Music Marketing

Gerald Casale Of Devo: “Marketing Is Everything.”

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In this interview featured on Marketplace, Gerald Casale, founder of the group Devo, talks about his journey to recording a new album and reentering the music industry with his former group, for the first time in 20 years.  This short except from his talk with Kai Ryssdal proved to be the most interesting part:

"the implosion of the music business in general, the functions of labels are almost gone, people have devalued music in terms of its cultural importance and they feel they shouldn't even have to pay for it. And with all the home-recording techniques, everybody puts out CDs and everybody thinks they can become the next huge act by using social networking like Facebook or MySpace. And it's all largely an illusion. What's happened is that so many CDs are put out per month, possibly 10,000 a month. Nobody can possibly even know half the music that exists out there. And so marketing is everything. Marketing is the end-all, be-all of our society."

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7 Comments

  1. The internet in promoting music is largely a joke.
    Devo is right. Internet is an illusion.
    Everything is coming back to radio. The numbers at radio usually match sales.
    Lifestyle bands are a little different with little radio.
    Same music biz as it’s always been.

  2. I’m thinking “marketing is everything” is not exactly a revelation. The methods of marketing change over time, again, not a revelation. Finding a new marketing pattern to sell a fairly saturated product that people think should be free is the puzzle here. As the previous comment pointed out – “how”. Recorded music to directly generate revenue may never happen again…

  3. Think its defenitely about “how” and most importantly that business people miss is how to make marketing-campaign appeal to the target market and how to engage with the customers.
    At the moment, people undervalue music and this could be for a number of reasons..maybe because they are overwhelmd by the amount of music on the internet, another reason could be the “free” factor as there are many sites offering tons of music or maybe its the wrong marketing approach?? decide for yourself
    check out this article: http://www.themusicvoid.com/2010/05/the-ongoing-devaluation-of-music/

  4. Music is undervalued because of two things: It’s very easy to aqcuire for free and it’s very easy to make these days.
    Coupled with the fact that people tend to be more passionate about music than screw drivers, which leaves the market ultra-saturated. The industry should have smacked illegal downloading hard immediately…
    But as a music downloader I’m thriving in these law-less times. So I dunno! Maybe passion will return to being just passion and jobs will remain jobs.

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