One of the most famous marketing techniques that is often tried is to give away free music. Arctic Monkeys were extremely successful in doing this as they began giving away free demos at all of their gigs, which their fans then uploaded online and shared about, this achieved them worldwide fame, and when their first album came out, it sold out extremely quickly. Personally I think that this is quite a good way to get your music out there, because people love free stuff, although it is quite a risky strategy because if you do not get your music to the right audience then it could fail miserably and you could just end up losing money.
Another extremely succesful example of this strategy was when Prince famously released his album for free with every copy of the Mail On Sunday. This was extremely risky for him, and a few people did not really agree with the idea. Because he had already achieved such fame and stardom people instantly knew that the album would be worth listening to. The idea behind this was that because of the vast amount of people that buy copes of the Mail On Sunday, Princes album was effectively being sent out to the majority of households in the UK. You're probably wondering how he managed to make any money out of this, I think that it was a great idea as it meant that the people who had got a free copy of his album will now buy tickets to see him live, and because of the large amount of people buying the CD, I see it as pretty much just promotion for live gigs but on a massive scale.
However, most artists need to sell their music as they have not yet become well established enough to be able to pull a huge crowd to a gig without selling any albums. Prince was at a point where he was already a household name and he was able to make money from just ticket sales as he knew that people would buy tickets.
However, most artists need to sell their music as they have not yet become well established enough to be able to pull a huge crowd to a gig without selling any albums. Prince was at a point where he was already a household name and he was able to make money from just ticket sales as he knew that people would buy tickets.
Read more here.. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10459020
An artist named Carl Cox is trying to introduce a new way to buy music, which is to buy a USB dongle which enables you to download a copy of his album, the perk with this is that in the future you can also download any bonus features as he adds them to his website. Carl Cox's argument is that he misses being back in the day when you would buy a record and have a physical copy that belongs to you, and nowadays it is all just done online, so you do not actually possess the physical copy of the album, and he wants to bring in a new modern way of downloading the album, but still be able to own a physical thing.
Find out more here... http://www.musicradar.com/news/dj/new-carl-cox-album-to-come-in-new-usb-stick-format-458485
Personally I don't think that this is going to catch on for a few reasons, the main one being that the USB dongle will be bought off of Carl Cox's website for £20 plus any delivery charges. You can buy an album off of iTunes for around £7. Also I don't think Carl Cox's fan base are the sort of people to be that interested in owning a physical copy, especially not for the price he is asking. And personally i would rather download it or just buy a CD. Though I think that Carl Cox's loyal fans will love to buy the USB dongle, and it will be a nice thing to own, but anyone who is not a really loyal fan will not want to buy it, and may even rather just not own a copy at all.
Even Carl Cox admits he doesn't know if the idea will catch on, but it's certainly worth a go. I think it will be interesting to see what other crazy ideas people may come up with to market their music. And if Carl Cox's idea does catch on, then it could potentially be the new way to buy and sell your music, and I think this will encourage more and more people to be more experimental with marketing techniques.
