I had a busy week with Amatorski this week with not much time for blogging. I will just refer to 2 mirror posts.
5 Reason Not To Sign A Record Deal
and
5 Reasons That You Still Might Want To Sign To A Record Label
One of the aims of this blog is to keep you informed about new things in music business and internet, without overloading you with tons of information. In fact, that’s the main problem of the internet: too much information and no good filters. Each week I try to filter out the most thought-provoking items. It gives you the opportunity to spend only 15 minutes a week on keeping abreast of new things.
This week I would suggest to spend 7 minutes on this talk by Dresden Dolls’ and Twitter guru Amanda Palmer. She relates her career as a street performer to where the music industry is heading in the digital age, a virtual patronage society, where every artist proudly stands on their box and ins’t afraid to put out their hat and ask their fans for money for their music.
Resource: Hypebot
Welcome to the 2nd edition of this weekly post with some advice for further reading.
Last week I referred to a series about getting your music on blogs. The final episode is about statistics:
How to REALLY Get Your Music on Blogs: Tracking the Results of Your Hard Work
Some other interesting posts about email marketing and new services:
17 Ways Bands Should Use Email to Grow Their Fan Base and Sales
Evaluate your songs with Jango focus groups
G2.fm: a management system for artist bookings
And if you really have a lot of time, you should walk through this Slideshare presentation for an in depth analysis of social networks:
Last week I referred to the new iPhone music app builder Sound Around in my further reading post.
A couple of days ago I got a mail from one op the people behind Sound Around.
Date: Thu, 1 Jul 2010 23:54:15 -0400
Subject: Sound Around follow-up
From: steve@getsoundaround.com
To: hilkeros@hotmail.comHilke,
Hey – I noticed you created an account with Sound Around but hadn’t started uploading content. Were you thinking about doing an iPhone App for Amatorski? We’d love to have you with us and would be happy to answer any questions you had, talk to you more about the product, or do anything you might need to help you if you choose to use our service. Let me know if there’s anything I can to do help you out.
PS – checked out the MySpace and saw they’re from Belgium — that’s awesome! How did you hear about us?
Best,
Steve Klein – @StevenKlein
http://getsoundaround.com – @getSoundAround
Well, this is great customer follow-up. The first paragraph is probably automatically generated. However, in the PS, Steve shows that he actually took the time to do some research on my band and he noticed that we are from Belgium, probably an exotic place for an American 
.
This is a textbook case of good, personalized marketing. It is exactly how you want put a music start-up like Motion Music Manager in the market, or even how you want to deal with your fans or other interested people when you are an artist. As a user, I feel personally connected to this Steve from Sound Around and I am more eager to help him with an answer. Similar connections can be maintained between artists and fans and it will motivate fans to do something for the artist at a certain point, e.g. buying an album, referring your music to other people, etc.
However, why did I need follow-up from Sound Around? Apparently, I signed up for the service, but I didn’t really start to use it. The confirmation email ended up in my junk folder. And I didn’t take the time to put content in the application to test it out… because I didn’t want to upload all those stuff (songs, videos, twitter accounts, etc.) over and over again. I would love to use the future Motion Music Manager for that: just one click and all my content is filled in at Sound Around… keep on dreaming…. 
.
Second reason: I looked at the pricing. The cheapest payment plan is $14/month. Is it worth it? I am reluctant for a couple of reasons:
But I could keep going on like this forever. So, I decided to ask the Amatorski fans via an online poll. I posted the poll in the following places:
And this is the result:
First conclusion: 63 votes. It proves how many people you actually reach on Twitter and Facebook. Ok, I posted it only once, on a Saturday afternoon and it was a very hot day and not that many people were behind their computer. If we would actually have an iPhone app, we would pay more attention to promoting it.
Second: only 51 % would download the app. 38 % would regularly use it. 32 % doesn’t have an iPhone. 17 % doesn’t think that single artist iPhone apps are useful.
My estimation is that about 200 people would download the app if we launch it and that about 50 people would keep using it. Is that worth $ 14/month?
But in fact, this is only guess work. I will only know if I really launch the app. What do you think? Should we try it?
Today I want to draw your attention to an interesting quote I found on the EHPO blog.
I think the one lesson I should have learned early on in the business is really all is based around the fans, it’s never based around the business. You know, a lot of bands will send CDs to me and they say, can you recommend an agent, or we just need a manager, or we need a record label. The fact is that what you need – your whole career this will not change – is fans. And if you have have that, then you dictate your own terms throughout your whole career. And don’t sacrifice your art for anybody else, and I think that’s the key. I think that most fans have a bullshit dectector. They’ll sense if you’re selling out, of if you’re compromising. So think of them first, before thinking of the record label or an agent or manager or whatever else.
Chris Trapper, singer/songwriter
Quite related to this, the post on Music Think Thank about ‘How to Find a Music Manager’. This is my favorite part:
Check out what people search for online for music related terms according to a Google AdWords querry in June 2010:
Term: “Get My Music Heard Online” Global Monthly Searches: less than 10
Term: “Get more people to my shows” Global Monthly Searches: less than 10
Term: “Make a Living In Music” Global Monthly Searches: 46
Term: “Marketing My Music” Global Monthly Searches: 110
Term: “Get a Music Manager” Global Monthly Searches: 590
Term: “How to Get A Record Deal” Global Monthly Searches: 18,100
Draw your own conclusions but I think too many people are looking for a shortcut to fame that barring an act of God or Justin Bieber just doesn’t exist.
After all, I’m quite happy I chose Motion Music Manager as the name of this project. This tool wants to give you the opportunity to manage your career yourself, by knowing your fans.
I am sorry to inform you that we currently have a problem with fetching the correct data about your Facebook pages. The issue is caused by a combination of a problem in our system and a bug in the Facebook API. We try to solve the problem as fast as possible.
