Music Online: Gina Hubbard

Affiliate marketing is an Internet-based marketing practise in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliates marketing effects. It is often called performance marketing.  It is a way for a company to sell its products by signing up individuals or companies (“affiliates”) who market the company’s products for a commission

Affiliate marketing can overlap other forms of Internet marketing, by using ideas such as advertising, search engine optimisation. Or less Orthodox methods like publishing reviews of products/services offered by their partner/affiliate.

Amazon take part in affiliate marketing, where people are able to sell their own products through Amazons site, amazon take a percentage of the sales. Amazon launched their affiliate marketing in July 1996.

Other sites which offer these kinds of services on a large scale are price comparison sites, but affiliate marketing can be found in a much smaller scale randomly all over the Internet and is a smart way of selling your product and marketing it to a larger target audience.

Currently the most active sectors for affiliate marketing are the adult, gambling and retail industry.

The commission that people can receive through affiliate marketing can be given/measured in three ways.

CPS – Cost per sale: used by 80% of affiliate marketing programs

CPA- Cost per action: used by 19% of affiliate marketing programs

CPC – cost per click. Pay per click requires one additional step in the conversion process to generate revenue for the publisher: A visitor must not only be made aware of the advertisement, but must also click on the advertisement to visit the advertiser’s website.

CPM- cost per 1000. Cost per 1000 requires only that the publisher make the advertising available on his website and display it to his visitors in order to receive a commission

A very useful site for anyone interested in selling a product through affiliate marketing is Clickbank. Clickbank claim to have 10000 digital product publishers and 100000 active affiliates. Google Adsense is also an interesting site to look at.

An interesting way of using Affiliate marketing is through widgets which other people can embed on their sites and through them advertising your product they will get a cut of the sales that people but through their embedded widget. this is something that bands are doing now with embedded music download players that other people can embed on their sites helping to sell downloads and promote the band. the site who has embedded the widget can receive commission from the sales.

Affiliate marketing programmes should include terms and conditions against spam, but there are sometimes dangers of spam, cookies and adware.

Instant messaging is a form of real-time communication between 2 or more people, based on typed text over the Internet or some kind of internal network/intranet. Instant messaging first appeared on multiuser operating systems in the 1960’s but was not made widely available in the state that people use today until the mid 1990’s.

Examples of commonly used instant messaging services are MSN/Window’s Live Messenger, Yahoo, AOL. Even social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook now have their own instant messaging systems, although they do not have as many features

Although it is realtime messaging, companies such as msn now provide offline messaging, so that when the user comes back online messages can be waiting for them.

Instant messaging services can provide content like, offline messaging, video calls, conference calls, group conversations, voice calls, conversation logging, file sharing folders, file sending, contact lists, streaming content (realtime streaming news).

They can be downloaded and used from a computer or used whist browsing the net and not downloaded such as webmessenger and ebuddy and can even be used on mobile phones.

Instant messaging really exploded on the Internet scene in November 1996. That’s when Mirabilis introduced ICQ, a free instant-messaging utility that anyone could use. ICQ, shorthand for “I seek you,” uses a software application, called a client, that resides on your computer. The client communicates with an ICQ server whenever you are online and the client is running.The ICQ model is the basis for most instant-messaging utilities on the market today

How instant messaging works:

1. You go to the download page and get a copy of the free software client for your computer.
2. You install the software and open the client.
3. The client tries to connect to the server. It uses a proprietary protocol for communication.
4. Once the client is connected to the server, you can enter your name and password to log in to the server. If this is your first time on, you can sign up for an account and immediately begin using it. When the server verifies your name and password, you are logged in.
5. The client sends the server the connection information (IP address and number of the port assigned to the client) of the computer you are using. It also provides the user with the names of everyone in your contacts list.
6. The server creates a temporary file that has the connection information for you and the list of your contacts. It then checks to see if any of the users in your contact list are currently logged in.
7. If the server finds any of your contacts logged in, it sends a message back to the client on your computer with the connection information for that user. The server also sends your connection information to the people in your contact list that are signed on.
8. When your client gets the connection information for a person in your contact list, it changes the status of that person to “online.” You click on the name of a person in your contact list who is online, and a window opens that you can enter text into. You enter a message and click “send” or hit return to communicate with that person.
9. Because your client has the IP address and port number for the computer of the person that you sent the message to, your message is sent directly to the client on that person’s computer. In other words, the server is not involved at this point. All communication is directly between the two clients.
10. The other person gets your instant message and responds. The window that each of you sees on your respective computers expands to include a scrolling dialog of the conversation. Each person’s instant messages appears in this window on both computers.
11. When the conversation is complete, you close the message window. Eventually, you go offline and exit. When this happens, your client sends a message to the server to terminate the session. The server sends a message to the client of each person on your contact list who is currently online to indicate that you have logged off. Finally, the server deletes the temporary file that contained the connection information for your client. In the clients of your contacts that are online, your name moves to the offline status section.

http://communication.howstuffworks.com/instant-messaging2.htm

Useful sites:

Windows Live webmessenger

Ebuddy

Windows Live Messenger

Yahoo Messenger

Kevin Kelly (from wired magazine) came up with the concept of ‘1000 true fans’, it is a concept that artists were already using but he decided to formalise the idea.

“A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, crafts-person, performer, animator, designer, video-maker or author, in other words, anyone producing works of art needs to acquire only 1000 true fans to make a living.”

if each true fan spends $100 annually = $100000

The number of true fans needed to make as living may vary with different types of artists.

It can be looked at as an extension of the Long-tail theory as it means that artists get enough coverage and sales to survive in the industry. You need to convert 1000 lesser fans into 1000 true fans to raise sales out of the flat-line of the long-tail.

A true fan is defined by Kelly as “someone who will buy anything and everything you produce, drive 200 miles to see you sing, but reissued box sets even though they already have it, go to signings, but all the merchandise.

To make sure these 10000 true fans stay true the artist would need to maintain a connection and key contact with them.

The 1000 true fans approach creates a place for the artist between poverty and stardom. Therefore if people aimed for true fans instead of hit records they could still obtain a suitable income.

Scott Andrew developed a variation on Kelly’s concept. he stated that if you can 5000 fans that spent $20 each which would create $100 000 which may be more obtainable than Kelly’s 1000 true fans who would spend $100 each.

Useful Links:

Kevin Kelly’s Blogs:

1000 True Fans

Against 1000 true fans

I chose to look in more detail at Merchandise; a definition of merchandise is: commodities offered for sale.

Merchandise in relation to the music industry is quite widely spread; it is available in many shapes and forms and from many different places. Merchandise can be obtained from record retailers, specific merchandise sites, general retailers, at gigs and concerts, through band websites, sites such as eBay; the list goes on… Whether it is official or not, merchandise can be found for almost anyone or anything.

Some companies are also making it easier for unknown bands to create their own merchandise which they can then sell on at a profit. If I wanted Merchandise with my own name on it, all I would need to do would be to email my logo to a company such as: Zazzle and they would manufacture my own merchandise. Some sites offer a chance to sell your merchandise in your own online shop through their site; others will send you the merchandise to distribute yourself independently. Merchandise is a way of advertising and promoting the artist themselves or a product such as the artist’s new album. Due to the demand for merchandise it is a good way to make substantial amounts of money. Music merchandise has become a worldwide concept. It is rare to go to a gig that does not have a merchandise stall, selling tour t-shirts etc.

Examples of places merchandise is available: Mcfly store, HMV, ebtm, grindstore, eBay selling items such as: clothing e.g. t-shirts, hoodies, hats etc bags, posters, stickers, badges.

There are many people involved in the merchandise business; the bands/record labels who want the merchandise produced, the designers who come up with the ideas and logos to be printed on the merchandise; the companies who actually produce the merchandise and also the avenues through which the merchandise is distributed and sold to the fans that wish to purchase it.

The concept of merchandise works well because when people get involved with an artist they want to be seen wearing/with objects associated with that artist, as a fan of them. In this way they can be seen as supporting the artist and in turn making the artist more money by buying the artist’s merchandise. Merchandise is a good form of advertising; if you can get people walking around in a hoodie with your name on it this creates publicity and more interest in your brand.

Although there is already a wide market for merchandise I think there are lots of interesting ideas that could be developed relating to the topic.

Recording Studios.

There are a lot of sites for different recording studios advertising the services they provide and information about themselves. e.g Ignition Studios and Madhouse; these were just purely for the independent recording studios. I also found some sites which gave directories of Recording studios across the country,
but I could not find any other information which I found helpful or interesting.

Retailers

I found quite a lot of information on music retailers.

A list of UK music retailers and also the top UK music retailers of 2007.

There where also online retailers of digital music such as itunes, and hmv digital.

Sites such as HMV, Amazon, and Play who who use websites for their music retail and ship from places other than the UK so they can cut costs.

There are also articles on Music retail and how independent music retailers are losing money as Cd sales fall and downloads increase, this is a problem that Music retailers are facing.

Merchandise

I found many sites which sell music merchandise e.g. Grindstore, BackStreetMerch, The McFly Official Store. These are all Online Shops selling music merchandise. There are also sites that help you to create your own merchandise and help with the promotion and distribution of it such as Trinity Street.

I didn’t find anything else which was of much interest; only sites where I could design or purchase merchandise.

Conclusion

I did not find much information on recording studios and I did not find them a very interesting topic.

I found a lot of information on Music Retailers and the problems that they are facing but I think that Merchandise would be a more interesting subject to pursue as there are lots of new possibilities within it that I could explore. So out of the three possibilities I have chosen Merchandise.

The owl and the pussycat went to sea

in a beautiful pea green boat

etc etc etc