Unconvention Groningen (1)

And finally we are here to write a round-up from the very interesting Unconvention in Groningen. There has been some excellent reporting by Bram Willemse (in Dutch), but I think I have still some things to add to the story.

I missed the first panel about setting up a good live show, because I was still looking for a good parking spot in Groningen.

The second panel (with the title ‘To MySpace or not to MySpace’) focused on the use of social networks. On stage we saw Pim van de Werken from the band Silence is Sexy, who made heavy use of the torrent site Mininova to distribute their songs for free. Second speaker was Lance LaBreche from Rocket Garage, a New York based music and models agency, which brings European bands to the States, and finally we had Nicolai Adolfs from Beep!Beep! Back Up the Truck, the first Dutch record label to distribute its complete discography for free under a Creative Commons license.

Let’s start with an excellent quote by Lance: “Music is a part of show business, show is what you do on stage, but there is a business behind it.” This vision explains his main perspective on the use of social networks: you should ask yourself how you make money with it. Therefore, it is key to limit your attention to about 5 networks that work for you and keep these up to date. However, in the first stage you must experiment to see which networks give the best results. It is important to understand the different types of platforms. MySpace, for instance, works great as a business card. But if you want to draw attention to the shows that you play, Last.fm and Facebook are better channels. A main advantage of Facebook is the opportunity to send location-based show announcements. You also should look at the demographics of the different networks and find out if they match with your target audience.

Let’s put this in practice and take the example of Silence is Sexy. The band experimented with ReverbNation and PureVolume, but that didn’t work for them. The last network appears to be more focused on emo and punk. The torrent site Mininova was a very interesting distribution channel for the band. They tracked the downloaders on Last.fm, approached them and asked them if they wanted to download the whole album. Jamendo was also a big success for them. It appears to be a site where listeners search actively for new music and Jamendo even asked Silence is Sexy to be featured in their newsletter.

The main strategy for the use of social networks may be best described as follows. You use the networks to catch the attention of potential fans. It’s a good way to introduce your music to the public. Afterwards, you want to draw these fans to your own website and build your own community there. From this (community) website you direct your fans to the iTunes store (or another download store). I would add an extra step to this myself: after they bought a track (or something from your merchandise store, or whatever), you give your fans the best tools to tell about it to their friends on their social networks. This is more or less the strategy I’m working on the following months with the band Arid.

We’ll end this first episode on Unconvention with some loose ends which came up during the panel. Somebody asked how you should handle new opinion makers, such as music bloggers. Lance advised that you use the positive feedback and tell about it through your own channels. It’s a way of creating new content and creating content is key to build up some tension around your music. It is also a big plus if you manage to be a bit different: find a way to set you apart from all the others. The last statement during the panel was a very straight business advice: in the first phase you should focus on a ‘business-to-consumer’ model, i.e. the relationship between the band and your fans. Afterwards, you can think about business-to-business revenue streams and start approaching publishers etc. This was exactly the topic of the next panel session, but we will save that for another blog post.