TechMuze Ep – 33 Mind Games & Monetizing Your Music

“Techmuze Episode 33”

“Welcome to Techmuze, a netcast designed to educate and inspire your musical creativity through tech – both technology and technique. Please visit us at techmuzeacademy.ca for show notes and more. Follow us all over the internet at Techmuzepodcast and as always enjoy the show.”

Already! Welcome to the 33rd episode of the Techmuze podcast. We’re going to wrap up our short mini series on the Artist Promotion Blueprint that we’ve been going through the last few episodes with parts 5 and 6 of the first module of the artist promotion blueprint which is the theory module. In these parts we’re going to discuss one thing that I refer to as mind games which is sort of the how we implement this psychology of marketing, the psychology of influence into this marketing system this machine that we’re designing and we’re going to learn how to build the artistpromotionblueprint.com. And then the other thing ofcourse is we’re going to discuss in the 6th chapter of this 1st module monetization which is ofcourse rather important if you’re trying to make a career as a musician. You have to figure out how to get people to ethically give you their money. And that’s the topic we’re going to discuss in a moment. But first what I want to do is take a second to say thanks to a few people who have taken me up on my offer here on my request rather, to show some love to the podcast and leave a review in Itunes.

I just want to make mention of a couple. First, we have Amiga Gia I believe that’s how I’m supposed to pronounce that from the USA who says, “I love this podcast. Always interesting topics and highly thought-provoking. It’s help me to become a better music producer and audio mixer. Thanks Dezz! You rock!” I appreciate that. Also, from the USA we have Jamol Powell who writes in and says,”I found Dezz on Youtube and just fell into a whole new world of learning and it led me to this Techmuze podcast which I must add is short, sweet and really gets you thinking about a number of topics. But it doesn’t end there, techmuze.ca also connects you to a community of like-minded others sharing ideas on a lovely art form. I really feel like anyone can pick up some nice info from Dezz and everything he’s put together. Shout out to Dezz, What’s up bro! I appreciate that Jamol.  And of course, Techmuze.ca will still lead  you to the Techmuzeacademy. However, Techmuzeacademy.com is the direct url. I still maintain the ownership of  Techmuze.ca because in previous podcast thats how I’ve referred to to the url to where I get you were your at. So, we will still work with Techmuzeacademy.com as the official url either way. And just one more, we’ve got…this is from James Thompsonthret. It’s all one word…from Australia. He says, “This podcast is incredibly awesome so much knowledge. Thank you so much for sharing.” Well, I appreciate that. I’ll just call you James. How’s that? I appreciate that James. So, like I say I truly love it when people leave reviews on Itunes. One of course, because is it helps me maintain my large ego. And the other reason and more importantly is that is a big way as to which way how …what am I trying to say, Itune search engine…how it works. If you got reviews then Itunes search engines will give you a little more credibility. And it helps me to get the show discovered by other people who may also benefit from the topics we discuss here. So, I appreciate that and feel free. If you haven’t yet done that feel free to do the same.  So, without further a do. Let’s get into chapter 5 and 6 of the Artist Promotion Blueprint and I’ll see you on the other side.

Okay, so so far we know that our machine is going help us to create luck. It’s going to allow us to be prolific. We’re going to leverage, heavily leverage systems and automation to make this all happen without our intervention. We’re going to use our content that hopefully you’re already creating as the fuel that makes the machine move. Now the next thing I want to get into with you is some of the secret sauce. The magic as it were, that really makes the machine much more powerful and effective at doing what it is design to do which is to acquire fans and to get them into a system that allows us to keep them interested in what we do. That’s the goal of this machine. And we’re going to do that by utilizing some mind games.

I want to talk a little about some of the basics of thepshychology of persuasion. Doctor Robert Choudini wrote a book called Influence that is sort of like the marketer’s bible almost nowadays. It’s very, very popular. And he talks about the Six Principles of Persuasion. These are little, tiny I guess techniques or tricks I supposed you could call them that we’re going to implement into the system so that it is more effective. So, what are these 6 Principles of Persuasion.

Well, the first one is the idea of social proof. Now, social proof is the concept where you know when everyone is doing it. If you see a whole bunch of people are shopping at whatever store then you automatically have an assumption that that store must be good. Okay! This is something very, very simple. This is something that has always been the case since the dawn of the social man I guess you could say. And that is the idea that if large groups of people are doing it, its a lot easier for me to say yes to doing it as well even if I don’t know a lot about whatever it is that these people are doing. Okay! So, social proof is something that we want to build into the machine. We want to have it automated. And we do these by things like you know that you might already be doing. For example like having your Facebook like box on the side of your website so people can see – oh, 8,000 people love this band. So, they must be pretty good you know.  These are small examples of social proof and that’s a small example of a way that you can automate that into your presentation by simply putting your Facebook like box or fan box on the side bar of your website. That’s a very simple thing you could do. But the idea is we’re going to build as much as social proof into the machine as possible.

The next principle of persuasion is the idea of reciprocity. Reciprocity is the sort of do unto others kind of thing. Basically, with it means is if I have given to you a great deal of value out of the goodness of my heart or for whatever my motives may be, it’s a lot easier for you to say yes when I ask something of you. Okay! It’s the idea that you want to reciprocate the kindness that has been bestowed upon you. So, reciprocity is the 2nd principle of persuasion. And again, this is something that we want to build into the machine. And this kind a happens by default because the content that you create hopefully adds value to another person’s experience whether through entertainment or being informative or being mind blowing and remarkable in some fashion. You’re giving away this content, this  experience to people for free. And your doing it regularly and consistently. So, when it comes to the point where you say, hey I got a new cd and it’s out on Itunes. I’d love to hear what you think about it, it’s a lot easier for someone to say, “Yeah you know what, I’m going to buy that album and check it out and let this guy or this gal or this band know what I think of it. The idea of reciprocity. You’ve done so much by entertaining me and so forth that I want to this small thing in return. So, that’s the 2nd principle of persuasion.

The 3rd one is the idea of authority. And when I say authority, I don’t mean necessarily being an authority figure like a police officer or what not. I simply mean staying in front of people’s mind. So, if you’re in a blues band and you produce a lot of great high quality, remarkable content on the blues music scene and people know not just your own music but you’re helping people discover some of your favorite blues bands and blues artists and musicians and what not. And if you’re doing this on a regular and recurring basis you start to become perceived as the authority on all things blues related and you start to stay in front of people’s mind, those people who are interested in blues music and those who are seeking it out are going to begin to come directly to you because they know you’ve never dissapointed them. You’ve always shown them something interesting that they’ve found to be attractive. So, that’s an example of how you build authority by staying in front of people’s minds. And that’s done by consistently producing content. So, if you are the type of person who puts a video once in every 7 months, then that’s not a great way to build authority. So, we do want to build authority into our machine.

The 4th principle of persuasion is likability and thats the idea of encouraging engagement like the Facebook like button is a great example of that. You produce a piece of content – your personality, your demeanor or your information or your presentation is likable and people want to share that and they want to engage with you, they want to leave a comment and they want to say thanks. That’s the idea of likability and we want to make sure that we want to build that into our system as well.

This next one here is very popular in marketing in general but is perhaps a little bit less…it’s a little bit harder to implement as an artist or a musician. But it’s definitely something that we are going to want to include in our music marketing machine that we’re building here, that we’re designing at the moment and will build in the next module. And that is the idea of scarcity and so yeah, just like the slide says – it’s the get it while it’s hot or get it before it’s gone kind of mentality. So, we’re going to talk about some of the methods that we can use scarcity in our machine, to encourage people to want to take an action before it’s too late. Okay! It’s a bit of a controversial topic too because you always want to be truthful and honest and transparent and open with your audience because people’s bullshit meters are in full-effect nowadays and they tell can tell when you’re just saying you know, “Oh, get this E-book now because there’s only a hundred of them.” It’s like “Well, cummon guys it’s an e-book. There’s an unlimited amount because it’s just 1’s and zero’s. Right! So, don’t tell me there’s just a hundred of them. So, you want to thread carefully when it comes to scarcity but we’re going to talk a little about how we can implement some nice, open, honest scarcity into our machine to encourage people to take an action which is what we are really trying to do here.

And then the other one here, the last one is committment and consistency. And that is idea of getting somebody to commit to an action because if they do they would most likely consistently act in that way. Okay! The concept here is, let’s say you shot an email out to your email list of subscribers or fans and you said you know, “Hey, I’m going to be releasing a dvd on yadiyadiyada and I think you guys are going to like it but before I put my time into it I just want to know how many of you, if you would actually pay for it and if you would, would it be worth $19 to you. And you send this out as perhaps  a survey. So, if you get people that say, “Yes, I would buy that for $19.” They might not. There’s absolutely no gurantee but they have just a made a committment of some kind and it’s more likely that they will actually follow thru with purchasing this $19 dvd because people have a natural tendency to want to be consistent to the things that they have said in the past. Okay! So, committment and consistency is another thing that we want to build into our machine in an automated fashion. These are the things that you’re not going have to keep in the front of your mind every single thing that you do. We’re going to build them into the machine so that they happen automtically. And they encourage people and give reason for people to want to do the things that we want them to do which is to share our content and to engage with us and to ultimately buy our products which is our music or dvds or merchandize or whatever that maybe and that’s what I want to talk about next which is monetization. What is the product that I’m selling? What are they?
Where do we sell them? How do we sell them? And we’re going to be talking about that next.

Okay! So, we have covered how to create luck by being prolific. We’ve covered a little bit about how to be prolific by leveraging systems to distribute and syndicate our content that we put together as part of our content marketing strategy to proliferate the internet as best we can. We’ve also talked a little about some of the mind games as I’d like to call them or some of the psychological aspects of persuasion that we’re going to implement and sort of roll into our content and into our calls to action to sort of make it more likely for people to do what it is that we hope that they will do. Okay! And now I want to talk about what we’re all are really here for which is monetization. So, there’s probably some ways that are obvious to you as to how to monetize your art and you know things like selling your cds and things like that. Selling tracks in Itunes so on and so forth. These are kind of obvious but there’s probably a couple less obvious solutions that you can also implement that perhaps you’ve never thought of before. So, let’s bang off a few rather quickly here and see what we can do. So, obviously as I mentioned first thing is digital sales. So, digital sales are things like getting your music in Itunes, on CDBaby, even  just self-hosting and selling your mp3s right off your website with no sort of 3rd party management. There’s some pros and cons to that. Pros are ofcourse that you keep all of the profits. The cons are that’s a little bit more to manage. So, using something like Itunes which is a huge marketplace of music lovers whose credit card numbers are already on file is definitely a time saver. And the fact that Itunes like I say it does, basically the selling, the transactions, the customer care and all of that for you, its a lot less for you to worry about as the artist and you can carry with on focusing on what you do best which is creating your content, creating your music and entertaining and engaging with your fans which ofcourse is the whole purpose behind building this marketing machine.

So, the next thing to consider is merchandise. When I say merchandise I’m talking about things like clothing, apparel, T- shirts, hats, things like that. DVDs and physical CDs. Nowadays, I even see a lot of people selling their album on SD Cards and Flash drives and things like that, just to be  unique and to standout a little bit. So, those are some different ways that you can also monetize your brand. And again, these are sort of some of the standards that’s probably there’s a good chance you’re already attempting to do. Okay! Another one that I’ve seen many people had some very nice success with is licensing. And that is getting your music to be used in movies, TV shows and video games primarily. There’s also now a new movement of  Web TV and Web shows, Youtube series and things of that nature. And so these are independently produced episodes of whatever and a lot of times these creators of these shows do need music and they need it legally and so there’s always opportunities to license your music to web shows as well as traditional movies, TV shows and video games. There’s a company called Crucial Music that I’ve had some success with and a good friend of mine also, his name is Bryan Wheremyer who’s a songwriter who’s had great success with. Bryan doesn’t tour or anything. In fact he has music in Itunes and he licenses it through Crucial Music who gets his music into TV shows and things of that nature. So, he’s had his music appear on The Young and the Restless, The Soap Opera. He’s also had it appear on the Ghost Whisperer, the same song actually. So, he gets continous recurring royalties everytime those shows are rerun he ends up geting another check in the mail. So, these types of things can be very powerful and allow you to get some money flowing in a pretty passive way as well. So, licensing is definitely something to consider.

This next one is something that’s… may or may not be suitable to absolutely everyone. It depends on…you have to get a little bit creative with how to do this but that is to create a membership opportunity for your fans. And this is a sort of the super fan exclusivity idea. So, those of your fans who really, really are your evangelist who really love what you do, its quite possible that they would be willing to pay a small fee, maybe like a $4 or $5 a month kind of membership fee to gain access to exclusive content that is only for your super fans. And this is pretty easy to setup online as well and these are things that we’re going to cover as we start looking in depth at the blueprint itself and start putting the cogs in the machine. These are optional things that you can add on to your machine to make it even grander and even more functional. So, definitely consider some type of exclusive content that you can give only to those fans who truly, truly want it and who are willing to join a paid membership club or group associated with you, your band, your music, your brand.

Another one that’s sort of becoming more and more popular lately is Crowd Source Funding. You maybe familiar with the website called Kick Starter. Kickstarter.com I believe is the address. A lot of bands are having great success by putting a kick starter campaign together and actually selling their album before its recorded and they do this in such a way that..it’s basically.. its like okay here we are guys, this is us. We’ve got this amazing music that we want to record but we need your help to do it. So, for anyone who donates $10 or more you’re going to get a copy of the record when it’s done and your donation will help to actually fund the recording of the record or the dvd or whatever it is you’re trying to put together for your audience. So, a lot of bands are actually getting great success with this. If you got some popularity that you’ve develop through this idea of being prolific and getting yourself out there, if you’ve got quite a bit of your audience it’s quite possible that you’ll get all kinds of people donating their money to help fund your next project. And a lot of times, a lot of bands I’ve spoken with and seen utilized this technique have ended up earning above and beyond what they needed to get the project done. So, this is another great way to monetize and to get some money flowing in your direction and that’s Crowd Souce Funding.

Now, there’s this other one…again that’s a little bit less obvious. Not a lot of people in my experience have thought of this. And that is adhosting and affiliate promotions. So, when I say adhosting I’m talking about becoming a Youtube partner and allowing Youtube which is ofcourse Google as some of you may or may not know Google owns Youtube to place ads at the begining or through out your videos that give you the potential to earn money when people click on those ads or when people sit through the ad longer I think than 30 seconds if it’s one of those inline ads that happen at the beginning of your video. So, that’s a real simple thing to set up. Just you setup yourself up on Youtube as a Youtube partner and you just go into your settings and you activate the monetization features and now you have the ability on whichever videos you want to allow Google or Youtube to host or to show ads there. So, that gives you the potential in a very passive sense to earn a little bit of revenue from your Youtube videos. And hopefully if you have a great content strategy as we discussed in one of the previous videos in this module then  you’ll have loads and loads of videos on Youtube and elsewhere that you can apply this technique too.

And the other thing in this category is affiliate promotions. Affiliate promotions are if there are products or services that you think kind a ressonate with you, your message and your brand and that you perhaps use yourself or have an affinity towards then it’s worth it to find out if that product owner or service provider offers an affiliate program. And basically what an affiliate program is is it’s a way for them to compensate you for sending them traffic that turns into business. So, again in this sort of generic internet marketing space, this is an extremely popular way to monetize somebody’s website, to monetize your website and that is again to find a product or service provider that offers a commission when you send them business. So, it’s real simple. You put a little ad instead of allowing Google to just put random ads on your website you put a specific little ad banner somewhere on your  site that encourages people to go and check out this thing. Maybe you do a short video about it and say hey, guys I’ve just been using this and I think it’s fantantic. You guys check it out and let me know what  you think. If people click on your link and then they leave your website and they go over this other website and if they decide that they also like what they see and make a purchase then you automatically get credited a commission. And it’s all automated and once again it’s completely automated revenue stream. So, ad hosting and affiliate promotions are definitely something to consider and again we’ll go into more depth on this topic as we start building them into our machine. We’ll talk the specifics at that point.

So, another one on the list here, the last one is Live Shows. And again this is good old fashion music marketing right here. Right from the dawn of performing there’s been live shows. Nowadays, however we have the oportunity to do live shows online. And I’m seeing a lot of bands starting to pickup on this concept as well. So, obviously if you’re going to play a gig somewhere in the city hopefully, I know a lot of times in the beginning we end up playing a lot of free gigs, promotional type gigs I want to encourage you to do less of that or I should say not too much less of it but do not be afraid to demand some kind of fee for entertaining. I mean after all you put hours and hours of effort and work into creating your music and perfecting your performances and getting everything to run smoothly and to provide maximum entertainment and it does stand to reason that somebody who owns a venue should pay for that. It’s something that’s a whole other debate that we could talk about if you wanted you know at any point in time. But I do believe that you should be strongly encourage to charge for your performances even if it’s just a meager amount, even if it’s putting gas in the van and food in your belly or whatever that you should get out of the habbit of playing for free unless it’s a charitable event or something like that you feel passionate about. So, live shows offline is kind of an obvious one. I’m sure
there’s a good chance you’re already doing this. However, you may not be doing it for compensation and I think that’s something that should be encourage. The other thing is to be able to do shows online. This allows you to setup. I’ve seen bands now that will setup basically a little bit of a TV studio type of situation in their rehearsal space. So, they can jam out and rehearse all day long. And whenever they want to they can turn on their nice lighting and setup the cameras, maybe one or two camera angles and they can broadcast the performance live you know. Maybe create a little ambiance, light a few candles or whatever it is that fits your brand presentaion and then you can actually perform live on things like Utream or JustIn TV just to name a couple and in a lot of cases you’re able to actually charge a ticket price for people to attend. The other beautiful thing about this is that you can record this performance and you can then split it up into individual songs and distribute that through out your content network as content that’s going to help people to learn to love what it is that  you do. Okay! So, there are just a few of things to consider in terms of how to monetize and again these are the type of things that we’re going to build into the system, into the machine. So, that once they’re all in place, they’re ready to go again all you have to do now is turn your attention back to creating great quality content and let the machine do the rest. Let the machine encourage people to become a fan, to join your email list. Encourage people to check out your CD in Itunes. Encourage people to buy a T-shirt. These type of things are going to be built into the machine. And that is ofcourse exactly what we’re going to start talking about in module 2 which is coming right up. So, I encourage you to maybe take a break, maybe jot down a few notes from what we’ve covered up so far in module 1 and move right along to module 2 and I’ll see you there!

So, that wraps up the first module of the Artist Promotion Blueprint. I hope you’ve enjoyed that. I hope you’ve perhaps found some insights in learning in there even if you don’t decide to go and purchase the training at Artistpromotionblueprint.com.  What I’m hoping is that you’re able to sort of implement some of these concepts into what you are currently doing. And if you are interested in getting the blueprint and learning how to put this together for yourself, to build this massive automated marketing machine head on over to artistpromotionblueprint.com
and get the training. It’s something I’m real proud of. By the time you’re hearing this podcast, the shopping cart should be open on the course. It’s sort of inlaunch mode right now but head on over to Artistpromotionblueprint.com and get the blueprint so you can start to put this together for yourself. It’s a bit of an effort in the very beginning You’ll probably going to spend a week you know or so in the evening. An hour or so here and there, building your website, building your content syndication network, designing your email autoresponder sequence so that you can sort of get fans to move deeper and deeper into your world so to speak all on autopilot. Trust me when I say, that once its done and it’ll only has to be done once by the way to set this up and you just drive it from that point. Once it’s done, it’s going to save you so much time that you would otherwise spend doing a bunch of manual tasks. So, once again Artistpromotionblueprint.com and I will see you on the next episode.