As entrepreneurs starting out, we have one very big asset that many overlook – no assets. Initially, we don’t have the bank balance of a multi-national corporation to set our ideas in motion. This in turn forces us to think outside the square to get results from non-traditional marketing avenues – ones that cost very little but garner great results. It’s a wonderful training ground and arms us with experience that let’s face it, had we not have been desperate we wouldn’t have accumulated. Desperation, otherwise known as having to survive on enthusiasm, causes brilliance when you learn to think outside the square.
A friend of mine Jill Kelly, a true marketing genius, showed me exactly what thinking outside the square was. Working on a single release for an independent artist, a sector in the market (music) which is almost impossible to penetrate without major financial backing, she achieved enormous success, elevating the band to number one overnight on the independent charts; filling a 200 seater venue; paying all the band and achieving a profit – another thing almost unheard of in the music world.
How? She thought outside the square. As part as the steep $15 entry fee each guest received a copy of the single. Thus, technically speaking, selling 200 singles in one night while providing a marketing strategy to lure patrons who saw the offer as ‘something for nothing’. Why don’t record companies think of this? They don’t have too. They have enough money to buy air time for their artists and to promote them using traditional marketing avenues.
But for the new wave of entrepreneurial musicians this type of thinking can be very rewarding both artistically and financially. Without the record company taking 80% of your profits, if successful, independent artists only have to sell 500 000 CD’s to make over 1 million dollars in profit, compared to signed artists having to sell more than 5 million to make any money. Actually I know of artists that have had twelve years of successful albums and have never yet, seen a cent from any of the recordings.
Now, if Jill Kelly or any independent entrepreneur can have this sort of success on little to no budget simply by thinking outside the square, imagine the success they can have backed by a major corporation. Consequently, our little marketing genius has been head hunted several times proving a little bit of out-of-the-box thinking can go along way.
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I’ve found something that might interest you as someone involved in music.
I own my own online download store that all bands should look into to suppliment their existing web page. The idea of having a website is to attract fans to your site to hear your music and maybe come to a show or something. But what if they want to buy your music? Do you have an easy way to sell it to them without having to produce and mail cds? What if you could direct them from your web page to a site where they could buy and download one of your songs right then? Of course you would want to check that out.
My store is http://www.burnlounge.com/bigtone. If you go there you will see one of my bands (Captain Hi Top) featured on the front page along with all of the major artists. You can get your own site like this to sell your music for as little as 30.00 a year. Click on the commerical at the bottom of the page to see more info. You can see the options by clicking on “become a retailers.” You can get your music into the burnlounge catalog for free and they pay royalties to the artist in the range of 55-75 cents on the dollar per download. And if you own your own site they pay 5 cents on top of that for every song you sell whether its your own or the Rolling Stones or whoever.
It totally makes sense for every band with a web page to have a complimentary burnlounge store to sell their music.
If you don’t want to look at having your own site, you can still get your music on Burnlounge for free (30 thousand websites like mine.) I can email you the documents you would need to fill out to do that. Its easy and takes about three weeks to get your stuff up there. I would be happy to feature you on my front page if you submitted your music and would keep your cd there as long as people were downloading your music from me. You could direct them to my site from your myspace page.
You can find more info at http://www.burnlounge.com . Click on “sell music”, features and “want to sell your music on burnlounge?” to download a pdf with info about it.
I would be happy to send you a code for a free song just for trying out my site if you are interested. Even if you don’t want to sell your music through me I’d love to have you as a customer.
Sincerely,
BigTone
http://www.burnlounge.com/bigtone
Thanks so much. It sounds like a great service I will check it out. I think in this day and age independent musicians are able to get their music out there, through sites such as yours, maintaining their own creative control and reaching an audience that is geographically impossible without the use of cyberspace. I know I have had some great feedback including record label interest from being on the Sonicbids site.
I have a number of other independent musicians that I’m sure would be interested and will forward this info on to. Thanks again.