January 13, 2010

Linking My Plays To iTunes and...

The Three Fold Path To A Long Term Musical Relationship

Since Airplay began almost a year ago I’ve had the pleasure to speak with hundreds of artists, bands and label managers in an attempt to figure out what they want to get out of their Airplay campaigns and how we here at Jango can best serve those needs. Nine out of ten times artists and managers ask only one question. ‘How can we get the people who hear our music on Jango to go buy it at iTunes ???’ After a while I came to a simple answer for this constant question and the answer is…you don’t, or at least not yet.


I realized that in everyone’s hurry to sell, sell, sell, they are missing out on a great opportunity or trying to skip right over it. That’s the opportunity to engage these listeners and new fans. Skipping over this important step will in the end mean less sales, less engaged fans or even worse, closed doors that should have remained open.


These days with so much opportunity to explore an artist online people are a lot slower in making a first purchase of a new artists. If their overall music and presentation is great some people will go buy their music. But if the first message you get from an artist is ‘BUY SOMETHING FROM ME NOW PLEASE’ you could end up shutting a lot of doors. People know your music is for sale somewhere, and if they like it, they know where to get it.


So after all these discussions and a little research I came up with what I am calling…


‘The Three Fold Path To A Long Term Musical Relationship'


…so here goes.


  1. Exposure
  2. Engagement
  3. Relationship














Exposure: This is one of the hardest things to achieve as a new act and interestingly enough it’s the thing that we here at Jango pride ourselves in being able to deliver, on a massive scale, for a very affordable price. We play your music to the people most likely to like your music based on their musical tastes. It’s that simple.


Engagement: This is the step that everyone seems to want to skip and it’s the most important, albeit hardest step along the way. If a new fan likes your music that’s great, now’s the time for you to let them get to know you better. Think about it like a first date, you might not even get a kiss let alone a roll in the hay, but they may be keen to get to know you better.


The question I ask is ‘who is going to buy your music after only hearing you one time?’. The answer is, ‘not many people’. They will visit your Jango profile, MySpace, YouTube and anywhere your music lives to get familiar with you before heading over to iTunes. So we have great tools to help engage your new found audience right here on Jango first. Here’s a couple examples.


‘Premium Targeting’ is the best way to get listeners to hear your song more than one time on Jango. By drilling down into specific geographic regions and age/gender demo you will surely expose your music to the same listeners again and again. This you can manage right from your 'Targeting' tab in your dashboard.


‘Custom Overlays’ are a really effective way to convey a personalized message to listeners and get them to bounce from Jango to your own landing page where you can give away mp3s, collect email addresses and sell music.


For more info contact labels@jango.com for a short presentation on ‘Airplay PRO’.


We actually did an A/B test with our ‘Custom Overlay’ promo unit running two of the same ads, one with a ‘BUY HERE on iTUNES’ button and one with a ‘GET MORE INFO’ button. ‘Get More Info’ got six times as many clicks and took the listener to the bands own website where they could explore more about the band, join a mailing list and hopefully down the line make a purchase. And this leads us to ‘Fold Three’.


Relationship: This is the part that includes having a fan buy your music at iTunes or Amazon. It’s also about them coming to see your shows and buying merch. Having a relationship with your fans is based on a mutual trust and doesn’t start at the cash register. It’s up to you to deliver great music, exciting performances performances, lyrics that mean something and an identity to relate to. If all these things come together some cash will ultimately come your way helping you continue to make great music and put on incredible shows. It’s a two way street.


I can’t tell you how many times artists, bands and even seasoned label managers always seem to overlook ‘Fold Two’, ‘Engagement’.


As a quick side note here is a great blog post from marketing guru Seth Godin talking about this same theory but using lemonade stands as an example. It gives a nice perspective…check that HERE













Please feel free to leave comments on how you best engage our listeners and your fans. We'd love to hear success stories as well as failed yet noble attempts...let's get the discussion going !!!