My friend and author Mihkel Raud talks about the ‘one album, one website’ strategy for musicians to implement. I recently had a conversation with one my Musician Mastermind members about this in the forum and thought it’d be an interesting topic to write about here at the blog.
The idea is to create a new website for every album you have. The site becomes the portal for that album during pre-launch, launch, post-launch and for the rest of its life on sale. It is where you will grow your mailing list and following. It is where you will sell related merchandise and list your related gigs.
The thing with this strategy is that when you talk with your fans, you have to give them a list of URLs for all your different albums. For some, that can be a lot of work. For others, who don’t have that many albums or who have multiple genres or type of work, this can be a real treat.
I’m going to add my twist to it which I feel will make this strategy work even more better.
The key is to create a portal for your music online, using a great tool like blogging. Make your blog a central place. You can see how I do that just here for example. It is where you communicate with all your fans on a regular basis. At that blog, you will have an albums page listing photos of your albums and linking back to the individual album sites. Anytime you mention an album on your blog, you will also link to the specific individual sites.
The secret here is to not diversify and spread your fan base (or ‘tribe’) too far out, because when you do that, you lose control of where they are following you and you now have to manage too many different areas. The idea, in the end, is to work less at managing too many social networks as you keep everyone entertained at your blog, and from time to time, point them to your albums and related products.
What do you think of the ‘one album, one website’ promotional strategy?
Let’s discuss…
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I’m kind of new to the game, but I’ve found it tedious to update multiple networking sites and music communities. With the attention span of people online, it seems constant updates are needed, so I like the idea of having a single blog to manage and will seriously think about setting one up. The concept of seperate sites for album releases eludes me though, why would you want to deprive someone from all the other features of an official website? They can view ALL the albums, and merchandise, and lyrics, and bios, and news, and more on your main site. Maybe you might sell an older release by accident. Anyway, my point is most sites are built with a seperate album page off of their discography section anyway, this IS essentially it’s own page, perhaps you should just blog to direct people to that page’s ’sub-url’ in particular when promoting a new release. The only perk of a seperate site with it’s own url, I can think of, is being at the top of the search engines…might be useful…It will be interesting to hear everyone’s opinion.
Stephen
You hit the nail on the head - the key reason is to get up in the search engines.
People, If you are using this strategy, let’s hear from you.
Kavit
Anyone working professionally in the world of music these days has to have a number of different strings to their fiddle. I believe that this is known as a ‘portfolio’ career, so rather having just one skill, which you have a number of different things that you do to earn a crust.
Professionally this might mean that you do other things apart from make music; for instance you might teach, do studio and live production work, write for publications and so on. Musically it might mean that you perform in a number of differnt genres - say a function band, depping, theatre work as well as creating and performing your own music.
My view on how many websites you need is that you have to balance the fact that you might have different audiences against the amount of time it takes to keep the sites up-to-date. You don’t want to confuse your ’seperate’ audiences but if you don’t keep the webistes current then that can be just as big a ‘turn-off’ as presenting your potential fan with the ‘wrong’ information.
Promotion at this level is an ‘overhead’ which means that you have to balance it against doing work that brings in money. I guess that if you have a day job then you can use your employer’s time to do this kind of activity.
I can’t say I’m very convinced about the idea of having a different website for each release. My chief concern is “what’s in it for the fan?” I think that it would be a serious pain for me if I had to go several places to find out something about a band that interests me - let alone try to remember all the URLs.
A more workable strategy might be to have sub-sites for the various albums integrated with the main site, all based on the same template and with content pertaining only to the release. That would make all album-related information easier to find, plus it would facilitate extra content (diaries, studio reports, whatever) and user feedback specific to the album in question.
Having said that, I don’t see how all the above will help get us off the social networks. The main reason for having a MySpace page isn’t so you can communicate with the fans that already visit your website - it’s to reach all those people, who are on MySpace (and there’s a lot of them). Convincing someone who already regularly checks his or her MySpace (or other social network) to regularly visit your website AS WELL, may be problematic. The solution to overhead problems for me would rather be some form of synchronisation software, that would allow me to post the same content to many sites at once (I believe Artist Data Systems offer such software). That way, people can choose where they want to read it. Since the question here is reach rather than impact, it seems better than forcing them to come to you.
On an end note, I really don’t understand why blogging is being touted as THE key promotional strategy. I have yet to see convincing evidence that writing a blog actually helps you promote your product. What’s more, Scott Adams - who has been voted one of the Top Ten Internet Personalities - claims that it doesn’t (I can agree, since I read his blog a lot more often than the Dilbert strips - on the same site! - and I’ve yet to purchase any Dilbert item; all this despite the fact that I like Dilbert). It does not follow that readers of your blog are going to become fans (and consumers) of your music. I’m a lot more inclined to see message boards as a valid promotional tool, than blogs (I have seen this in action with regards to my own band and others). The fact that blog power is most often heralded by bloggers does not help.
I’m willing to take all the above back, Kavit, if you actually convince me to buy something from you.
Hi,
I’ve used this strategy to promote and sell my books online. My books, “250 Jazz Patterns”, “Blues & Rhythm Changes in All Keys” and my “Way To Mastery CD-ROM Series” are sold from my main personal artist website and they each (the books) have their own websites.
This way, if people are not looking for me personally, but are looking for sheet music or learning tools for improvisation on the web, they eventually wind up at my book sites.
I’ve had this running for a few months now and I’d say it has been worth doing this. I can track which orders come from what website, tweak my sales letters, SEOs, and marketing techniques.
I am now adding audio/video podcasts to the mix.
I think the idea of having multiple websites for different albums from the same band is confusing. A sub URL would be the best practice as stated above. To solve the SEO problem one can use the social networks to push their band and music out. Google loves indexing sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Digg and the more your music is spread around the internet through these networks the better. I believe the best practice is to have a solid website for your music with links to listen and purchase your music. You should also have a blog as part of the site where you can keep your fans updated to what your are doing or your next performance. A lot of your fans will want to hear about you as a person or the members of your band just as much as they want to hear your music. It makes it more personal for them.
You also should be represented at the major social platforms: MySpace, Twitter, and Facebook (pages). Learn about Facebook pages here: http:www.startmysong.com/blog
Then you add the ‘ShareThis’ link to your blog (fairly easy on WordPress) to appear below each blog post. This will allow you to transfer your new blogpost to all the major social sites and other sites such as Digg or Delicious or Yahoo Buzz. So each time you post a new blog (and it can be as simple as “hey we have a new album”), you also send the information out to all your other pages on the social networks and filter networks where you are further represented.
So this is a way to keep one main website, but also increase SEO and attention to your music through all the major social players.
I’m already doing this for all musicians at my site http://www.startmysong.com. I let anyone post their music and I then push a song a day out to my followers on all the social networks. This is all free for the artists and my benefit is bringing people from the social networks back to my site to hear the music. Then, artist can post a link to their website on my site to further direct people who like their song to their “internet home.”
This is another short lived fad, in my opinion. It might work fro a while, but it doesn’t fit with the model of connecting products. When they know about one album, they might be interested in others, but might not go to another web site to order it. You would need multiple shopping carts and so on, and that is more maintenance. Better to play more gigs and sell CDs there, I think.
If a single CD requires that much attention, why not just give it its own page on your site?
this is an interesting concept. i know of one big label called iK7 who for almost every full length release, they will make a “micro-site” which is a flash site devoted to the album.
they’ve been doing this for years, so it’s not too far out that in the future they would make their flash sites more interactive with the audiences by adding more blog-style tools.
After reading this blog and the responses so far, I have learned a new term. I realize that I have a “portfolio” career. I teach, produce, perform, and write for outside artists as well as myself. I have been using social networks as my separate sites for each facet of my career and my web site as the hub that connects them all. Do you think that this model would work as well as actual websites? I was raised by a salesman who instilled in me the idea to ‘always be closing the sale” and as a result I would have any product available for sale ( or a link to s sales site) on each of the social networking sites. And finally, I have yet to start a blog, but plan to In my thinking I would use this to attract fans to any of the separate sites or my main home site where the deals are closed. In response to one of the previous responders, unless you are a gifted writer, I too wonder how well a blog will work to attract fans. The use of message boards or anything else to attract people to your site is good. But regardless how they get there, if you can’t offer something to close the deal and move them to the next level of “fandom” it really doesn’t matter how they got there (does it?)
Hello,
I am not sure about the idea of that. Its not a bad one, its certainly a way to do it. I mean if you’re primary function is to get featured in search engines its okay.
We have something like 23 different pages on varying sites including our own official website and a bit earlier on the year I start getting the blog up and running. A blog is essential its simple and effective. However, I think what you should be talking to people about about is using widgets such as widgetbox and gydget. I am sure there are many others all offering similar services, but I use these because they are free and can be encoded for various sites.
I use widgetbox for my blog I can embed this on various places such as My Space Bulletin and encourage people to grab it selling the idea that they can get our latest news and releases place it on their website or My Space or Facebook, or Tagged and instead of searching for news it can be delivered right to them via the widget when it updates.
With Gydget I use per artist/per release I put pictures, news music, and links to where people can buy our music. Our digital distributor has provided us with embed codes for links so we can pass that on in a gydget along with video and we have links to ur website shop to buy CD’s. The view that I am taking is that while its important to get featured in search engines, I think that bringing your product to potential customers in a neat package that a widget provides helps give a two fold attack. To me the web is like a busy main/high street. Don’t believe me? next time you are out look at your main/high street. All the store signs you see are like a websites front page attracting you to come in. Once you have the customer in depends on you. That’s all well and good but you are one voice in amongst millions all shouting at the same time.
There is a lot to be said to having your product featured on as many different websites on social networks as you can possibly handle. Its like MacDonalds. You want one there’s not one usually too far from where ever you are and you know what you buy.Similar principal in music. It means you have to really dedicate your time to doing the work. I think this is a much better idea than having one web page per product, but that’s just my opinion.
I am not feeling the separate websites for albums, but am totally down with the blog. I am working on this concept for the artists I’m working with as I think it is a good way for the fan to get to know the artist outside of music, but it also requires constant updating. I think once you start throwing social networking sites, social content sites, and others it can be very cumbersome to manage and ultimately require helping hands outside of the artist. I can see to an extent the SEO perspective on the separte album sites, but this would only be effective if someone is searching for the terms used in the album title with another intention in mind and inherently stumbles upon your album site. If I’m a fan of your music, I’m gonna go directly to your artist website as my main portal and be directed from there as I probably don’t even have the album titles memorized in the first place.
hey i bought Mihkel’s ebook and applied the strategies for my debut Sonic Freedom CD at
http://JustGiveMeSomeTime.com
I enjoyed building it and getting more search engine exposure.
I suppose there’s a good and bad angle on it either way.
Little extra work in webmastering, potentially confusing for people
to keep track of numerous sites. Multiple shopping carts?
e.g. Is there not only one spot to buy everything or is some things only for sale
at certain site shopping carts? etc.
However a grand central site should be able to clarify the purpose
of the individual CD sites.
Either way enjoy!
We use a similar model to promote our artists and product which works out great!
we also employ a cool tool (in beta) called Artist Data (artistdata.com) which allows us to manage / monitor several social media sites in one place, it makes it ideal to centralize our blog / promotion / twitter etc to keep feeding our tribe with less effort and optimal output. Because of this model we have seen a dramatic increase in both fanbase and sales.
Hey folks,
WOW - I am loving this discussion and soft debate. Lots of mixed views but I think most are on the side of not understanding or going for this strategy.
@Jim Townsend - portfolio career. Interesting. How can you make it a more interactive career. Web designers build portfolios. Musicians don’t and shouldn’t. Build a two way conversation with your fans.
@Brian Heywood - you are right about the time consuming factor. Too much investment of time to manage too many networks.
@Krzysztof - interesting point about blogs. The key is interaction and conversation. Forums are good for that too. I just prefer the blogs as my choice. More people do. I don’t know why. Maybe one day you’ll buy, maybe you won’t. I can’t say I’m too fussed about that - the key is that we all build a learning environment to buddy ourselves forward. Honest :o)
@Evan - yes, I see it done a lot for different info products like books, cds, dvds.
I am really believing in the method of having a portal for you to make it all happen and then spin out traffic to your different areas when the right promotion comes along. Whether you use a blog, forum or whatever as your portal, the idea is still the same.
-Kavit
its wonderfull. i like the idea.
I have heard of this idea of changing the look/feel of a band’s website to match each new album. It’s a difficult balance, because I think the fans also crave a kind of consistency of brand and want to “come home” to a familiar place when they are visiting you on the web. I’ve also been thinking a lot lately that intensive aggregation is the future. It’s crazy to keep updating all these different profiles, music sites, etc and much of the information becomes redundant, so the fans that ARE following all your various links are getting much of the same information on all the different sites. I would think the goal would be to choose a select few sites to focus your efforts on and make those locations as dynamic, interactive, robust and frequently updated as possible. Then you simply funnel your traffic to the one (or few) locations.