"Forget Push, Satisfy The Pull"
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Music Publishers |
Revolution. Reinvention. Reloaded.
Three words that best describes new-age marketing for record companies and labels. With increasing portability, access and custom ability, not to mention cutting-edge e-commerce capability (and the fat wallets of music fans), marketing and selling music turned a drowning industry to a new-age version of the phoenix. The resurrection of record companies and their once sagging and threatened profits emerge from the onslaught of digital challenge, not to mention rampant piracy. They are back; stocked, locked, and packing a bigger bang.
Instead of shunning the digital revolution, most record companies embraced it. They entered the virtual arena and threw their weight around. Turning the very medium that was killing them into their biggest weapon.
With the advent of better music players and mobile phones with digital audio player capability, record companies turned to digital marketing masters, exploiting every power avenue of the digital infrastructure to reach more clients at a better and more cost-efficient way. Hit songs became mega-hits by distributing them as bundled downloadable mixes, complete with a digital booklet, video clip and a bonus (future hit song) track. Portions of future hit singles, sometimes with streaming video, act as teasers to churn future revenues and milk an album down to the last drop.
Consumers want more, and they have the financial firepower to back it up. Digital images, ring tones, and ring back tunes wet their appetite even more via marketing "peeps" to add more to a record company's bottom line: pure profits.
Ah, the power of new age marketing: less physical outlay, and the digital investment exploited many times over. Risk taking record companies can have it all for the long haul.
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Brian Cook is a freelance writer whose articles on music and songwriting have appeared on many websites.
You can find more of these at SongwritersGuide.com.
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