I’ve been fortunate enough to work closely with Steve Vai for over six years now, and I’ve learned many, many things from the experience. Some I can share and some I can’t. ;)
He has a tremendous knack for knowing what his fans want, but also taking it up a level and giving them something they wouldn’t expect. This is clear in this video he (and his second self) put together to introduce fans to his new distortion pedal, the Jemini. Check this out, and use the embed code below to spread this using your own site. That’s how the magic works, people.
2. Build Incrementally
There are different schools of thought about growth. Some are of the “go big or go home” approach. Been there, done that.
The approach that I feel most comfortable with is one of developing products and services gradually, making incremental enhancements.
Start small, spend as little as you can, and build on early successes. Quickly dump the stuff that doesn’t work out.
If you take this approach, your risks of going down the wrong path and spending lots of development time and money on offerings that fail, will be minimal.
It’s also a way to gather market research along the way. You learn what customers want and you’re early enough you can build that feedback into your offering.
Great article about tips for bands looking to make better use of their social media pages. Excerpt:
#2 – Tell us what you do, especially on Twitter. If you are throwing out a follow on Twitter and I have no idea who you are, the least you can do is have some info about yourself, your company, your product, even a link that can tell me whether you are worthy of a follow or not. No info is not Social Media Sexy.
#3 – Find a video player that you can resize. I’m a fan of Blip and Viddler. They both allow you to change the size of their players so they do not screw up your sidebars.
Spent late last week the Bandwidth Conference. An amazing time as always. It’s great to be somewhere where so many of the people I deal with (or want to be dealing with) converge to discuss what we do for a living.
Some amazing panels – I actually took notes!!! How rare is that at a conference these days. Some highlights:
- Larry Weintraub’s panel on how the youth are interacting with music online. AKA “All the different ways we don’t pay for music…” However, I also took away that if you engage them right, they’re thrilled to pay for merch, tickets, and heightened experiences. That’s certainly something.
- 42 Entertainment’s panel about the NIN Year Zero project was a jaw-dropper for sure. I had heard and read plenty about it, but seeing the behind the scenes theory and approach was fascinating. These people have set the bar. The unspoken thing however is that NIN’s fans are the PERFECT – and possibly only – fans that will go this extent (and have the tech savvy) to make it work. Having said that, it scales down nicely to many other artists.
- Marketing to the older demographic. This one was real important to me as we do so much of that at my company. Was glad to hear my ideas are basically spot on.
- Master of Your Domain – talking about how artists are enabled to be their own label at this point through partners, third party companies, and technology. Ian C. Rogers from Topspin was on it and I think he and his team have it right, was a great panel. And he gave me and my company mad props which doesn’t hurt!
For anyone working in or interested in the digital music space, consider going to the conf next year.
For all of you in SF, you should check out the Bandwidth conference this Thursday and Friday. This is the third annual time for the conference, and I can say it is really worth it if you are interested in what the industry’s top professionals have to say regarding the future of the music industry. I’ll be there, as will many of the people I work with on a daily basis. I think this will be my fourth music/tech conf in San Fran this year, it’s really a good place to be these days if you’re in this line of work..
Part of the pain of twitter is finding people to follow. Depending how your address book is stored, finding your own friends can be mighty hard, let alone interesting new people and companies.
Enter http://blog.fluentsimplicity.com/twitter-brand-index/. A directory of many companies and media outlets utilizing twitter. They are only added if they are legitimate reps from the company, and actually update on a regular basis. Check it out!
According to this article that references research from The NPD Group, these are the leading music retailers for the first half of 2008.
1. iTunes
2. Wal-Mart (Walmart, Walmart.com, Walmart Music Downloads)
3. Best Buy (Best Buy, Bestbuy.com, Best Buy Digital Music Store)
4. Amazon (Amazon.com, AmazonMP3.com)
5. Target (Target and Target.com)
It’s interesting that only one out of the five is an entertainment store, and none of them are music specific. Remember when this list might have included Tower Records, Wherehouse, Sam Goody, Virgin, FYE? Probably not, hardly anyone does anymore. Ahh, the times they are a’ changing. Get on board for the ride or be left in the dust my friends…
