Comedian Louis CK innovates, so maybe you should too

Louis CK accepts poor pay in exchange for total control over his show. The show is a success.

He then sells a comedy video for $5 on his website. While the video can be pirated because of no DRM, he makes 1 million + in less than 2 weeks.

Now, he's selling tickets to his tour on his website, where every seat in every city is $45. 

Eliot Van Buskirk of Evolver.fm wrote an article for Hypebot about why the music industry should take a hint from this innovative and business savvy comedian. Here's what he said. 

-Be good. Actually, be even better, now that the economics of recorded musicfavor repeated listens.

Keep control. Whether you’re a start-up company or a start-up band, the Lesson of Louis is that it pays off to keep creative control over the things you are making, because otherwise they get watered down, corners get cut, and competing visions cloud the direction. Steve Jobs would agree.

Simple deals. As complex as our globalized, interconnected, real-time, distracted-by-the-totality-of-human-knowledge-and-activity-at-all-times world is — or perhaps because it’s so complex — Louis proved that a simple deal can be more attractive. No bundling, no fees, no muss, no fuss: Selling an easily understood unit of something for a flat price (not even using that tired old trick of making every price end in .99) seems to be the way to go. Not $4.99. $5.

No fees. According to Gawker, Louis’ decision to sell tickets to his upcoming tour directly without going through Ticketmaster or anything else, has “infuriated” ticket sellers. Who cares?

Making my shows affordable has always been my goal but two things have always worked against that,” writes Louis. “High ticket charges and ticket re-sellers marking up the prices. Some ticketing services charge more than 40 percent over the ticket price and, ironically, the lower I’ve made my ticket prices, the more scalpers have bought them up, so the more fans have paid for a lot of my tickets. By selling the tickets exclusively on my site, I’ve cut the ticket charges way down and absorbed them into the ticket price. To buy a ticket, you join nothing. Just use your credit card and buy the damn thing. Opt in to the email list if you want, and you’ll only get emails from me.

Note that this direct sales thing lets Louis get your email address — because you trust him. Meanwhile, if you sell music through iTunes or many other platforms, you don’t get the email address of your fans, and perhaps even worse, someone else does.

Own the relationship. Louis is in charge of selling Louis to Louis fans. That’s it. He owns the whole thing, from the television show (which he edits), to the taped live special, to the tour. That means he can keep his people happy, and it makes us trust him even more.

Via hypebot 

How to make your Facebook Timelime pop

Music Think Tank has an article about a few changes you can make to your Facebook Timeline to make it pop and build your band's history. In doing so, you can highlight important dates or even connections with other bands - your milestones, giving fans a way to better connect with you. 


Here are a few good dates to add 

• Past tour dates
• Past album release dates
• Past press placements & radio add dates
• The day you saw an amazing concert that inspired you
• The day you were signed to a label
• The day you were dropped from a label
• The day you got your publishing deal
• The day you recorded your first song
• The day you entered the studio
• The day you had your first vocal lesson

Click here for a "how to" 

Build your fanbase through gamification

Building your fanbase through gamification is not about being a player or playing your fans, though some may approach it in that manner. Gamification is about bringing game-like behaviors into non-game settings to increase engagement with fans and to encourage their engagement with your product. In the case of music, gamification can provide tools to draw fans and potential fans into your world. It's not about killing time by scoring points but about being drawn into a world through an element of play that encourages further interaction with you and your music.......

Money making tools for music makers

Affiliate programs you should look into -

Linkshare

Tradedoubler  

dgm

Once you're signed up and accepted, apply to the iTunes programs from within the affiliate.

Then use Linkmaker to create new links that point to iTunes.


You can eliminate error messages for international users using GeoRiot. GeoRiot works for any user in the iTunes stores, unlike the above affiliate programs which only work for their specific regional areas. Click here for more.

Here's a thought.

What if you only had one fan? Played a live show without an audience? Could not achieve fame or money from your music career? Chris Seth Jackson writes an interesting article on Music Think Tank about a few interesting hypotheses that should make you think about how your running your band and treating your fans.

Click here for the article.

Two more Social Media tools to help your branding

FanMix and Mingly are social media tools that manage conversations with your connections and keeps tracks of all your different accounts. With FanMix, conversations through facebook, twitter, linkedin, blogs and more are all managed together, making it easier to get to get to and keep on point. Mingly collects and manages all of the contacts you've made from all of those social media platforms. You're then able to contact them by email, without having to log in to each tool.

VIA Hypebot

How to build your fan base

When trying to build a fan base, Seth Godin writes about a few steps that everyone must follow. Number 1 on the list, he says, is marketing.  Marketing includes word of mouth, social media, and any other creative forms of establishing an actual connection with your fans. This, according to Seth, is stronger and a lot more effective than advertising.

To read the entire article on Hypebot, click here.

The next Justin Bieber? Teen Skypes to stardom.

Teen Austin Mahone may just be the next Justin Bieber. With 700,000 Twitter followers, 450,000 Facebook fans, 350,000 Instagram followers and over 70 million hits on his You Tube Video, Mahone found a better way to connect with his "Mahomies" - Mahone fans. Mahone uses Skype and charges $50 for a 10 minute call. During the call, the fan gets to speak with him and have a song played especially for her.

To read the full article on Billboard.biz, click here. 

How Google and SEO changed the music industry

Stephen Carmichael of Music Think Tank talks about the importance of Google and search engines for today's music industry. Because of Google, success is a more likely achieved when a song is written about something that is highly searched today. The more something is searched and the more people click, the higher the ranking is on Google. Carmichael provides examples, such as Rebecca Black's "Friday". Friday is a commonly searched word on Google, bringing Rebecca's song up to top 3 in Google's search rankings.

To read the full article at Music Think Tank, click here

Youtube Signs up More Publishers

On a post on their blog yesterday, YouTube announced that they've reached publishing deals with BMG Rights Management, Songs Music Publishing, Reservoir Media Management and more. "We're committed to making sure their (musical artists) work can reach the widest audience, and that singers and songwriters will continue to be appropriately compensated for these works", states Youtube. 


The new deals will allow YouTube to monetize almost all user generated music videos. According to them, this will allow publishers, songwriters represented, and record labels and artists to all make money. This monetizations allows publishers and labels to then reinvest in old and new careers, keeping the music industry thriving. 


To read more, click here for the YouTube blog post. 

Airplay - How to get it and what it means for your band

Earbits created a survey asking artists about how they got their music playing on the radio and what the exposure meant for them. Below are a few of their responses.


TOIL: Daniel Whittington - Daniel has gained local airplay in Austin, but has, so far, been unable to crack the major markets. "...we spent a lot of time pushing packages and promotional info to stations in CA. We even hired a radio consultant at one point that tried to help put together a promotion for us. It never gained any legs. In this round I've focused more on networking directly with the people running the shows in Austin that I want to be involved with. It's resulted in a few long interviews and some small radio play, but nothing significant. Part of it is that, even in Austin, most of the local based radio stations are now owned by much larger groups whose focus is primarily on gaining more listeners... Luckily there are still killer DJ's and radio shows that are going out of their way to find and foster locals. But in a scene like Austin, there's shortage of kickass local artists. Breaking through that pack is still a serious proposition."


TRIUMPH: Ken Berman - Ken has received FM radio airplay in both the United States and France. "If I was familiar with the radio station or any of the disc jockeys, I would send my material out and include a personal note about what programs I listened to on the station, and what I liked about those programs. This seemed to generate the best response, especially when I did my research and knew what I was talking about! When I sent my promo materials out cold to stations, my success rate was much lower..."

TRIUMPH: Fly Radio - They prove that thinking out of the box can sometimes lead to success! "When we were in high school we drove to Sacramento, sat outside KWOD 106.5, called in on the request line and told them we wanted to give them our CD and we were outside and amazingly enough they thought it was pretty rock and roll that we did that that they brought us in played two songs and interviewed us."

So, before you rush out and pay that promoter three months salary to make you famous, take some advice from these established artists. Start locally, and gain fans! Don't be afraid of doing the leg-work yourself - you'd be surprised at the doors a little research and persistence can open. And, when all else fails, play a live set outside the station. Hey, it worked for Kurtis Parks and the Anthem.

To submit your music to Ear Bits - click here 

Click to read the full article @ Hypebot

Vinyl Tap Turns Your Ipad into a Record Player

Vinyl Tap comes with two record player simulators, each of which has been reproduced with as much accuracy as we imagine is possible on an iPad. From adjusting the color of the pretend strobe light that tracks the pretend dots on the side of the pretend platter, to the faux-auto-detection of singles or albums (on the linear tracking turntable), Vinyl Tap can virtually do it all.

Click here for the full article @ Hypebot