Internet Marketing: A Blessing Or Curse?

PREVIEW #1 – At the Bandwidth Conference in San Francisco next week, Greg Werckman of Ipecac Recordings will be appearing on the panel "The Truth, The Whole Truth, and Nothing But The Truth: Running a Label Today."  We asked him if internet marketing and sales were a blessing or curse?

"To me, Internet marketing is both a blessing and a curse. Personally it is a curse. I sit in my rocking chair and gently weep, longing for the good ol days. Holding an LP or CD in my hand meant something. Going to a record store meant something. It ain’t the same. That’s for sure. To this day, I still have not gotten accustomed to downloading whole albums.

But, from a business standpoint it is a blessing for our small business. We could NEVER afford to buy a full page ad in Spin, but there we were a few weeks ago with a feature on…

the MySpace mainpage
about the Melvins and a link to stream their new record. 100,000 hits
in the first 24 hours! All thanks to the marketing team at our digital
distributor The Orchard.

The time is now to think more creatively,
that is for sure, but the playing field is being leveled to some degree
and the creative and forward thinking artists are being rewarded. Oddly
enough, the direct connection between the artist and the fan can be
closer than ever now. The audience plays a bigger role in dictating
success or failure. Money can’t as easily buy you a hit.