1.  Resnikoff’s Parting Shot: Smashing the CD… to Bits

“What would happen if the majors stopped pressing CDs right now, closed down their plants, and wrote off their physical retail networks?  The answer is that they’d lose billions, right off the bat!  The lights would start flickering immediately!

But, they’d also quickly shrink unnecessary overhead, ditch ineffective legacy commitments, assume nimbler stances, and refocus all of their energies towards digital formats and concepts.  And, start building companies designed to survive in the 2010s.”

By Paul Resnikoff (full story here)

2.  Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants

“Today’s students – K through college – represent the first generations to grow up with this new technology. They have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers, videogames, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital age. Today‟s average college grads have spent less than 5,000 hours of their lives reading, but over 10,000 hours playing video games (not to mention 20,000 hours watching TV). Computer games, email, the Internet, cell phones and instant messaging are integral parts of their lives.

It is now clear that as a result of this ubiquitous environment and the sheer volume of their interaction with it, today‟s students think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors. These differences go far further and deeper than most educators suspect or realize. “Different kinds of experiences lead to different brain structures, “ says Dr. Bruce D. Perry of Baylor College of Medicine. As we shall see in the next installment, it is very likely that our students’ brains have physically changed – and are different from ours – as a result of how they grew up. But whether or not this is literally true, we can say with certainty that their thinking patterns have changed. I will get to how they have changed in a minute.

What should we call these “new” students of today? Some refer to them as the N-[for Net]-gen or D-[for digital]-gen. But the most useful designation I have found for them is Digital Natives. Our students today are all “native speakers” of the digital language of computers, video games and the Internet.

So what does that make the rest of us? Those of us who were not born into the digital world but have, at some later point in our lives, become fascinated by and adopted or most aspects of the new technology are, and always will be compared to them, Digital Immigrants”.

Digital Natives Digital Immigrants ©2001 Marc Prensky  (full story here)

3.  Minds For The Future: Why Digital Immersion Matters

“Like many other crucial skills, digital literacy needs to be taught and learned through constant practice.  Naturally, this doesn’t explain why some Digital Natives will get more out of their sessions than others do.  But what about those who get much more practice?  Its estimated by Professor Urs Gasser that for kids who turn fifteen in 2016 or so, “they are likely to spend somewhere between 1,200 and 1,500 hours per year on digital technologies.”  Going onto say that, “Five years later, at age twenty, they will have accumulated at least 10,000 hours as active users of the Internet, if the current statistics still apply.”

This amount of time, in turn, is equivalent to what Malcolm Gladwell argued to be the magic number for true expertise in Outliers.  Whether you take into consideration world-class violinists, concert pianists, chess grandmasters, star athletes, Bill Gates, the Beatles, and what have you, 10,000 hours appears again and again.  “It seems,” neurologist Daniel Levitin writes, “that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.”  Ten years, Gladwell says, is roughly how long it takes to put in 10,000 hours of hard practice.  For these Digital Natives it will only have taken them five years”.

By Kyle Bylin (full story here)

4.  Digital Natives In The Classroom

“Digital Natives, Generation-D (digital), Nintendo Kids, the MTV generation, whatever term you chose to describe them, today’s youth has grown up with an uprecedented access to and appetite for technology and new media. Since 1970, when Pong (the revolutionary video arcade game) was introduced, children have voraciously consumed a steady diet of digital games, music videos, and the world wide web. More recently, they have enthusiastically embraced technologies that are on the leading edge of the technology wave including live chats, instant messaging, smart mobs, blogs, wikis, modding, and more. While these terms might be common parlance in the vernacular of Digital Natives, they are cryptic and foreign to the “Digital Immigrants” who struggle to understand and master these new technologies.”
by Michael Culligan, SDSU Educational Technology (full story here [EDIT: Link now down])

5.  Advice For Musicians In 140 Characters Or Less

“I recently asked Hypebot’s Twitter followers to contribute their best advice to musicians in twitterspeak’s 140 characters or less. Below are a few of the best that that I gathered usingTwitoaster, a free online utility that threads and archives twitter conversations, bringing context and adding stats to your Twitter communications.”

By Bruce Houghton (full story here)

People become attached to certain artists as a result of a myriad of factors about the artist and all this gets “bundled” into how they “experience” that artist. Here are some of the factors involved in that experience:

• How the artist looks, dresses, and talks on stage
• What topics the artist chooses to talk and sing about
• What others around me think and feel about the artist
• What happens at concerts
• How often I get to see and hear, or hear from the artist
• How much the artist seems to feel and think like me
• How, whether, and how much the artist talks to me offstage
• Does the artist answer my calls, emails, etc.
• Does the artist have a web presence that is interesting to me or that I can participate in
• What do I know about the artist’s “private” life and what do I think about it
• Are there places, other than concerts where I encounter the artist: do they teach music, produce CD’s, write books, use social networking, etc.
• Does the artist ever engage me in person outside, or alongside, of concerts.

All these aspects (and more) of “experiencing” an artist fold together to create an image held in the mind(s) of those following an artist to determine how much the artist’s ministry is valued.  And here’s the really important part: the value of that entire experience represents how well the artist’s ministry succeeds. Bookings, CD sales, concert attendance, and sales of other products, are all really just “souvenirs” of that experience.

Most artists do not fully understand the quality and quantity of the kinds of experience they do or could offer. They simply look at their success as a function of how many CD’s they sell or whether they get “good bookings.”

Artists can “grow” their ministries by learning how to look at themselves broadly, and understanding the real breadth and depth of experience they offer.  Deeper and more meaningful experiences for followers means a more fulfilling experience for the artist.  And this will result in a more stable funding for the ministry as more followers find more value for more “souvenirs” of their experience.

1. Build, own, control, and maintain your own new platform and experiment until it works for you.
2. Rent one of the new cookie-cutter enterprise platforms that are set up to do this for you.
3. Partner with a company who understands the current landscape of tools and concepts that will act as your “web presence” staff.
4. 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.

1. A position, such as “celebrity”, “pastor”, or “President”; and/or
2. A tool, such as a blog, website, magazine, or TV show; and/or
3. An audience, such as the readers of a magazine or viewers of a TV show.

In marketing thought, the word usually encompasses all three of the above but with an emphasis on #3.  Who is reached? How many are reached? How easily are they influenced by the platform to buy or otherwise consume and/or act on the message?

Traditional Marketing.

In the view of traditional marketing, platforms are seen as more or less static and each has a certain known value in terms of sales.  A certain long-standing successful magazine, for instance, is seen as a platform whose audience has certain responsive characteristics that you, as an advertiser, can depend on for sales.  When you decide to use (rent) their platform you can expect certain results.

In this sense, a transaction is taking place.  You are paying dollars to “rent” their platform (advertise) and expecting a return on your investment that will make the “rental” worthwhile.  Christian bookstores are a platform where record labels “rent” space by allowing the store to keep part of the proceeds from sales.  This is seen as a valuable transaction if the store has a “good” audience.  These are two different kinds of “platform rentals.” In the case of the magazine, it makes money regardless of the advertising success. In the case of the bookstore, it makes nothing if the recording does not sell.  This type of platform rental transaction is seen as a more “vulnerable” transaction and the store covers itself by retaining the right to return product to the label for credit. The label, in either case, has no cover.

Platform renting in this traditional sense is the business of entities in this model. If you want to “use” their platform again, you have to rent it again.

Another feature of traditional marketing is the “chaining” of platforms.  A music artist may transact with a record label to rent their perceived platform which includes the label’s ability to rent a radio platform, a product distribution platform, and various other promotional platforms.

This chaining of platforms in the music world has placed a whole series of platform rental transactions between the artist and the followers of the artist. The artist now depends on the whole chain to “grow” or achieve success. And all the connected platforms in this rental chain depend more or less on the success of the others.

And, as we all know, any chain is only as strong as the weakest link.  And, as we all know, most of the traditional platforms in the music world now are weak links.  Why these traditionally good platforms have now become weak links between the artist and fans are the subject of way too much discussion to get into here. The point is that some new way of understanding platforms is needed and there is a lot of experimenting and some success stories.

Enter “New” Marketing.

New marketing is a set of very fluid and sometimes contradictory ideas for getting around the fact that the platform rental model is breaking.  It attempts to understand and create ways to use new platforms that do not involve rentals and, usually, advocates primarily creating your own platform for interacting with constituents. New marketing usually denies that platforms are stable and reliable unless they are understood as platforms of conversation with a talking/listening mode — as opposed to the old model where platforms could just direct its constituents to act in a certain way.

In its most radical form, new marketing would advocate that the follower (fan, constituent, member, etc.) in fact IS the platform.  Such an approach attempts to create connections with the platform/follower that are so valuable that the follower will spread the message.  This is exactly the meaning of “viral” marketing and is what has made YouTube the success that it is.

Less radical forms go for the (non-monetized) sharing of platforms.  A blogger may interview a celebrity artist (who already has a platform) to expand his own platform (traffic) while the artist looks to build his own following (platform) by reaching the blogger’s readership who may not know that artist or who may see the artist in a more favorable light as a result of the interview.

In either case, the very meaning and basis of the idea of “platform” is changing from one that sees stable and reliable entities telling their audience what to do or buy (and charging advertisers for so doing), to one where the audience determines the rules of the game and the way to build that audience is to listen and converse with meaningful dialog.  Such conversation creates a valued experience that influences both parties.  In the music world, fans grow more attached to the artist and the artist learns what the fans want them to create.

This idea is, of course, not so new. Successful sellers of things created have always needed to understand their audience. New marketing simply focuses on that and brings new creative platforms to the task.  If there is one aspect that stands out in this process it would be attitude. Valuing the audience is an attitude—one that is mostly lacking in the platforms that no longer work. The folks in “our audience” these days have little time for being told what to like or buy.  They gravitate toward valued experiences and may, sometimes, purchase souvenirs of that experience.

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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.

For $10,000 per title, a major label can buy the opportunity to force consumers to buy album-only downloads on iTunes. (Indie labels, including SG, need not apply–this is only available to major releases on major labels.) Read more details here, here, and here.

See this for what it is. A brash attempt on the part of the major labels who are bankrupt of new marketing ideas to force consumers who are now used to “choice” to have to buy ten songs at once to get any of the songs on their favored new releases.

Methinks this attempt to return to the good old days will be rejected by consumers. Worse, it may drive those who have been actually purchasing song downloads back to their “free” P2P networks to, in effect, “steal” the songs they want.

The forcing of consumers to buy-songs-they-don’t-want cat is out of the bag. That cat will never be recaptured. This is a bad idea that can only hurt the companies and artists involved. On the other hand, it will probably hasten the resolve of all who are moving forward to create the strategies of the future.

But, since I’m always open to debate… suppose your two favorite SG artists had new releases and one of them was only available as a full album download while the other was available either way, individual songs or full album. What would be your first thought? Would your buying choice be affected?

Now let’s talk cake ingredients. Cake has to be sweet. Could be refined sugar, brown sugar, powdered sugar, honey, or even molasses, or some combination. Your music is the sweetener. The cake(s) you can offer depend on the sweetener(s) you use and that has an effect on whether people like your cake. Repeat, it “has an effect” but it is not the whole cake!

This brings up a major question about who you are / what are you offering. You are offering cake, not just a sweetener (music). You are offering a whole bunch of ingredients in that cake. What are they? Almost no one thinks about this. What you are offering people is a mixture of ingredients, not just the sweetener.

When you understand and can name all the ingredients (beyond the sweetener) that make up your “cake”, you will begin to know why people REALLY follow you. Then you can serve needs.

At the same time, we have silos of consumers “giving” us attention for free and we usually just squander it. Let’s take concerts for example. The traditional “look” at this has folks showing up to see you sing, maybe talking a bit after the concert at the record table, and maybe buying a CD or two. Then they leave, you leave, and “see you next time” ends it.

But look at this more closely. Someone has made a choice, among all other things they could be doing, to come and see you. They have paid the ticket price and they have “paid” you attention. In addition they have given you their permission to show them something, tell them something, inspire them, talk with them, etc. They have paid you their attention and given you their permission. FOR FREE.  It has COST YOU NOTHING – in fact, you are getting paid to be there.  Now if these are things we usually have to go out and buy, just how do you react when it’s given for free. Maybe if you took advantage of all the FREE gifts of attention and permission, you wouldn’t have to buy any.

Why do I call this squandering? Because you have just had a whole bunch of people offer you their attention and permission to inspire them and you have (1) not given either of those things back to them and worse (2) you are willing to walk out the door at the end of the night, let it all just end, without inviting them to “go with you” or to continue the relationships established there –  tomorrow, next week, next month.  Just a “See you next time!”  True, they may fondly remember the event. True, they may take you “home” with them in the form of a CD. But you do not take them home with you! You have not returned the attention back to them and given them permission to continue to be “in contact” with you.

No invitation to them to continue and deepen the relationship has been offered. What if…at the end of the evening you said

“We’ve all just had such an incredible and spirit-filled time this evening…we just don’t want to let it end. We don’t just want to leave here tonight and say ‘goodbye.’  We want to STAY in touch with every single one of you. We want you to call us, email us, send us Facebook messages. We want to keep up with how your doing. We want to know if there’s something outstanding in your life — good or bad. We want to pray for you and have you pray for us. And we want to be able to call on you when WE are in need. So, we’re really asking you here, do not let what got started here tonight–end. Come to our website to email or call us. leave us your address. And here’s our promise–no call or email will ever go unanswered. We value the relationship we’ve all begun here tonight and we pledge to continue it if you do. There’s nothing more important to us than you. You are the reason why we are here.”

And then did it.

All this tends to be credited (or blamed depending on your point of view) on scriptural warnings about wealth, love of money, and greed. (One could wonder as to why other scriptural passages like the parable of the talents have not taken precedence.)  Against this poverty mentality background, it is no wonder that lots of artists and other business entities in the genre live “on the edge” or just barely get by, and some even “wear” it like a badge.  While the issue of money is discussed often and everywhere and “dumbs down” almost every endeavor, rarely is the question “are we really that poor?” asked and put to the test.

You would think that the Gaither success story over the past 15 years would have put the issue to rest.  Yet even some artists who have been participants in that success are still careful to observe the poverty mentality rules when working on their own outside of the tour.  Which begs the question as to whether the shared belief in this mentality is actually functionally true or whether it just functions “like the truth” because we believe in it and follow it.  I would argue the latter.

Beliefs are powerful.  There’s an old story about a jeweler who had a small line of matching items that were not selling after months of sitting in the store.  The owner, before going on vacation, left a note for one of his clerks to change the price of that line of jewelry by one-half.  The clerk misread the handwritten note and doubled the price. When the jeweler returned he discovered that the whole line had sold out.

If a promoter follows a pattern of putting on concerts in gyms with poor sound and lighting, he is going to draw crowds that are only comfortable with very low ticket prices and looking only for “bargains” at the record table.  When the Gaither tour comes to town, however, people are willing to pay higher ticket prices for a great venue and buy all the CD’s and videos that they value.  Bill has valued himself, the artists, the tour and the people.  He shows that the genre’s fans do value the artists highly and, even more, they value seeing those artists framed in a setting that is “as good as” those of other genres.  And they value seeing themselves in that setting equal to fans of other types of music.  They value the artists, they value themselves, and they value the appearance of equality with other artists and fans of other music.

So what exactly is value?  Value is the perceived worth of something compared to price or cost.  We know that value is relative — it depends on who/where you are in life.  If you are poor and hungry you value eating.  A little higher up the ladder you may value the quality and nutritional value of food.  Further up you may value fine restaurants.  Value moves us toward having our needs and/or wants, met.  It means we will choose to move toward things we value and not others.

But value is also co-determined by whoever is offering the thing of value.  The “presenter” sets a price based on the value of the offered thing to him.  In so doing, he begins a “discussion” with the buyer.  But in the southern gospel business, those with something to offer tend to shortcut this discussion by starting with the question “how much will someone pay?”,  where he devalues the buyer.  Then he offers something “cheap” because of his perception of the buyer.  The offer is degraded, the event is degraded, the artist(s) are degraded, and the value of the music is degraded.  The “industry” is degraded.

Then, in this context, we try to offer ministry and expect people to think it is valuable! Hmm.

To their credit, they seem more interested is serving their followers than worrying about whether someone gets to hear or see their music for “free.”  Someone has figured out that, in this “music 2.0″ world, they are not just “selling music.” Perry Fans want the music, yes. But they also want more: they want the whole package of who the Perrys’ are: their beliefs, their lifestye, their daily inspiration, and most of all they want the Perrys’ attention.

And The Perrys are giving them that; they are giving themselves. Genuinely. And using the internet to do it. And their “friends” are bringing other, new, friends to the fold.

There was a discussion recently on Averyfineline about whether the Perry’s are “the best” in Southern Gospel. This kind of discussion is mostly irrelevant today.  The Perrys are already “the best” to their followers. They are “famous” to their followers, whether the standard media notices or not.  And these followers are bringing others.

“Old school” connections with fans using “new marketing” tools. Music 2.0.  The Perrys are getting it right!

I jumped in the car and headed downtown, mercifully catching all the traffic lights just right, and actually finding a parking spot right in front of the store.  I was in-the-door at 8:58 PM.  Since it was right at their closing time, I went straight to the checkout desk to ask for the book rather than go hunting for it.

I walked up to the counter where there were two guys, one standing up and the other sitting behind looking at his watch. I asked for the book by title and author.  Standing guy thought for a moment, turned to sitting guy and said “I believe we sold out of that a couple of days ago.”  Sitting guy nodded his head and said “Yeah, sold out.”  “Your website says it’s in stock” I said, ” I checked just before I came.”  Standing guy gets on his computer, studies a minute, and says “Yes, it does.”  He turns to sitting guy while shrugging his shoulders and sitting guy says “Yeah, we only upload inventory once a week. And it’s been about a week. We’re sold out.”

Realizing I was not going to get my book again tonight, and after flashes of internal disappointment and anger, I quickly put on my best “marketing mentor” face and said “I know you guys probably just work here but you might wanna pass this along to the owners.  This is a perfect example of why retail stores are struggling. I chose your store out of loyalty, to buy this book. I went out of my way to drive into downtown, hoping I could find parking, skipping Amazon and the Mall, and checking your website for availability.  At a time when retailers stress, strain and struggle to get consumers’ attention, I gave you mine and you have squandered it.  You’ve lost a customer and it will cost you money to replace me with another one. I was a customer already giving you my attention, for free, and you did not deliver. Simply conversing with me accurately via your website would have kept me for another day.”

Sitting guy, in an almost apologetic voice responded “You can always call us to check and we’ll set aside a copy until you can come in.”  And I said, “I’m thinking that your young, local, “social media” active customers are waiting for you to get it right. They’re not thinking about making a phone call.”  I nodded a quick “thanks” and walked out of the store.

And then I had another thought, turned around, walked back in, and back to the counter.  “If you worked for me, in a situation like this, I would be very disappointed to know that you did not ask for the customer’s name and how to contact him and, maybe, offer some kind of incentive to ‘keep’ him as a customer.  Instead, you let a disgruntled customer just walk away with no attempt to “keep” him and no way to follow up.”  With that, I left. For good.

Standing and sitting guys said nothing.

If you’re reading this article, you are probably involved in some kind of  “marketing” endeavor: with fans, with customers, with a congregation, with readers (of your blog), with concert ticket buyers, or some other grouping of people. And you are making some kind of effort to “get” and/or keep their attention for your enterprise.  Attention is very hard to get these days and you should know that it is your most valuable asset. You “pay” in the form of money or time to get people’s attention. “Your” people are very busy and they don’t just give their attention easily. When they do, you should recognize they have given you something very valuable–they are now paying attention. You’ve asked for it and now you have it–they are paying you (attention).

When people pay for something, they expect to get something back that they want. What are you giving them for what they paid?

Do you know exactly what you have of value you can give them in return for their paying you with their attention?

And, once getting their attention, what do you do if you don’t have what their attention has paid for–what they want? What’s your “plan B” and how will you keep their attention if you don’t have what they want?

And consider this. Your attention back to them just may be what they want most. Not your CD. Not your tickets. Not your articles. Not your sermons. Maybe not even your singing.