Diversification is a business and investment term meant to broaden your offerings and mitigate risk. In your music marketing efforts, diversification will allow you to test new ideas and see what is working, and find new fans from different sources.

So, which different avenues have you tested out lately?

We all have different goals – maybe someone lives in Alaska and wants to find 15 live fans to play to in the dead of winter over the Internet. Others want to sell more albums; others want to tour; some want it all – to make a living and more out of playing music.

Ultimately for most, though, it is about connecting and finding more fans to justify the time you put into to your music. It could be fans or money or general community interest that is the payback.

However, no matter your exact goal, you should be on the lookout for some basic criteria in the services you elect to use that will provide the maximum long term benefits for your time and energy spent in signing up and learning to use such services.

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We all want to try new products and services, and find a potentially easier path to getting new fans. Yet, we all need to push to make sure we are getting something in return for the free music we may be distributing, and a reason to think that the time we put in to learning a new platform or service will pay off.

This led me to think about what every service should have if they want to attract and add value to independent musicians.

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Baseball players young and old still field ground balls in practice, turn double plays, practice bunting, play catch – every single day. Whether they are in little league or the majors the routine of practicing fundamentals is key.

Approaching the business of music is the same. For musicians trying to make it from nothing to something, or even for those that are “something” and want to make to the next level – signed by a major label, etc. – everyone still must remember the fundamentals of marketing your music.

1. Make sure your web site is the central hub of all things about your music. First and foremost, there needs to be a central place where you can control things, and your website is it. Myspace, Facebook, etc are controlled by those companies, and you can’t build and plan around that long term.

The most important aspects of your website will be the ability to (i) collect emails and (ii) distribute your music how you want (free downloads, pay what you want, etc). You don’t have to create those features from scratch, as you can utilize services like Reverb Nation, Bandcamp or others, however everything should still start from your website with the intention of gathering your fans’ data.

Blog Gen Y Rock Stars has an extremely well thought out video blog about using your fans data strategically to better target the buyers of your music. To repeat, it all starts with getting fan emails.

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This recent article on The Economist points out that legal music downloading options have finally created a scenario where legal downloading is a legitimate and viable alternative to stealing music through free downloads.

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I can appreciate that it rather difficult to self-promote, especially for many artists. It seems either pushy or corporate or uncool or all of the above to talk your music up to other folks. The key, then, is to find ways to do it that somehow doesn’t come off this way and is real — is you.

Our friends at New Rock Star Philosophy recently stated: “Start with something that is unique, honest, and real.” Volume 11 also wrote about “authenticity” in online marketing this past May.

John Oszajca is a musician who has experienced a good amount of what the music industry has to offer – getting signed by labels, putting out albums with those labels, getting dropped by labels, and then being forced to do it himself. To put it more bluntly, he was forced to find some work to pay the bills, learned online marketing for other products, and then began to apply what he learned to promoting his own music.

He is now a “success” and also a self-proclaimed online marketing guru:

I asked myself, why do all of the things that I’m selling sell? The answer almost universally was that my products were selling because they solved problems.

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The hardest thing to do is go from nothing to something.

This is true in life, business, and your music career. Getting started in anything involves finding your strength, developing your innate talent and idea, honing it, and promoting it. Then repeat again and again as necessary. There is also some self-analysis involved – for things you are not good at you need to find others to help.

For music, once you feel as if you have ability to be unique or have an impact in some way, you start practicing. Practicing leads to skill development. Then you perform, and that hopefully leads to fans and some justification for your time, energy and faith.

But after you have some core fans, perhaps a somewhat loyal and consistent fanbase, and maybe made a self-published album or two, now what? It seems that many bands get stuck at this level for a long time, most forever. And there is good reason for this. After all:

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