{"id":2149,"date":"2009-08-10T10:50:13","date_gmt":"2009-08-10T18:50:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/?p=2149"},"modified":"2009-08-10T10:50:13","modified_gmt":"2009-08-10T18:50:13","slug":"imogen-heap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2009\/08\/10\/imogen-heap\/","title":{"rendered":"Imogen Heap"},"content":{"rendered":"

All this to sell an album?<\/p>\n

I know this guy Scott Perry.\u00c2\u00a0 I met him at the CIMS convention back in the summer of 2000 (CIMS-Coalition of Independent Music Stores, Scott worked for the organization, I spoke at the convention.)\u00c2\u00a0 We immediately hit it off, we connected as they say.\u00c2\u00a0 So Scott Perry earned access to me.<\/p>\n

That’s the most important part.\u00c2\u00a0 Being able to reach someone.<\/p>\n

PLEASE read this Seth Godin essay on Permission Marketing: <\/p>\n

\n
Permission Marketing<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It’s the most informative piece of marketing info you’ll read all year.<\/p>\n

Every Monday I get an e-mail from Scott, entitled "New Music Tipsheet" <\/p>\n

\n
sign up here: New Music Tipsheet<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

If I scroll down, I get some factual information, about what’s coming out, I don’t care about that, it’s too overwhelming and generic, but it’s Scott’s essays atop the e-mail that interest me.\u00c2\u00a0 Today Scott went on about Imogen Heap’s online marketing.<\/p>\n

Imogen occupies a far distant spot on my radar screen.\u00c2\u00a0 I know who she is, but I don’t voluntarily play her music, even though I get regular e-mail about her from fans.<\/p>\n

But employing Google, I uncovered the essay Scott was referring to, delineating everything Imogen had done to sell her new album.<\/p>\n

And my first reaction was, is it worth it?<\/p>\n

Now the activities took two years to unfold.\u00c2\u00a0 But suddenly, you’re no longer a musician, but a personality.\u00c2\u00a0 And so much of what Imogen was doing was generating no revenue.\u00c2\u00a0 It was all leading up to a single sales event, the ultimate release of an album.\u00c2\u00a0 Huh?<\/p>\n

Do you have to be a newfangled self-marketer to have success in today’s world?\u00c2\u00a0 If that’s what it takes, if you’ve got to do everything Imogen did, how many will say no?\u00c2\u00a0 What about practicing, gigging, getting good?<\/p>\n

Just about everything Imogen has done here has nothing to do with music.\u00c2\u00a0 She could speak at Kellogg, America’s number one business school, about marketing.\u00c2\u00a0 But those chumps would rather just go into finance anyway.<\/p>\n

There’s nothing wrong with what Imogen has done here.\u00c2\u00a0 But if this is truly the future, we’re fucked.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s got to be a better way to reach fans.<\/p>\n

I believe it’s a Website, a place where you go to find out all information about artists.\u00c2\u00a0 Something that no one, not Ticketmaster, Live Nation, MTV nor Apple nor labels has yet created.\u00c2\u00a0 A trusted source.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s only one Amazon, why should there be a million music sites?<\/p>\n

There will be only one.\u00c2\u00a0 If I wasn’t a writer, I’d create it.\u00c2\u00a0 I know exactly what it should contain, how it should look.<\/p>\n

But you can’t do everything.\u00c2\u00a0 If I were to create that site I’d have to give up writing, which is my passion.\u00c2\u00a0 Do people have to give up music because they’re so busy marketing themselves?<\/p>\n

But Imogen is at the cutting edge of today’s music world.\u00c2\u00a0 It is about fans.\u00c2\u00a0 Capturing them and keeping them satiated.\u00c2\u00a0 If you’re playing in the old top down world, not only are you wasting effort, most people just don’t care.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s the point of Seth’s post above…\u00c2\u00a0 You can do saturation advertising, but that doesn’t mean people are going to pay attention!<\/p>\n

But I’m paying attention because of my trusted source Scott.<\/p>\n

And that’s my point here, it’s all about trusted sources.<\/p>\n

Imogen’s got a flock of dedicated followers, that’s the key to the future, but they didn’t come free.\u00c2\u00a0 Furthermore, by employing grass roots methods she built from the bottom up and has more fans than those who built from the top down.\u00c2\u00a0 But wow, it was a lot of effort.<\/p>\n

\n
Read this: The New Music Business Model: Imogen Heap<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All this to sell an album? I know this guy Scott Perry.\u00c2\u00a0 I met him at the CIMS convention back in the summer of 2000 (CIMS-Coalition of Independent Music Stores, Scott worked for the organization, I spoke at the convention.)\u00c2\u00a0 We immediately hit it off, we connected as they say.\u00c2\u00a0 So Scott Perry earned access […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-yF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2149"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2150,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2149\/revisions\/2150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}