What Is Music Discovery?

Online Music Discovery is just the same as offline, albeit with nearly unlimited choice

Photo Credit: mkorchia

Music Discovery is the term used to describe the period from the time a potential fan first hears your music to when they decide to go out and purchase it. So many different variables come into play at this stage from, what mood they are in to whether or not they are paying attention. The right blend of variables will turn a potential fan into a real fan.

To restate that the goal of Music Discovery, is to convince a potential fan to consider making a connection with a new artist.

Before we dive to deep into this, lets have a look at a few of the major variables that come into play during the music discovery phase:

• Am I paying attention?
• What mood am I in?
• Do I know this artist?
• Have I heard them before?
• Do I like it?

Each of these in some way influences their overall opinion of the song and whether or not they are going to pursue and discover the artist. The better the experience of the fan when they discover your music the greater the chance they will pursue it and you. The first time someone hears your music may not be the time that grabs them, in fact it rarely is unless you have a strong hook. Gaining enough exposure to catch a potential fan in the right situation for them to be paying enough attention to listen to the song is vital.

Exposure

This is quite a simple concept, but not the most practical. Be everywhere your potential fans are. You need to position your music to be heard wherever your potential fans are listening. Never forget the necessity of permission based marketing in this stage. Send emails or IM’s to everyone you can find telling them about your new song isn’t going to get you very far.

You need to be heard is a relatively organic way, as it is the most sustainable over the long term. Be it, on a music discovery podcast, a recommendation from a friend or service or a music discovery website like thesixtyone or good old radio. The advantage of these are that the fan has already opted in to the prospect of discovering new music.

Music discovery podcasts are great ways to discover new music, their advantage for artists is that they are completely opt-in to discovering new music. Thats the sole reason you go to them, much like music discovery websites. Recommendation services are very similar, being on as many as possible is important to gaining exposure.

Going viral, is the other method of gaining exposure. The degree of exposure can be small or great, but it all counts. It could be as small as a group of friends suddenly falling in love with you, or the entire blogosphere talking about you. It all counts.

The important thing to note is that with both music discovery podcasts and going viral are somewhat out of your hands. You cannot put yourself on them. The best you can do is to be everywhere possible, so that someone who runs a podcast can find you.

In short the best methods for gaining exposure are:

• Music Blogs
• Recommendation Services
• Music Discovery Websites
• Music Discovery Podcasts
• Freely Offering Value
• Word of Mouth
• Going Viral

Attention

Now you have made yourself prolific on the web, what does it take to convert a listener into a fan and get them into your tribe. You need to gain their attention. You need them to listen to your music, chances are if they like it they will stop and pay attention. If you can get enough people to pay attention and like your music you can rise through the charts of thesixtyone and last.fm, you can become the favourite of music bloggers and get the potential to go viral.

The more attention you gain, the more likely it is for someone to discover who you are. They probably wont rush out and buy your album the first time they hear you, unless you are just THAT good. Some artists are, but for the rest of us we need to gain some good old fashioned attention.

Attention and exposure go hand in hand. More exposure will likely result in more attention from the music consuming public. And more attention will undoubtedly result in more exposure. Just think what happens when you gain the attention of a few hundred music bloggers; exposure.

Gaining attention does need to be somewhat organic as well. Spamming will not get you very far. You need to get other people talking about you, attention tends to be a little exponential. That is, once you get ball rolling, it snowballs.

On the internet both scarcity and abundance are big problems for an indie artist. The scarcity of good music in the listeners view, and the abundance of music in general. Discovering the minimal amounts of music listeners like can be made much easier with music discovery services. The more attention you can gain on these services, the greater the chance the right person will hear.

Once they have discovered your music, you can then focus on getting them into your tribe, and converting them to a paying customer. But until then, you need to get enough attention and buzz for them to even know you exist.

UPDATE: Bruce Warila has just published a similar post on the Music Think Tank that takes a more scientific look at Music Discovery. He calls it the The Song Adoption Formula.