How Digital Marketing Is Changing the Music Industry

It is quite difficult today to imagine a person who does not use a computer and has never surfed the web. The majority of citizens, at least in big cities, actively use a variety of social networks. That is why, executive resume writers state that a carefully planned social media marketing strategy, the effectiveness of which depends on the selected marketing channels, helps to Increase a brand recognition. An affordable and leading way to develop your business is digital marketing. Promotion of the company or services is carried out through social media. Digital marketing will give positive results if a chosen platform has the most suitable functionality.

Advantages of the digital media marketing:

• the exact focus is not on search engines, but on visitors.
• a low cost. In contrast to SEO promotion and placement of contextual advertising, attracting visitors with SMM promotion is much cheaper.
• “Chain reaction” or a high virus capacity. Users of networks continuously share information with each other. An interesting news about the brand that has appeared is not only shared by members of the community but also goes beyond the created groups. The faster SMM site promotion, the more users will learn about your brand.
• increase the impact of SEO optimization. Increased traffic in social networks leads to an increase in the site’s ranking in search results. Active attendance attracts an incoming traffic to the web page and landings.
• interrelation with potential clients. Communication with users of the network in the framework of organized communities, forums, discussions in the comments allows you to analyze the opinions of customers about services and goods, to study the needs and tastes of different people. The rapid processing of feedback influences the confidence of customers.

Marketing Week published an article on how the promotion of musicians has changed over the past few years. The author notes that due to the growing popularity of streaming services, marketing teams refuse traditional music marketing strategies including releases on radio and television. The record company Domino Records launches advertising campaigns for its artists in social networks. According to the representatives of the studio, the nature of a constant inclusion has changed the way of new compositions releasing.

Is Digital Marketing Needed in the Music Industry?

The artist’s life is full of events: new songs, presentations, concerts, shootings, releases of live blogs, interviews, etc. Their life is totally social, and their fan crew organically integrated into it. The audience of the artist constantly follows the events from the life of their idol. The crowds of fans listen and download songs/albums, watch clips, read blogs, and visit the concerts, getting the information from the social networks. Such an audience has a higher motivation to participate in various BTL-promotions and giveaway contests. Such activities are the best way to promote their music. Celebrity can offer as a prize something related to them and their music. It can be an invitation to a private party, a pass to the backstage zone, a meet and greet with the star and other unique prizes that cannot be purchased in a standard way (money can’t buy).

Beginning from 2016, the most of artists, along with the audience, focused on streaming services, DeJuan Wilson, a vice president of marketing in online song distribution platform SoundCloud proclaimed. More and more promising performers appear literally from nowhere. Nowadays, the Internet is a perfect background for making a qualitative content.

Domino Records marketing manager Brooke Salisbury said that grouped compositions into playlists are the most popular on the streaming service Spotify. She noticed that the importance of broadcasts grew in 2016.

Spotify is used by more than 40 million users around the world. For this reason, streaming is becoming too big musical niche to ignore it, explained James Fleury, the founder of the traditional music marketing agency Nouvague. In his opinion, this is a promising direction of development for traditional singers.

By the way, the brand’s promotion through the digital channels solves several tasks of any business:

1. Improves the company’s image on the market
2. Attracts the social networks’ audience
3. Increases brand recognition
4. Acquaints potential customers with goods or services

A New Trend Is Emerging: the Musicians Paid Attention to Digital Marketing, Including Geolocation Services

Arcade Fire, in partnership with the filmmaker Chris Milk, Google and @radical.media, has created The Wilderness Downtown, an interactive HTML5 multi-browser experience. It’s hard to nominate a simple “video” – it’s something wider. On the head page, you are proposed to write down the address where you live or grew up. Even if the city won’t be represented there, you can still look or “walk” along the other cities. It’s better to use the Google Chrome browser for watching the video. On the background, the song We Used to Wait sounds. The band’s Grammy-awarded album The Suburbs contains this song.

The goal of creating this masterpiece (and integration with Google maps) was to get every listener to relive the song and get a valuable experience. Everything here is extremely individual. You can choose any country, city, and almost any specific address. As long as you’re “running through time,” in a well-known street, new trees suddenly grow up and you have the opportunity to write a letter to yourself – someone who remains in the past.

Moby has created a site for his album Destroyed. There is a combination of SoundCloud and Instagram used to create a synesthetic experience. He turned the music album into a photo book. Moby was writing songs at night during the tour. The digital-book contains photographs of the moments he experienced during that trip.

After visiting this site, you will immediately hear the music and see photos – those that Moby made on trips, and those that added fans from around the world, by posting them through the Instagram application, by adding the tag #destroyed. Thus, this album unites thoughts and memories of like-minded people – Moby and his listeners.

Advantages of Music Marketing in Brand Promotion

Music marketing is far from the traditional use of a well-known melody on TV or Internet advertising; it is very important to attract the artist and use their image to promote the brand. As a rule, brands that have chosen the strategy of music marketing, attract popular artists into their advertising. Pop idols or popular tracks in media attract customers’ attention and raise the memorability of brands. In most cases, drawing celebrities is associated with such brand tasks as:

– launching a product or product line;

– the necessity of creating an artificial experience of communication with the brand;

– repositioning the brand;

– the necessity to remind the consumers of the brand.

Who Can Be Interested in Music Marketing?

1. Companies that do not have a tangible product (banks, insurance, providers, cellular operators).
2. Companies whose marketing opportunities are limited (pharmaceuticals, alcohol, tobacco).
3. FMCG brands, as well as companies whose products are designed for an audience whose self-identification is based on musical preferences.

There is an opinion that only major brands can afford music marketing, but it is misleading.