Music Blogs

I think we promised CMU Daily readers some coverage of that recent MusicTank conference on the future of music marketing this week, and as this week is nearly over we better get on with it.

As previously reported, the event was called 'Meet The Millennials', and saw Terry McBride, the boss of Canadian music firm Nettwerk, and a panel of other industry types, advise aspiring singer songwriter, James Yuill on how to build and engage with his audience, and how to make money out of his music making.

Here, for those that missed the session, here are of McBride's most quotable quotes...

On the role of the album in the digital age: "The way consumers consume music - they don't consume it as groups of ten or twelve songs on a piece of plastic, they consume it as songs".

On staggering releases around the world: "The minute a piece of music is released now it is a worldwide release, so holding back on releasing it in, say Japan, even if you want to coincide the release with a tour there is, frankly, not commonsensical. It's already in Japan. The minute you release it, it is public property and you cannot control it. What you can have fun with though is all the pieces you haven't released yet and when and how you release them".

On new online revenue streams for artists: "There are new revenue streams to be had out there. For example YouTube. Every time a video is played on YouTube it creates income for both the master owner and for the publisher. So creating assets specifically for YouTube can really work. That's what I call 're-evaluating free'. We are doing that and it is proving very profitable. Take Avril Lavigne - there's about a $2,000,000 cheque waiting for her for all of her YouTube visits".

On using your fans as one big focus group: "Start asking your fans questions like 'hey I'm thinking of doing this, what do you think?' Just post it on your MySpace, and you will get load of ideas back... you'll get a brainstorming session with 3000, 4000, maybe 5000 people. That's invaluable".

Take note people. Yuill - at whom the advice was specifically aimed - certainly has. His manager Amul Batra told CMU this week: "For James, the event was as near to a total success as possible. Following from all of Terry's advice, James has already set up an mp3 blog, has added Google Analytics, we are in the process of crowd sourcing live visuals and we are working on a plan to get fans to vote for each of the remixes for 'No Pins Allowed'. We are just getting up to speed again after Latitude and will be having a team meeting in the next week or so to properly digest and make some concrete plans".