New CD - What now?

Here is the way I see this, and keep in mind I am one old and burned out musician. So what the heck do I know!  However, let me take you on this little escapade of mine and if you are in the same stage of the process maybe we can work this out together.

I finally finished my "Full Grown Man" project, as far as: recording, cover art, hard disc pressing, cover wrapped and bar-coded,  registering with a distribution firm, ASCAP, BMI..the whole deal.  I think the studio was the easiest part, for me anyway.  But it is what it is.  So, what now?

Well there is a ton of stuff out there basically telling me the same thing.  I am supposed to be building these electronic relationships through social media sites, tweet a little but not too much, blogging (such as this), becoming recognized on certain forums (don't get burned!), adding and offering some kind of value to the community (I believe I do that by staying off the streets at night most of the time), and on and on and on.  All correct.  But it is time consuming and usually I get sleepy when I try and concentrate.  So, as Granddaddy Charlie used to say, "Here's the deal."

This is "Long Tail Marketing."  You have to keep that in mind.  Back in the day, and now really also, the Record Companies only concentrated on "Short Tail Marketing."  Which you can also if you have a couple of million bucks to promote yourself.  The Record Companies put in the cash to promote an artist, (By the way that money is paid back by the artist through the sales of the record. Most musicians are so ecstatic upon being offered a contract that they do not realize they are really paying for the whole deal), and this short term promotion leads to air play, album sales, and concerts.  The artist will make most of his money at first through the concert venue.  He or she can charge phenomenal amounts of money to perform and with all the promotion hype people will pay unusual amounts of money on tickets.  And after the Label has retrieved it's original investment for recording and promotion they continue to get a cut of proceeds from sales as do the artist and the writer of the material. All of this is negotiable, however you have to be able to fit into the stream of what is considered a viable product to promote.  You have to have the sound and the look.  And that ain't happening to most of us.  But...

In "Long Tail Marketing", instead of being a flash in the pan of some Label Guru, you can slowly promote yourself for years and years using the above mentioned vehicles. And, if you were to graph it out, instead of a quick spike and fall that the music industry lives on, you would show a steady climb over a 10 or 20 year period.  If you are lucky you could compare numbers and you would be in the ball game because you are already ahead in that you do not owe a Label millions of dollars for their recording and promotion expertise.Of course you are behind the eight ball in terms of ticket sales, but the actual product sales numbers might surprise you.  You can now record your own music for a nominal sum at small but worthy studio, or do it yourself at home.  The key to all of this in my mind is that wonderful venue: Youtube.

I think without a doubt that this is where the independent artist can promote effectively to his hearts content.
And I will write more on that next time.