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Saturday, June 17, 2006
Pfarr out at sea 
| | Several days ago I got a call from John Pfarr over his Iridium satellite phone. He and Nanci were at 20.59n 141.39w, or about 800 miles east of Hawaii. I'm setting up a blog and a Flickr account for John so he and Nanci can write and post about their travels around the world on his sailboat, the Boussole. We should have that running not long after they take their first break, in Honolulu. |
Markets are Relationships, Exhibit R.
| | There's so much good stuff in this post that I'm going to excerpt most of it right here: |
| | Your most important team member is your Webmaster. |
| | Most marketing is done to intermediaries. Radio stations, television, radio shows. Whereas today it¹s about establishing a direct relationship with your FANS! Via your Website. |
| | You should have an update on your Website EVERY DAY! You should have a message board. You should have free music, whether streaming or downloadable, hopefully all downloadable, but at least recorded streamed and live downloadable. And you should retrieve mailing addresses. This is the ultimate goal of your Website, to establish a PERMANENT relationship. |
| | This is not like fan clubs of yore. You don¹t want to charge people. And it¹s not like the fan clubs of today, wherein you pay for the privilege of buying supposedly good tickets. Rather this is about cementing a bond with your fans, making sure they never leave you. |
| | Imagine a marriage wherein the husband never talked to the wife. Where she saw him on TV and in Best Buy, but never felt any personal contact. Well, that relationship wouldn¹t last too long. Best to make regular contact. PERSONAL contact. |
| | The days of artists being superior is over. Stardom is something completely different. Oh, don¹t pay attention to the one hit wonders hyped in the media. In their case, it¹s about making fun of them. Even if they¹ve had more than one hit. People might like Christina Aguilera¹s music, but they laugh at her boob implants and chicken legs. But if each and every one felt connected with the real her, it would be different. |
| | Go to see one of those bands who survive on the road. Over by the merch table, there¹s a clipboard, garnering e-mail addresses, for their mailing list. Which is why, after the hits dry up, if they come at all, these bands can still work. They¹ve established a club, a cult. And EVERYBODY wants to be a member of the group, feel like an insider. Your job is to make them one. |
| | Don¹t make your site pretty, make it a fount of information. Somewhere people can find out EVERYTHING about you. And want to come back to to find out more. A place where they can not only meet you, but OTHER fans. Community is key. Everybody¹s looking for like-minded people. For friends, for love relationships. An artist¹s Website is a much better place to start than match.com or craigslist.org. |
| | Your site should have minimal Flash work. No entrance page. It should be UTILITARIAN! As in USABLE! You should be THRILLED that anybody comes at all, and if they do, you want them to feel welcome. You don¹t want them to have to go through so many pages, waiting forever for them to load, that they get frustrated, so they never come back... |
| | Fuck those scrolls of tour dates on television. Even radio announcements. Most of the people who hear them could give a shit about the act. It¹s about reaching those who DO care, directly. This is what the Web affords. |
| | Cement and serve this relationship. If you do it right, you¹ll never have to get a day job. |
| | Read the whole thing. It rocks. |
| | Now, a couple of small amendments to Bob's advice. |
| | 1) Think of the Web as the ultimate live venue: a vast marketplace where you're out there living, relaxing, relating, practicing and performing, all the time. Yes, it's also still a static place, with "sites" and "addresses". But blogging and podcasting and instant messaging are among the living parts of the Web. That's where your relationships with your fans will happen, and where they'll grow. For more about how The Live Web differs from The Static Web, page through the slides from the talk I gave at Reboot8 a couple weeks ago. Starting at Slide 33, I outline the new economy that's emerging. |
| | 2) Don't just leave it up to your webmaster to post every day to your website/blog. Do it yourself. If you're a band and not an individual artist, blogs can be set up to have multiple authors, and each post with its own personal byline. If your relationship is going to be direct, and not intermediated, it needs to be personal. That means you have to write as many of those posts as possible. It's not hard, and it doesn't take much time. In fact, it doesn't need to take any more time than it does to write an email or an instant message. (In fact, some blogs can be set up so you can post by emailing to the blog.) Bob didn't say this, but you probably know that website "design" and "construction" can (and usually does) get mighty expensive, especially when you have to do it over and over again. I'm sure most artists consider their websites an expensive pain in the ass for that very reason. With a blog, however, that expense isn't necessary. You just relate. That's it. Ask your webmaster about setting up a blog, or making your website into a blog. If they crap on blogging, or otherwise refuse to do it, or want to charge you a zillion dollars for a "redesign," fire them and hire a fan who also blogs to do it for you. Given the abundance of Flash-filled fancy-beyond-endurance websites that most recording artists put up, cluefulness about blogging is apparently a rare condition among the industry's webmasters. This will change. In the meantime, you need to get tough about getting close with your fans. |
| | 3) Link out, and do it a lot. Your relationships aren't just with your fans. They're with agencies, stores, other artists, producers, record companies and performance venues. Here in Santa Barbara, Soho is a great club that also links back out to the artists who perform there. |
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