Skip to Main Content
Ebooks
New Channels of Music Distribution: a complete guide to music distribution, music business, promotions, and selling music
With an example-driven, hands-on approach, New Channels of Music Distribution offers a practical, comprehensive study of the music industry's evolving distribution system. While paying careful attention to the variables that impact success, C. Michael Brae examines the functionality and components of music distribution, as well as the music industry as a whole. This book is a one-stop guide and resource for all musicians, performers, songwriters, and label owners in understanding all the elements and efficiency of music distribution. Through its hands-on exploration of the music business, this book provides insightful strategies for executing marketing, radio, retail campaigns, and much more. Here you will find: * Specific DIY methods and strategies for distributing music throughout every platform possible * Case studies and discussions highlighting wholesale and retail markups, pricing strategies, major chains, rack jobbers, one-stops, mom and pop stores, and other retail outlets * Tips on how to incorporate retail distribution networks supporting Soundscan and employ marketing techniques using cutting-edge web technology * Distribution methods and promotion tactics to help you increase an effective "sell-through" on your music An accompanying website (www.routledge.com/cw/brae) features examples of distribution, licensing, and co-publishing agreements, sample Midem charts, sample proposals, quiz questions, web links and key terms.
Books
Cyber PR for Musicians
Digital PR thought leader Ariel Hyatt's Cyber PR for Musicians is an accessible, effective, and empowering guide to online marketing success. In her 18 years in PR, Ariel Hyatt has changed the landscape of how musicians build a successful marketable profile. With her latest book, Cyber PR for Musicians: Tools, Tricks, And Tactics For Building Your Social Media House, she reveals her trade secrets in an accessible and warmly written guide. Ariel's approach is centered around demystifying and harnessing the full potential of social media. In Cyber PR for Musicians, she cleverly uses the metaphor of building a house for building an online profile and, with grace and clarity, guides artists through constructing a robust online presence that will yield real results. Her book is digestible, divided into chapters that thread together an easy-to-follow priority-oriented plan. For example, she begins with a website as being the front door to a musician's house, and, not only does she detail its importance, she offers realistic ways to get one constructed affordably. Cyber PR for Musicians also illuminates many tricks and techniques to maximize Facebook exposure. Here, she starts with the basics for newbies, but spans to break down more sophisticated topics such as Rdio and Spotify integrating with Facebook, and Spotify Analytics for Facebook. Ariel is a recognized thought leader in the digital PR world. In her acclaimed career she has represented over 1,800 clients. Her game-changing work has been lauded by industry professionals and highly established media outlets alike, garnering her press in Oprah, CNN, Wired, Billboard, Hypebot and The Washington Post. Middle Tennessee State University offers a master class based on her innovative PR principles. Besides being the founder of a successful PR firm, she is an international speaker, educator, and author of three books on social media and marketing for artists."
Music Success in Nine Weeks, 3rd Ed
Just released in its third edition, with a forward by Derek Sivers, Music Success in Nine Weeks can easily be deemed the “what to do next” bible for both new and established artists. It provides the missing manual for musicians trying to make sense of social media sites like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, and teaches them how to make profitable businesses. With her candid workbook style, it feels like you are sitting down with Ariel, scribbling your own ideas all over the book’s pages. Each book comes with a lifetime membership to join her online forum: Ariel’s Cyber PR Mastermind where readers get support from fellow readers, and from Ariel and her staff. The hands-on guide and support provides structure to what often feels like chaos. “I am guiding musicians to take off their artists’ hats for a nine weeks and put on their business hats,” says Hyatt. Her tactics have actualized exponential success for her most proactive readers by giving them a solid business strategy.
Online Videos
How To Market Your Music In 2022
From the words of Adam Ivy- marketing specialist, producer & entrepreneur "My personal proven system for how to market your music in 2022 begins with throwing out everything they've been trying to tell you about Traditional Music Marketing. Spoiler alert...it doesn't work anymore. It's just a way for these "industry gurus" to keep you from becoming their competition. The best way to quickly and effectively build your music career is by using Magnetic Music Marketing. In this video I breakdown exactly why Magnetic Music Marketing is the best possible option, and why it's what you need to start using it immediately."
How To Get My Music On Spotify Playlists
Getting your music on Spotify Playlists can be a game changer for you as an independent artists and expand your reach rapidly, but it's easier said than done. There are three types of Spotify playlists that we can get our music onto. The first, and holy grail, would be an official Spotify editorial playlist which are very challenging to get on until you've built a buzz. The next would be an algorithmic playlist such as Discover Weekly or Release Radar which will usually show users who follow you your new stuff. The third, and possibly most dangerous, are user curated playlists. These can range from your personal gym workout track list all the way to MASSIVE playlists that rival those Spotify editorial playlists. The question is...how do we sort through thousands of those playlists, find contact info, and navigate the process of submitting our music to them...all while avoiding the dreaded botted and inactive playlists? Well I break that all down in this video.
How to Build a Music Fanbase from Zero in 2022
In this video How To Build a Music Fanbase From Zero In 2022. In this video Damian Keyes will take you through the actionable steps you need to take to successfully build a fanbase, get more streams on Spotify and create your career in 2022.
Musformation // Jesse Cannon
Record Producer/ Author / Podcast Producer/ Music Marketing Nerd - Jesse Cannon breaks down how to promote your music project, how to write songs you're happier with, how the music business ACTUALLY works and how to make progress with building your fanbase.
New videos every week
Websites
Cyber PR music
Cyber PR is an artist development and marketing strategy firm serving musicians and music-related brands. Lots of resources for coaching artists through the new music business and handle social media posting and growth strategy.
10 Best Music Social Media Marketing Strategies in 2022
This article runs through 10 steps on how to market your music in the 21st century. Starting with being an authentic musician- and ending with going live with your music, this article is a great read for music students.
Music PR: How to Get Publicity for Your Music
Don't know how to publicise your music? This article gives you tips on how to start an audience base for your music career. Writer Berenika Teter, teamed up with music PR experts to give budding musicians an insightful article on how to gain a fan-base.
How to Promote Music on TikTok (and Go Viral)
TikTok is currently the leading social media platform- with creators on the app going viral over anything...
So, why can't your music go viral? Well it can, and this article will explain tips on how to reach your TikTok goal.
Inner circle podcast
Featuring a mix of music and audio business news and mover and shaker industry guests, the podcast is frequently in the Top 20 Arts and Entertainment / Music Commentary podcast chart worldwide on iTunes, and is heard by over 100,000 listeners per month across a variety of platforms.
Articles
Making Monsters: Lady Gaga, Fan Identification, and Social Media
Like her chart-breaking musical success, Lady Gaga's relationship with fans, built by her messages of self-acceptance and by her intense engagement with fans through social media, is unprecedented. Through one-on-one interviews with an international sample of 45 self-described Little Monsters, we explored this unusual fan-celebrity relationship and found that Lady Gaga's re-articulation of the negative connotations of "monster" enabled fans to use her as a mirror to reflect upon and embrace their differences from mainstream culture. We argue that social media amplify fan identification and raise questions about the changing nature of fan-celebrity relationships in a digital environment.
Building a Social Network for Success
This article proposes a framework for studying how a brand, firm, or individual can use networking activities to manage a social network and drive its success. Using data from ego networks of music artists, the article models how artists can enhance their social networking presence and stimulate relationships between fans to achieve long-term benefits in terms of music plays. The authors use a Bayesian modeling framework to model the heterogeneous and dynamic impact of networking activities on network structure and on music popularity, while relying on instrumental variables from another independent online social network to handle potential endogeneity. The results imply that artists can shape network structure via marketing activities and thereby achieve a long-term impact on success that far exceeds the direct and short-term impact in magnitude. Specifically, improving the density of ego networks enables long-term effects beyond those that stem from growth in network size.
Algorithmic (In)Tolerance: Experimenting with Beethoven’s Music on Social Media Platforms
Popular social media platforms, such as YouTube and Facebook, see insurmountable volumes of media uploaded every day. The extent of which cannot be feasibly monitored through human efforts alone to identify infringing activity. Such companies employ algorithmic methods to enforce copyright by removing or monetizing content on behalf of copyright owners; however, occasionally flagged material is misidentified as infringing. These instances represent a potential loss of income for independent artists by way of misappropriated revenue or removal of material, and time spent challenging automated decisions. This article discusses an experiment seeking to ascertain the false positive rate of YouTube’s Content ID and Facebook’s Rights Manager. This is put in the context of existing legal precedence in the United States, including the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
Does social media pay for music artists? Quantitative evidence on the co-evolution of social media, streaming and live music
Recent commentaries on the music industry have emphasised the importance of social media in creating a monetisable fan base. However, no quantitative evidence yet exists regarding the correlation between social media follower numbers and artist income. Using a unique dataset of 255 artists signed to a large UK-based independent music publisher, we undertake growth curve modelling to provide a novel quantitative analysis of the correlation between following across major social media and streaming platforms and royalty income from music rights. Findings from our modelling suggest that while there is no correlation between numbers of followers on major social media platforms and an artist’s total royalty earnings, there is a strong correlation between numbers of followers and royalties from music streaming specifically.