Saturday, January 27, 2007

A Warning Sign

I was browsing a blog written by music business "coach and consultant" Madalyn Sklar when I came across something interesting: a blog entry recommending an e-book on indie music promotion. The title of the entry was "Recommended Reading..." so I was looking forward to seeing Madalyn's comments and then following up by perhaps looking the book over myself. Here's Madalyn's review:
In this revolutionary eBook, you will discover WHO TO APPROACH TO GET YOUR MUSIC HEARD in advertising, television, and even film. You’ll discover how easy it is to get your work into the right hands. You’ll be given step by step information on how to package your material and get your music heard!
My hype radar immediately went off. That didn't look like the kind of objective book review you read in a blog, even for how short it was. So I clicked over to the book's site to follow up, and check out what you find there:
In this revolutionary eBook, you will discover WHO TO APPROACH TO GET YOUR MUSIC HEARD in advertising, television, and even film. You’ll discover how easy it is to get your work into the right hands. You’ll be given step by step information on how to package your material and get your music heard!
Mighty familiar, isn't it? But wait, this re-printed paragraph of hype is just the beginning. If you look at the link to the e-book site from Madalyn's blog, it looks like this: gogirls.music456.hop.clickbank.net/. That's not a direct link to the site, that's a link that goes through a paid affiliate program run by Clickbank.

What does that mean? It means that if you click on the link from Ms. Sklar's site and then buy the e-book after visiting the book site, Ms. Sklar gets a paid commission. So here we have a woman who provides her services to the indie community as an expert selling out her "expert recommendation" for a quick buck. She didn't even have the decency to indicate that she didn't write the comments used in her blog entry--they were hype from the site who was paying her for each referral.

I don't know if Madalyn Sklar is any good at her job or not, but I do know that I find it hard to trust her when she claims her blog is "to help you with your music career by providing free advice, resources, and even some motivation" and instead she uses the entries to shill for a book she makes money from. Credibility is so important when judging who to pay to help nurture your career, and there are few things that will hurt a person's credibility more than the possibility that your opinion is for sale.

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Posted by Jack at 12:19 AM | | Comments

Thursday, January 25, 2007

One Last Post On AirSpun

I received a comment about my post on AirSpun that described my opinion as a "smear." I responded to the specific complaints in the comments section of that post, but I did want to address the bigger point of AirSpun's business model. In short, the company's problems are fixable. My issues with AirSpun aren't that the idea behind their business is bad but rather that the service they provide is bad. How can they improve? Well, the following would be a good start:
  • Don't charge for overnight spots
    • Either don't sell them at all or provide them as free bonus spots for people who buy a longer schedule. I can't emphasize enough how worthless overnight spots are. Selling them to indie musicians who don't know any better is not much different from outright stealing from them.
  • Require a minimum purchase of 10 spots
    • As I outlined in my original post, the nature of reach and frequency is that a message isn't going to get across without being heard numerous times. That would require more than 10 spins, but at least 10 would be a minimal start. Selling less than 10 spins will have a marginal impact and is pretty much a waste of money.
  • Give the artists more time to customize their spot
    • The current AirSpun template includes a brazenly self-serving ad for AirsSpun.com that is part of the required 15 second tag at the end. Why are you advertising your service in an ad that the artist is paying for? Sure, you need to include a legal mention at the end of the spot that states it is a paid commercial, but that doesn't need to be more than 3 to 5 seconds, and it certainly doesn't need to include AirSpun self-promotion.
    • Give the artist 50 to 55 seconds of time to include either more music or a co-op ad with a local venue or record store.
  • Require radio stations to define spot schedules using exact language
    • Is it too much to expect a station to tell an advertiser that the spot is going to run 3pm-7pm Monday-Friday? No, it's not. So why do they use undefined terms like "prime" that potentially can be twisted to mean a wide range of times if the station has oversold its inventory?
  • Use a paid monitoring service to verify that ads aired
    • Radio stations are infamous for filling out affidavits swearing that they ran advertisements only to have never run them. And why not? Outside of sitting by the radio all day long, there's no way to know for sure.
    • AirSpun can--and should--get around that by using a paid service like RCS's monitoring subsidiary or somehow convince BDS or Mediabase to monitor the commercials.
    • The irony here is that this problem would be solved if Mediabase or BDS monitored the commercial spins, but AirSpun has taken pains to point out that they don't want that to happen.
As my follow-up post on Google indicated, a lot of these problems inherent in AirSpun aren't relevant to dMarc/Google: dMarc uses a computerized system to monitor the airing of commercials, the musician has total control over the content of the ad, the spot schedules are purchased using very specific language, and you can exclude overnights if you want.

It would be nice if AirSpun, which claims to be a small company sensitive to the plight of the aspiring recording artist, actually served them as well as the corporate insensitive behemoth that is Google.

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Posted by Jack at 10:02 PM | | Comments

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Less Hype More Help

In the interest of taking a look at what young artists face as they prepare to learn how to improve their fortunes and begin their music career, I thought I'd examine the first step most people would take when approaching a new endeavor: Internet research. So I pulled up a random Google search for "music promotion help" and took at look at both the top sponsored link and the top search result. How helpful would they be? How appropriate would the advice be for a young aspiring musician?

The first paid result was for "Brand in 60 Seconds" via www.brandin60seconds.com. This site was for a PR business who wanted to help companies create a better brand, and thus wasn't what a young musician would have in mind when looking for help. So I went to the next choice, which was "Publish you CD/DVD at no cost to you" via www.kunaki.com.

This was more like it! If I'm a young band, I totally want to produce CDs for free. I didn't do any research into the company's track record, but their offerings appeared to be perfect for a young musician. You can buy any quantity of CDs prepped via their software at $1.60 a disc. That's certainly not the cheapest you'll find, but for a new artist tracking down resources and looking for an easy solution, it's a great start.

But what about the "publish at no cost to you" promise? Well, that looks legit, as well. Kunaki provides a digital storefront, which you can link to from your band's website, and they will create the CDs on-demand. You, as the artist, don't pay for anything up front. The cost is steep, however--a $3.00 handling fee. On the other hand, having an online storefront with actual inventory available at no up-front cost would be the ideal solution for a starving musician getting his or her career off the ground.

So, the second paid Google result for "music promotion help" was helpful, but didn't really address the core need: Help with music promotion.

The first actual search result was for a site entitled, appropriately enough, "Music Business Help" via www.indiebiz.com. Now that sounds like exactly what we would need as a new recording artist looking for advice. Unfortunately, as you enter the site, you get a litany of highlighted, underlined, bolded, and italicized promises that look like this:
I will personally show you... What smart musicians do to make $40.00 per CD... (yes, you read that right!)
Don't believe this guy? Well, he's not afraid to let you know that he's the man. He says up front that he is the "'Secret Weapon' labels like MCA, Interscope, Sony, and Capitol hire when they need music marketing that gets results!" Having lots of friends in major labels, I can assure you that this guy is no one's "secret weapon." I can also state that you should be especially wary of sites that are low on actual practical advice and high on hype and bullshit.

And let me tell you: Half his promises are meaningless bullshit. Who cares if a label intern calls you back? Should we get excited about earning $40 in non-traditional revenue for each CD if you sell 5 CDs to your family and friends? What young artists need is concrete, practical, and actionable help. Not a bunch of empty promises.

What can I say? The first result for music promotion help on Google presents you with a worthless site promoting some huckster trying to pawn off his hype as a service to help independent musicians. And that, my friends, is why I launched this blog. There's too much hype and not enough help out there.

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Posted by Jack at 2:38 PM | | Comments

Sunday, January 21, 2007

So Are Radio Commercials Good Or Bad?

A few days ago I blogged about Airspun, and one of my criticisms was that Airspun doesn't air songs, they air commercials. I followed this up by positively highlighting how you can do a more effective job buying commercial time from Google's dMarc subsidiary. But these are commercials, too. How can commercials be bad with Airspun but good with Google? The answer comes down to expectations and effectiveness.

I daresay that most indie artists would buy showcases via Airspun and think of them as good as regular airplay. This is an unrealistic expectation, and I think one of the main problems with Airspun--it preys upon every artist's dream of commercial radio airplay. As I mentioned, it's an enticing concept. After all, your song (at least 45 seconds of it) is getting played on the radio. However, my point was that you have to separate the expectation of "radio airplay!" from the reality of what you are purchasing. The bottom line is that this spin will not be as good as regular commercial radio airplay for all the reasons I listed.

Now note that this doesn't necessarily mean the commercial showcases are bad, but you should consider the context of how they are being presented when you decide whether to buy a schedule through Airspun or Google. The absolutely worst thing you can do is get excited about the possibility of getting 10 spins on a major radio station in Seattle at only $30 a spin, and pay for it, telling all your friends that you have "major market airplay." This may make you feel good and impress your friends, but it won't be an effective use of your dollars.

Which leads me to Google. One of the main reasons that Google and dMarc is a better option is that there is no illusion that this is radio airplay. These are commercials pure and simple. The good news is that Google's approach provides you much more flexibility: You can actually leverage the power of the "commercial" aspect of songs purchased on the radio. Not only is there legitimate demographic targeting and accountability, but you can utilize things like co-op advertising, which are critical for your marketing plan if you buy airtime.

Perhaps the ultimate irony is that you can present more actual music in a Google spot if you want, making it more like an actual song play than Airspun.

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Posted by Jack at 7:01 PM | | Comments

Saturday, January 20, 2007

Using Google To Get Your Band Radio Airplay

A couple days ago, I blogged about the company Airspun, which gets independent artists commercial radio airplay via 60 second commercials presented as artist showcases. As I elaborated in my post, in most cases Airspun is a waste of money.Wouldn't it be great if someone could improve the Airspun idea, giving you access to many more radio stations, and giving you total control over when your song spot will run and what the content of the spot will be? Well, believe it or not, that service exists right now, and it is owned by Google.

The company is called dMarc, and Google bought it to connect its Adwords advertisers with commercial radio stations. What does this mean for you as an aspiring recording artist? It means that Google has just streamlined the same process that Airspun uses, only its service has hundreds more radio stations, more accountability, more creative control, and is quite likely cheaper. After all, Google purchased dMarc for the simple reason that the system is designed to be affordable and easy-to-use for their long tail of advertisers.

Here's how it could work for your band:

  • Contact dMarc and create an advertiser account

  • Figure out what cities and what demographic target you would like to reach
    • You should know your audience. Pick a demo that would be similar to them.
  • Figure out what time of the day you would like your spots to run
    • Prioritize based on the most-listened to dayparts: Morning drivetime, afternoon drive time, middays, nights--in that order. Don't pay a penny for overnights, and avoid weekends unless they specifically exclude overnights.
  • Estimate the cost of a reasonable number of spots to run
    • Remember from this post that you want a schedule that will reach each listener at least three times. So purchase at least 30 or 40 spots. I know, it's expensive, but anything less than 20 spots will be a waste of your money.
  • Put together your 60 second spot via the production resources that Google provides or do it on your own
    • Google uses professional radio people, so that's an enticing option, but it won't hurt to do it yourself. Be more economical than Airspun, which takes 25% of the airtime for talking and sponsorship announcements. Succinctly give the name of your band and the song title at the beginning and then close by again giving the band name/song title, along with where listeners can get more information
  • Buy your airtime!
The opportunity here is immense because of the flexibility you have in dealing with the airtime you have purchased. This is a huge difference from Airspun, which prepackages your spot for you. With Google/dMarc you can even play the same games the big boys do. For example, with a Google ad buy in place, you could go to your local independent record store and say, "Hey, I just bought a 40 spot schedule on the local rock station. If you sell my CD on your front rack here, I'll mention your store in every spot." This is just one example, but it should illustrate the opportunity in having a plan in place to support your airplay.

Here are some other ideas:

  • Try to leverage your newfound advertising muscle with local clubs or, as mentioned, music stores.
    • Odds are that many of them aren't savvy enough to know about dMarc and thus assume they can't afford radio advertising. You are literally approaching them with free advertising and a legitimate marketing plan based on radio airplay. That would certainly get you a second look from a store buyer or a club owner.
  • Approach the station program director (not the music director) about augmenting your schedule by giving away some CDs or something similar on the air.
    • This is a long shot, but worth the attempt, especially if you also...
  • Have your friends work the phone lines and station email addresses. Have them request the song and leave emails about how much they love it.
  • All of these things help create that cause-effect connection between the airplay you are getting and a listener response/community excitement. That is a very powerful selling point to radio programmers.

The bottom line is that radio exposure is an incredibly powerful tool, but to really get the most of it, you need to leverage the power across multiple points of attack. How much impact would a 40 spot schedule run on a station have? Well, think of it this way: If you purchase 40 spots on a rock station, in all likelihood your song will be receiving more airplay than the biggest rock song in the country on that station. For that week, your song is the number one hit song in the city. Now go market it like one.

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Posted by Jack at 3:37 AM | | Comments

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Fine-Tuning This Blog Thing

I have a lot of topics I want to discuss on this site, as well as a few services to review. Next up is going to be a way to replicate the previously mentioned Airspun service in a way that is not only better in every way, but is also most likely cheaper.

But I'm also enjoying developing this blog, so I'm spending some time looking around for fun widgets and sidebar things. That's what I've been doing most of tonight. You probably won't see many changes over the next few days as I look at things behind the scenes, but when I finally have everything the way I want, I think you'll like that.

Anyway, spending time on the blog meant that I couldn't finish the "Homespun Airspun" entry, but look for that tomorrow!

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Posted by Jack at 11:16 PM | | Comments

Airspun Is A Waste Of Money

I like Guy Kawasaki, so when he recommended Airspun for indie musicians as a way of getting airplay, I just had to check it out. Not surprisingly, some indie marketing consultants are also recommending the site. The idea is interesting: Through agreements with commercial radio stations across the U.S. (they currently work with 17), Airspun allows you to purchase a one minute "artist profile" that includes roughly 45 seconds of music. The cost goes from $30 to $400 for each broadcast.

As an indie artist, what's not to like? For a relatively modest investment, you get all the benefits of radio station airplay. Well, let's break it down for you.

Problem #1: These are commercials

This is not traditional radio airplay. These are commercials, and each of your broadcasts won't be surrounded by other music--they'll be surrounded by commercials. Additionally, the songs are packaged like commercials, complete with "showcases paid for by..." tags at the end. This is hardly the best environment to showcase your music.

Problem #2: You only get to present 45 seconds of your song

With roughly 15 seconds reserved for all the promotional voiceovers, each of your promotional broadcasts include only 45 seconds of your song. Note that the biggest problem isn't that the listener will only hear part of your song (although for a lot of songs, it is an issue), the problem is the length of exposure. For a song to truly make an impression on the listener, it needs to sink in. A 45 second snippet just doesn't have the impact of a full song, complete with several repetitions of a song's hook.

Problem #3: To use this strategy right, you need to spend a lot of money

One of the draws of this approach for indie musicians is that it looks extremely cost-effective. At $30/spot (the lowest rate quoted), you can get 3 spins on a commercial rock station in San Diego for less than $100. What a deal, right?

This is where cost-effectiveness comes in. Former Arbitron executive Pierre Bouvard wrote a book called Optimum Effective Scheduling (OES), the essence of which was that, for a message (or song) to get effectively exposed, it had to reach the audience at least three times. The trouble is that people don't listen to a station 24 hours a day, so to guarantee reaching them three times, you need to schedule many more than three spots. How many spots required is based on reach frequency analysis, but from my experience, I would estimate that it would take a minimum of 40+ spins on an average rock station.

What does this mean? This means that if you spent $300 for ten spots via Airspots, you may as well not have received any airplay at all. Reach frequency analysis would say that your spot was heard by the average listener one time, if that much. And one listen just isn't enough to make an impact.

How often do we criticize radio for focusing so much on one listen records and not the stronger music that artists like you create? This is the type of trap you will build for yourself if you ignore OES. Your song will get played 10 times, but even with great positioning during the day, it will hardly make a ripple. So, for your Airspots to be effective, even at the cheapest rate of $30, you're looking at an investment of at least $1200. And even that is the bare minimum.

Problem #4: You will get screwed on when your profile spot is scheduled

Radio stations make a lot of money from their commercials at peak listening. You can be certain that if the station needs to make a scheduling decision between playing your spot during the afternoon commute and the spot from the local Chevy dealer that spends $60 thousand a year at the station, they Chevy dealer will get the afternoon drive spot. You? You're spot will run in overnights.

The Airspun site supposedly lets you choose your part of the day that your spot will run, but the choices are so vague as to give you no protection. Say you open your wallet and drop the $115/per spot fee for the "JAN Prime Special" on KBZT in San Diego. "Prime" certainly sounds like your artist showcase will run during the morning or afternoon commute, doesn't it? Well, here's the definition of "JAN Prime Special" from the Airspun website: "Special Prime-Time Rate - Jan Only." Note there is absolutely no definition of what "Prime-Time" is.

Don't believe me? Browse the spot times by each station that the Airspun site conveniently provides. I looked at KNDD/Seattle. Six artists used Airspun to promote their music on KNDD, including 2 spins by a band called Latent Anxiety. When did they play? Well, four the six spins occurred between 2 AM and 4 AM. Yes, these indie artists spent their hard-earned money to get exposure in the middle of the night. Does that sound like a good investment?

Look at another example: From the Airspun site we can see that Movin Melvin Brown bought ten spots on KMTT in Seattle. Ten spins on a major market adult rock station! Sweet, right? Well, 8 of the 10 spins occurred between midnight and 5 AM. The cheapest rate for KMTT is $35, so that was $280 in wasted money. Not so sweet.s

Problem #5: The spins don't count on charts

I just looked up on Mediabase, an airplay monitoring service, to see if I could find the Movin Melvin Brown airplay on KMTT. If I did, that would mean that you could conceivably buy your way on to the radio charts via the Airspun system. That would be kind of unsavory, but in a business sense it would actually be worth the monetary investment. Well, guess what? It's not there. This is not surprising. Both Mediabase and BDS go to great efforts to protect the integrity of their charts. They specifically do not include spins from songs that are featured in commercials, even with 45 seconds of music.

So this means that not only are you not getting any significant exposure from your Airspun investment, but you don't even have the benefit of having your purchased airplay showing up on radio station playlists or airplay charts. As far as the radio industry is concerned, it's as if your airplay didn't occur at all.

Problem #6: You can't do any co-operative advertising with your showcase

We already mentioned that one downside is that these are actually commercials, but commercials do have some benefits, and one of the primary benefits of a spot schedule is ignored by Airspun--the ability to leverage the commercials with music stores or clubs. Imagine going into a record store and telling them if they place your CD for sale on the counter you'd mention their store in all your advertising. In that scenario you get airplay and potential sales from that airplay. But you can't do that with Airspun.

In conclusion

Radio is still the single most powerful force at exposing music to a mass audience. Unfortunately, getting commercial radio airplay is incredibly difficult. A service like Airspun is enticing because it makes what is so difficult suddenly appear to be so easy, and not just easy--but not that expensive. Unfortunately, you can file this in that overflowing file: If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

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Posted by Jack at 12:44 AM | | Comments

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

It's A Jungle Out There

I estimate that 90% of the money most indie artists spend on promoting their career and music is wasted. Radio promoters, retail programs, CD compilations, and more--most of them are nothing more than a waste of your time and money. Why is that? Well, often it is due to a misunderstanding of the simple concept of getting your money's worth.

An independent radio promoter may be able to get you a spin or two at a decent-sized station or even full-time airplay in a light rotation at a smaller station. That's nice. But how much is it worth? I'll walk you through understanding exactly how to make that judgement. Similarly, the Internet provides indie musicians with a tremendous amount of opportunity, but what is worth spending your money on and what is a waste of time? I'll walk you through that answer, too.

So, if you came to this blog expecting a get famous quick scheme, you've come to the wrong place. If you came for some advice on how to get famous, well, I guess I can provide some anecdotal lessons on that. However, if you came to this blog to educate yourself on how best to promote yourself and your art, to avoid the scams and the ineffective tools that will simply lighten your wallet and not improve your booking, CD sales, or radio airplay. Ah, then you've absolutely come to the right place.

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Posted by Jack at 12:55 AM | | Comments

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Who The Hell Are You?

You can say that I've been around the block. I'm one of the few people in the world to have management experience in the radio, record, and retail industries: I have worked as a music director in a major market rock station, a promotion executive at a major label, and I oversaw marketing at a major distribution company retail branch.

In other words, I've seen enough to know the benefits and pitfalls of practically every element of the music business. I'm not here to sell you anything. I just want to share my knowledge so that you can save yourself the money and pain of having your musical dream hijacked by someone out to make a buck, and--trust me--there are a lot of people out there wanting to do just that.

Consider me your guardian angel. You know, the one that smokes and hangs out a little too late at the local clubs. Oh, and I'm keeping this anonymous because I am sure that at some point I'll have to say something not very nice about businesses where people that I know and like work. I figure it's best to be honest and anonymous than reserved and open.

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Posted by Jack at 10:37 PM | | Comments

About me

  • I'm Jack
  • ...and I'm here to save you money and help you better navigate the music business waters. I have worked as a music director in a major market rock station, a promotion executive at a major label, and I oversaw marketing at a major distribution company retail branch. So I know of what I speak.

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