Your Online Music Marketing Report Card

Not every artist needs an A+ online. But everyone needs at least a C-.

The challenge for independent artists, label managers, artist managers and anyone working with artists in online marketing is deciding where to apportion effort.

Am I doing enough online? Should I tweet?

Should I blog on MySpace?

Do I need my own website or is a MySpace enough?

Do I need a Facebook page?

For digital music and music marketing in general to move forward, I think it’s important that some basic standards are established around an artist’s online presence. If these standards are established, music marketers can spend more time innovating and less time worrying about whether the Bebo page has enough of a photo gallery.

If we agree on a minimum standard, then we can define what is exceptional and extraneous.

Digital agency Native has developed an online artist report card to help structure decision-making and reduce the grey area around representing music online.It moves from the basic to the advanced and is intended for all levels of artists.

A threshold: This is the minimum requirement to pass. You need to answer ‘yes’ to questions 1-5.

1 - Is your music available for sale on iTunes?

2 - Do you have your own MySpace, with autoplay turned off, featuring your best songs?

3 - Have you embedded an iTunes buy link into your MySpace page? (You can generate iTunes links to your album here.)

4 - Do you have a document listing the email addresses of your fanbase?

5 - Do you have an application to sign up subscribers embedded in your MySpace page?



For a C, answer ‘yes’ to questions 1-10.

6 - Do you regularly (8-10 times a year as a minimum) deliver value to your fans via email? Delivering value means sending them mp3s, video content, letters from the band. Tour dates, calls to action to ‘buy my album’ and press releases do not constitute value.

7 - Do you have your own website on your own domain?

8 - Do you keep a list of online sources that mention your music?

9 - Do you have a YouTube channel to collect all video and audio content relation to you?

10 - Have you reserved your artist/band name domain on Twitter?




For a B , answer ‘yes’ to questions 1-15.

11 - Does a Google search for your band/artist name return your MySpace page, YouTube clips of your music, your Wikipedia page (where relevant) and your homepage within the first 10 results?

12 - Does your website and MySpace integrate not just buy links to iTunes, a subscription form for your email database but links to buy merchandise and tickets.

13 - Is your music for sale on iTunes, Amazon mp3, emusic and BigPond (for Australian artists).

14 - Are you aware of being talked about on music forums relating to you?

15 - Do you track analytics on your website relating to user behaviour (where people come from, where they go, how long they stay, how many pages they view, what they search to find you)?



For an A, answer ‘yes’ to questions 1-20.

16 - Does a Google image search return an image of you?

17 - Do you have an established presence across Facebook, an active engagement with the Twitter community and an up to date Last.FM page?

18 - Is the band regularly producing and distributing original content to fans via email and across the online presence: photos, text, video, out-takes, live recording, broken guitar strings, guitar picks, signed posters…

19 - Do you replicate all artist content across all your online properties including Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, your homepage et. al.

20 - Do you track and engage with all mentions of you across your Homepage, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Last.FM, on blogs and in forums?




To be the best, answer ‘yes’ to questions 1-21.

21 - Do you have your own blog on a separate domain to your main site, a forum set up dedicated to discussion around your music and a series of subsites dedicated to various campaigns around your music (remix competitions, live album giveaways, UGC-style film clip sites)?

I’m interested in feedback on this report card - what is the minimum you expect of an artist online?

Rob Oxoby on song writing

Like anything, songwriting improves as one practices one’s craft. Practicing songwriting can often be a daunting task not only because it seems odd as a concept (What is the difference between practicing songwriting and being creative by actually engaging in the process of songwriting?) but also because it requires admitting that your own songwriting needs improvement.

Many times, once we write something we have a hard time letting it go, admitting that it needs complete rewriting or that may just not be that good to want a live performance or recording. Many years ago, I read somewhere that Charlotte Cafferty (then guitarist of the Go-Go’s) wrote hundreds of songs that never saw life beyond her notebook. She viewed these is not good enough for live performance and use them as examples to learn and practice what worked and what didn’t work.

Personally, for every 10 songs or so I write, one makes it in front of a band; and for every five that I bring to the band, one makes it to a live performance or recording. While this may suggest that I’m extremely prolific or just plain suck at writing, I take a different view: In a sense, all those bad songs I write are practice for the good songs I write.

In any event, admitting that a song you have written requires rewriting/retooling/rejecting can be difficult. Sometimes when I’m just not in the mood to rework my own material, I turn to the work of others. My approach is this: How many times has a song you don’t particularly like gotten stuck in your head? It happens to me all the time. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and one of my kids’ favorite songs is stuck in my head. Sometimes I (inadvertently) hear a song by an artist I don’t like, only to have the song repeat over and over again in my head throughout the day. There must be something about these songs that makes them “stick.” So, I use these songs as material to practice my songwriting. Literally, I take these songs and start rewriting them, taking them apart to figure out what makes them tick and why they are so catchy. At the same time, I’m honing my own skills with melody, harmony and rhythm.

Deconstructing a Hit

When practicing songwriting, it’s useful to think about what it is that makes these songs (perhaps regrettably) so memorable. Is it the melody? Is it the artist’s phrasing? Is it the rhythm or chord progression? As such, rewriting an existing song can serve several important purposes:

1. By dissecting and rewriting an existing song you can learn a great deal about what makes its melody catchy or its rhythm addictive. I often take an existing song and try to change one aspect (e.g., melody rhythm progression) while keeping everything else constant. This allows me to see how, say, the artist phrasing works within a melodic or harmonic structure. Sometimes I keep the melody and try to change the chords or rhythm in order to understand how a seemingly catchy melody can be supercharged by the right rhythm and harmony to create a monster you can’t get out of your head. Through this, you learn what works and what doesn’t for more general songwriting.

2. This type of work also gives you an opportunity to step outside of your genre. Maybe you can take that goofy Carrie Underwood song about cheating and turn it into a mambo? Maybe you can really stretch out an do what these guys did, converting a Brittany Spears song into a fugue. By stepping out of your genre and writing something really different, you open yourself up to new ways of conceptualizing a song. You hear new rhythms and phrases that may spark ideas for your own original material.

3. Finally, by working from an existing song you are not only learning from an example of a “successful” song, but you’re also practicing your own craft. In re-writings say a Beyonce song or something from the soundtrack to bear in the Big Blue House, it’s impossible for you not to interject your own ideas and style. As such, your songwriting, arranging, and your toolkit of songwriting tricks and ideas can only get better.

Rob Oxoby

robbyoxoby@gmail.com