Off to MIDEM in just a few minutes and wanted to give everyone a quick overview of the panel that I am moderating:

I’ve talked a lot over the past year on my blog about the role consumer brands are playing with respect to the discovery of new music.

It’s not new for marketing VPs to collaborate with major pop stars (Madonna, Sting, U2) to launch a new soft drink, car model or an iPod, of course, but what is new is the way and the rate that large consumer brands are tapping into the power of independent music to help them promote.

Over the past year, we’ve been approached here at Sonicbids by a slew of brands eager to find fresh ways to reach their target audience — an audience that to a large degree has grown immune to marketing messages coming from TV sets, airwaves and broadsheets.

Indie music (and we have more than 220,000 independent bands on Sonicbids) is attractive to marketers for a number of reasons:

• The Audience. People who listen to indie music are young, passionate, early adopters of trends and, more importantly, influencers in their own right.

• The Message. Every brand craves one thing: authenticity. And what’s more authentic than homegrown, unadulterated, uncompromising music that’s not been watered down by corporate interests?

• The Carrier. Young independent artists are easy to work with. They are entrepreneurial, they know how to market using all kinds of social media, and they are eager collaborators (after all, the enemy of music is not piracy: it’s obscurity).

• The Costs. It’s not a secret that the cost of supporting even 770 young independent bands is much cheaper (and less risky) than the cost of supporting just one major pop star. More importantly, it’s more effective.

Speaking of supporting 770 bands, that’s exactly what American clothing retailer Gap did back in August when it worked with Sonicbids to create an event at nearly 770 Gap stores around North America, that featured 770 independent bands performing in its retail stores at the exact same time.

What did Gap get for all its trouble? Amazing viral exposure through social networks (just think about getting nearly 800 hyper-motivated, influential people blogging and twittering about you for more than a week), increased store traffic, captive consumers and critically, engaged and happy employees (Gap store managers chose all the music using Sonicbids’ online platform to listen to all music, read bios, etc.). Not to mention, brand sheen than money can’t really buy.

And how about the bands? They got promotion and support that only a seasoned and adept marketer like a consumer brand can give them.

According to a recent poll, 50% of Americans rated the 2000’s as the worse decade in 50 years (with the 80’s being ranked the highest). I wouldn’t expect anything less of course from a decade that most people haven’t even agreed on what to call (“the two thousands”, “the noughties”, “the Ohs”, “the Oh-Ohs”, etc.) But was the decade we just lived through really the worse in more than two generations?

Of course, I get the sentiment. For decade that began with so much promise, it’s been pretty rough. We’ve had the Bush administration, the September 11 attacks, the terrorist attacks in London and Madrid and Thailand, the Indian Ocean tsunami, the earthquake in China, the housing marketing collapse, the economic collapse, the great recession, historic levels of unemployment, high oil prices, SARS, swine flu, mad cow, anthrax attacks, poisoned Coca Cola’s, the implosion of the global banking system, the death of Michael Jackson. You name it, we’ve experienced it.

But if you were an independent musician during this decade, I would argue that the 00’s were about as good a decade as the late 1480s were to art, the 1890s to railroad magnates and the 1980s to the personal computer makers.

Think about it. Ten years ago, there was no Facebook, no MySpace and barely any Google. Cost of producing an album was in the tens of thousands, never mind trying to distribute it. There was no Garageband, no Tunecore, and barely a CD Baby.  If you wanted to get any bookings out there, unless you had an agent or a record label you were no one. There was no Sonicbids. Try getting your music into a Tower Records or a Virgin Megastore in 1999. Good luck. There was no iPhone, no iPod, no eMusic or iTunes, And how about marketing your music? Forget it, we had no Twitter, or a YouTube, no podcasts, no blogs, no Pandora, no Last.fm, and certainly no Shazam or satellite radio. If you wanted to make your own website, you would be set back by at least $4K. There was no Nimbit, no Joomla, no Flikr to post your photos, and RSS was still something for geeks. If you were on the road and got lost? On your own. No GoogleMaps, no GPS, hell most of us had no cell phones. Wanted to grab a quick bite or find out where to stay? No Yelp!, no Urban Spoon, no Orbitz and certainly no App Store.

I can go on and on (the 1990s were the dark ages for God’s sake). So, before we write off this last decade as one for the misery record books, let’s all of us in the Indie scene pause and bid it a very warm goodbye.

May the next one be as good and as kind to us as the last. Happy New Decade.

Panos

I am happy to announce that we have partnered with SoundExchange, and together we have helped identify nearly 10,000 Sonicbids members that are collectively owed over $4 million in unclaimed digital performance rights. That’s a lot of money.

To find out if you are owed any royalties and claim them please log into your Sonicbids account to see if you are on the list.

In case you are not familiar with SoundExchange, they are a non-profit organization that collects performance royalties from satellite and Internet radio, streaming sound recordings and many, many other venues. You can read more about them here.

At Sonicbids, we are committed supporters of Independent Music. 

Happy Holidays.

Panos

So here we are, 2010 just around the corner. Can you believe it? I mean we’ve barely gotten used to the fact that we are in a new century (heck, a new millennium) and we are already entering a second decade.

What do I see in the year ahead? Read on.

• Consumer brands will play an even more important role in talent discovery. Yes, the role of the traditional label has been forever upended. But who’ll step in to fill in the void? Who’ll fund and promote new music and artists? I see more and more consumer brands jumping into the music business as they realize that music is the perfect marketing medium. That’s good news for artists.

• Apple’s iTunes will become an even bigger player (pun intended). It’s already signaled its intentions by buying music start-up Lala.com.  I see iTunes. In the cloud. Get ready for another fun twist in the recorded music tale.

• The consumer becomes the co-creator. I expect to see more creative collaborations between artists and consumers along the lines of Imogen Heap’s tweets and Deadmau5’s iPhone app. The internet is the world’s largest collaboration tool. Why should the audience be a mere spectator when it comes to recorded music? Guitar Hero and Rock Band proved that customers want more.

• Better music search ahead. There’s already a slew of start-ups offering better ways to search music (Echonest, Mufin, etc.). One of these will have a breakout year and will forever change the way that we look for and discover music.

• The live music festival will have a banner year. Yeah, I expect that the economy will still be sluggish and unemployment will stay high. Is there a better way to escape one’s troubles than a three-day live music festival? I don’t think so. Historically, live music has does well during tough economic cycles. 2010 will not be an exception.

• And… Spain will win the FIFA World Cup. I’m not Spanish, I’m Greek. But I don’t see Greece going past the first group stage and I also predict that Brazil will sadly exit early. Ivory Coast will become the first African country to play in the World Cup semi finals. England? Probably will exit at the semi’s – at penalties. Spain seems to me to be the most complete team right now.

Panos

P.S. Wanna see how I fared with my predictions last year? Check out my 2009 post and let me know.

If you want to see some highlights from our (strangely named) “Specific Business Concepts Applied for the Modern Day Music Artist” panel at CMJ, check it out. (Adam’s lighting makes me look like Joan Crawford in “The Shining Hour”….)

The past few weeks have been absolutely insane for me (so I apologize for the dearth of posts).

Amidst all this insanity, we found time to host a “tweetup” with Scott and Brent (the creative head in charge of all music programming) from South By Southwest this past Wednesday. I am sure many of you wonder what on earth is a tweetup and I will admit I had no idea myself until this week. You can read more here. (Basically, a party where folks are encouraged to tweet – go figure).

Seven tips that I picked up by talking with Brent about what they look for when booking artists:

1. Have Live Video. Yup, pretty obvious. Brent says that even a rough live video, shot with an iPhone tells him more about a band’s energy and audience rapport than say a sleek video. And it makes all the difference in the world.
2. Be creative with your EPK. Don’t use your Sonicbids EPK bio page to give folks a lengthy dissertation on you life’s story (“I was born in so-so in 1984 and always loved music”). Be witty, be creative, have fun with it. It tells a lot to the perspective booker.
3. Show you care. Don’t treat building your EPK and your submission as drudgery. Take time to pick cool photos (ideally live shots), put together the best songs you have, fill out your calendar shows, and in general, show you care.
4. Build your online presence. Now at Sonicbids, we offer promoters like the folks from SXSW access to things like number of MySpace friends, latest blog posts about a band, Last.fm listens, etc. Folks like SXSW don’t just want to know what you say about yourself – they want to know what others say about you too.
5. Get some bloggers to review you. Yes, reviews matter. And nowadays, getting some cool bloggers to talk about your music maybe even more important than a review in your local paper.
6. Show you can draw a crowd. Ultimately, the club that’s showcasing you at SXSW needs to sell beer to pay the bills. Make sure you communicate in your EPK (photos, video, calendar dates with capacities, reviews) that you know how to pull them in.
7. Build up your relationships. Old-school, right? Perhaps, but relationships matter. I can’t tell you how many times I meet bands that never bother following up, staying in touch etc. If you want to make a living playing your music, you will need to hone this skill. Yes, having your hometown alt-weekly writer, or some indie music blogger put in a word for you can make a difference. Business is, after all, all about relationships.

Panos

Had a quick pop into CMJ this morning to moderate a panel titled “Specific Business Concepts Applied For The Modern Day Music Artist”. Had great participation from the audience and you can see some of the tweets here. My  fellow panelists, which included Derek Sivers, founder of CDBaby, Rick Goetz, from MusicianCoaching.com, Jonathan Lutzky from Masur Law and PT Walkley, Artist/Musician, did a great job. One of the most lively panels I’ve been on.

Off to Italy for business, will pick up when I return.

Panos