Great idea - I share your pain!

I have had clients tell me that the plan is good. That they believe in it. But that they can't execute it because of constraints within the corporate culture.

I then offer to end the engagement. But they say, "don't, we want you to keep working with us even though we can't act on what you advise."

It's crazy!

I bet there are people in the music industry saying, "100 CDs to 100 bloggers, Mack's idea, would really be great to do." But these types are often the ones closest to the action but farthest from the top of the org chart.

I'm with you Mack! Make my CD a new release from James Taylor, please.

Ah Michael it's the old 'you'd have to change your entire culture' dilemma again, isn't it? I can just see label higherups reading this post and cringing, thinking "That idiot! He wants to GIVE AWAY 100 CDs?!? Ever heard of the term 'lost sales'?!?"

Sigh.

See this is what companies don't get....their job isn't to grow their customer base. Their focus SHOULD be finding and IDENTIFYING the community members that WANT to spread the word about their product, and then giving them EVERY tool they need to do so as seamlessly and effectively as possible.

The job of the marketing dept for James Taylor's label is to find you, and put every tool in your hand that you need to communicate your love of his music to other community members. YOU are the marketer for James Taylor, and since you are a fan of his music, you WANT to tell others about him. His label needs to find you and EMPOWER you to market James Taylor for them. Once that happens, THEN the community of James Taylor fans will grow.

'100 CDs to 100 bloggers' is one way to do that.

Mack:

You bring up a GREAT topic & I wanted to share an answer to a question of yours as well as some thoughts:

Q1: "...why music labels are ignoring a community of bloggers...."
A1: The biggest problem w/promoting music on the internet via podcasting and blogging (besides ignorance) is Licensing. Most labels don't have 100% of the rights that are required to allow bloggers to post music streams/podcasts/downloads. (full disclosure, I'm the founder of a Music Licensing Company that provides legal liceneses that fix this problem.) This obviously makes it difficult to provide music, legally, to bloggers and podcasters. This is such a brand new area that only forward thinking indie labels, podcasters and licensing companies are providing 100% legal music for bloggers such as yourself.

A good example of a service is IndieFeed ( www.IndieFeed.com ) Notice that all of the artists are indepdendents. Yet again, the indie artist is leading the way into new formats. Go indies!

I'd expect there to be an exponentially increasing catalog of indie music available to bloggers in the near future. The real question is - who is going to promote a service that gets the word out to bloggers? They need, as you basically requested above, a resource that can enable them to discover music, license it and passionately bog about it - thus helping the artists they care about become more successful while simultaneously providing great content to their readers.

It would also be tough for smaller labels to utilize your Donna's model. It would take a label a significant amount of time to put together a solid/useful list of bloggers that would get promo CD's in the mail (at the labels expense). It's expensive enough to do this type of promotion for radio - good lists, mailers, follow up calls, etc. An online digital solution would be more financially viable. Then labels could send you an email when new music that you might really dig becomes availabe, perhaps even before the street date to get hype going.

Your point that Bloggers will sell downloads & records for labels, I ABSOLUTELY AGREE! You're way ahead of most labels on that one.

All the best.

Thanks for starting this conversation, Mack. I am working on an article on the whole topic of music and how businesses can start to incorporate/integrate it more with all the appropriate licensing - to be published in MP in mid-June or thereabouts.

I know how big a difference "sonic identity" can make for brands looking to reach multi-sensing women, in particular, but I suspect that getting more music into brands is something that will be appreciated by everyone. It's a fun and effective new way to appeal to an oft-neglected sensory touchpoint.

Paul thanks a ton for your insight, I wanted to address certain points you raised:

"Q1: "...why music labels are ignoring a community of bloggers...."
A1: The biggest problem w/promoting music on the internet via podcasting and blogging (besides ignorance) is Licensing. Most labels don't have 100% of the rights that are required to allow bloggers to post music streams/podcasts/downloads. (full disclosure, I'm the founder of a Music Licensing Company that provides legal liceneses that fix this problem.) This obviously makes it difficult to provide music, legally, to bloggers and podcasters. This is such a brand new area that only forward thinking indie labels, podcasters and licensing companies are providing 100% legal music for bloggers such as yourself."

Whenever I mention the '100 CDs for 100 bloggers' idea, someone immediately says 'well I don't even buy CDs anymore, I'd rather just download it'. But I knew if I said let's make it available as a download to 100 bloggers, that the labels would never go for that, because we as both know if you made it a download, 100 bloggers would immediately send it to all their friends, and within 24 hours every person on the planet would own the CD and the music industry would collapse ;)

But you raised a completely different reason why the download idea wouldn't work. Also the 'have the band sign/inscribe the cd' was a way to give an added suprise to the bloggers, and make the CD also a collectible to them.

"It would also be tough for smaller labels to utilize your Donna's model. It would take a label a significant amount of time to put together a solid/useful list of bloggers that would get promo CD's in the mail (at the labels expense). It's expensive enough to do this type of promotion for radio - good lists, mailers, follow up calls, etc."

I agree completely. But for the big labels that do have the time and resources to do this, it should be a no-brainer. You are basically taking 100 fans and converting them into 100 marketers for The Donnas.

"Your point that Bloggers will sell downloads & records for labels, I ABSOLUTELY AGREE! You're way ahead of most labels on that one."

Good, I was afraid I was losing my mind there for a while ;) And again the big X-Factor here is that the FIRST label to do this, is going to get a HUGE upswell of positive heat from the blogosphere. The only potential 'downside' that I could from doing this, is that the buzz around the promotion itself may overshadow the actual band being promoted.

Stick 100 CDs in the hands of 100 bloggers, and let the commmunity market your product for you. Sounds like a win-win deal to me!

I hope they remember to thank you when your idea revolutionizes music marketing, Mack.

Great Post. It's nice to see the 100 cds for 100 bloggers flushed out completely.

I know you've been brewing this concept for a long time.

Mack,

You know where I stand on all this. (Personally, I can't wait until Towerpod gets going. I'm jumping on that one early.)

Let me say this: the autographing of CDs is a GREAT idea. Believe me, I get them from time to time, and they are a WONDERFUL incentive to blog positively about the artist. The thing is, I only get these things from indie artists, which tells me (as Paul commented) that the indies are WAY ahead of the game when it comes to these kind of viral marketing tactics.

Even if the disc weren't signed, there's still the option of including items like posters, stickers, and swag like that, which any music nut (i.e. ME) will just plain eat up.

Take the band Line of Fire, for instance. They sent me not only their CD, but also a sticker, and a sampler from their new label. Ashley Melnick sent me an autographed CD. Roxie Mae sent me an autographed 8x10, a CD, and a little extra something else. And do you think these guys are getting bad reviews from me? No. Granted, I like their music, but I'm in a much better mood to write something stellar about them to start with now that I've got all this stuff.

Sadly, I think that the people who would agree with this idea are not the people in the decision making role. The people who make the decisions have knee-jerk reactions that range from "won't work" to "if we send out the CD, it'll get leaked to the internet." This is true for both digital AND cd copies (because who here doesn't know how to rip a CD to mp3?) And to some extent they do have a point. This has even curtailed distribution of CDs to some radio stations, because disc jocks who get the disc before the street date will upload the entire thing on bittorrent, and then the pre-release buzz is shattered and the CD is out way before the marketers intended. (See "Bice, Bo" for a case study of this.)

Still, I think if one label can make a successful run at it, it will open the floodgates. You know how it is with marketers...nobody wants to be the first to try something. And when someone does and is successful, that's when everybody else thinks it was such a great idea.

I think it's going to take an Indie band doing it successfully to make the major labels stand up and take notice. And that's why I'm paying attention to indies much more than I used to nowadays.

--J.D.

Ooh ooh, another thought...

In addition to the CDs, what if labels or artists gave the bloggers free concert tix? (with backstage pass, natch.)

A lot of labels like to fly college radio music directors up to New York every year for the CMJ Festival so they can see all the new bands showcased. It's a huge event. What if the labels were to cut a few bloggers a ticket in too, with the promise that if they come, they'll blog reviews and news about the bands? I'd certainly be up for that.

Hey, it's 5:30 in the morning and I've been up all night. These kind of random thoughts just attack me some times.

Thanks for the comments everyone. Glad to see this idea is being discussed, if nothing else. JD is right that this is a paradigm shift, but in more ways than one. The higher-ups at major labels have to stop looking at ideas like this as something that will 'lead to more illegal downloads', and see it for what it is, a marketing promotion that will 'lead to more music sales'.

Because it will. You are converting PASSIONATE music fans for an artist, into PASSIONATE promoters for that artist. And they will willingly market and promote your artist for the cost of one signed CD.

All I want out of this discussion is for a major label to actually try this, or give me a valid reason why a major label CANNOT do this. I don't want to hear why they don't WANT to do it, I want to hear why they CAN'T give '100 CDs to 100 bloggers'.

It's a question I don't think they can answer.

The labels aren't in total control of their marketing message any longer. They can either hide in their ivory towers and deny what is staring them in the face, or embrace the waiting and willing community that WANTS to market their artists, and reap the benefits.

the labels are already sending free music to bloggers, both directly and via the publicists hired to work the record.

Music blogger.....I'm not talking about sending CDs to Coolfer or another music blog hoping they'll review it, I'm talking about a label targetting fans of one of their artists, who are also bloggers, and letting them promote their music.

If you know of such a promotion similar to '100 CDs for 100 bloggers', please let me know, I'd really love to hear about it.

Because labels aren't giving their biggest fans free CDs, doesn't mean they are ignoring them. Quite the opposite. There are countless examples of using fans for user-generation promotions. (The Wall Street Journal had an article about this just last week.)

While no free CDs have been given away (why give away to people who are sure to buy them?) there are marketing tools that fans are given. Most band sites have HTML for banner ads, audio streams videos and other items for people to place on their blogs or MySpace pages. Never before in the history of music has a fan had so much available to help promote the bands he/she loves.

Example of user-generated promotion: Matador Records has twice conducted a make-a-video contest. One was for the band Interpol, another was for Pretty Girls Make Graves and was done in conjunction with YouTube.

Some labels hire marketing companies that deal with tastemaker teens, who spread the word about a band and offer feedback.

As for giving 100 CDs to 100 bloggers (who are not well read music bloggers like myself), I think most labels know they don't need to give away what will certainly be purchased. From a practical point of view, I don't know of any label or PR company that keeps a database of blogs for everyday fans of a particular band. Which 100 people do they contact? Does anybody read their blogs?

Another practical issue: Blogs are good at breaking unknown bands. If there are 100 bloggers who love a band, chances are it already has moved beyond the point where blogging is crucial. For more established bands, blogs are as critical as bands with no mainstream exposure. There will be the typical outlets for such an established band.

Last practical issue: Blog saturation. Believe me, it matters. I know plenty of people who automatically ignore a band they see mentioned on a lot of blogs.

As for the piracy issue, yeah, that's definitely going to be an issue. For a well known band that already has 100 known fans, it's already going to be tough to get a promo CD ahead of street date. Labels are tightening up, and what is handed out before release is often watermarked or copy protected. I personally think there can be adequate promotion through audio streams at MySpace or the band's own webpage. Most bands stream their albums at or before street date.

As somebody already pointed out in the comments, labels absolutely promote through blogs...in a big way. CDs and concert tickets are given to bloggers. Not unheard-of blogs run by fans, but blogs with at least a decent readership.

Licensing is not an issue here. Promo CD are given away en masse. Setting aside some for bloggers would be simple, and nobody expects the bloggers to pay royalties if they post a track. What the labels get is promotion, just as royalty-free MySpace audio streams offer.

"While no free CDs have been given away (why give away to people who are sure to buy them?)"

Because you realize that losing one sale of a CD will result in many ADDITIONAL sales by giving a blogger the tools and INCENTIVE to promote their CD. The 'why give away music and lose sales' is old-school big-label thinking. Smart marketers today realize that the end result justifies losing 1 sale upfront.

"As for giving 100 CDs to 100 bloggers (who are not well read music bloggers like myself), I think most labels know they don't need to give away what will certainly be purchased. From a practical point of view, I don't know of any label or PR company that keeps a database of blogs for everyday fans of a particular band. Which 100 people do they contact? Does anybody read their blogs?"

Again Glenn, we are going to have to agree to disagree here. The label will technically lose up to 100 CD sales upfront, and in exchange they will eventually get likely tens if not even hundreds of thousands of positive endorsements for their CDs. I'd say that's a no-brainer of a promotion.

"Last practical issue: Blog saturation. Believe me, it matters. I know plenty of people who automatically ignore a band they see mentioned on a lot of blogs."

Some people might do this. But for most people, when they see the same band being endorsed on several blogs, it doesn't take long before they think 'man everyone seems to be talking about this band! Wonder what the deal is?'.

"As somebody already pointed out in the comments, labels absolutely promote through blogs...in a big way. CDs and concert tickets are given to bloggers. Not unheard-of blogs run by fans, but blogs with at least a decent readership."

That's great, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about a targetted promotion aimed at 100 or so bloggers who are also fans of a particular group. Let's get past trying to find an example of some blogger somewhere that once got sent a free ticket, and concentrate on the issue at hand: Which is whether or not a promotion that gives '100 CDs to 100 bloggers' would work.

I think it would....mainly because so far no one can give me a valid reason why it wouldn't.

Hi there

I'm a music marketer and I have several blogs on my mailing lists and I find this method successful...to a degree.

My question is: What about the bands that no one has heard of that Capitol or Warner is looking to break? A debut album that doesn't quite have a fan base or an artists second release? Any ideas if there isn't 100 fans established yet? I'd also love to know if there is a blog directory out there I can send CDs to for review - specifically music reviewers other than the blogcritics of the world..that would be "jackpot" for our company.
Cheers!

Chip I think the '100 CDs for 100 bloggers' promotion would work better for established artists.

For artists that are looking to start out and create a community of fans, here's the textbook example of how to do it on MySpace:
http://moblogsmoproblems.blogspot.com/2006/05/trust-can-remove-need-for-marketing.html

Check out the free music downloads at this designer music store there worth a listen

Full disclosure: I am a former fan of The Donnas who was banished from their official message boards (one open to all, the other for paid members of their fan club) eight months ago. (Long, sordid story — don't ask.)

While I was a member of their message boards, I estimate the number of fans who posted to the main message board regularly or semi-regularly at far fewer than one hundred. Furthermore, not a single one of them ever mentioned having a blog other than on MySpace or LiveJournal.

It's interesting to look, because from what I could tell their message boards and website is pretty dead, but their MySpace page is bangin'. I actually think The Donnas would be the prototypical band/artist for '100 CDs for 100 Bloggers'. They have a fanbase, but they aren't A-List stars, and they have a history of embracing fans sharing their music, such as with their DonnasMedia.com site, where fans are openly encouraged to exchange and trade live concerts.

This promotion would work best for a band/artist that's middle tier, and this promotion would help grow their fanbase to the next level. It's going to happen, it's just a matter of which label/artist wants to pull the trigger on it first. The FIRST time this promotion is executed, it will be massive in the blogosphere, for reasons outlined above.

Ok i unfamiliar with the music industry so please bear with me if i seem a little ignorant.

I am supposed to be attending an interview tomorrow for a marketing manager position at an agency which promots emerging musicians. I came across this interesting blog while i was looking for some wise things to say tomorrow.

Now i live in China where there is as much piracy as there are people. You could find the latest CDs in pirated shops and these are as spread out here like 7-11. or cafes? Now comes the issues.

Artists hope to make money some day (excluding the few who do it for the love of doing it) so how do you suggest that these artists ever make in in China? I would assume that irrespective of the promotion, an artist will never make money unless he/she becomes a celebraty and gets radio contracts, tv contracts and such? Hold on, i think ive just addressed the issue.

Okay - I'm trying to break into the scene as a singer/songwriter in the Detroit area - but I find it very difficult because I don't really play the Detroit 'garage band' type of music. I know there is myspace...but I'm not even sure how to start to connect there...where do I begin to search for the right people to listen to my music? Is there anything besides the slow server connection of myspace...?
I really like the 100 CDs, 100 blogger idea...would it hurt me if I tried it as an unknown artist?

Hey Alex, I can't see how '100 CDs For 100 Bloggers' would hurt you, but it may not help, either.

Look at it this way, you are a trying to start your career, so that means you have little or no fanbase for your music yet. So that means that for you to do '100 CDs For 100 Bloggers', it would be like giving 100 bloggers at random one of your CDs. They might like it, they might not. You have no idea till they listen to it.

Whereas if you were an established artist, you would have a fanbase to draw from, and you could give 100 CDs to 100 Bloggers that are ALSO fans of your music.

'100 CDs For 100 Bloggers' works best for an artist/band that has an established fanbase, and this works to EXPAND that fanbase. You need to create yours, so this promotion wouldn't be your best option.

As for MySpace, do me a favor, click on my name and when you get there, scroll down on the right and search for 'the favorites', and it will bring up the posts I've written on The Favorites, they do an EXCELLENT job of creating a community of fans on MySpace. If you need further help/advice, feel free to email me!