Infinite Fan Base

Here’s a story to a few more success stories using unconvential methods. You struggling musicians out there take note: You can make it. Just stay at and don’t be afraid to try new things.

Link:  Readers as patrons in the digital age

The government is considering whether to cut off Internet access to the folks suspected of piracy.

UK file-sharers to be ‘cut off’

This is just another example of the music industry pursuing the wrong strategy. You can’t beat the public into submission. I don’t care if you are a label executive. Or a lawyer. Anyway, this is just another example of bad policy.

There is one interesting theme in this article. The ISPs are starting to get upset at the music industry for trying to force their hand to disconnect users. It’s the ISPs job to help make a physical connection to the Internet. The labels are pressuring the ISPs to start policing users for piracy. The ISPs don’t like being put in such a precarious position. On the one hand, they’re getting pressure from the labels through government lobbying to control piracy. On the other hand, the minute they start cutting off users, the word-of-mouth phenomenon will kick in and you’ll have many users switching service providers in protest.

Congratulations music industry. Just when I thought you couldn’t get anyone else mad at you, you prove me wrong. Way to go. We welcome the ISPs to the side of the upset consumers.

It’s very easy to want to start promoting yourself as soon as you get on Twitter.

Hey!! – Buy my CD!

Hey!! – Come to my show!

Hey!! – Buy a t-shirt!

When you start this type of conversation, you immediately turn off your crowd. There are ways to sell stuff (which we’ll discuss later), but this direct method of yelling isn’t it.

Start out by talking with others and just having conversations. People like people who are nice.

I translate that into musician speak: Just be cool, man.

This is odd. Apparently, before the announced merger of Ticketmaster and LiveNation, there was an attempt by the current Ticketmaster CEO, who was with a different company at the time, to drive LiveNation out of business. The idea was to get the major scalpers to partner together and pit themselves against LiveNation. The proceeds from the ticket sales would be split among the parties, including the artists.

This is the economics example of trying to form a cartel. The idea behind a cartel is to control prices and divvy up the profits among the players. If you  don’t want to participate in the cartel, then you don’t get a piece of the profits. Unfortunately, cartels are illegal in the U.S. It violates the Sherman Act. Secondly, cartels circumvent the free market mechanisms to regulate themselves. And these efforts always create less value for the consumer.

The one thing I like about this situation is it’s a classic prisoner’s dilemma. Altough illegal, all the parties would have been better off if they had worked together. But, just like the classic prisoner, no one trusts the other one and everyone ends up in a worse position.

Links:

WSJ: Big Ticket Seller Tried Deal With Scalpers

Hypebot: Project Showtime: Secret Deal Between Irving Azoff, Ticketmaster & Ticket Scalpers Revealed

Ticketnews.com: Azoff tried and failed to make a major move into the secondary ticket market

This is a good idea. It has tons of potential. Let’s hope that the management team doesn’t twist the channel into drivel. Think MTv of old to the MTv of today as a reference.

Link: YouTube to Stream Outside Lands Music Festival

More lawsuits in the industry. This time from the publishing side of things. The NMPA is suing several sites that are offering free lyrics. The NMPA is a lobby group, the publisher’s equivalent of the RIAA and MPAA.

The “I wish the Internet would go away” motivation from the lobbying group seems to think that shutting down the site will create an immediate benefit for the properly licensed businesses on the web. In fact, the end game is going to be greater distrust from the music community in regards to the industry as a whole. And, should the offending sites be taken down, someone else is going to put up an exact replica of the site on some server where the laws are less enforceable. It’s already happened in similar situations.

Link: Publishers File Suit Against Lyric Sites

Ok, I’m not going to win a Nobel prize for this relevation, but I’ve seen some folks break this rule.

Your Twitter name should be your band’s name, or something very close to it. As you are finding new fans, you want to create name recognition for your music, which comes from multiple exposures and repetition. If you are using your personal name to tweet info about your band, you are more than likely confusing new fans.

Corollary A: If you want to Tweet on your own, use your own name. (You can point back to your band’s info in your profile.)

After much research and discussion, it’s obvious there is a wide discrepancy in regards to the use of Twitter. Some have good ideas, some don’t. Anyway, if this many people are having problems, then there are likely many more.

I’m going to post 50 Twitter tips for musicians in regards to promotion and finding fans. I’ll try to post one a day, depending on my schedule. The ideas will range from basic information to more advanced techniques. There will be no order to them, I’ll write them out in the order I’ve collected them.

If you have a good tip, I want you to send it to me. If I post your tip, I’ll include your Twitter account, name, and website. (Use this email: twittertips@infinitefanbase.com )

First post tomorrow.

When I have 50, I’ll put them into a single PDF for easy viewing. If you’ve made a contribution and your Twitter Tip gets posted, I’ll make sure you get a copy of the PDF in your email. Again, the email addr is ‘twittertips@infinitefanbase.com’ .

Many artists want to quit their day job and play music full time (or tour, or record an album, or whatever).

It seems like a difficult problem, but if you can answer one simple question, you’ll be on your way to making it happen: “How many fans do you need to quit your job?”

It’s your ‘magic number.’

The question is a trick. In reality, you could find a single patron to fund your band. However most artists won’t find a single source of revenue.

By answering that question, you are forced to start thinking about the business side of your music. The question has built-in sub-questions:

How many fans do I have now?

How am I making money off the fans now?

How much money do I need to quit my job?

What am I doing to get new fans?

These are not easy questions to answer. But they are all relevant. If you don’t have the answers, you should start working on them. Once you know your magic number, you can start working on a plan to get you there.

When talking with artists about online promotion, there’s a simple, yet effective approach I use – start with the theory and abstract idea, and then decscribe it using specific examples and details. From there, make simple observations about the ways the band can start using it themselves. It helps to hear the abstract first, solidify the idea with specifics, and drive the point home with specific suggestions.

Sometime I get weird looks when I start using specific numbers. It’s because the numbers don’t match the size of their fan base. For example:

Me: If you do this x and this y using twitter,you could add 1-5 people to your attendance.

Them: Man, I don’t care about those numbers. Our list has xxx (it’s a large number) people of it. 1-5 people doesn’t help us.

Me: Ok. Let me explain what I meant.

And then I do into a diatribe about scale, percentages, and the initial size of the fan base.

You’d be amazed at how many people will turn down an idea because they don’t quite get the numbers. Most people are skeptical and very wary of new ideas, but the next time you hear an idea, you’ll be better off if you ask yourself 3 questions:

1. Is this something we could use?

2. Will our fans respond to this?

3. Will we see significant returns based on our existing fan base?

Using these 3 questions should help you get past the scaling question.