If you aren’t using Pandora Radio, you are missing an amazing chance to share your music with new fans.

Pandora is the largest and fastest growing radio platform in the world with 45 million registered listeners and growing in the United States.

Pandora offers a unique opportunity to independent musicians – Pandora prides itself on selecting music using a level playing field, where music is considered for inclusion solely based on quality.

Once music is selected for inclusion, the unique musical identity of a song is analyzed through the Music Genome Project. Those attributes are then used to create personalized stations for each listener based on their musical tastes.

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I had the opportunity to ask Pandora founder Tim Westergren some questions about the role of independent music at Pandora. Here’s what he had to say:

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If you really want to give yourself the best chance to succeed, make an impact, and get noticed you need to be different.

Some people can just be so special at playing guitar that they will stand out no matter what – hello Jimi Hendrix and those folks – but that is the exception. Just about everyone plays guitar, which means there are more ultra-talented guitar players.

The better way to make it is to compete in an area with less competitors. If guitar is your calling, then so be it, but if you have a choice, find the most obscure instrument around and become amazing at it.

Then see what happens…

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As I watch some bands move up the ladder and others sort of stagnate, I often begin to notice the importance of Branding.

Some bands really get it, and others don’t.

What do you want your band to be known for? What do you want others to think about attending one of your shows? Or think about as they are going through your website?

You know, sometimes you need to be the person to slip these thoughts into someone’s head, or at the very least you need to set the tone.

Will shows always be a fun party? Or a mix of serious and fun? Do you want things to feel consistent, or different every time? (Different every time still falls under the category of “Branding”)

Think about it, then see if you are consistently projecting the image you’d like to be projecting at your shows, on your website, twitter statements, etc.

After all, the most important aspect of branding is being consistent about it.

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In her article “Get Paid in 2010: Want To Increase Your Bottom Line? Focus On Your Fans!,” Ariel Hyatt is asking you to “take off your artist hat for a minute and put on your business hat,” and use a greater connection with fans as a way to increase your ability to make money.

To be more successful and make more money in the new year, Hyatt suggests you start thinking of yourself and your craft as a brand, and your fans as customers.

The key, according to Hyatt, to getting fans to buy from you, is creating a relationship with fans. “Every study on sales has proven one thing: People hate to be sold to, however people love to buy, and people always love to buy from people whom they like and who they feel they trust.”

So how do you become a person that your fans like and want to buy from?

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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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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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Since 2006 people have begun to realize that all social networks are not the same. We’ve at times advised folks not even to bother with a myspace page. This advice is wrong.

As the various social networks diverge and segment their appeal, we all need to be focused on what we can do to get the most out of each segment.

CNN’s technology section recently wrote about this topic and calls this a “class divide.”

MySpace has one population, Facebook has another…. A recent study by market research firm Nielsen Claritas found that people in more affluent demographics are 25 percent more likely to be found friending on Facebook, while the less affluent are 37 percent more likely to connect on MySpace.

More specifically, almost 23 percent of Facebook users earn more than $100,000 a year, compared to slightly more than 16 percent of MySpace users. On the other end of the spectrum, 37 percent of MySpace members earn less than $50,000 annually, compared with about 28 percent of Facebook users.

These differences, however, do not highlight that one network is worth your time while another is not. That the largest social networks are segregating into niches is a positive in that you can now better target your message.

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We are always happy to pass on helpful lists about getting your online marketing efforts started.
This list is from Gen-Y Rock Stars.
http://www.genyrockstars.com/2009/09/music-marketing-where-do-i-start.html

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