William's 2 Step Method For Increasing Your Value As A Musician

Is it weird that I love to study Boar’s Head? You know, the sandwich meat company?

Not only is their quality spot on but I LOVE their slogan –

Boar’s Head – Sacrifice Elsewhere

That is dope (Did I mention that I have no life?). But, it’s a testament to our thinking here at HTBAMS.

We would rather pay 2x the price knowing that we get an amazing product, versus saving a few pennies to get the knock-off. It’s just not the same. 

But, what happens when we invest in ourselves?

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Number Ten with a Bullet...Metallica?

People are still buying plenty of rock albums, these just happen to be 20, 30, and 40 year old releases. Instead of whitewashing this fact, though, and then turning around and writing articles about the death of rock, wouldn’t it make more sense for the Billboards of the world to champion rock’s legacy?

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A Look at the Music Industry

Contrary to popular belief, file-sharing didn’t destroy the music industry.  It didn’t even change the industry.  It was people’s assumptions about the industry that changed the industry.  All file-sharing did was allow for these assumptions to become more apparent.

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Video banner advertising campaign lifts album sales by 80% for Liam Gallagher's Beady Eye

A test to measure the impact of video banner advertising on album sales resulted in an 80% lift for Different Gear, Still Speeding, the debut album by Liam Gallagher’s new band Beady Eye, according to web analytics company Buzzdeck. 

The campaign was delivered by the cost per engagement advertising network Silence Media and was commissioned by media agency The 7 Stars for the band’s record label Beady Eye Records.

The ad featured videos for the band’s singles The Roller, Bring The Light and The Beat Goes On. Fans on numerous male lifestyle and sport websites were invited to rollover and expand the ad to watch the videos.

Click here to watch the ad. 

Buzzdeck measured these engagements in a timeline that also included total album sales. All other advertising and promotion was suspended during the test. The campaign produced a sales spike that lifted sales by 80%.

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Share And Earn

Today, thinking about ways of selling content online, especially music, demands to take a close look at even distribution channels you didn’t bother to think of before.

You simply can’t afford to miss any options for sales any more. As album sales still drop and single downloads do not compensate for the loss of physical sales diversification of revenues is gaining more and more relevance.

The crux of diversification is that new revenue models must not cannibalize existing products.

So let’s think of revenue channels that do not concern physical media or downloads but opening revenues without loosing channels you already have.

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We're All Sales People. What's Your Style?

You may not identify yourself as a salesperson, but rest assured you’re doing some selling. Whether it’s selling tickets, selling downloads or selling your drummer on the idea that he needs to start taking showers - you are in the business of selling.

The approach that you take says a lot about how you view the world. What you believe about yourself, your product and the people who you are selling to, will determine your level of fulfillment and success.

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