I have been doing a lot of market research over the past few months preparing for my next book and have found some pretty interesting misconceptions about who indie artists and groups feel their number one competitor might be. I have talked with very successful indies as well as “start up” indies and can 100% tell you the biggest difference is how the successful artists or groups view their competition.

My research has shown that more than 75% of independent artists, musicians, and groups feel that other local artists and groups are their #1 competitors for these top five reasons given:

• There are only so many clubs or venues hiring live music for pay…
• There are only so many, genre specific, fans in the area that will actually buy music…
• The local, genre specific, radio station only plays so many songs from local artists…
• The local entertainment magazine only reserves so much space for local artist coverage…
• The local CD Retails only has so much self space reserved for local artist’s music…

Here is the problem with this reasoning….

All these answers are all based on local market acceptance and appeal. You have to ask yourself if you are trying to be a “local hero” or are you trying to gain national or international recognition? If you are only looking to gain local recognition than all these are very valid questions and should be at the forefront of your mind. You should find a way to make sure you are on top of all other artists in the local scene and insure you are getting all the attention. However, if you are like most artists or groups I talk to, you want to gain national attention that leads to international success in the music industry. Thinking local and competing local will not get you there. It won’t even get you 1% closer to your goals. In fact, it will drain your time, money, and energy resources to the point that you don’t have anything left to devote to national exposure.

Don’t get me wrong. I feel that a local following is imperative to gaining momentum needed to achieve national success. But getting your CD in local retailers, getting a spin from time to time on local radio, or concentrating all your efforts into selling your CD to every single potential fan in your local market is not good business. Think of it this way; if you have national exposure, are getting national magazines to review your cd, gaining national spins on radio, and creating a fan base from several outside markets, don’t you think your local market will see that press as well? They will, they do, and it makes them realize that you are not “just another local market artist or group!”

Marketing music works a bit of the opposite as you might think. You can get all the local press and coverage you would ever want, but you still have to put in the exact, if not more, effort to create the national exposure you desire from that local press. On the other hand, if you put your efforts into national press and acceptance, your local market will pick up the story and run it locally because it has the “local musician makes good” angle. Now think about this; how much easier would it be to get booked in your local venue if you have national press coverage or radio spins? Much, much, easier I assure you! And what about self space in retail? It will be a lot easier to walk into your mom and pop CD outlet and get your CD on the “top” placement if you can show them spins, reviews, or stories from national outlets.

Your competition is national artists, not local artists. Local artists should work together to help raise awareness to the market. The more national positive stories, reviews, spins, and buzz your market can establish the better. Why? Because it will make national press, radio, and professionals start to look at your local market to find out why so many artists and groups are getting the coverage. This is the basics of how markets like Atlanta, Indianapolis, Nashville, Houston, and others have grown their markets into power houses in their genre. They learned, quickly, that if they do not consider one another as competition, and actually help one another piggyback on any coverage they may get as individuals, that the local market would be able to get additional national coverage resulting in more direct coverage of their own efforts as individuals within the local market.

I will leave you will one more thing to consider; If you put your efforts into markets outside your local area and only get four or five new fans in each market you put effort into, how fast and large do you think you can grow your fan base? The second biggest mistake I found while researching my new book was that artists and groups that are new to music marketing strategies feel that gaining only a hand full of new fans in a market equals failure. This is absolutely wrong. There are hundreds of markets in the US alone. If you were to gain only five new fans in each market, and to make it easy lets say there are 300 markets available (realize a city is a market so this is a low, low figure), you would gain 1500 new fans. Now, if you are truly marketing your music and takin gthe steps to increase awareness of your project you could show those 1500 fans how to get their friends into your music as well. To make it easy, let’s say each of your 1500 fans have only two friends, 1500 x 3 (your established fans plus their two friends) = 4500 fans. Now, do it again, each of the new 3000 fans brought by your established fans brings in 2 friends = 6000 new fans. You are already up to 10,500 new fans. I think you get the point. A small handful of new fans in a new market, if marketed to and worked correctly, does not equal only a handful of new fans!

Keep an eye out for my new book; “Low or No Budget Music Marketing Strategies” It will be available online at www.IamMusicNetwork.com and on amazon.com. And, to keep with the title of the book, I will offer the book for $9.99 digital download or $14.99 paperback version. It should be ready in the next week or two!

Until next time…
Peace,
Jai
“Love the MUSIC in Yourself, Not Yourself in the MUSIC!”