Bob Baker's Indie Music Promotion Blog

News, notes and ideas on music marketing, self-promotion, artist empowerment and more

May 23, 2006

Warner Music Taps Indie Success

Here's an interesting excerpt from an article on MSNBC:

Alternative Distribution Alliance (ADA) is a part of a multipronged strategy to revitalize Warner Music, which, like the rest of the industry, fell on hard times in recent years as sales of high-priced CDs softened and Internet piracy accelerated. Through ADA, Warner Music wants to dominate indie music, the industry's fastest-growing segment, by signing deals with scores of small local and regional labels and getting retailers to stock the distinctive music of the fiercely independent acts.

Warner Music and ADA don't own the labels, and merely earn a fee for distributing their records. Yet when Warner's market share is calculated, ADA's overall sales are counted as if the acts belonged to Warner. In addition to the moves at ADA, Warner Music established a so-called incubator system to offer limited financial backing to small entrepreneurial labels with promising acts that can be "upstreamed" -- signed later to Warner Music-owned labels, if they hit big.

The Warner aspect is informative. But the thing that grabs me the most is this:

"indie music, the industry's fastest-growing segment"

If you still feel shame about being "indie" instead of being "signed" ... well, just stop it already!

For more info on the Alternative Distribution Alliance, visit www.ada-music.com.

-Bob

posted by Bob Baker @ 2:09 PM   0 comments

May 21, 2006

I Want My Bob TV

This just in ... My first-ever music video is available for your viewing and listening pleasure.

I say "viewing pleasure" with hesitation, because I cringe every time I see myself in this. Hopefully, your response won't be so unnerving.

My longtime pal Lee Mueller produced this video for a film editing class he took this past semester. It's to an original song I wrote and recorded last year called "Sin Is On Your Face." The girl in the video is our theatre friend Liz Landeau.

Enjoy. And thanks to Lee and Liz for their generous work on this!



You can also view the file at Google Video.

posted by Bob Baker @ 1:20 PM   6 comments

May 10, 2006

Express Yourself

As a followup to Monday's post on Empowered Fans, here's one way I'm empowering my fans to express themselves ...

Check out these audio testimonials:

From Jason Fladlien, www.straihtwikidcrew.com


From Sylvia Young, www.totalkaosent.com


Want to record your own audio testimonial? Find out how on this page.

-Bob

posted by Bob Baker @ 10:00 AM   0 comments

May 08, 2006

Beastie Boys & Empowered Fans

In my recent post called The Hunted Become the Hunters I discussed the growing empowerment of music fans and consumers in general. Another offshoot of this evolution is the blurring of lines between people who produce creative content and those who consume it.

Case in point: Here's what Beastie Boy Adam Yauch told Wired magazine in an article last month ...

One night, I was prowling around on our web site's message board and found a phonecam video clip that someone had taken at one of our shows. It was really grainy and shaky, but I loved how it was shot from eye level and showed a personal take on what was happening onstage. I thought it would be cool to apply that approach to a full-length concert film, so that it actually feels like you're watching a concert and not some big, overblown MTV video.

To make their new concert movie, the Beastie Boys distributed Hi8 videocams to 50 fans at a show in New York City -- and asked them to record everything they saw. Yauch then combined his favorite bits from the 100-plus hours of footage into a feature film.

In this new era, artists aren't the only ones who do the creating while fans passively sit by and wait to be fed the latest music. Now everyone has an opportunity to express themselves. Use this to your advantage. Ask your fans to produce videos, artwork, T-shirt designs, even alternate versions of your recorded music.

Get fans involved and allow them to be co-creators in your success story.

-Bob

posted by Bob Baker @ 9:20 AM   0 comments

May 01, 2006

MC Lars Taps Into iGeneration

Have you heard of MC Lars and his rap-inspired tunes aimed at the "iGeneration"?

Check out the tracks "Download This Song" and "iGeneration" on his MySpace page to see what I mean.

Lars is a good example of someone who is doing two smart things, marketing-wise:
  • Tapping into (and rapping about) a current event or trend -- in this case, the realities of the digital generation, with a big dose of flipping off the traditional corporate music industry.

  • Creating a new musical category Lars calls "post-punk laptop rap."
Opinions seem to vary on the quality of his songs and whether they fit more into the comedy or trailblazer genre. But one thing's for sure: MC Lars has received a good amount of media coverage -- MTV.com, The Village Voice, Now Toronto magazine, Chart Attack, Full Effect magazine, and IGN.com, to name a few.

What event or trend does your music tap into? And what new category can you create and establish yourself as the preeminent artist in?

-Bob

posted by Bob Baker @ 1:40 PM   0 comments