Ian Rogers (who I’ve met once, and is a really smart nice guy) recently posted his presentation on creating a digital marketing plan on the TopSpinMedia website. You can link to it here, and I definitely recommend you read every word. If for no other reason, it will inspire you with a ton of different ideas as to how you can better serve and grow your audience as a band in the year 2011.

Don’t misunderstand what he’s saying though, and simply run off to create a ton of different offerings, and throw all his suggestions into action at once.  The part about there being a process and a strategic order to things is crucial.  Always plan things with timing in mind.

And, as a very important aside… Ian Rogers can safely assume that you already make music that people love.  That’s because it’s his job to market what you already make.  As a musician, you can’t afford to make that same assumption.  It sounds simple, but it’s really not.  Make sure your music is incredible because if it isn’t, marketing it to the world is only going to make matters worse for you.

A friend sent me the link to this Mashable article today, talking about a new music/artist discovery tool called Hitlantis. I haven’t been able to get the actual Hitlantis site to function on my Macbook yet, so this post is purely in response to the Mashable article.

The idea behind Hitlantis is that it’s another site for bands to create their profiles on, and encourage people to become their fans on.  Sounds pretty familiar so far.  Only difference is the size of your fanbase is represented graphically on a map, and all the bands on the service are all placed onto the same ‘heat map’, so music fans can scour the heat map by genre and see what bands have bigger fanbases than others, simply by how big of a footprint they make on the map.  Visually, it looks really interesting, and I definitely want to dig further into it.  If the discovery aspect is fun for the end-user, then this could be a fantastic addition to the digital music landscape.

They’re apparently charging for upsells to artists though, including the ability to have a store (5 euros/month), and if you pay them 10-euro/month, you get record company pitching opportunities, and additional software features.  Then they plan on taking a ten-point commission on any sales you make through their store.  All this weirds me out a little bit, because it sounds like they could be making the bulk of their money off bands that are struggling to sell anything.  It’s tough for an artist to make a living, and if these guys stuck with just the commission model I’d respect it more.  They’d be making more of a committed statement to artist development, because they’d only be making money when their artists do.

I also somewhat disagree with launching yet another place that bands need to upload their music to, and create profiles on, and encourage people to become their fans on.  But I don’t blame Hitlantis for that… I guess this is all Myspace’s fault, because as it declines, there’s no “one solution” to replace it yet.  Could Hitlantis be that one-stop shop?  Only time will tell.

Mobile app versions of Hitlantis are in the works too.  Check out this video for a teaser.

This looks like something at least worth checking out – ReverbNation just released the beta version of an iPhone app that will allow you to collect fan mailing list signups, manage all your different status updates, send email newsletter updates and more, all from the comfort of your iPhone.

And the best part is that it’s free.

The downside – you have to sign up to Reverbnation and use their service to manage all your data.

It will be interesting to see what functionality future versions of the app will add though.  Some I thought of would be Credit card/Debit card transaction processing, SMS group signups and group text-messaging, location-based targeting of fan messaging, and merch inventory management.

On Dec. 9 of last year, the free (ad-supported) live-streaming site UStream.tv released a live video-broadcasting app for iPhone.  I’m sure the data-charges for using it could potentially get really out of hand if you used it over your 3G network, but if you’re within range of a free wifi network there are some really interesting things you could do with this.

• broadcast live from backstage before a show, interact with the fans in the audience, and build your set list together
• stream live performances from your rehearsal space
• video-chat with your fans no matter where you are
• give fans a live look at you in the recording studio
• post-concert wrap-ups live from the van/tour bus
• give your fans a “band’s eye view” of what it’s like to be on stage with you

I’m sure there are a ton of different and interesting ways you could use this tool to engage with your audience.  All you need is an iPhone and a free account at uStream.tv, which you can sign up for in seconds using the free app.  You can be broadcasting live video to the world in under a minute or two, using just your iPhone.

If you’re a musician with an iPhone and you want to check it out, download it now for free on the iTunes App store.

Several factors have really started to come together to result in a plethora of metrics being applied to music.  Record sales (and download sales) are no longer the only relevant metric for analyzing an artist’s fanbase.  I’ve personally seen an artist play a single concert to a room holding more fans than have bought their newest album in the entire country.  Ticket sales are a good metric, but that data isn’t readily accessible, or accurate until you’re working with promoters and ticketing agencies.  But with so many bands playing bar and club shows for cover-charge instead of hard tickets, that metric isn’t a good place to start either.  Radio play is another traditional metric, but access to that data for an indie artist is very expensive.

Add to all that, now the main ways artists are connecting with fans are all taking place online, where everything is trackable, and in comes web services offering email subscription tracking, myspace plays, youtube streams, blog-status grading, web-traffic measurements, “hit potential” analyzers, and more.

With more and more onus on bands to develop themselves, before working with business partners, it’s going to become increasingly important for musicians to become even more savvy marketers.  To understand all the different and powerful analytics that are available, and interpret the data into actions is going to become increasingly time-consuming (and potentially costly, if these services start introducing paid-subscription business models, which is the current norm for analytics services).

For a musician who’s looking to immerse themselves in information, and study their fan metrics intently, this onslaught is a dream come true, but on the other hand, when your main job it is to be creative, write, perform and practice, this could also become a real problem of time-management.

So what are services like the below doing to make this as easy and understandable as possible for musicians?

What services do musicians find provide the most useful and actionable information?

What are musicians saying about these and other services?

Is this type of information something a musician should pay for?

Are there other services out there that should be added to this list?

Music Metrics Services:

• Band Metrics
• Google Analytics
• Fanalytics
• Rockdex
• Artistdata
• MusicXRay
• Next Big Sound

A friend sent me the link to check out culturejam.com – after poking around on the site for a bit, it seems like they’re doing some interesting work in the twitter-world, with a specific eye toward music marketing.  One of the main things they seem to be doing is providing a twitter-app, that will back-end a download function.  Most of the examples they provide on the site seem to live on a sub-domain of the artist website.  So for example, if you visit http://twitter.moby.com you’ll get to listen to the entire record, then there’s a box near the bottom of the page that allows you to post a tweet-review of the record, (the suggested tweet already has an URL shortened link included) and in exchange for the tweet, you are then given access to a free exclusive download. It’s a great way to tap into your current followers networks and engage them in a transaction… their tweet for your free download.

I don’t know how I feel about the value proposition, and what is the value of a single tweet?  It could be very attractive to developing artists, however it also seems like some of the artists they’re working with are fairly established… Moby, Imogen Heap, Travis Barker/DJ AM among them, though there are others who I was not immediately familiar with.

Might be a good idea, and the service seems to be a valuable one, although there’s no mention on culturejam’s website as to how much an artist/label has to pay to use their services.  At any rate, it’s worth a look.  You can check out other examples of their services, listen to a podcast by the CEO, and sign up for their mailing list, or contact them directly if you’re interested in trying them out.

www.culturejam.com

And if anyone’s worked with them already, post your experience in the comments section.