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Resnikoff's Parting Shot: Will You Still Love Me, Tomorrow?

Wednesday, September 01, 2010
by  presnikoff

If you're serious about your career, then you want it to last for decades.  Hobbyists are happy with 15 minutes of fame on YouTube, not real artists.  But let's face it - if you are lucky enough to enjoy such a run, most of your marketing and online partners won't make it for the ride.  The terrain is simply too flaky and unstable, and that demands a centralized, control-oriented approach.  

Just look at your partners right now.  How many have a stable and profitable business model?  And, how many have been around for more than five years?  Exactly.

In fact, you will probably rifle through dozens of different partners over a multi-decade run.  And artists that survive the test of time must closely manage their own content, strategy, and fan relationships.  Because a sinking partner could destroy years of fan data and direct-to-fan infrastructure if not managed properly.  It can send you and your marketing team into survival mode, and away from creative growth, touring, or fan-building.  

So, why such a flaky terrain?  The problem right now is that very few companies serving artists and marketing teams have stable sources of income.  Look past the hype, and most are not making money, because most bands are not making any money.  That goes for the biggest label - ie, UMG - or the smallest DIY startup.  Labels are hemorrhaging cash, and DIYers are struggling to make ends meet.

Bandcamp may be your ally right now, but will they be around in ten years?  Or, owned by the same group of people?  Will its recent monetization experiment work?  If not, it needs to be a short-term issue for you, not a game-changing fail.  

There was a major debate last week about the role of the artist website.  The central question, first sparked at the Bandwidth Conference in San Francisco, was whether an artist should skip the page entirely and simply rely on a collection of partner companies.  The list included Facebook, MySpace, Soundcloud, iContact, Bandcamp, Wordpress, even Apple.  

Predictably, most sided with the controlled artist page, and offered a range of highly-detailed reasons.  And the biggest among those focused on control.  "How much time was devoted by artists on MySpace over the past 5 years?" asked Constantine Roussos of startup .music. "All your 'friends' left and unless you captured their emails through your official site, then you are in trouble."

Taking it one step further, others recommended a structure that puts the site at the center of a very vibrant site ecosystem - even if the artist page is not the most-trafficked component.  It just makes sense from a growth and stability perspective.

Paul Resnikoff, Publisher.

 



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