Your Music Should Be So Good, It Promotes Itself

your fans should be THIS interested in your music.

Photo Credit: Corrêa Carvalho

The days of spending thousands of dollars on an all out television, radio and press blanket promotion strategy are all but gone. And thank god for that. All they ever did was promote the act with the most money. Talent never even came into it, it was and still is all about attention.

The Attention Ecomonmy

The democratization of media has leveled the playing field immensely. No longer must we be at the whim of mass media. No longer do we have to listen to who THEY say we do. This means we have an incredible amount of choice. Naturally as humans, we think we want as much choice as possible, but in reality we really don’t. The amount of choice now with the prolificness of the internet, is mind boggling.

When you release your music, people should have a desire to share it. 

Welcome to the Economy of Abundance. This is not doom and gloom though, it’s really an incredibly exciting time. You just need a method to cut through the noise and be heard. The gatekeepers are no longer the A&R reps, rather everyone is now a gatekeeper. What they like will spread. You need attention, so to speak. You need everyone talking about you. Surprisingly this is basic economics, the demand for attention has never been greater and the supply never been smaller.

There is a simple way to do this. Well it’s more one of those easier-said-than-done kind of things. But its by far the best method. Derek Sivers sums it up on Music Think Tank best:

“You’ll know when you’re on to something special, because people will love it so much they’ll tell everyone.
If people aren’t telling their friends about it yet, don’t waste time marketing it. Instead, keep improving until they are.”

You need to be good. Your music, needs to be good. How will you know when you are good? People will start to talk, and then you start getting attention. And not because they know you, or because you asked/paid them to. No, people will talk because they believe they are imparting value to others when they do. They will believe that what you have created is so good, so fantastic that everyone they know must hear it.

Until people are talking about your music, don’t even try to market it. Improve it untill they talk. The obvious catch here is, don’t market your music until it’s so good it markets itself. This isn’t to say don’t try and get the word out about your band, rather wait until you have something of real value before you do.

When you release your music, people should have a desire to share it. You want to get it to a quality that they want all their friends to know who you are. When you reach this stage, you will have a product so good that it commands attention. In this new internet world attention is money.

A recent Harvard paper analysed the top pirated songs, and drew some interesting conclusions regarding file sharing. Stating that in a study of “2,135 artists” studied over a ten-year period the demand for “concerts increased due to file sharing.” The songs with the most attention may not have sold spectacularly, but their complementary goods certainly did.

Attention is more valuable than money, because it holds enough influence and worth to a consumer that when presented with a reasonable value proposition like a piece of merchandise or a concert ticket they will take it.