This month’s blog post of the month is Bruce Warila’s post on Music Think Tank: “Don’t go over the self-promotion cliff; crush your local radio station instead.”

His thesis – the promotion tools of the Internet are trends that come and go, and don’t offer the type of return for your time that they should.

However, if you are going to make the effort, focus on “where the puck is going to be”, which according to Bruce will be niche channels of similar content, which will develop their reputations by selecting and continuing to keep organized the best group of music in a particular niche.

Some excerpts:

Look at the fragmentation of the music consumption marketplace this way: genres are coastlines, niches within genres are beachfront properties, and standalone artists are rocks or grains of sand. Sticking with the metaphor: coastlines and beachfront properties are compelling, interesting and entertaining; rocks and sand are things that get stuck in your shorts and sandals.
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Yes there are independent artists earning a sustainable living, and there may even be one or two that are making a lot of money. However, show me another industry where the gross / aggregate investment (time and money) across all of the participants generates such a negative ROI. When this industry had (past tense) a massive upside lottery component to it, the potential reward mitigated the risk. Now, if you are going to go over the dream-chasing cliff that the tech providers are currently peddling, you better be doing it for the love of your art (period).