Advice To Record Labels: Open Up The Conversation

I’ve been visiting a lot of record label websites lately and it’s becoming apparent that the majority (I’m sure there are some exceptions) of record labels aren’t leveraging the internet to its fullest potential to promote their artists and their label in general. In the past, simply having a web presence was enough. But times are changing and having just a brochure type website is settling for mediocrity. Labels need to learn to make their websites work for them. Poorly designed sites that are hard to navigate reflect poorly on the label. Below are just a few of many ways they could do this.

Give The Fans A Place To Find Out About Your Artists
All artists need to have their own website for their subset of fans, or at least a page on the label’s site dedicated to their band and music. It should be up to the label make sure that this is done. It gives the fans a place to seek more information on their favorite artists and get updated on the latest news. Even if the dedicated page just has a short about section and a link to a MySpace page that provides tour dates and music samples, it’s better than nothing.

Open Up The Conversation
Record labels use their website to release news, but this seems to be more for publications to pick up and re-run in their articles instead of speaking directly to the fans. Labels are generally limited to the audiences that they can participate in personal conversations with based on their geographical location. Having a blog breaks those geographical boundaries by allowing the label to participate in a conversation with hundreds of people at the same time. Utilizing a blog would allow the companies to lay aside the PR speak and communicate directly with the people who buy the music and support the artists, the fans. Posting occasional news items on the site is a one way conversation, by having a blog the conversation is opened to allow consumers to talk back to the record label. Consumers visit company blogs because they’re interested in the company and the product that they’re selling. Labels sell music, so by inviting their artists to make guest posts would further connect them to their audience.

Problems arise all the time in the music industry. Albums get delayed multiple times and the fans get shafted. Labels could use their blog to communicate with their fans in an open and honest manner to let them know why the album got delayed. People would appreciate the openess and honesty. Participating in the blogosphere by commenting on other blogs would help drive traffic to their own site, while helping stay on top of any confusion people might have about their label and clearing it up before rumors start to fly around.

Syndicate The Content
It’s common practice on blogs to use feeds, whether they be RSS or Atom, to syndicate information to the consumers, but feeds can be used for a lot more than just blog content. Perhaps a label feels they don’t need a blog for monetary reasons or whatever, but by using feeds to let readers consume their one way news conversations they would be making it easier on the people who actually want to know about them. Even without a blog, music could still be sent out through RSS. The possibilities are endless.

Give Away Music And Create Contests
People like free things and they like to tell other people about free things. Giving away one or two songs would create buzz and drive traffic to the label’s blog. Inviting other bloggers to take the music and post it on their own blogs would open up the record label, and their artists, to new audiences. For example, a common practice among marketers is to provide valuable information for free on their blogs. It establishes them as experts and builds their personal brand. When the time comes that they want to write a book and sell it, or provide an eBook for a fee, they already have a built in audience who are willing to purchase their product. The built in audience is the same people who they’ve been communicating with on their blogs, the readers, commenters, and other writers in the blogosphere who consume and link back to their free content. It’s essentially the same thing that would happen with record labels if they wrote blogs.

Having people use their contact information to enter an occasional contest would allow labels to gain leads for future promotions (only if the users opt in, of course). The contest could also double as a marketing tool by creating buzz among their niche of the blogosphere.

Labels spend a lot of time and money on their offline promotions, but I think shifting some of that time and money to online promotions would go a long ways to strengthening their brand and customer loyalty.

The reason that this article came to be is because I was commenting to Brady how cool it would be to own our own record label, to sign the artists that we enjoy and try and spread the word about them. It led me to start thinking about all the things that our record label would do different than the labels that currently exist. One of which would be communicating more effectively with the people purchasing our artist’s music, and since Brady and I currently make our living off of web and blog design, it was only fitting that I thought a blog would be one way to do that. I have quite a number of other ideas on how to be successful by starting a record label, maybe I’ll write about them in future posts. Now if only I could realize these ideas in my own record label.

So the question arises, what would you like to see record labels doing differently?