Distributing and Marketing Music Albums - Essay Example

Other (s) Distributing and Marketing Music Albums My presentation will primarily focus on how we will be able to distribute and market our newly released music album which has just been recorded. First and foremost, we all understand that the contemporary music economy requires effective strategies of distributing and marketing and promoting albums to help musicians and bands penetrate the market and generate more income to support their livelihoods. With our band having successfully recorded the new Album, our next step is to decide on how to effectively distribute and market our music so that everybody will get to know our new release. Generally there are a number of ways through which we can distribute our albums. One way would be to use physical distribution agencies such as CD baby. Although we may be forced to incur some costs such as the cost of shipping the CDs, the use of physical distributers is quite effective and it will certainly enable our band to sell higher volumes of albums than any other music album distribution methods. Alternatively we can use the online distributers such as Amazon. The primary advantage of using Amazon and the other online distributers is that it will allow our band to post some editorial reviews alongside albums on sale and the customers will also be able to post their personal comments and reviews. Consequently apart from the fact that online distributers like Amazon may guarantee huge sales because they have large customer bases, this distribution option enables our band to understand their customers perception with regard to the newly launched Music album by analyzing their reviews. We will however have to contend with a few limitations of this option such as the high annual fees that these distributers often charge which can sometimes goes as high as 55% per each album sold. We can also choose to physically distribute our albums by ourselves. This option is undeniably the best in terms of saving costs and increasing profits but we must understand that it is a time consuming process that requires commitment from all the relevant players in the band. To distribute our albums by ourselves, we will have to first place a PayPal account on our official website. After this we will design some simple JavaScript button enabling the “buy now” function. When the customer clicks the link, they will be presented with an option of paying for the album they want to download through PayPal using their credit cards. The next important option of distributing our music albums would be to use the digital methods of distribution. Depending on the genre of our recorded album, we can effectively use Napster, iTunes or Amazon MP3 to distribute and sell our recorded albums. An important advantage of digital distribution of music album is that it does not need any upfront investments like packaging and therefore we will not have to worry about incurring losses even if we record limited sales. Again I recommend we use CD Baby particularly because they have many digital retailers in many parts of the world. Many artists all over the world are increasingly setting up accounts with CD Baby to help them distribute their music whether physically or through digital means. CD Baby usually takes around 9% of each Album sale and this is a fair deal. Another digital distribution company popular with many artists is TuneCore. Unlike CD Baby, TuneCore do not charge a percentage of each sale but instead the artists are required to pay some upfront fees as well as an annual maintenance fee for the music sales. Although many artists find this is attractive, it can only be profitable if we sell many albums. The next important task after distributing our recorded albums will be how to effectively market and promote the music so that more people will buy the new release and increase our sales. Generally marketing music albums involve effective branding as well as dissemination of the information regarding the particular album. To achieve this, our marketing strategy will have to consider some factors such as the appearance of our albums, the nature of our target customers, fair pricing, creating a buzz and setting up shops over the internet. Sometimes giving out free music to attract and retain our customers may be necessary. First and foremost our band will have to determine the demographics of our potential customer base. For example we will have to find out the percentage of people willing to buy our albums whether online or from the physical distributers. In this regard, the idea will be to make sure that the population segments who are our potential customers ultimately get to hear our new album for example by taking our album to the radios so that our potential customers can listen to the new release. At this point, we will have to use other marketing mechanisms to convince our customers that our new release is worth their hard earned money. Another widely recommended aspect of marketing and promoting that can be used for our newly released album will be to design the appearance in such a way that many people will simply be attracted to buy the albums at their first glance. For example we can design colorful CD cases that attract the attention of the potential customers even before they listen to the music album itself. Although it may not appeal to everyone, many analysts agree that people often buy music albums purely because they were attracted by the artwork. Similarly others may be turned off from buying the album because the packaging is not very attractive. In this regard, the use of attractive CD cases may be the best way to sell our newly recoded album since many people may not have a clue about our music or band. Another effective marketing strategy that we can employ to market our album and promote our sales is to keep the prices of our albums affordable to our potential customers. Although lowering the prices of our new album may not necessarily convince individuals to buy our material, people are generally more willing to take a risk and spend their money on some thing when the costs are lower. Therefore, I suggest we cut back some of our profits particularly during the initial stages of our sales in order to capture a larger market and register more sales. Alternatively our band can also set up an online shop on the internet as part of our strategy to market and promote our newly released album. Making our album available on our website will not only help achieve more exposure but will also enable our band to display more information regarding the new release and suggestions where our potential customers can buy hard copies of our album. Additionally after setting up our online sales website, we can then get more people to visit our webpage by using a number of strategies such as putting up flyer advertisements over the social media sites like the Facebook, plugging our band at different locations within our website and using attractive images to attract more visitors to our webpage. One important advantage of setting up online shops for music albums is that they enable potential customers to listen to the samples of the albums before they decide whether to buy the music album. They will not take the usual precautions since they will be pretty sure that the music is worth their money. We can also use other band pages to ensure that our music album is more accessible. Finally we can also market and promote our newly recorded album by creating a buzz. This can be achieved through a number of ways for example sending a sample of our music album to popular radio stations so that everyone can listen and get to know our newly released album. When the buzz begins to go around our band, our music will gain publicity and more people will visit our websites and the retail shops selling our albums. In conclusion, all these strategies will significantly help our band in the distribution, promotion and marketing of our Albums. The choice of the distributer or a marketing strategy will however depend on a number of factors such as the number of Albums available for sale, the nature of our target customers as well as the amount of money we are ready to invest for the distribution and marketing of our new release. Read More