The 20 things you MUST know about music online

Published by Dubber on March 16, 2007

in things to know.

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UPDATE: You can now read the whole ‘20 Things’ series of blog posts and sign up for the free e-book on this page.
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I’m making myself redundant here. Understand and implement these simple principles — and you won’t need me any more.

I was on a panel last night, at an event for the Moseley Creative Forum. The topic was ‘Is this the best time ever to be in the music industry?’. Naturally, there was some debate. My brief, as you might expect, was to come up with some tips for dealing with the music industry in these ‘best of times’. So I drew up a list of bullet points to discuss.

I was aiming for a top 10 list — but there are more things than that to understand if you’re going to make any headway in the music business online. So I made it a top 20.

In no particular order (but numbered so you know where you’re up to):

1. Don’t believe the hype: Sandi Thom, the Arctic
Monkeys and Lily Allen are not super famous, rich and successful
because of MySpace, and nor because they miraculously drew a crowd of
thousands to their homegrown webcast. PR, traditional media, record
labels and money were all involved.

2. Hear / Like / Buy: It’s the golden rule. People
hear music, then they like music, then they buy music. It’s the only
order it can happen in. If you try to do it in any other sequence, it
just won’t work.

3. Opinion Leaders Rule: We know the importance of
radio and press. There are now new opinion leaders who will tell your
story with credibility. You need to find out who they are — or better
yet, become one of them.

4. Customise: A tailored solution at best, or at
the very least a bespoke kitset approach to your web presence is
crucial. An off-the-shelf number will almost guarantee your anonymity.

5. The Long Tail: Chris Anderson has pretty much
proved that the future of retail is selling less of more. Put
everything online. Expand your catalogue. You will make more money
selling a large number of niche products than you will selling a few
hits.

6. Web 2.0: Forget being a destination — become an
environment. Let your customers tag and sort your catalogue. Open up
for user-generated content. Your website is not a brochure — it’s a
place where people gather and connect with you and with each other.

7. Connect: Learn how to tell a story, and learn
how to tell it in an appropriate fashion for web communication. Think
about how that could be translated for both new media and mainstream PR
outlets.

8. Cross-promote: Your online stuff is not a
replacement for your offline stuff, and nor does it exist independently
of it. Figure out how to make the two genuinely intersect.

9. Fewer Clicks: This is especially true if you
want somebody to part with their money. If I have to fill in a form,
navigate through three layers of menu and then enter a password, I
don’t want your music any more.

10. Professionalism: Have a proper domain. MySpace
is not your website. Learn to spell. Use high-quality photography. Get
a web designer who understands design — not just code.

11. The Death of Scarcity: Understand that the
economics of the internet is fundamentally different to the economics
of the world of shelves and limited stock. Know that you could give
away 2 million copies of your record in order to sell a thousand.

12. Distributed Identity: From a PR perspective,
you are better off scattering yourself right across the internet,
rather than staying put in one place. Memberships, profiles, comments,
and networks are incredibly helpful.

13. SEO: You need to understand how Search Engine
Optimisation works, and how you can maximise your chances of being
found. Be both findable — and searchable.

14. Permission: This is very basic stuff. Don’t
spam. Let people opt-in. Make the information you send them relevant,
useful and welcome. Long lists of dates and events are impersonal and
feel like work. Personalised messages seem far more important.

15. RSS: Provide it, use it and teach it. Relying
on people to come back to visit your website is ultimately soul
destroying. So is always making more content all the time. RSS is the
single most important aspect of your site. Treat it as such - but
remember it’s still new for most people. Help your audience come to
grips with it.

16. Accessibility: Not everyone has a fast computer
or high speed access. Not everybody has the gift of sight. Make
everything you do online accessible. Make your site XHTML compliant.
It’s easy to do, it’s important, and it stops you from turning people
away at the door. You wouldn’t have a shop without wheelchair access,
would you?

17. Reward & Incentivise: Everything is now
available all of the time. Give people a reason to consider you as part
of their economic engagement with music. A 30-second streaming sample
is worse than useless.

18. Frequency is everything: Publish daily. There’s
nothing more sad than an abandoned website or a disused forum. Search
engines prioritise active sites. You want people to come back? Give
them something to come back to that they haven’t seen before.

19. Make it viral: Whatever you do, make it
something that people will want to send to other people. Your best
marketing is word of mouth, because online, word of mouth is
exponentially more powerful.

20. Forget product — sell relationship: The old
model of music business is dominated by the sale of an individual
artefact for a set sum of money. iTunes is still completely old school.
The new model is about starting an ongoing economic relationship with a
community of fans.

And a bonus:

21. The chart is a mug’s game: Not only is the top
40 singles chart entirely meaningless, it has even stopped working as a
promotional tool. Don’t aim for the chart — aim for a sustainable
career.