How to market your songwriting with eBay and Amazon
By Don • Sep 1st, 2008 • Category: Songwriting Resources, Songwriting Tools
Do you want to get your new album into the hands of potentially new fans?
Seth Godin writes:
“What if your new rock group appeals to fans of the B52s? Or if your new book is just perfect for people who like Brad Meltzer? If you have a CD or a book or an idea that will appeal to a certain psychographic, it might not be so easy to reach just those people.
[...]
Go buy a bunch of B52s CDs. Then list them (brand new!) for sale on Amazon and eBay. Price them ridiculously low, like a dollar. The only people who are going to buy a copy are focused fans. Then, when you ship out the CD, include your new CD in the box as well. You’ve reached exactly the right people (purchasers! who spent money! who are fans!) at exactly the right moment. Why not include two or three in the box? Fans know fans, and they like spreading the good stuff around.”
This reminds me of a similar tactic people were using on iTunes for awhile. Suppose your band would appeal to Dave Matthews fans. When when you release an album and sell it on iTunes, encourage your fans to also buy a Dave Matthews song or two. This way, the next time someone visits a Dave Matthews album on iTunes, your songs will be listed in the section that says, “People who bought Dave Matthews also bought [your band name here]. It’s only $1-$2 more for the purchase, and if it is your core fans it is very likely they will go the extra mile for you.
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Don is the founder, writer and editor of BloggingMuses.com. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina, USA.
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I’m not convinced by Seth Godin’s suggestion…
If you’re going to go buy new CDs, you’d be better off spending the money on a powerplay campaign on last.fm for example. People buying cheap CDs on eBay might not be huge fans of music, but simply people who want music for cheap but aren’t internet/computer savvy enough to look for free downloads, or do not want to do something illegal.
Or you could ask a friend to join an online forum for fans of B52s (following on from the example) and reward your friend with a bit of cash in hand (ask a friend who is unemployed or a student).
The iTunes tactic is cheeky but based on the way iTunes works for sure. Don’t know how you could implement this – I mean, I don’t see myself asking my fans to buy another track when they buy mine – but if you’ve got the guts to do that, it might work. I wouldn’t try it myself though…
I agree with Natalie comments above.
If you wanted iTunes to suggest your music after users purchase other songs, shouldn’t you be putting out the initial investment instead of asking mildly-interested customers to spend more money in a bad economy?
However, now that iTunes has released Ping, I think songwriters and independent artists should really be pushing iTunes and Apple to include smaller band and maybe even a section especially for beginning/self-managed recorded artists. People using specialized-for-music-lovers social media like Ping are also interested in forging relationships with other singers/song writers, so this could be a networking as well as marketing tool.