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What’s up everybody?? Dane the intern checking in and no surprises here - I’m gonna talk at you about some music!

ahem...

Of the many industrial landscapes the Internet has shifted forever, few have seen change as rapidly or extensively as the music industry.  Some of these changes have been painful for artists, the most obvious of which being the complete devaluation of their work.  Illegal downloads introduced people to “free” music, often before its official release, which proved nearly impossible to combat.  The traditional artist/label dynamic collapsed. The formulas for marketing and distribution evaporated. And just when the landscape appeared most desolate and dry, the clouds of innovation rolled in, drenching us all in streaming audio, social media and legitimate electronic distribution.

In 2007, Radiohead released their album In Rainbows online, allowing fans to choose the cost of the download.  The result was that fans paid less than the average cost for an album, and Radiohead made more per album sold than they would have with a traditional release.  Even more recently, the band released their album The King of Limbs with only a week’s notice. Strategies like these pave the way for other artists to venture into the murky uncertainty of the evolving music industry.

And murky or not, a lot of them are venturing. While this has been a difficult time for labels and many larger names in music, independent artists are flourishing like never before. Websites like Bandcamp.com provide a free platform for artists to sell their music to fans.  Social networking sites make it easy to interact with listeners directly so that they remain informed and engaged. Most of these free sites even provide analytics, so artists are able to easily monitor fan interactions and get the most out of the medium’s marketing potential.

Below is a graph from my band’s Facebook analytics page, showing the number of daily, weekly and monthly “active users” (people who have viewed the page or interacted with a post).

I can see that our daily active users peaked February 9^th, which is the day that the Oklahoma Gazette featured an article about us.  Social networking sites are a stellar medium for marketing, but it’s important to remember that they are not in themselves a strategy.  Your audience is as unique as your content, so figuring out what generates traffic takes some trial and error.

Below is another graph, this time outlining post interactions. Included at the top is the total amount of post views and post feedback for the time period. The percentages shown illustrate how these amounts relate to the last cycle.

Any time a fan “Likes” or comments on something you’ve posted, a link to your Facebook page appears on their wall, hopefully to be clicked by copious other soon-to-be fans.

As rough as the transition to this uncharted musical territory has been, the industry is certainly better for it. Independent artists have a voice now, and consumers benefit from the extreme diversity that the web has made possible.

That’s enough for today! Here’s an amazing interactive video from the indie group Arcade Fire.