Music Business Blog by Jason Feinberg

http://lateralaction.com/articles/kurt-cobain-startup-success/

REALLY cool article about innovation, marketing, and the music biz. To sum up:

1. The first key is always a new and better approach, or a fresh and innovative way to do the tried and true. If the “do it the way it’s done” crowd tells you you’re wrong, crazy, or stupid, you may be onto something.
2. You can’t ignore the realities of market demand and human psychology, but often the market doesn’t realize what it wants and the mind craves something new.
3. Create things that people naturally want to market for you.

WAY more and worth reading here: http://lateralaction.com/articles/kurt-cobain-startup-success/

http://www.knowthemusicbiz.com/index.php/BIZ-BLOG/BIZ-BLOG/The-$52.45-Music-Marketing-Plan.html

A great rundown of how to market on the cheap. Excerpt:

Mobile:

Many music fans now spend more time on their mobile device than their PC: It only makes sense to develop a mobile strategy for promoting your music. Mobile marketing solutions can include text messaging, ringtones, ringbacks, full track downloads, wallpaper and mobile fan clubs. Two solution providers that make it easy for artists to start marketing their music through mobile devices are:

Broadtexter – Broadtexter lets independent artists easily create mobile fan clubs plus text fans with artist news and regionally based tour date alerts. Costs: $0

MyxerTones – MyxerTones allows artists to create mobile phone ringtones and wallpapers that can be bought directly from a mobile device or the artist’s website. Artists can set their own prices and keep 60% of the revenue collected for their content. Costs: $0

Read more here: http://www.knowthemusicbiz.com/index.php/BIZ-BLOG/BIZ-BLOG/The-$52.45-Music-Marketing-Plan.html

http://wcbstv.com/local/tin.pan.alley.2.836414.html

“Tin Pan Alley, once the home of Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin and dozens of other great American songwriters, is up for sale.”

“Tin Pan Alley housed a concentration of music publishers and songwriters from the 1890s to the 1950s. It is the place where Berlin wrote “God Bless America” and where George M. Cohan wrote “Give My Regards to Broadway.” “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” was another tune written there, helping establish the area as a significant contributor to the great American songbook.”

http://wcbstv.com/local/tin.pan.alley.2.836414.html

I’ll be at the Digital Music Forum West conference today and tomorrow. If you’ll be there, please get in touch. I’ll look remotely like this guy:

In marketing the Dirty Heads, we’ve used multiple avenues to reach multiple types of fans. This is a core element of any marketing campaign – segmenting your audience into different groups and approaching each of them in the most engaging way.

Thanks to our friends at Slide the band is reaching the younger Myspace demographic in two interesting ways.

First, they are a featured “action” in the Superpoke! application. For those of you unaware, Myspace has similar functionality as Facebook in that you can install widget applications. This one is wildly popular with millions of users having sent billions of actions to their friends. In regards to Dirty Heads, they are in the featured artist section and you can “go Driftin’” with the band or your friends (Driftin’ being a song on the new CD Any Port In A Storm).

Second, their single “Stand Tall” is a featured track on their Slideshow application, which allows users to generate embeddable Flash slideshows using the Dirty Heads songs as the soundtrack. I love the idea of people uploading pictures that mean something to them, then enhancing it by adding a song that further expresses that emotion (or even just adds life to the slideshow).That is crowdsourcing, my friends!

So for some interesting ideas on how to reach the socially active, tech savvy 14 year old in your sights, check out Slide. And why not enter to win a snowboard, car stereo, and autographed Dirty Heads CD by clicking here.