A look at content marketing capabilities for the music industry
Many of you may not know this, but I dabbled in the music industry for a bit. However, as a musician who sees the infinite beauty and power in music, it was hard for me to grasp the industry model.
Over the years I feel the music industry has turned into the ego-and-image industry. Very rarely is it about the music anymore, and maybe that is a major contribution to its current downfall.
Or maybe it’s the fact that their model is old and out of date. (Also, suing mothers, the elderly and tweens for hundreds of thousands of dollars for illegal file sharing probably hasn’t helped the reputation either, but I digress…)
Content Marketing for Music
Major record labels that host hundreds of artists could easily start using a content marketing model. They could use their dozens of interns to create content. They could offer free downloads of songs or album art and collect email addresses in the process. There could be intimate performances, special messages, band practices, and an array of other features that could make a paying subscription worthwhile to fans.
Plus, upsells to albums, concert tickets or meet and greets could be used to enhance the label’s potential streams of revenue.
For these major labels, genre-specific channels could be part of the paid subscription model as most of them have a variety of performers. Users can choose specifically which styles they’d like to subscribe to and pay for.
For independent labels, the concept would be the same, except they may only offer one form of subscription, as opposed to a genre-based one. This would mainly be due to the size of the label itself and the range of artists it contains.
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A New Record Label
Imagine support for more musicians. Labels are selective and often times bring forth products, i.e.: musicians, which seem to be taken from a mold. There is a lot of over saturation of artists that sound too similar. Where is the uniqueness?
The fact of the matter is there are a lot of unique acts out there. However, with the turmoil in the industry, most do not end up on labels. Instead, they play the do-it-yourself game and create a MySpace page with their songs, develop a website, Twitter and Facebook page, and hope that word of mouth will get around.
A content based model could allow for more opportunities for musicians. It could involve very detailed niche marketing and allow for testing and tracking of campaigns. This collected data could then specify where and when tours should take place. This would cost much less than the traditional label, and most importantly, may save the face of music.
Of course it may not be as easy as I make it sound, but the groundwork is there. I hope my musings on the topic didn’t come off as harsh, but I have seen a horrible lack of insight and originality on that forefront, one that could change if good, diverse content became the strategy. And since I am incredibly passionate about music, I’d love to see it succeed to the fullest, as an art form, a lifestyle, an industry and a universal language.
How about you? Do you think content marketing could drastically change the way other industries operate? I’d love to hear your opinions.
And for more on the immense benefits of content marketing, attend our Content Marketing 2010 webinar on April 13th, 2010.
Interesting article in Los Angeles Times Business section yesterday on local and specialized web sites attracting investment and challenging yellow pages and print media.
Hi Luis,
Thanks for your input. I agree that content marketing could be utilized in the political process. I feel the issues behind candidates would be discussed easier that way.
The link in the article about the special interest on-line publishing is for one of our free reports. I would agree though that different genres of music could be looked at as special interest topics and would be particular directions for content marketers to go in.
-Chris
I feel content marketing as you describe can apply to many industries especially service oriented industries. It could also apply to the political process which has also devolved into fundraising and media hype.
Also has a strong collaboration and location based component which is my expertise and interest.
There was a link for special interest on-line publishing in your article. Do you view music industry as a special interest? My thinking would be that each genre or even location such as Southwest down to local communities can be considered a special interest with potential for content marketing. This could be applied to any industry and could make the transformation of industries that’s needed more feasible. This could be the opposite of using the internet for strictly globalization or mass appeal in the negative way we’ve seen.