Case Study: Remixing: New Release!

Brand New releases from Oscar TG on his new record label Oh That's Good Music!  Entitled, Squelch, the release features remixes from Sean Dexter, Pete Kastanis, Secret Groovers and Me, The Celebrity Murder Party.



You can purchase this here:

Oscar TG Squelch
Juno Download (Mp3/WAV) | iTunes (256kbps AAC)
Oscar TG Squelch (Celebrity Murder Party remix)
Amazon (256kbps Mp3) | iTunes (256kbps AAC)

Or on Beatport here:

http://www.beatport.com/release/squelch/854472 

By Jez with No comments

How to book a Tour

From the Music Managers foundation:

Taking place from 6pm on Monday 16th January at Under The Bridge in Fulham, this is one of s series of events the MMF have produced to engage with the live industry that many emerging managers want. The aim is to expose the (sometimes) conflicting needs of the participants in booking a successful tour from artist/manager/agent/promoter/tour personnel/transport provider etc. The aim is to be light-hearted but with an educational outcome.

The panel will consist of:

• Jon Webster (Chair)
• Adam Elfin (MMF Live Committee – manager and agent)
• Alex Bruford (ex-artist/tour manager/ now agent at ATC Live)
• Promoter TBA
• Richard Young (Production manager Radiohead)
• John Corr (Sound Moves, Global Freight Orchestration)
• Adrian Whitmarsh (Premier Aviation – transport)

Date:  Monday January 16^th

Time: 6pm arrival, 7pm panel discussion + Q and A, 8pm (approx.) networking

Venue: Under The Bridge, Stamford Bridge, Fulham Road,London,SW6 1HS

Underground: Fulham Broadway

Map: click here

RSVP to info@themmf.net. Admission is free for MMF and FAC members and is yet another benefit of belonging to our wonderful organisations.

http://www.themmf.net/2012/01/10/mmf-event-how-to-book-a-tour-16th-january-2/

By Jez with No comments

How to: Internet Marketing - Affiliates

There is much disagreement over affiliate marketing on the internet - the idea of advertising masquerading as content is a contentious one.  Many principled people balk at the idea of placing ads on their internet boards - and certainly for your main content - your "shop window" this isn't really such a great idea as it tends to give off a bad impression.  This is why, if you're going to go down the road of placing adverts on your blog you need to consider this quite carefully.

By Jez with No comments

Case Study: First Release: Raindance

Back in October my track "Raindance" was released through Red Robot Records.  At the time I was busy setting up a company and so was unable to dedicate time to self releasing. 

Red Robot had a good reputation and a solid backlog of  tracks on Beatport - and as it was unlikely that I'd be able to churn out the volume of tracks and sales that Beatport wanted in order to stay eligible from month to month, it made sense to go with a sturdy record label with a proven history.

The deal with the label was profit share - we each take a certain percentage each in return for them releasing and promoting the track to their mailing list.

Initial reviews have been good, although without a large budget to push the track marketing has been kept to a minimum.

By Jez with No comments

Monetise your music content: Mixeeba

Mixeeba are a music affiliate system that enables content providers to monetise content by linking to music download stores.  

As they describe below:

Mixeeba originally started life as a website for hosting DJ mixes. DJs uploaded their mix and entered the tracklist in a special format. We monetised the website by displaying the tracklist with an affiliate link to buy each track, making the tracklist interactive. We would search for each track from download stores likeBeatport, Juno Download, Traxsource and iTunes.Others on the web, however, were also tackling DJ mix hosting and websites likeMixcloud, Let's Mix and SoundCloud were, we thought, doing a better job than we were. We decided to focus solely on what we were doing well: finding where to buy the tracks being played. As such we're now able to help other music-related websites successfully monetise their own content.

This basically means that if you advertise DJ mixes or Tunes on your blog that in return for providing a link and promoting a product you receive a share of the sales.  The exact % of the sales return depends on which outlet you advertise. 

The Rates Mixeeba pay are detailed below:

By Jez with No comments

Internet Marketing Dirty tricks: Mayor of New York to learn to code

According to the BBC "New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has resolved to take an online computer coding course.

The mayor is joining more than 180,000 people currently taking part in Code Year, a campaign to encourage more people to programme.

"My New Year's resolution is to learn to code with Codeacademy in 2012!" he wrote on Twitter.

- BBC  6th January 2012.

"Participants in the course receive an interactive lesson each week, via email.

The campaign promises that participants will be "building apps and websites before you know it".

It has proved a hit on Twitter with thousands using the hashtag "#codeyear"."

Codeyear is a campaign by the company codeacademy - the company mentioned so prominently in the article.  The whole article reads like a press release for the company, and I would bet my hat that it's wording originated in codeacademy's PR department.

It may be somewhat surprising to learn that companies can manipulate large news organisations into running adverts as news items, but it is a trick used by PR agencies all the time.  Nick Davies in his excellent book "Flat Earth News" exposes how propoganda (government and PR related) is disseminated into the main stream media through the pressures on news organisations to produce a large amount of content quickly.

There are several obvious giveaways when looking for PR planted news stories:

1. A prominent mention of a company, or campaign run by a company / political organisation
2. The article will espouse specific benefits of the product
3. The article will mention research by a grassroots organisation
4. Often the company's product addresses a specific outcome of that research by providing a solution.

Codeacademy's campaign is doubly effective in that they have leveraged a major figure to promote their campaign - Mayor Bloomberg (One wonders what he was offered in return).

As the BBC pointed out in their expose on Internet Marketing here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b018xy2b/The_Internet_Millionaires_Club/

Twitter testimonials are often a valuable tool for internet marketing.

By Jez with No comments

Louis CK on Direct Music Sales

Comedian Louis CK has weighed in with a status report on the first four days of his experiment with independent, DRM-free video distribution. CK spent $170,000 recording live performances consisting of previously unaired material ("every new generation of material I create is my income, it's like a farmer's annual crop") and made it available online direct from a site that he spent a further $32,000 on for $5, without any DRM. In four days, CK recouped the $200,000 outlay and made an additional $200,000, and sales are still holding strong (I just bought a copy).

The show went on sale at noon on Saturday, December 10th. 12 hours later, we had over 50,000 purchases and had earned $250,000, breaking even on the cost of production and website. As of Today, we've sold over 110,000 copies for a total of over $500,000. Minus some money for PayPal charges etc, I have a profit around $200,000 (after taxes $75.58). This is less than I would have been paid by a large company to simply perform the show and let them sell it to you, but they would have charged you about $20 for the video. They would have given you an encrypted and regionally restricted video of limited value, and they would have owned your private information for their own use. They would have withheld international availability indefinitely. This way, you only paid $5, you can use the video any way you want, and you can watch it in Dublin, whatever the city is in Belgium, or Dubai. I got paid nice, and I still own the video (as do you). You never have to join anything, and you never have to hear from us again.

I really hope people keep buying it a lot, so I can have shitloads of money, but at this point I think we can safely say that the experiment really worked. If anybody stole it, it wasn't many of you. Pretty much everybody bought it. And so now we all get to know that about people and stuff. I'm really glad I put this out here this way and I'll certainly do it again. If the trend continues with sales on this video, my goal is that i can reach the point where when I sell anything, be it videos, CDs or tickets to my tours, I'll do it here and I'll continue to follow the model of keeping my price as far down as possible, not overmarketing to you, keeping as few people between you and me as possible in the transaction.

From Boing Boing:  http://boingboing.net/2011/12/15/louis-cks-drm-free-direct-sa.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

By Jez with No comments