Prepare for your dream job in the ever-changing music industry.

The following lesson material

is taken from Berklee Online’s Bachelor of Professional Studies degree program in Music
Business. Want to learn more about earning a degree online? Contact us at 1-866-BERKLEE
(USA) / +1-617-747-2146 (INT’L) or advisors@online.berklee.edu.

3. The Three P’s

from Music Business 101 by John Kellogg

5. Working with PR, Radio, and Digital Media

from International Music Marketing: Developing Your Career Abroad
by Shain Shapiro

7. Demand Generation
from Online Music Marketing: Campaign Strategies, Social Media,
and Digital Distribution by Mike King

19. Meet Instructor John Kellogg

20. How Berklee Online Works

21. Get in Touch

2
 The Three P’s
From Music Business 101

By John Kellogg

Is there any one thing that ensures an individual’s success in this dynamic music business? Every profession has
its guiding principles. The medical field has adopted the Hippocratic oath from the ancients. Successful conduct
in sports is guided by ideas of sportsmanship, including fair play and losing with grace.

Being an amalgamation of art and commerce, the music business has no officially sanctioned guiding principles,
but I offer the “Three Big P’s” as a roadmap which I believe can help guide your success in this industry.

1. Powerful Product 2. Proper Perspective

A song, audio or video recording, live performance,
or technological advancement (e.g., app, site, etc.)
that has the ability to build and retain long-term
value and relevance.
An Example of a Powerful Product
In 1973, Atlantic Records producer Joel Dorn
recorded the Grammy Award-winning, number-
one hit single “Killing Me Softly with His Song”
with artist Roberta Flack. The Charles Fox/Norman
Gimbel-penned tune had a unique theme and a
strong hook. The final recording sounded great
-- Flack’s emotive vocal delivery, a choir-like
background vocal chorus, and an infectious groove
created with a displaced kick drum added to the
pulse of the backbeat. By all measures this was
a truly powerful product. To underscore this fact,
consider that the Flack record was covered in 1995
by the Fugees and went to number two in America
on the Hot Airplay chart. It also became a number-
one single in the UK, selling over one million
copies.
Creators of music must develop both an external
and internal perspective of the music business.
Externally, they must recognize that one of the
primary jobs of their record company is to maximize
the company’s value for the record company
owners. Even if the artist owns the company, one
of the company’s goals should be to generate a
profit so that the company can stay in business and
be of benefit to the artist. Internally, an artist must
recognize that any sustained success can only be
achieved through long-term investment of time
and money to build valuable assets -- the powerful
product.
An Example of Proper Perspective
The Grateful Dead are the most successful touring
band in history. Their creative improvisational
flights, top-shelf songwriting, and high-fidelity
sound reinforcement were heralded by legions of
devoted fans. Recently, several books have been
published that expound upon the Dead’s innovative
attitude toward the business of music and the
cultivation of their fanbase. As Brian Halligan, co-

3
The Three P’s

author of the book Marketing Lessons from the

Grateful Dead: What Every Business Can Learn
from the Most Iconic Band in History*, puts it:

“ The fundamental assumption in almost every

band’s business model was that they were going
to make their money on album sales. The Grateful
Dead rejected that assumption. Their fundamental
business model was based on making money
from the concerts. Because of that change, there
was a cascade of decisions that fell from that. For
3. Professional Attitude
instance, each concert was completely unique night-
after-night, so there was a strong incentive to see Participants in the music business must understand
them for several nights in a row—this ultimately that their everyday dealings with others must be
led to fans following them around the country. In conducted in a professional manner that respects
addition, they allowed their fans to make tapes of all people with which they come in contact.
the concerts and freely spread them to their fans— Whether the communication is a correspondence
the more concerts they played, the more tapes with a president of a major label, his or her
there were, the more people were exposed to the receptionist, or a tweet to a loyal fanbase, it should
music, the more people paid for concert tickets. reflect proper knowledge of the subject and
deference to the recipient.
Today, the Grateful Dead release official versions
of their historic concert recordings to fans. This
has become a profitable enterprise because of
the thoughtful curation and superior sound quality
of the recordings (compared to many of the
recordings made by fans). Their constant focus on
the fan’s experience has paid off in ways that the
band couldn’t even have anticipated when they
were in their prime.

*Meerman, Scott; Halligan, Brian. Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead:
What Every Business Can Learn from the Most Iconic Band in History. Wiley Publishing, 2010.

4
Working with PR, Radio, & Digital Media
From International Music Marketing: Developing Your Career Abroad

by Shain Shapiro

What comes to mind when you refer to one of

your favorite artists? Even if it’s their music, which
is the primary point of reference, there is always
a visual element that complements that—Björk’s
extravagant outfits, Slash’s long hair, hat, and
sunglasses, and Daft Punk’s futuristic costumes are
but a few examples.
• Keep it real: include quotes.
It is a fact that, when trying to build a successful • Keep it concise!
career as a popular artist, your public image—your
• Be original.
brand—plays a major role and ultimately defines
how you are going to be perceived by the public.
Assets, Assets, Assets
So what are the assets your media pack needs to
Any public performer has a public image associated
contain? Here are the most common ones,
with their art and it’s very difficult to separate
and remember, refer back to your checklist!
them from each other. So, every time that art
gets exposed, the public image gets exposed • Bio
too. Therefore, the public image becomes an
• Press release
inseparable part of the artist and, in some cases,
becomes art itself. • Sales sheet (for the distributor)

• Promo photos (max five)

The Golden Rules for Drafting an Artist Bio
• Single cover
• Write a captivating press story that grabs
readers from the start. • Album cover

• Talk about the music. Describe it. Make it • Music videos (on average, three for every
sound exciting. album release)

• Avoid too many artist references/influences. • Video teaser

• Adjectives: don’t over-do it. • SoundCloud links

• Nobody cares about the band’s background, • YouTube links

such as how they met, etc.
• Promo CDs

5
Working with PR, Radio, & Digital Media

All assets need to be the highest possible quality.

Golden Rules of Contacting a Journalist
You only get one chance to pitch something, so
you need to be able to impress quickly. Be very
careful with what you choose to include in your
communication. Here are a few things to consider:

• Include the music link first.

• Don’t forget to mention release and tour

dates.
Understand that this is a two-way relationship.
• Embed a spectacular artist photo. Editors want page hits and visitors, so that their

• Use an intuitive email subject. website becomes popular and is able to generate
more advertising money. The content you are
• Use a few press quotes. offering needs to satisfy that need. Promo CDs

• Always be polite. need to be sent to long-lead press (for example,

monthly music magazines) at least three months
• Don’t demand coverage. prior to an album release.

• Ask for their opinion (they love that).

• Give them time and pitch well in advance.

• Understand the editor’s point of view.

• Develop the relationship over time.

Make Your Mark: Careers in Music Business

• Artist Manager • Music Supervisor • Public Relations Director

• Booking Agent • Publicist • Independent Radio

Promoter
• Concert Promoter • Music Publisher
• and more...
• Tour Accountant • Tour Manager

• Entertainment Attorney • Entrepreneur

6
Demand Generation
From Online Music Marketing: Campaign Strategies, Social Media,
and Digital Distribution
by Mike King
Generating Demand and Building
Your Community
The first step in creating an effective online
presence is to “get your own house in order” by
creating an optimized website, which acts as a main
focal point for your online promotions. Your own
site gives you full control of the visitor experience
and provides you with the ability to optimize any
conversion opportunities.
Once you have your site together, the next logical
step in online music marketing is to engage in
an external marketing campaign designed to
create demand (i.e., web traffic, awareness, and
attention) for your band and your products. While
the majority of traffic you get to your site will likely
come from direct traffic, links from email blasts,
and organic search (which is why search engine
optimization is so important!), the traffic generated
from a combination of other third-party sources
to your website is also significant. Taken together,
outlets like Facebook, Wikipedia, Twitter, YouTube,
and other online third party outlets can also drive
significant traffic to your site, if you are optimizing
these outlets effectively. Let’s start by looking at
some general techniques to draw fans to your band
from these external sites.
Demand Generation: The Four Major
Segments of Online Marketing
A“marketing funnel” is the concept of converting
7
the uninitiated into fans and consumers of your
products. As fans move through the funnel, they
are provided with additional incentives and higher
rewards to increase their brand loyalty. But before
consumers even enter the marketing funnel,
marketers have to create a reason for potential fans
to enter the funnel in the first place. As Chris Stone,
accomplished marketer and cofounder of legendary
NYC- and LA-based recording studio The Record
Plant has said: “[without marketing] if you build it,
they will not come, because they will not know you
exist!” Simply put, the Internet and home recording
technologies like Pro Tools have made supply
abundant and demand scarce. Building up demand
for your product is more important than ever.
Demand Generation
Demand Generation is a marketing concept used to
describe the act of creating a focused and targeted
campaign that drives awareness and interest in a
company’s products and/or services. As Chris Stone
says, it is a crucial step in “letting people know
you exist.” Based on this concept, but adjusted
to work specifically for online music marketing, it
Demand Generation

is recommended that artists organize their online Viral/Social Marketing

marketing campaigns across the following four Viral or social marketing is the utilization of a
marketing channels: marketing tool that gets people to pass a message
along to each other. Viral marketing is considered
• Permission Marketing
an earned channel, where the fan considers content
• Viral/Social Marketing worthy of sharing, on its own merits. Viral marketing
may require very little effort on the part of the
• Discovery
propagandist (that’s you), as the recipients of the
• Paid Placements message become the primary agents who spread
it to other people. If it works, viral marketing can

Permission Marketing be rapid and explosive. Viral marketing can also be

Permission marketing refers to the privilege (not characterized as the Fan-to-Fan channel.

the right) of delivering anticipated, personal, and Many of the same tools that a band can use for

relevant messages to people who actually want permission marketing can also be used by your

to get them. This form of marketing accomplishes friends, fans, and followers to help spread a viral

several positive things: 1) it reduces clutter campaign online, such as:

and unwanted messages for consumers; 2) the

• Forwarded Emails
messages received by the consumer contain higher
quality, more specific information; 3) it improves • Retweets
targeting precision for marketers. In other words,
• Facebook Posts / Shares / Likes
permission marketing can be considered the Artist-
to-Fan channel. Examples of permission marketing • YouTube Posts
outlets include:
• Pinterest Pins
• Email Lists
Discovery Marketing
• Twitter Followers
Discovery marketing takes place when your music
• Facebook Fans is introduced to a completely new group of fans
through efforts that are not permission or viral-
• Instagram Followers
based. Examples of discovery marketing outlets
• Snapchat Friends could include:

• YouTube Subscribers • Search Engine Results

• Fan Clubs or Street Teams • Blog

• Online Radio

• Interactive Streaming Services (like Spotify)

8
Demand Generation
• Music Identification Apps (like Shazam)
• Film and TV
• Terrestrial Radio
• Live Events
• Print Publications
Paid Placement
The last channel of demand generation occurs
when an artist pays for access to potentially
qualified fans. Examples of paid advertising include
search engine marketing (purchasing keywords),
buying visibility on ad networks (such as those on
Google, Twitter, and Facebook), and banner ads on
How Social Media Works:
a Conversation with Ian Rogers
Ian Rogers has been a key player in the
development of the Internet for musicians since
founding the Beastie Boys website in 1993. Ian
has worked as the GM of Yahoo Music, the CEO of
Topspin Media (a direct to fan marketing and sales
technology company), the CEO of Beats Music, and
as a Senior Director at Apple Music.
“
I try to break social media down into what the
actual physics of attention are. I think about
attention as this flow. We’re sort of naturally…
we click on stuff right? And we move around the
Internet in this way, and that to me is the overall
attention flow of the Internet. I try to put that
against what you are really trying to accomplish as
an artist.
9
blogs/music/lifestyle sites. It’s also possible (though
not advisable for all but a few artists) to purchase
ads on both online and terrestrial radio stations.
A Framework for Marketing Across
Different Channels
Let’s take an in-depth look at some of the more
popular third party sites for band marketing and the
specific techniques we can use to increase visibility
and overall demand generation. While the concepts
we’ll discuss are particular to these specific online
outlets, these overall marketing ideas can be
applied to a variety of other existing (and not yet
existing!) sites as well.
The first thing that you are trying to do is build
awareness, because no matter who you are, even
if you are Linkin Park, no one knows about your
new record until you tell them about it. So you
are trying to build awareness on some level. The
blessing and curse of the Internet is that anyone can
build a website but it’s not a ‘build it and they will
come’ world; just because you built it, doesn’t mean
anyone is going to know it’s there. So the first thing
that you are always trying to do is build awareness.
If you are lucky enough to build awareness, then
you are trying to build fan connections. If you can
build fan connections, then you are trying to build
a fan relationship and fan trust and to do that, you
need to communicate in some authentic way. Only
when you’ve done all that, can you sell anyone
anything.
So if that’s the model, let’s look at how social media
plays into that model. The interesting thing about
“social media” is that s kind of a catchall phrase
Demand Generation
that doesn’t really talk about what’s happening,
and what’s happening is that flow of attention. The
interesting thing about Facebook and Twitter is
that they are not sort of inherently viral. They are
really two different forms of marketing. One is direct
marketing, and that’s a relationship between an
artist and fan, and the other is what most people
call viral marketing, or fan-to-fan marketing. So I
would break it apart into those two things: so you’ve
got the artist to fan channel and then you’ve got the
fan-to-fan channel. If you are vending something
valuable, people want to share it with other people.
It’s the nature of human interaction and sort of
reciprocity among human beings.
So that’s kind of the physics of the space, and then
you ask, “Well, what is it for? What is social media
for?” I think that what you really want do with social
media, more than anything else, is be a part of the
conversation. The most highly leveraged thing that
you can do is to put good content out there, have
people care about you, have people actually follow
and pay attention to what you have to say, because
then you have a way to talk directly to them.
I think it’s hard, having lived through it, to not look
at the example of MySpace and not want a little
more sovereignty beyond what Facebook offers.
You know, if you spent a lot time building up
hundreds of thousands of followers on MySpace,
those people are unreachable to you at this point
and that’s really dangerous.
When I was at Topspin, we worked with Linkin
Park. Linkin Park has tens of millions of fans on
Facebook and hundreds of thousands of people
on an email list. We still sell more products by
sending a message out on an email list than we do
by putting a message on Facebook, even at that
scale. So there is no question that email remains a
10
really efficient channel of direct marketing. There
is a not a gigantic value to the direct marketing on
Facebook. It’s good but not great. There is a little
bit of a fear of lock in, I would say. Do you really
want to hand all of your fan connections over to one
company who will go through its changes over the
coming years?
Overall, with social media you want to be a part of
the conversation, you want people to share what it
is you are up to on Facebook and Twitter; that’s the
most important thing. So using those channels to
build fan connections, to put your own content out
there, and to share your own content. You might just
be sharing a thought that you had but that kind of
authentic communication is what builds trust and
can add to your artist persona and brand. So I think
it’s most important to be a part of that conversation.
Second to that is the homesteading part, where I
am going to have a really nice page on Facebook
and make sure people can hear my music. I’m going
to make sure people know where they can buy my
music and all that. You definitely want to have all of
that in place, but I think the most valuable thing is
being a part of that conversation. I certainly would,
as much as possible, grab email addresses, grab
mobile numbers, have my own website and be
a sovereign entity, which is going to live through
Demand Generation

whatever the Facebook of tomorrow is. There will
be one.
Remember that once upon a time, Netscape was
infallible, Microsoft was infallible, Apple was a joke
that was for 5% of the population, the general
consensus on Facebook was, “why would anyone
use Facebook when we’ve got MySpace?” It always
changes; it is the one thing that is consistent, so you
want to own your fan outside of those entities first
and foremost.

John Mayer on Social Media and

Focusing on Your Craft

John Mayer, former Berklee College of Music

student, has come back to Berklee several times
over the years to give informative clinics to current
Berklee students. In his clinics, John provides clear
and concise advice on a variety of other topics,
including his experience in the music business, the
craft of songwriting and guitar playing, and general
best practices that he has learned from his years in
the industry. he found himself asking questions like, “Is this a
good blog?” or “Is this a good tweet?” When those
In one of his recent clinics, Manage the Temptation questions used to be, “Is this a good song title?”
to Publish Yourself, John focused on social media and “Is this a good bridge?”
and the potential pitfalls associated with it. In
John’s words: John Mayer has a great point. Similar to other
marketing verticals like press, radio, and retail

“This time is a really important time for you guys

because nobody knows who you are, and nobody
should. This is not a time to promote yourself. It
doesn’t matter. This is the time to get your stuff
together. Promotion can be like that. You can have
promotion in 30 seconds if your stuff is good. Good
music is its own promotion.
John went on to say that in his own experience,
visibility, social media at its core is simply a set of
tools that are useful in amplifying existing efforts.
Of course the level of connection between artist
and fan can be much closer with social media, but
without having great music, all the social media
visibility in the world is not going to get potential
fans of your music to become hardcore fans of your
music if the music itself isn’t amazing.

11
Demand Generation
Facebook
Overview
As Ian Rogers mentioned, one has to
look no further than MySpace to see how quickly
folks can lose interest in an online social networking
site, but at the present moment, Facebook holds
the crown as the largest social networking site in
the world, by far.
The winds of change can move quickly, but
Facebook is definitely the premier social networking
site of the moment. 80% of all online social activity
happens on Facebook, and the average American
spends 40 minutes a day checking their Facebook
feed. It’s also a popular destination outside of the
U.S., with more than 80% of daily active users living
outside the U.S. and Canada.
For all the reasons above, it’s important for
artists to understand how Facebook works from a
marketing standpoint. The first step in developing
a Facebook music marketing campaign is to create
your “Facebook Artist Page” as opposed to a
standard “Facebook Profile.” A Facebook Artist
Page provides bands with more communication and
interactivity options than a standard profile page,
as well as the opportunity to introduce third-party
marketing and visibility tools.
Facebook Artist Page accounts are relatively simple
to create. A quick how to:
1. Go to the Create a Page area on Facebook:
facebook.com/pages/create
2. Choose “Artist Band or Public Figure,” then
select “Musician / Band” from the drop
down menu.
12
3. Choose Your Band Name.
4. Click on “Get Started”
5. Upload an Image and Provide Descriptive
Copy and Link.
6. That’s It!
Online Marketing Opportunities on Facebook
Facebook is a good example of a permission
marketing channel, as well as viral/social marketing
channel. The single highest converting Facebook
mechanism is the “send update” feature. Sharing
an update (particularly if this update is interesting
content, like a photo, audio file, or video) can be an
effective way to reach fans that want to hear from
you. It’s also a good way to get the valuable fan-
to-fan channel happening. Through the permission
marketing channel, research shows that Facebook
generally accounts for low to mid single-digit
percentages of revenue for an artist’s campaign.
Best Practices for Marketing on Facebook
Similar to the rest of the Internet, Facebook is
working hard on curation – finding ways to deliver
the best possible content to its users. Because
it would be completely overwhelming for most
Facebook users to see all comments from all of
their friends all of the time, the Facebook “news
feed” is curated by Facebook in a very data driven
way, not unlike the way that Google returns search
results. On average, 1,500 stories float through
the news feed of each user. Each user is seeing
an average of about 100 of those stories per day,
which are controlled by Facebook’s engagement
algorithms.
For several years, Facebook’s algorithm for
Demand Generation

determining what content you see in your news

feed when you log into your account was called
EdgeRank, which looked at three main things when
analyzing a post:

1. Affinity: the relationship between the creator

of the post, and the recipient. If there is a
two-way communication street between
the creator and the recipient, meaning
that these two folks routinely comment on
each other’s posts, share content from one
another, and are generally more involved
with each other online, EdgeRank looked
at this relationship, and would more likely algorithm advantages, but because content
place content from one of these parties into is a better way to engage your fanbase. On
average, content-rich posts see 200% more
the stream of the other party.
engagement than non-visual posts.
2. Weight: determined by the type of content • Encourage fans to post photos of you. Being
that is being produced. Posts that contain tagged increases visibility.
video, photo, and audio were more likely
• Stay Aware! Hardly a week goes by without
to be delivered into a recipient’s stream
Facebook making changes to their service.
than a simple comment or “like.” Facebook
There are a number of online services that
rewarded meatier content postings. are good resources for Facebook updates,
including Adweek’s blog, Forbes, Mashable,
3. Time Decay: simply a measure of how long
and many more. For information from the
a post has been out there. Recent postings
horse’s mouth, check out facebook.com/press
appeared in a feed more often than older
postings.
Additional Best Practices on Facebook

• Wherever possible, embed a click-through link

Although EdgeRank is no longer the term used to a marketing campaign’s primary landing page.
to describe Facebook’s engagement algorithm,
• Use a static call to action in the “about” area
the above criteria (excepting time decay, which
of your profile to drive traffic to your primary
Facebook has de-emphasized) still provide a great
campaign landing page.
point of reference for marketers when determining
what content to post to their community. Best • Utilize your cover photo to help promote your
tour dates or music release information.
practices still include:
• Use link tracking services like Bitly to see how
• Creating posts rich in photo, audio, and
your links are shared – making social media a
video content. Not only because of the
more measurable marketing channel.

13
Demand Generation

• You can monitor your fan activity through the Twitter

Facebook Insights analytics. Reviewing your
Overview
insights can let you know when you should
Twitter (a tool for microblogging—
spike the activity or increase engagement
creating online updates using less than 140
with more content (songs, videos, remixes,
etc.). Additional third party analytics services characters) can be highly misunderstood. To many,
like Quintly can help you to measure what is Twitter can simply seem like a time-wasting tool
working for other similar bands, in terms of that the self-absorbed use to discuss what they had
types of posts, time of posting, and more. for lunch. And while there are certainly folks that
use Twitter in that fashion, enlightened marketers
OF NOTE: Facebook is constantly changing their
have found Twitter to be a very useful and effective
algorithms, which has recently resulted in less
tool. While not at the scale of Facebook, Twitter
organic reach for marketers. What this means is that
currently has over 300 million monthly active users,
Facebook is incentivizing their paid options, to reach
with 100 million of these users using the service
fans that you have acquired organically! Not the best
daily.
situation for creators and marketers, but perhaps
another cautionary tale against utilizing properties
Twitter has also been found to be a tool that music
you don’t control as your sole online visibility.
consumers tend to use. An NPD Group study
found that active Twitter users buy 77% more
Helpful Third Party Services for
digital music downloads on average than non-
Facebook Marketing
users. 12% of those who have bought music in the
Facebook itself currently does not provide a great
last three months also report having used Twitter,
native homesteading option for bands that want to
versus 8% of overall Web users. They are far more
highlight their music, tour dates, videos and more
comfortable spending time online, buying online,
in a really user friendly way. A number of third party
and communicating online. As we will discuss,
options have popped up to fill the gap. Again,
when best practices are followed, Twitter has a
technology is advancing on a near daily basis,
lot of potential to cheaply and effectively increase
but there are several helpful third party services
sales.
that bands can use to help increase visibility
and engagement (as well as sell direct from your
Twitter is an example of a marketing tool that
Facebook profile, if you want) on Facebook. The
falls into three of our defined marketing channels:
most widely used option is BandPage, which allows
Permission, Viral/Social, and Discovery.
artists to share their music, bio, photos, videos, tour
dates, and more, as well as collect email addresses
Perhaps the most interesting facet of Twitter is how
from potential fans.
quickly messages can be spun into the viral realm
via the “retweet” function. A retweet (usually noted
by starting your tweet with “RT”) is when one fan
resends a message (a “tweet” in Twitter-speak) from
someone in their network and shares it with their

14
Demand Generation
entire network. It’s perhaps the highest degree of
content approval and means that the content was
so valuable and important that they were willing
to share it with their network – causing it to spread
from one community to the next. Retweets of good
content are not unusual—all the more reason to
focus on writing something of substance.
Twitter Best Practices
Some tips to consider when getting started with
Twitter:
• Build Up Your Base. Like any other
communication method, the more engaged
people you have to communicate with,
the better your results will be. Certainly
communicating with your fan base via site
visibility and emails to let them know you are
on Twitter is a good first step. But the most
effective way to build up your Twitter following
at the moment is to simply follow individuals
that have mentioned your band, or are fans of
similar bands. If you have great content, more
often than not, folks you follow will follow you
back. Additionally, Twitter users can view, and
often follow, the folks that their friends follow.
Twitter also makes suggestions of other,
similar, Twitter users that fans should follow.
There may not be a mathematical equation
that explains it all perfectly, but the bottom
line is that following key folks in your particular
niche in the Twitter community will very likely
result in an increase in the number of followers
you have, which will provide you with a larger
base to communicate with.
• Quality Posts. While it’s incredibly easy to
follow folks on Twitter, it is just as easy to UN-
follow too. Providing your community with
15
interesting content will not only keep folks
happy and involved, it is also the basis of any
viral Twitter campaign. Give folks a reason to
talk about you!
• Consistency in Posting. Breaks in posting
could cause a drop in followers. Consider
using a service that can schedule future
tweets. HootSuite, Sprout Social, and many
other third party services can be used to
schedule tweets.
• Engage your Fans. Consider asking more
questions of followers to connect more
personally and get everyone engaged (e.g.,
ask followers what they think of a recently
posted demo).
• Connect Your Blog to Your Twitter
Account. WordPress makes it easy to send
announcements to your Twitter feed from your
blog. Of course the 140-character limit will
not allow the entire blog post to appear, but
followers will be directed back to your blog/
site from the tweet.
• Connect Twitter to Your Facebook Account.
The Selective Tweets app lets you selectively
update your Facebook status from Twitter
simply by ending a tweet with #fb.
• Use Hashtags for Trending. Hashtags are
a way of adding additional context to your
tweets. You create a hashtag simply by
prefixing a word with a hash symbol, like this:
#hashtag, in any of your tweets. Services like
Hashtracking can help to provide analysis on
trending Hashtags.
Hashtags were developed as a means to create
“groupings” (otherwise known as “trending topics”)
Demand Generation

on Twitter, without having to change the basic

service. For example, folks at the SXSW music
festival has used the hashtag #sxsw to categorize
any SXSW posts under this heading, which makes
for easy review by folks interested in news on
SXSW. Effective use of hashtags by bands might
include tweets on upcoming festival dates (such as
#glastonbury, for example).

Collaborative Marketing Outlet your site in a way that fits the context of the page.
Wikipedia Taking the time to blend the content and the link
According to Alexa.com, Wikipedia is currently
to your site in such a way that it naturally fits and
the sixth most visited site on the entire Web. With
enhances the content on the page will ensure that
hundreds of thousands of other sites currently
your link does not get deleted. Research shows that
linking to it, Wikipedia is also one of the most
proper implementation of links on these pages can
optimized sites on the Web. As such, a band entry
account for low to mid single-digit increases to the
on Wikipedia often appears higher in search results
overall revenue in a campaign.
than a band’s official site.

Best Practices for Marketing on Community-

Wikipedia is a collaboratively edited site, with tens
of thousands of editors responsible for adding
and maintaining the content. While a potentially
excellent traffic generator for bands, it is also
somewhat tricky to set up a Wikipedia page for
developing bands. Wikipedia frowns on self-
promotion (its goal is to be an impartial community-
developed encyclopedia of sorts, not a promotion
vehicle), and one has to take certain steps in setting
up a Wikipedia page as to not have the page
deleted by the site’s editors. Making your entries
Generated Content Sites:
1. Add the link in the top third of the page for
visibility.
2. Ensure that your link fits in naturally with the
page content.
Paid Marketing Opportunities on Third Party
Social Networking Sites
Of the four defined marketing channels we’ve

and edits as notable, relevant, and non-promotional identified, our previous examples have focused on

as possible will help avoid this, as anything added organic (i.e., free) opportunities: Permission, Viral/

that remotely resembles a sales tool will surely get Social, and Discovery. The fourth defined marketing

deleted by Wikipedia’s editors post-haste. channel is Paid placement. While it’s certainly
advisable to exploit all organic opportunities first,

Another key to marketing and generating online paid placements allow artists to target

conversions on community-edited sites like specific psychographic and demographic criteria

Wikipedia is to add specific targeted links back to of potential fans, which can provide additional

16
Demand Generation
visibility to support your organic efforts.
There are a number of paid visibility opportunities
available online. Let’s take an in-depth look at one
particular option: Facebook.
Facebook Advertising Options
One of the problems with traditional advertising
is that it is impossible to pinpoint a message
specifically for someone who actually wants to hear
it. While print (and some online) publications can
provide general demographic information on their
subscribers and readers (such as annual income,
how much money they spend on music per year,
age, etc.), most advertising models do not allow
you to target your fan with laser-like precision.
Facebook is an example of an online outlet that
does provide this sort of highly targeted advertising
opportunity, one in which you can pinpoint the
exact characteristics of your target fan, and deliver
them a specific message for a specified period of
time. If done properly, this sort of online targeting
is an evolution from ads being annoying intrusions,
into helpful, meaningful recommendations. As
mentioned earlier, Facebook generates billions
of dollars a year from their advertising efforts,
and they are currently the second largest web
advertising vehicle in the world, behind Google.
Facebook advertising traditionally relied on the
information that users had uploaded into their
profiles, from age, geography, favorite music,
books—basically any personal information that
folks have added to their profile page. But in recent
years, Facebook has partnered with some third
party data giants including Epsilon, Acxiom, and
Datalogix to allow brands to match data gathered
17
through shopper loyalty programs to individual
Facebook profiles. What this means is that as an
advertiser, you can target folks on Facebook not
only based on what they say in their profiles, and
what they say in their posts, you can target them
based on past activity on a variety of other online
and offline activities and interests. To put it another
way: Facebook knows A LOT about you, and is
using that information to help advertisers target
their products more effectively.
Based on the psychographic and demographic
information you are looking for in your campaign,
Facebook trawls its user base for members who
meet this criteria, provides you, as an advertiser,
with an estimate of the number of folks you will
reach with your ad, and provides you with pricing
options based on an ever growing palate of
advertising options including clicks to your site,
promoting your page, boosting your post, and
much more. The ad creation process is simple:
1. Get Started: Assuming you have an account
set up in Facebook, go to facebook.com/
advertising and log in.
2. Create and Target your Ad: Say you are
interested in placing an ad with the goal
of driving potential fans to your site to
experience your music, or learn about
your tour dates. After choosing the “send
people to your website” option, you will
be asked for specific targeting information
on who you want to reach, how much you
want to spend, and what you want your
ad to look like. You will also be asked for
specific text and an image or video to
accompany your ad.
Demand Generation

3. Target Your Ad: Set up your target
demographic and psychographic
information. Let’s assume you are targeting a
local demographic for a record release show
taking place in Cambridge, MA. If your band
sounds similar to the iconic Cambridge-
based low-rock trio Morphine, you might
want to consider targeting Morphine fans
in this ad. Facebook will provide you with
additional potential targets as well. In this
example, Facebook is suggesting targeting
Andrew Bird’s Bowl of Fire fans (not a bad
suggestion), as well as Nirvana (not quite
right). Facebook ads could just as easily
be used to announce new releases, free
singles, etc., with your personal website
being the destination for the click-through
on the ad. Facebook ads are also flexible;
it makes sense to experiment with different
campaigns to see what kind of traffic volume
you might get from your alternate settings.
easy way to implement Twitter advertising is their
“promoted tweets” option. With promoted tweets,
you can select specific tweets to promote to your
fans. Similar to Facebook you can target your
audience (your fans and/or fans of other bands
you’ve toured with, perhaps?), and set budget
restraints in much the same way as you can with
Facebook.
A final note of caution with regards to paid
advertising for musicians: paid advertising can get
expensive, and is not the best place to start when
you’re a developing band. There are a variety of
free or inexpensive options that musicians should
start with first that often tend to have better results.
Paid ads should be considered only for more
established bands that want to expand their reach
and who understand that music marketing is a
comprehensive system that needs to be continually
monitored, assessed for success, and fine-tuned.

4. Determine Your Pricing: Set up a daily

budget and choose your pricing model
(CPM, CPC, Clicks to Website, or Daily
Unique Reach).

5. Place your order and enter your payment

information.

Additional Advertising Options

Facebook advertising is just one option available
to marketers. Depending on your psychographic
and the tools that your fans are more predisposed
to using, your advertising campaigns can be
expanded to focus on other outlets, including
Twitter. Twitter’s advertising options are currently
less robust than Facebook, but one relatively

18
John Kellogg
• Assistant Chair of the Music Business
& Management Department at
Berklee College of Music

• Music Business 101 Online Course

Author and Instructor

• Licensed Entertainment Attorney

Licensed to practice in the states of New

York and Ohio, John P. Kellogg, Esq. has
represented recording artists The O’Jays,
Eddie Levert, Sr., LSG, Stat Quo of Shady/
Aftermath Records, and G-Dep of Bad Boy
Records. He also serves as a member of the
management team for the late R&B
recording star Gerald Levert, whom he
represented throughout his career.

Kellogg is President-Elect and a member

of the Board of Directors of the Music and
Entertainment Industry Educators Association
(MEIEA), in addition to being a former board
member of the Black Entertainment and
Sports Lawyer’s Association (BESLA) and a

2005 inductee into the BESLA Hall of Fame.
He is the author of the book Take Care of
Your Music Business: The Legal and Business
Aspects You Need to Know to Grow In the
Music Business, as well as numerous legal
articles and editorials. A former vocalist with
“
A music business degree puts you in the
position to be a leader in the music industry.
You’re going to study with other students
who have experience in the business as well
as instructors that are skilled at incorporating

the group Cameo, Kellogg has been profiled
in Billboard, Ebony, Black Issues, and In the
Black magazines.
”
music with the business principles you need
to know in order to be successful.
- John Kellogg,
Music Business Online Course instructor

19
How Berklee Online Works

Renowned Faculty
Berklee Online instructors have managed, produced, and engineered hundreds of artists
and records and have received numerous industry awards and accolades. Each week you’ll
have the opportunity to participate in a live chat with your instructor and receive one-on-
one instruction and feedback on assignments.

Award-Winning Courses
Instantly access assignments, connect with your instructor, or reach out to your classmates
in our award-winning online classroom. Study from anywhere in the world at a time that
fits into your schedule.

Specialized Degree Program

No other accredited institution offers the acclaimed degree curriculum provided by Berklee
Online. Earn your degree at a cost that’s 60% less than campus tuition and graduate with a
professional portfolio that will prepare you for a career in the music industry.

Like-Minded Classmates
Offering courses for beginners and accomplished musicians alike, our student body
comes from over 140 countries and includes high school students getting a jump-start on
college, working professionals, executives at industry-leading technology and business
firms, and members of internationally known acts like Nine Inch Nails and the Dave
Matthews Band.

Experienced Support
Every online student is assigned a Berklee-trained Academic Advisor. Each Advisor is
passionate and knowledgeable about music and here to support you throughout your
online learning experience.

Try a sample lesson for free:

online.berklee.edu/sample-a-course

20
 Questions about
Earning Your Degree Online?
Contact Us.

online.berklee.edu
advisors@online.berklee.edu
1-866-BERKLEE (USA) | +1-617-747-2146 (INT’L)