I recently had the opportunity to pick the brain of prominent music business and marketing expert Mike King. Mike is in the thick of it, creating and teaching many of the courses for the Berklee College of Music’s online school on the subjects of Music Business and Music Marketing, including their new class on Topspin, a game-changing marketing tool for artists. He maintains a killer blog which is a great resource for artists, and he’s written several books on the subject of navigating a career through the changing industry, his latest being “Music Marketing: Press, Promotion, Distribution, and Retail.”
And just to support the theory that giving away product creates demand, he’s made a chapter available as a free download here. 
We focused on 2 important subjects:
1. Keeping on top of so much rapidly changing information and new technology as it relates to an artists’ career
2. The ongoing struggle/need for artists to view themselves as a business
Q: 1. What is a typical morning like for you? I sort of picture you
drinking coffee and reading blogs the way someone might read the
paper. Your blog is such a great resource for so many people. What are
some blogs that you follow and recommend to your readers?A: I actually still read the paper! I wake up around 6:30 and read the
Boston Globe at breakfast. Maybe this will change in the future, but I
still prefer the format of a paper to online news for general stuff, at
least first thing in the morning. Outside of that, from a music and business
standpoint, I get most of my info from Twitter. Most of the blogs I am
interested in have their posts feed directly into Twitter, so I start there.
I use TweetDeck to segment the folks I follow based on topic, for the most
part, so in my “Music Business” Twitter segment, I follow folks like Eliot
from Wired Listening Post, Glen at Billboard, Hypebot of course,
1000TimesYes, Paste, Arthur, The Orchard, Pitchfork, Hugh McLeod from Gaping
Void, Ian Rogers, TechCrunch, Mashable, Ethan Kaplan, Jeff Jarvis,
Largeheartedboy, Gary Vaynerchuck, and a couple dozen more. I also get Seth
Godin’s daily email via Twitter, and I sometimes use The Orchard’s
aggregator for news here: http://www.netvibes.com/orchardnews#Music_IndustryQ 2. The industry is changing so quickly and with the demise of the
labels, a strong “middle-class” of musicians are emerging. But there
are still artists who don’t want to let go of their dreams of
superstardom; i.e. “getting signed”, “video on MTV”, “world domination”
etc… As someone who’s worked in that world, what words of wisdom do
you have for these artists? Would you completely discourage them from
pursuing this old model? And who is the model even available to at
this point in time?A: You’re right that there is, as Ian Roger’s says, a growing middle class
of musicians. There are more tools available for more musicians to get
started in music, and provide a more level playing field than in the past.
That being said, I don’t think that DIY (do it yourself) = DIAY (do it all
yourself). I think that at a certain point, you’re going to need help to
pull of what you want to do. I think that a label can be the best option in
some cases, and I have seen a number of bands come full circle, use the
available tools to help them build their community, and then find help (in
the form of a label or otherwise) to get them to the next step. Labels want
to sign folks that have a base – doing all you can yourself early on is the
best (and in some ways, only) course of action when you are starting off,
and you have to understand the tools and players that exists at all levels
of the industry.I think the problem lies with the artists who say “I’m a creative type, and
I don’t want to be involved in anything that has to do with the business
side of things. I’m too busy writing and performing music.” I think that is
flawed logic. Bands are businesses, plain and simple. You can’t run a
business without having an understanding of all that is involved, and when
you are starting off, you have to wear a lot of hats. This has ALWAYS been
the case. You have to work to succeed. And partners make sense in this
equation. In terms of a video on MTV and the glory of getting signed, I
think that bands should look at exactly what they are being offered, and
understand that the paradigm has shifted miles away from where it was in the
90s (which wasn’t all that great for bands either, really). Understand that
a major label deal will likely be a 360 deal with a low royalty rate, and
that they have fewer people to work your project than ever. These are
facts. If you are at the point of even being considered by a label (which
is rare), I would suggest that you look long and hard at the finances of
doing it yourself vs doing it with a label. A lot of it depends on how much
control you want to keep, too. I could talk days about the old model, but
understand that the traditional areas where a major could help you (physical
retail and radio, primarily, in addition to being a bank) are also
constricting. Lastly: a major deal is irrelevant for 95% of the bands out
there.Q: 3. What is an emerging trend/emerging technology that is changing the
game for artists that people may not know about?A: I think the major change that occurred happened in 2004 with the rise of
self service online distributors like TuneCore and CD Baby. Anyone anywhere
can get their music onto the major online retail services in days. It’s a
major shift. But of course, as distribution follows marketing, I think the
increase in music that is available has made marketing even harder. How do
you differentiate yourself from the millions of other indie bands out there?
I think that what we are seeing now is an increase in artists service
companies that add value to an artist in more fair and equitable ways.
There are specific tools that exist now that help artists succeed in
specific marketing verticals (like Tubemogul for videos, or artist data for
social media sites), but I also thing that the full service artist service
companies that help artists marketing and sell across all verticals can be
really helpful. I think software services like Topspin, Bandcamp,
Reverbnation, and Nimbit have the potential to change the game for artists
in a big way, if used properly (which is what my courses teach J )
I encourage everyone to check out Mike’s blog and follow the experts he’s following on Twitter to keep up to date with industry news. Check out his books (I’ve read several of them and they’re all great) and start looking for resources you can partner with to help move your career forward. (More on some killer resources later.) Thanks to Mike King for sharing his thoughts with Sorted Noise!
Mike King is the associate director of marketing at Berkleemusic, and author/instructor of Music Marketing 201. Prior to working at Berklee, Mike was the marketing/product manager at Rykodisc, where he oversaw all marketing efforts for label artists, including Mickey Hart, Jeb Loy Nichols, Morphine, Jess Klein, Voices On The Verge, Bill Hicks, The Slip, Pork Tornado (Phish), Kelly Joe Phelps, and Frank Zappa’s estate. He also handled copyright administration for a number of active and catalog artists at Rounder Records. Mike consults as the Marketing Director and Managing Editor for the Herb Alpert Foundation’s online musicians resource,www.ArtistsHouseMusic.org
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