All You Need To Succeed In the Music Industry
Part one
Jeronimo Black
I declare 2006 as the year when the Internet took over the music business. Website’s like Myspace, YouTube, and Soundclick among others have become the “go to” sites for fresh hip musical experiences. Gnarls Barkley, a collaboration of Danger Mouse (Brian Burton) and Cee-Lo (Thomas Callaway), had outstanding success with the single Crazy.
Gnarls Barkleys’ promotional success in the music industry started on the Internet. Once Crazy was one of the top downloaded songs on sites like iTunes, the mainstream media took notice. Eventually the song jumped from the Internet to multiple radio stations in various formats. Urban (Hip-Hip & R&B), Top 40 and even some Hot Adult Contemporary stations started spinning Crazy and the rest is history from their debut project CD St. Elsewhere.
Panic at the Disco has suffered through an enviable year of radio and T.V. spins. The band's video of I Write Sins Not Tragedies is among YouTubes’ most-viewed videos, having been streamed more than 5 million times. The song I write Sins Not Tragedies got so many spins on MTV’s TRL, that the band feared fans would view them as mainstream – a tragedy that no Indie-artist would wish on their worst enemy.
DJ Webstar most recently has found success in the music business with his single Chicken Noodle Soup. At last count, the single had over 49,000 streams on YouTube. Radio stations and music video channels are now playing the single. There was a time when the Internet was only an extension of an artists marketing strategy.
Today the Internet is the marketing strategy. Still, many recording artists are using old school music promotion tactics.
The formula for success in yesterday’s music business was;
1.) Produce commercially viable music
2.) Make it widely available (record stores, music clubs etc)
3.) Use radio and T.V. ‘spins’ to promote the music
Yesterday’s music business required a substantial promotion budget and established relationships with key decision makers in radio and T.V. Yesterday’s music artists would spend years touring, shaking the hands of key influencers in the music business and praying that they would be able create mass awareness and sales.
Today an artist can produce music that my not sound commercially viable or be widely available but still find an audience with thousands or millions of fans. The formula for success in today’s music business is;
1.) Produce music
2.) Make it easily available (music submission sites, YouTube, Myspace etc.)
3.) Make people aware of your music
In 2006 and beyond, all you need to know to succeed in the music industry is how to effectively use the Internet to make people aware of your music.
