Alternative Strategies for Music Marketing

David Gale - VP of New Media, MTV

Music is becoming very democratic.

Richard Campbell - Author, Media and Culture

The new ideas and innovation almost never come from the boardroom, from the top of the skyscraper where the executive offices are. They bubble up from the basement, they bubble up from the garage.

David Gale

Somebody can put a song as they have many, many times on YouTube or on MySpace or on a social network, and people decide this is what they want. Then, that band or that singer becomes popular or their music becomes popular. There's this collective force that's happening within music that really never existed, and it's being taken out of the control of the major record companies.

Gina Mendello - Music Business Manager, Tommy Emmanuel

With the advent of iTunes and a lot of the streaming, and YouTube and various online outlets that you have for music, what we seek to do is offer the higher quality product for sale, for actual sale. Those things are now acting like promotion in a way, to get people to come to the shows, to see the show live, and then also to buy the high definition product that we have that they're not going to get on YouTube and they're not going to get by downloading or file sharing. Mass marketing of large artists is very different than marketing of boutique artists. You need to have the promotional outlets to really guarantee that something goes into the area of mega sales, and to do that you need television and radio airplay. An artist like Tommy, for example, public television is the outlet we hope to have.

Public Television Commercial Voiceover

Coming soon to this public television station, the world's best acoustic guitar player, Tommy Emmanuel, in concert.

Mike Molenda - Editor, Guitar Player magazine

The Tommy Emmanuel record, joining in with PBS to promote his concerts. Rolling Stones having corporate sponsors. Getting involved in video games such as Rock Band or Guitar Hero. Ways to have people find you through another venue that isn't necessarily the radio or television or just hearing you in a record store.

Scott Dugdale - Composer, Wavegroup Sound

For example, I'm producing a singer/songwriter named Becca, and we're collaborating on a record together. In the past we would try to shop this thing around to record companies, get a deal and all that, and it's not a viable way to release now. For example, with her music we've released it through video games. She sang on a few international and global games, Guitar Hero and Rock Band and so forth. She sang on a few of those tunes. But with this original music we've been able to release it through mediums like that, mediums like Tap Tap Revenge for iPhone, which is an instantaneous little game you can play, and it's almost a way to break a new artist, because if you have x-million amount of users, and even if only a small percentage of those people download the song, you're hitting what would have been a hit single status, in the past. That would have been a hit single. Bands are putting out exclusive content, releasing their new single through, exclusively on the game. It has become a new way to pipe bands and break artists.