READ PART 1: McBride Speaks
PART 2: (London) The final section of the day at yesterday's Music Tank Millennials gathering and probably the most anticipated, was the brainstorming session dubbed Artist Road Mapping. Terry McBride and representatives from all parts of the industry discussed what an up and coming artist, James Yuill (video and links after the jump) could do to get his music out there. Terry knew nothing about James before he arrived and it was exciting to see the man in action. He is all about “getting out of the sand box and onto the beach”. Its not about being creative its about using your imagination, which McBride says are two very different things. Focusing on how you can get the artist (the brand) to make a connection with their fans should be a personal and varied process.
The exercise started off with a shy artist who was in the sandbox and ended up with an eco-fighting, Guinness loving, creative geek who had jumped out of the box and was running towards the beach of opportunities. Some of the suggestions:
- Creating his own Guinness advert using his music and then sending it to Guinness. Even if they didn’t use it could go on You Tube.
- Making the stems of his tracks...
available for his fans to play around with.
- A competition to help find his missing laptop that held all the original recordings.
- Letting his fans pick his singles and instead of making available whole albums possibly releasing music when he finished it.
The key element to the process was finding out what the artist believed in, what his causes were, and keeping it personal. Fans can sniff a fake marketing ploy from a mile away so you have to keep it real and believable. If the artist believes in the causes he is aligning himself with so will the people who listen to his music.
Going out and actively trying things that people say can’t be done is the direction artist and artist managers should be going. It is not about completely ignoring the press and TV and the usual methods of marketing it is about building on these areas and going beyond them. No is not a word Terry uses and looking at things in the positive he says is important.
James Yuill: Web, MySpace, Video:
