In a global music market, what's in a name for a local band?

David Byrne's recent article in Wired describes six different business models for musicians seeking to make money in a rapidly evolving music marketplace. Among those is the self-distribution model:

Finally, at the far end of the scale, is the self-distribution model, where the music is self-produced, self-written, self-played, and self-marketed. CDs are sold at gigs and through a Web site. Promotion is a MySpace page.

The significance of access to a global audience that MySpace and similar sites provide for musicians can't be understated. But along with that access come certain unique realities, as I recently discovered.

When I'm otherwise unoccupied with the business of earning a living, I play rootsy Americana music in a four-piece band called The Elderly Brothers. Our aspirations are modest: we enjoy performing live, and like to do so on a semi-regular basis at selected local Cleveland venues. If we make a few bucks, fine, but we're not looking for fame, fortune, or a record contract.

But even those limited goals require some legwork -- virtual and real-world -- to promote the band to local club owners and make information about the band available to those who might actually want to see us perform. The real-world legwork involves talking to club owners, a task that poses little problem given the limited number of venues we target, all within a few minutes drive.

Online promotion is a horse of a different color, and the unique nature of online promotion has created a genuine identity crisis for this band, one that has obvious repercussions for anyone doing business of any sort online.

The problem is that while our band's name is unique in the Cleveland area, it is all too common in the global marketplace. This was a source of amusement early on, but it has recently become a serious issue.

The band has had a MySpace page for a little over a year. That page has proven to be far more effective at promotion than our original static web page -- and it's certainly a lot easier to maintain.

But a few days ago a Snocap widget appeared on our MySpace page, offering songs for sale from a band called The Elderly. Snocap is a fee-based service that allows artists to sell their music via MySpace pages. So while The Elderly paid for this service, their music, which is very definitely not the music of The Elderly Brothers, is being promoted on The Elderly Brothers' MySpace page. Given the similarity in names, visitors to the Elderly Brothers MySpace page are going to wonder if we've undergone some kind of bizarre transformation. And the members of The Elderly -- if they are even aware of the issue -- are very likely wondering why the Snocap service they paid for doesn't appear on their MySpace page.

In trying to correct this issue, I searched MySpace to try to locate The Elderly. It turns out that there are fifteen different bands using the name "The Elderly," and five other bands using "The Elderly Brothers," not to mention other variations. So far I have been unable to locate the right The Elderly. I've contacted MySpace support, but I have yet to hear from them.

So while this situation is a headache, it illustrates an important and exciting point: the redefinition of what it means to be a local band -- or a local anything.

My band may be competing with a limited number of other Cleveland bands for stage time, but we're competing on a global basis for the attention of those seeking information about who we are, what we do, bookings, and so on. If a user types "elderly brothers" into a search engine, the search engine doesn't care if we're a bunch of weekend warriors playing at the corner bar or a national touring act playing Madison Square Garden.

So when it comes to promotion, at least, we have to think beyond the confines of the local market. In a smallified global music marketplace, success, however you care to define it, requires a big, global mindset.


Technorati Tags: music business, Wired, David Byrne, global marketplace, MySpace, Snocap

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CIO - Blog: Something is Happening Here

Writing in the CIO.com Soapbox blog, Michael Hugos shares some of his ideas on generational differences and the changing nature and definition of work: 

This new global economy is clearly about more than just working hard. Innovation and agility don't happen by doing the same old things over and over, harder and harder. What other things might smart people with clear eyes be able to tell me? Innovation is what happens when we integrate different views into new visions.

For as long as I've been drawing a paycheck -- a process that started during the Nixon administration -- I've heard about the importance of working smart, as opposed to working hard.  I never interpreted that as  an indictment of hard work, or encouragement to figure out how to game the system. I took it as encouragement to always have my head in the game, and to always strive to find better ways of doing what I had to do.

Nixon's dead, I'm feeling every day of my 53-plus years, and the world has certainly changed.  But it always has, and it always will. The only difference now is that the pace of change in the first decade of the 21st century is so much faster than it was in the entire last half of the 20th century.  Keeping up isn't getting any easier, but what are the alternatives?

Michael's post also includes this:

A guy named Joe observed "The baby-boomers frequently draw distinctions between 'work' and 'play'. If it's 'work', it's not fun. If it's 'fun', it's not work." He went on to say, "The notions of 'hard work' and 'paying your dues' are clearly lost on the millenials. But is that really such a bad thing? Does it not also make sense, in today's electronic world, to encourage smart, efficient and creative work? In the post-industrial era, is 'hard' work really more valuable than 'fast' work, 'good' work or 'fun' work?"

And this:

But in my more creative moments I know there are insanely great new things to be done with this new stuff. There's lots of fun to be had and there's money to be made too if we can put it all together in innovative ways. Working hard is fine but it's just as important to work fast and have fun. In a world where pensions are going away and working at the some company for your whole career is a thing of the past, we need to think about new ways to motivate people and new ways to produce value. It's time to get inspired.

Give that man a cigar.

Thanks to the Internet and the explosion of technology, we have entered an age unlike any before in human history.  The temporal, spatial, and national boundaries that once separated people have little meaning or relevance in an information economy.  This presents unprecedented opportunities for those willing to take advantage.  But that means accepting change as a constant, and accepting the perpetuity of a 90-degree learning curve.

In this new age, we all have to pay our dues, all the time, regardless of age or generation. We have to work hard at working smart.  

It's the price of participation. 

It's what drives innovation.

But it's also the price of emancipation from the old boundaries and limitations.  If you had the choice, would you really want to spend thirty years at the same job?

Technorati Tags: innovation , career , technology , boomers

Down, but not Out of Ideas in American Democracy

A story in yesterday's WSJ (Have a Laptop? You, Too, Can Sway New Hampshire Race)   presents an interesting illustration of the important role citizen journalists are playing in American politics:  

The Blue Hamsters, as the three bloggers sometimes call themselves and their readers, represent a new class of political amateurs who are changing the way information flows to activists. In Iowa, there's "Bleeding Heartland," a Democratic site founded by a college student. In Florida, Democratic bloggers recently formed the "Blog Florida Blue" coalition. Republicans are getting into the act, too, with sites like South Carolina's "Palmetto Scoop," which serves up bits of news.

The story is significant in that it offers insight into the important role these and similar bloggers play in keeping a channel open between voters and political candidates the mainstream media has already deemed less than worthy of the kind of coverage granted to front runners.  

These back-of-the-pack candidates may not have a realistic shot at the White House, but the MSM shirks its Fourth Estate responsibilities and does a disservice to voters by ignoring their ideas. 

As the front runners maneuver to be all things to all people, the others have little to lose by saying what they really think.

Dennis Kucinich, for instance, has no chance in hell of becoming President - and maybe that's a good thing. But he's also one of the few candidates to actually speak his mind. That kind of honesty is too often missing from a democratic process that for decades has all the political validity and relevance of American Idol.

Independent citizen journalists -- like those in the WSJ article, and the people connected with Cleveland's own Meet the Bloggers, represent a vital new platform, and an important  step toward real democracy. They fill the gap left by the MSM by providing a public platform for those whose willingness to express original, challenging ideas makes them both unelectable in an increasingly superficial political climate, and indispensable in a truly democratic process.

Technorati Tags: politics , democracy , blogs , blogging , citizen journalist , grassroots journalism

EBay: The Place for Microfinance

From a 10/24/07 story in Business Week:

"Tracey Pettengill Turner doesn't want to give handouts to poor people. But she does want to make investments in them. So on Oct. 24, Turner is launching MicroPlace.com, a Web site that lets small investors provide low-interest 'micro' loans, of $50 or more, to would-be small business owners. Her hope is to create sustainable economic growth in the world's most impoverished communities—and do her part to expand the reach of the microfinance industry to more than 1 billion people worldwide, from about 100 million people currently."

Between microbusiness, microfinance, and this new service, there's no reason everyone can't get on the globalization bandwagon.

Read the article

Visit Microplace

When Mass Marketing Dies

From Seth Godin's Meatball Mondae (#2):

"The Meatball Sundae is an idea that's possibly even bigger than that one. When mass marketing dies, the future of the companies that embrace this approach dies too."

The bodies are already piling up: the recording industry, the movie industry, broadcast TV, radio, newspapers, are just the beginning.

A recent Wall Street Journal story (Wal-Mart Era Wanes Amid Big Shifts in Retail) offers evidence of how the giant retailer is losing ground in a rapidly evolving marketplace:

"[T]he Internet is transforming the retail definition of scale. The once-stunning compilation of 142,000 items found in a Wal-Mart supercenter doesn't seem so vast alongside the millions of products available on the Internet. At the same time, the cost of creating and sustaining a national brand is rising because of media fragmentation. Niche brands, created by Internet word of mouth, are winning shelf space and sapping profits required to fund big brands' advertising. Manufacturers such as Apple Inc. and Phillips-Van Heusen Corp., lacking the retail distribution or presentation they crave, are opening their own stores. One result is that retail giants hold less sway over their customers -- and over their suppliers."

Godin's insightful point is that it will take more than a change in marketing tools or strategy to adapt to the new business ecosystem. Companies have to actually evolve, not just change their stories.