Podcast your band and music - really simple audio subscription
For the third article in my week of podcasts (here’s the first on podcasting in business and the second on effective podcasting techniques) I thought I’d examine the utterly obvious yet totally overlooked manner in which podcasting is going to change things… music subscription.
It’s almost too simple, consider this (very round the corner) scenario:
I’m a coldplay fan, I want to get the latest coldplay tracks straightaway, I’m more than happy to pay for this & so I subscribe to their ‘latest’ service. Now, with my wireless mp3 device within a couple of minutes of their latest release I have it on my .mp3 player and my credit card has been charged. No shops - no cash - no worries. I could even have subscribed to their free service and got the first 60 seconds / radio version / ad version with an option to purchase or pay. Either way, all I had to do was to do a one click subscribe.
Blogs have broken down the barriers of publishing and podcasting has similar potential for the same reasons.
Not needing for their material to end up in a music store (who will go to music stores anyway?) these bands don’t need the company to get them in there. Not needing the outlay for producing CDs, paper-based artwork and distributing product pretty much anyone with a bit of blogsavvy and some graphic design skills can start this off with no backing required and, if the growth of the blogosphere is anything to go by, if you’re any good then you’re going to get the kind of publicity that you need for things to take off.
“But people have been able to post .mp3s on the web for ever and that hasn’t changed anything!” you might be thinking.
Well, that’s true, and the reason that that’s true is because you are NEVER going to bother to visit a site x times a week to see if any new music has come out. Heck, even if you get an email you’re unlikely to go there and even less likely to burn the thing to a CD or download it. The whole process sucks.
But with a podcast all you have to do is one - click - subscribe.
And maybe, just maybe, this might change the ‘culture of popular crap’ that dominates the recording industry.
- Posted on: June 22nd, 2005
- 3 Comments
- Category: Archives
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Hmmm…this ignores one of the major issues about on-line anything: “Discovery”.
In your case how did you learn you liked Coldplay? Radio, TV, advertising, marketing. All done by the record company to get your dollar from your pocket to theirs.
How does podcasting aid discovery? It clearly doesn’t in any way. Sure you could subscribe to some Coldplay feed, but if you’ve never heard of Coldplay why would you? Recommedation engines(if you like X and Y you might like Z) and search dont solve the problem, as they only marginally reduce the inherent risk(wasting my time & money downloading something I dont want). I can only think of on-line Radio (and associated free podcasts) as a way forward here.
So what does this mean to “the next Coldplay”? It means you’ll have to give it all away at the start,when you are struggling most and least able to do so. So far the number of “internet discovered bands” is really small and will stay this way whilst we have this catch 22. Podcasts contribute only to the problem domain not the solution domain.
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