I hear a constant stream of complaints from people marketing music about how hard it is to get above the noise level and reach new fans. Nothing seems to be working. What their really saying is nothing is working like it used to. Nothing is easy.
The real answer is that everything is working....but only a little. You've got to experiment. Expect small results from a multitude of quick free or cheap actions. Be satisfied with incremental growth. Admit that if its not happening, it might be the music.
One label that gets the new fast on your feet multi-faceted approach is Terry McBride's Nettwerk. They're often among the first labels to license their tracks to the latest site or service. One stop blanket licensing, variable pricing, giving music away, pay-what-you-want concerts and more are all part of Nettwerk's toolkit.
Just yesterday I got an email from Nettwerk:
"Do you have a Podcast? If so, send us your info! We constantly have cleared MP3's from our upcoming releases that are available for Podcasting, so we are putting together a special email list just those who have Podcasts so we can reach out directly to you when we have content available."
I'm on a Nettwerk email list because I blog and many bloggers have podcasts. Even I podcast occasionally; and here Nettwerk was asking me if I might want to use some free music. It's a small thing. How many people rush out to buy after a snippet of music is played on some semi-obscure podcast? But in Music 2.0 its the little things that add up. If a tastemaker tells 20 of his friends and they each tell 20 friends...
Nettwerk gets it.
PS: I just love Nettwerk Management's mission statement.
PPS: Terry, you need to add an RSS feed to your blog CORRECTION: My apologies, the link to the RSS feed was at the bottom here all along.
