Cardboard Box Records' Blog

Ok, so maybe you've noticed that the post before this one and this post used to be one post. Now they're two. I realized that there were two subjects in the old entry, and that that was unecessary and confusing. So, here we are.

Anyway, I've been learning a lot about music marketing.

During CBR’s restructuring (I talk about it in the previous post), we began developing a new marketing strategy that, I think, could be useful for our artists as well.

I think that artists would agree that there is a struggle for new business, whether it is finding new venues, fans, or media. I feel your pain. Because we're in the process of developing a new marketing strategy, we decided to work on ours while we helped out our artists. We changed up our contracts and made up our minds to ask our potential music clients to work with us on a pretty detailed marketing plan before we signed anything with them.

Surprisingly, the new requirement to have a marketing plan in place before asking our company to invest in a new artist’s music has gone over pretty well. Most artists we’ve worked with thus far with this new strategy have been pleased as punch to put together a plan for their band to succeed. I thought the extra paperwork might turn some people off, but it turns out that people want to do the work; they just need a little nudge in the right direction. After all, it is difficult to, with little or no experience, develop an outline for then fill in the details of a marketing plan.

Luckily, actually coming up with new, fresh ideas for marketing your music is not as hard as you may think. First of all, the marketing techniques you use do not have to be totally original, just so long as they meet your standards as a creative person.

Look at your everyday habits. What do you do all day? What about your music is special and interesting? Do your habits and those special, unique aspects of your music touch at any point? Do you know anyone who works at a business that would advertise for you or otherwise support your music? What sites interest you online, and how can you get on them? Where do you hang out? Can you promote your band or advertise your music there?

Beyond all of these questions, which may or may not be helping you, there is a need to figure out some basic stuff about your scene, your music, your customer, your strategies, and your money before you really proceed seriously in the music industry. It is nearly impossible to be successful, whether it is in music or any other business, without some kind of plan. How are you going to fund yourself? What are your goals? Why are you here? And, most importantly, why should anyone care?

Well, you need, at the very least, a marketing plan.

The components of a CBR Marketing Plan are this:

• Market situation, including a customer profile (your fans, venues, and media) and descriptions of changes affecting your customers (fans, venues, media), competitors (fellow bands), and business climate (super-simplified example: the music industry is crumbling, but local business for indie rock is booming).
  • A Customer Profile should include:
    • Geographic data
    •  Demographic data
    • Psychographic data
• Decide what your goals as a band in the business world are, then expand, slice, and dice your business goals into marketing goals, then further divvy up your marketing goals into smaller, easily-achievable objectives. Thinking of your business goals as top-tier, and your marketing objectives as culminating in marketing goals that facilitate your business goals will help. Well, I don’t know, did that help?
• Create your band’s positioning statement and brand: 
  • Your position is your niche that your band and only your band fills in your customer’s minds. To gain a market position, you first define how your band and its products (i.e. merchandise, live shows, music) and services are unique, and then you use marketing communications to convey that your band provides a unique solution in your market area. Remember, in the words of Simon Sinek, "people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it"!
  • Write a positioning statement:
    • Positioning Statement = Your band or product name + what makes your band or product unique and different + your market description
      • (ex. iPod / is the digital music player / for people who want 5,000 songs at their fingertips everywhere they go.)
    • OR
    • Positioning Statement, Simon Sinek-Style = Why buy it (whatever “it” is) + how it benefits the consumer + what it is
      • (ex. If your life needs a soundtrack, / then you need a digital music player that holds a song for every moment. / Trust iPod.)
  • Your brand is a set of beliefs that customers associate with your name. You build a brand by projecting a consistent look, tone, quality, and message every time you communicate with your customers (fans, media, venues). What are your colors, fonts, buzz words, images, logos, or other visual and buzz cues for your customers to associate with your brand?
• Develop marketing strategies for your band. There are four major elements of marketing strategies used every day in the business world: product, place (distribution), pricing, and promotions. Every marketing action falls under one of the four P’s. Clever, eh?
• Decide on a marketing budget. How much money have you got to spend? Cool. Now divide it into portions. What do you absolutely have to spend money on to promote yourself as a band? What do you want to spend money on? What can wait? This should be decently self-explanatory. If not, let me know, and I’ll try to help you out.
• Now, go do it! You spent all this time on a plan, and I spent all this time writing out an outline! Go put your hard work into action!
• Also, pay attention to what works and what doesn’t with your current plan. Make changes over time, and work on a long-range plan. Make goals for the future, and create objectives to achieve those goals.

That seems very long and drawn-out, I know. I’d be surprised if you got through the first half of it. But seriously, a marketing plan is going to change your life. I promise. CBR’s Marketing Plan is making our lives easier.

I’m not saying that it won’t be hard work, but nothing great ever came easily.  

Also, I thought it would be helpful to give you guys the Artist Assessment Form for your personal use. Let me know if you think of anything to add, or a question that is redundant!

Click here to download:

Artist_Assessment_Form.pdf (263 KB)

(download)

Click here to download:

Artist_Assessment_Form.pdf (263 KB)

PS. I want to say thank you to Bob Baker, Dr. Steve Peterson, Peter E. Jaret, and Barbara Findlay Schenck for all the guidance their books have provided as I trip blindly along this road to success.

I think it worked out very well. However, it did make for some very interesting new changes in Cardboard Box Records’ structure. For instance, we have a brand new process for signing artists. Here’s how we do it now:

• A Talent Scout goes out on the town looking for some cool music. If he finds a band that catches his ear, he will approach them and ask for more information about them. Hopefully, they’ll be pleasant people and he’ll strike up a dialogue, during which he can determine their level of commitment to their music and their needs as a band.The Talent Scout will enter the new band’s contact information and other demographic-type data into the CBR Artist Database, and he will follow up the initial meeting with a courtesy email or call. It’s now up to the band and their manager. If the band expresses an interest in signing with us to the Talent Scout or anyone else, it is that CBR employee’s responsibility to hand over the request to the Music Mentor, who
  
  • Emails the band manager an Artist Assessment Form for the band to look over individually and start filling in,
  • Sets up a meeting with the band and their manager just to talk,
  • And begins researching the band by attending live shows, listening to any recorded music, and perusing any online presence the band may have.
• Is the band ready to move forward to the next step with CBR? That’s the Music Mentor’s call, although it can be overridden by the CBR Manager if deemed necessary. If it is decided that the band is not ready, then the Music Mentor will keep tabs on the band and keep in touch with the band manager. The Music Mentor may also offer to assist the band in moving toward working with CBR in the future.
• If the band is ready to move forward, then the Music Mentor, Band Manager, and the Band meet to talk over the Artist Assessment Form, which each member of the band has completed separately. This is where the Music Mentor will get a better idea of the band’s overall goals and needs.
• The Music Mentor then schedules a meeting with the Head of Marketing, and they outline a tentative Marketing Plan together to present to the band manager. They apply the band’s responses to the Artist Assessment Form to the Marketing Plan to help fill in some holes.
• The Music Mentor schedules a meeting with the Head of Marketing and the band manager to talk about the plan. They flesh it out together, then the Music Mentor schedules a final meeting with the band manager, the band, and the Head of Marketing, wherein the Marketing Plan is discussed and finalized.
• Is the Marketing Plan a good one? If not, then it’s back to the drawing board as the Music Mentor, the Head of Marketing, band manager, and the band meet again to discuss changes that need to be made in order to move forward.
• If the Marketing Plan is good, then is the Plan a good investment for CBR? If not, then the Head of Marketing, CBR Manager, and Vice President of Theironics, LLC (who writes the contracts) may meet with the Music Mentor to discuss options for viability. They will then meet again with the band manager to propose the necessary changes. 
• If the changes go through and the Plan is a good fit for both parties, then the Artist Packet (including the Release Form, Band Agreement, Manager Agreement, Conflict of Interest and Non-Disclosure Agreement, and Statement of Intent) is handed to the band manager, who will discuss it with his band.
• Are there changes that need to be made? Of course there are! The Vice President will meet with the band manager, the CBR Manager, and the Music Mentor to discuss the changes.
• Once everyone can agree, then the band is brought into a meeting with the Vice President, the Music Mentor, the CBR Manager, and the band manager to sign the Artist Packet.
• From the time the ink on the Statement of Intent is dry, the band and CBR have two months to audition for each other. During those two months, there is a lot of back and forth, and the Marketing Plan is implemented then updated with any changes that need to be made along the way.
• The hope is that at the end of two months, the band and CBR will be ready to sign a Formal Contract for a greater length of time, formalizing their agreements and forming a strong relationship which will build up both the band and CBR.

I think it is important to keep our procedures public, which is why I just put you through all that. It’s part of our company’s strategy to move toward open-source management. If our strategy works – and I will keep you informed on that front – then it is free and available to you so that you don’t have to go through the same crap we had to endure to get it right. And if our procedures still need some work, then you’ll have seen the iterations as they present themselves.

I think that, should you decide to use our strategy, you’ll probably start out with it, hate it, trash it, completely revise it, and use your new system instead. Which is absolutely great, and I hope you put your system online so that others may learn from it. Seeing the triumphs and mistakes of those who came before you is an extremely powerful thing.

Just as an aside – full disclosure, you know? – I watched a TED Talk about this open-source idea by Johanna Blakley, the Deputy Director of the Norman Lear Center. If you watch the video, be sure to really examine the graph called Gross Sales of Goods near the end of the talk. Look at the industries that are very open-source (low copyrighting, low secrecy), such as food, automobile, and fashion versus the industries that are not very open-source (high copyrighting, lots of secrecy), like films, books, and music. It makes you think.

Anyway, immediately following this post is one about how to start a marketing plan for your band or music business, though it’s written for bands. I hope that you find it useful. I figured since I wrote a lot about marketing and signing contracts and such in this post I should give you some tools that we have developed or found helpful.

If you find any sites that are doing something similar to this, i.e. posting their procedures and documents online, please comment here so that others may take advantage of those strategies as well.

Begin with Passion.

There can be no doubt, no second's hesitation in your love of music of all types, of people from all walks of life, and of talent even in the strangest places. You must have an eye, ear, and nose for good music, and a fearless desire to succeed. In our company we call that having attitude and aptitude. If you don't feel willing and able to put in long hours and endure lots of stress, then I suggest you stay just a fan.

Not that business people in the music industry are not fans. Most people get into the business of music because they are fans, and they want to make a difference. The bigger people in the music industry get, the more distantly I see them speak of local, underground, or seriously underrated bands, as if they were fond memories instead of everyday realities. These business men and women are almost wistful in their descriptions of the days when they had no company car and no fame, when they used to make things by hand to use as promotional gimmicks and money was not a barrier or a driving force. It was about the music.

I think we as an industry have drifted away from the music as our focus. But the fans haven’t. That’s why it’s important to be a fan first and a business savvy record label owner second. 

Next, find yourself a few people who are as obsessive about music as you, and invite them to start a label with you. It’s always good to have help. Stall while you try and figure out what it means to actually start a label, or tell them you have no idea how to go about doing it and try to figure it out as a group.

Let’s stay with that for a minute.  What does it mean to start a label? Besides being mushy and saying to start with passion, there has to be a finite starting point. You have the passion, you have the buddies to lean on, and now you need a name.

Here’s what I do, and maybe it will work for you. Look around the room you’re in and start naming objects aloud. If that room doesn’t work out, go to a different one. Go outside. Go to a park, restaurant, or back alley. Say whatever comes to your head. I’m telling you, it at least gets you thinking.

Once you have a couple of names in mind, and it's good to have more than one because the one you want may be taken, go to your state's “Department of State” website and look for the “Bureau of Corporations” or something similar to that. Then, wade through the murky bureaucracy on that site while you look for something called a “Fictitious Name Registry”. Some states require you to go down to city hall to register your name, and some allow you to register online. If you have to go to city hall, make sure you’re super organized and have everything you need before setting off to meet with The Man*. Like I said, bring a few alternatives in case your first choice in names for your label is taken.

Florida, my state, has the technology to apply for a fictitious name online, so we’ll use it as an example.  Go to www.sunbiz.org. One of the links across the top of the page will be “Document Searches”. Look in there for “Fictitious Names”, then in there for “Inquire by Fictitious Name”. Type the name you’d like in the search box, and ff is listed, then we’re back to the drawing board. If the list doesn’t have your name in it, however, then it’s available! Yay!

Go to “E-Filing Services” and look for “Fictitious Name Registration”. Follow those steps and pay The Man. I would spring for the Certificate of Status and the Certified Copy, but that’s just me. It is nice to have those around, just in case you’re audited. It’s also nice to get it in the mail and have a reveling session**.

Once you and only you have got your name, you’re on your way. Next up, study your ass off. It’s not as terrible as you’d think!

Until next time, this is Casey Robbins of Cardboard Box Records signing off!

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Terms:

 *The Man = Government

**Reveling Session = A period ranging from five minutes to several hours wherein one rejoices exuberantly, with much jumping around and good-natured gloating. Reveling Sessions are important because they allow one time to realize the scope and magnitude of the little accomplishments as well as the big ones, and to celebrate all the triumphs of a day.