Digital Music Marketing Is Boring

Over the last few years digital campaigns for new albums and releases have had increased budgets, more time and a much bigger place in the overall marketing mix.

The work done by a digital department or independent company has come to be seen as crucial to driving sales and creating engagement. In fact the digital presence of an artist is now more sought-after than the actual quality of the music itself. A&R people will ask how many email addresses on the mailing list and if there has been a video that has ‘gone viral’. These are the stand-out indicators of the likely success of an album now.

Despite digital having this increased importance and there being a greater understanding of how to use it, campaigns are mostly dull and boring carbon-copies of the same idea.

If you walk into any marketing meeting at any mid to large record label you can guarantee to hear that the plan for ‘digital’ involves a free download, a remix competition and a stream of the album. The record will be pre-ordered with some sort of exclusive content and iTunes will have two bonus tracks that the artist didn’t deem good enough for the album itself.

It’s all perfectly well and good, but boy is it dull. With the opportunity to reach an unlimited audience, a starting point of great artwork, songs and lyrics to spark the creative juices and with pre-existing fans, why the heck is it like this?

Why do artists put up with having spent months in a studio tweaking every sound and laying down hours of different takes to get their musical expression correct and then have their marketing be a remix competition and giving away a free track.

I’m not saying that we have all the answers and can do this on every campaign, but it is up to us and the marketing departments at all labels to use digital creatively and not just go through the same motions on every record.