If the value of renting the use of traditional platforms (magazines, newspapers, agencies, radio, etc.) is becoming shaky, then just how is the artist going to reach fans with messages and products. Going forward, this is the most important question any artist has to answer. Simply put, here are four options:
- Build, own, control, and maintain your own new platform and experiment until it works for you.
- Rent one of the new cookie-cutter enterprise platforms that are set up to do this for you.
- Partner with a company who understands the current landscape of tools and concepts that will act as your “web presence” staff.
- Hope the traditional platforms approach will “turn around” and start working again.
We’ll discuss the first three.
Own And Build Your Own. If you have the time, the inclination, the webskills or ability to learn them, and know or know how to keep up with new marketing strategies, this can be the best way to go. You have to be as creative about connecting with your fans and how to grow your base as you are with your music. If you do not already have all these abilities and skills, this can be a very time-intensive process. If you do have the skills and understanding, it still takes a lot of time and you have do decide if the return on investment of your time is worth it. Your time is not free. You also have to keep up your creativity as an artist. Your “new” platform is not just a website to maintain, it is understanding and using multiple tools to make up a web presence that will keep you constantly engaged with your fans and responding to them as if you were in concert with all of them at once, every week of the year.
A good example I know of where an artist is learning to do this effectively and successfully is The Dills.
Enterprise Platforms. There are a lot of new web companies now springing up that offer to “be your web platform.” They will set up a fan-oriented web presence for you and other artists who buy in to their system and operate some aspects of it for you. Most of them offer a menu of services with more complex ones costing more.
I should note here that FaceBook, MySpace, and other such social networking sites are the forerunners of these newer enterprise sites. They all “congregate” many artists and their fans together under one umbrella—their own. They all can offer some options but have to standardize to a certain extent. In other words, you can’t just make their platform do anything you may want it to do. Also, most of them, while allowing you and your fans easy access to each other, maintain your mailing and other lists on their server which you may or may not have access to keep if you leave their service.
I probably should offer an example but, not being much of a “fan” of these services myself, I think I’ll just let the more enterprising among you find them yourself.
Partnering. (or maybe just hiring). If the artist is really knowledgeable about new marketing concepts and tools but is busy at being an artist, he can just hire a web developer who will design a web presence and build the tools wanted to create a robust platform where the artist provides the content he wants in the just the ways he wants. This is a really good option if the artist can afford it and can sift through various developers to find the one who can create what the artist wants.
On the other hand, if the artist is not so knowledgable, he can look for a developer who is very up to date with both web design and who understands well new marketing concepts, and make a partnership agreement to share profits. This can be a good option if the artist has little time, little money, and can find the suitable partner. “Suitable” being the primary obstacle here.
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Whatever option or direction you choose, do not expect permanency. Finding the new platform that will replace the old is not something that will remain static. What works today will change tomorrow. The key is to maintain the effort to become and stay more connected to more of your fans. Change and experimentation will be keys because we are in a time where consumer values and interests are in a state of what appears to be permanent change. Oxymoronic isn’t it?
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If you have an interest in this and other new marketing ideas for artists, check out the Seminar link on the right sidebar. A new class begins this month.
