Making Money out of Music
p2pnet news view Music:- Is connecting with fans so you can offer them good reasons for buying your music what it’s all about?
If you’ve become a musician with the same motivation as some people become surgeons and others become lawyers, it probably is.
You might, of course, be a musician from the sheer joy of making music and you might want people to listen simply because you’ll get pleasure from their enjoyment of something you made.
If enough people like what you’re doing and you end up doing it full-time, you’ll earn a decent living as a kind of by-product.
If that’s what you want. Because the cream always rises to the top, no matter what kind of bottle it’s in.
If, however, you’re in it with making money as your primary goal, Techdirt’s Mike Masnick (right) did a presentation at the corporate music industry Midem fest in Cannes, France, last month when he expounded a formula, which looks like this »»»
Connect With Fans (CwF) + Reason To Buy (RtB) = The Business Model ($$$$)
“There are many artists – famous and not so famous – who have been making use (on purpose, or not) of this formula to create successful strategies for building up a stronger fan base, creating wonderful new works of art, distributing them out to the community and getting paid for it at the same time,” he posts on Techdirt, going on:
“What made [NiN's Trent] Reznor so interesting as a case study was the fact that he’s done it so many times in so many different ways that he, by himself, represents a great example of how you can approach this simple formula in an infinite variety of creative ways. ”
You can see Masnick’s Midem video below, and meanwhile, at the end of his post, “One final point on this is the last question that people often raise: why should the musician be involved in any of this?” he asks, adding »»»
Shouldn’t they just be creating music. There are two answers to this. First, this is exactly where a smart record label, agent or manager can come in and be quite helpful. Let the musician create the music and let the “business guys” focus on applying this business model. Second, however, is that due to the way the industry is these days, the musician does need to be somewhat involved. You cannot connect with fans if you’re in seclusion. If you don’t want to make the effort to connect with fans, then that’s fine: you won’t have that many fans. It’s a choice you make.
That said, there are tremendous opportunities allowed by new technologies, new communities and new methods of communicating today. They all enable better ways to connect with fans, and better ways to offer real reasons to buy. Those who look at the past and complain about what’s been lost need to turn around and look at the vast open fields of opportunity in front of them. There’s a lot more music to be made, a ton of new fans to make very, very happy – and, yes, through it all, an awful lot of money that can be made as well. You just need to stop worrying about what was lost and recognize all there is to be gained.
Now you know. 
Techdirt – My MidemNet Presentation: Trent Reznor And The Formula For Future Music Business Models, February 5, 2009
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February 12th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
Matthew Good does this, in a round-about way, with his site (www.matthewgood.org). He blogs about the news, blogs about his life (somewhat – gives a ‘human’ feel to it), blogs about the music recording process, blogs about his demoing process including some explanation into GarageBand for simple demos, uses Twitter, Facebook, Flickr (including fan artwork/pictures/concert clips), etc…
Connecting with the fans, keeping them updated on a almost personal level of the recording process… this all contributes to anticipation of the album. This all builds a sense of loyalty to the artist in fans and they tend to support him more (via concerts, CD’s, etc…).
He is with Universal Music Canada but he’s able to work within the confines and does pretty well. Of course he doesn’t provide a lot of “super bonus exclusive” packages, but communicating with the fans about world issues, enlightening and encouraging them to read and educate themselves on the world is a real connection! He doesn’t just give his opinion and that’s it. He engages in communication, which is his Connection with Fans!