A quick lesson in promoting a band
Sunday, July 22nd, 2007Marketing guru Seth Godin points out the importance of having a unique concept for promoting music. He stopped by a garage sale recently and found out that the guy was selling thousands of brand new CDs, most still in the wrappers, for just $3 each. What a great deal! Well, he soon discovered that he didn’t really know who most of the bands were, they were all small and unknown to him and they all started to look the same. There were no recommendations or hints about what was similar, no frame of reference for him to judge the bands by. He spent so much time and effort trying to figure out if he might like any particular album that he felt his time was worth more than the $3 it cost to buy one. Essentially, the CDs weren’t even worth it if they were all free, because of the effort he had to spend.
What does this all mean? It means that new and emerging bands are facing huge challenges right now. But more importantly, it means that if a band wants to overcome these challenges, they have to do something different. If you do exactly what everybody else does, doing it more and harder isn’t going to help you more than anyone else.
