Monday, October 19, 2009

Billboard's “Maximum Exposure: The Top 100 Ways to Get Your Music in the Public Eye”

I seem to get most of my music industry news from the Wall Street Journal theses days. For example, Friday’s issue had an article about the antitrust implications of the proposed Ticketmaster Live Nation merger as well as a profile of Tim McGraw which demonstrated the challenges facing a ‘mature’ talent in today’s country marketplace. However, Billboard magazine is always worth keeping up with. Their issue from two weeks back had a cover story entitled “Maximum Exposure: The Top 100 Ways to Get Your Music in the Public Eye”. The article contained a lot of smart ideas such as #5 “Synch Placement on “Grey’s Anatomy” (oddly enough the same day I read the article I had a client call me with a synch request from that very show); #31 Album Featured on Amazon.com MP3 Daily Deal; #14-Interview/Profile in the New York Times, #56- Feature on NPR’s Morning Edition (I have seen this in practice, it can have a huge effect-so can a feature on “All Things Considered”) and #63, review from Pitchfork.
The article also contained some more interesting international twists on the formula. For example, in China, they suggest “hire an intern to start a discussion thread about your album on Douban.com”. In Japan, they suggest landing a song on the “featured Artist” homepage of Recochuko.com, Japan’s largest mobile music retailer.

Admittedly, many of these ideas are perhaps beyond the reach of artists who are just getting started but I found the sheer breadth and novelty of the article’s suggestions to be both eye opening and encouraging. I would recommend this to anyone trying to figure out how to market their music.

No comments: