A Few More Thoughts
on Internet Music Promotion
Below is the text of an email conversation I had with Glyn about
the internet and music (30th January 2007):
Hi C.
Thanks for the links.
What I'm curious about is how Groups work on Myspace? Like what
are they for? Are they a kind of forum? Why do people join them? (rather
than just adding you as a friend?)
The thing I've found with Myspace is that since I've set up a profile
page I get less hits on my website and the people who do buy stuff from
me don't seem to be finding me via Myspace. Likewise most people who want
to be your friend on Myspace are generally not interested in buying music
when they can just put it on their profile page (or just listen to it
from yours) for free. As I said I've recently started making all my back
catalogue available at 79 pence a song, but I'm getting zero interest
in that so far.
I still wonder whether music consumers are falling into two specific
camps -
T hose that download and aren't used to or prepared to pay for it (the
new generation if you like) and;
Traditional buyers who like cds (and even albums), might check something
out online but then would prefer to buy a physical product. In other words
do the Myspace generation ever want to part with any hard cash when there
is all that music out there for free? And so many sites where you can
just stream music to have on while your working so you don't even need
to download it?
I'd be interested in your thoughts on these conundrums....
All the best - Glyn
|
Hi
Glyn,
Thanks for your question.
Groups aren't really essential, but they are a way of posting extra bulletins
and stuff. Yes, they are forums by another name and if you can
get some kind of conversation going it all helps to draw people to you. I suppose
they are a bit more exclusive than just 'friends' so I put
stuff on there that supplements the main page which is a bit full up. Mind you
a blog would probably serve the same function - the great thing
is once people subscribe they get a flag everytime you post a new journal. Definitely
consider doing your own blog !
I don't think that you can blame Myspace for lack of hits on your website,
maybe there's a lot of competition out there. You need to make sure there is
exclusive material on your own website to draw people in, Myspace should just
act as bait. You should have 'buy' buttons on the front of your Myspace so there
is no need to go to your site. Looking at your pages I did not see any obvious
advert for downloads.
Yeah, there are a lot of blaggers on there who want freebies, but you should
make the clips on the player only 1 minute long ( and maybe mono or low bitrate)
so they go and buy it. We have not made individual songs available to buy on
our site as we think we get more revenue from whole albums, but this is debatable.
But, the more catalogue you have online the better.
I take your point about consumers, there are still cd & vinyl buyers out
there but they are getting less, and it costs a lot more to master and press
hard copies. So you may need to cater for both groups, with different strategies
for each The success of i-tunes (cursed be their name) proves that there is
money
to be made and people will buy downloads. The hard part, I think, is making
them aware of your music with previews and tasters and if they like it they
may buy the finished product. There are of course still the traditional ways
of press & promos leading to vinyl and cd releases, but there is still the
extra start up costs of this.
The great thing about the internet is that the promotion in mostly free, except
for your time and effort.
I don't really know much more than you about all this, as I have only in the
past 2 months began pushing Myspace & co. We have had reasonable web sales
over the past 9 months, nothing amazing, but the cost has been VERY low, and
only about 10% commission from Paypal. The thing is the music biz is now changing
and musicians have to follow where things are going or get left behind.
Read my page and see if this explains
things, I will update it as time goes by.
Seeya - C..
Hi C.
Thanks a lot for the tips etc. I'm curious as to how you set up your site
so that people can buy downloads; can they download a track as soon as
they've paid for it? Or do you have to upload it via yousendit or similar
first? Also how do you set up PayPal so people can buy your stuff? At
the moment my orders all come via my webspace provider, which is ok if
a bit clunky, and there's no facility for people to directly download
so they can't get an instant "hit".
Cheers - Glyn
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Hi Glyn,
The first thing you need is
1: A Paypal Merchant account with Website Payments Standard. For this you need
a UK bank current account & credit card for ID purposes. This is also ID
verified by them 'phoning you.
2: A PayLoadz Merchant Account( this costs £10 a month + transaction fees)
3: You then have to link the two accounts together with a special IPN code,
so that the money from sales goes to your Paypal account.
4: You upload the files (zip or mp3) to the *secure* Payloadz server which gives
you HTML buy button code for your website. You also get a mini-store on their
website.
5: Paste the code into your website or myspace pages and test delivery with
a spare credit card / paypal account
That's it, no interaction needed, you just sit back and let the ca$h roll in.(There
is the small matter of promotion, though.)
The customer does the following:
1: Goes to your website & clicks on 'buy' or 'add to cart', just like any
web-store.
2: Once they have chosen the products they then enter their paypal or credit
card and pay.
3: They quickly get an email with a web-link to a secure server and download
the files. (This link expires after 24 hours & helps prevent piracy.)
4: Unpack & listen.
5: You, the seller, get a confirmation e-mail for your accounts and transfer
the cash to your bank account when ever you like.
* Payloadz have now added an express service, but I haven't reviewed this.
It looks ok for a small business, but not for volume sales.
Their charges are reasonable but not low, so you need a fair bit of turnover
for it to pay well. The advantage is that you are in control of everything,
not some iffy 'i-tunes' clone with their contracts and exclusive clauses. It
just takes a little while to get it set up, what with a few teething problems,
but it has worked well for us.
You can also use the Paypal Merchant account to sell hard copies and merchandise
in a similar way.
Best - C.
P.s. I don't work for these people, just in case you're wondering.
More info here: Paypal
Website Payments Standard / Payloadz
Sign up / Payloadz Express /
Payloadz
manual (pdf)
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