10 Tips for Viral Marketers From a Military Propaganda Manual
Monday, December 07, 2009
Do you know that signature line from Henry Jenkins about how if it doesn't spread, it's dead? Yes, well, this is the "if it doesn't spread, you are dead" kind of thing: a military rumor manual dated 1943, now declassified, and unearthed by a colleague of mine. Plenty of solid insight for the designers of spreadable media, some already familiar from the books like Made to Stick
and Rumor Psychology
, written more than half a century after this document. My top ten favorites follow, mostly verbatim. And I really like how they use of "design" and "rumor" in the same sentence:
1. Effective rumor design requires special kinds of intelligence on Rumor Targets.2. The design of a rumor is largely determined by the job it has to do. The slogan-type rumor ("England will fight to the last Frenchman") is especially adapted to summarizing opinions which are already widely accepted. Narrative-type rumors, on the other hand, aim at introducing information which will create or shape new attitudes.
3. The successful propaganda rumor is self-propelling in a high degree, retains its original content with a minimum of distortion, and confirms to strategic requirements.
4. The form and content of a rumor should be tailor-made for the channel through which it is to be initiated. (The best type of rumor to be spread through diplomatic circles: clever epigrams.) Different channels of rumor initiation and dissemination frequently require different forms and contents for the rumor.
5. A successful rumor must take advantage of the state of mind of the people for whom it is intended.
6. The rumor should be sufficiently brief and simple to survive in memory of successive narrators.
7. The rumor's plot should recapitulate precedents and traditions in the history and folklore of the group.
8. A successful rumor is a function of the momentary interests and circumstances of the group. It provides justification for suppressed fears, hatreds, or desires.
9. Unless most subtly handled, counter-rumors may emphasize and increase the effectiveness of the rumor to be countered.
10. Design different rumors that reveal the same "information".
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Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Rumor Has It...? 10 Tips for Viral Marketers From a Military Propaganda Manual
| 
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
Your Glass Half-Empty / Half-Full? From The NYT. For Media, a Sunset Is Followed Quickly by a Sunrise
Historically, young women and men who sought to thrive in publishing made their way to Manhattan. Once there, they were told, they would work in marginal jobs for indifferent bosses doing mundane tasks and then one day, if they did all of that without whimper or complaint, they would magically be granted access to a gilded community, the large heaving engine of books, magazines and newspapers.
Beyond that, all it took to find a place to stand on a very crowded island, as E. B. White suggested, was a willingness to be lucky. Once inside that velvet rope, they would find the escalator that would take them through the various tiers of the business and eventually, they would be the ones deciding who would be allowed to come in.
As even casual readers of media news know, those assumptions now sound precious, preposterous even. Calvinistic ideals are no match for macromedia economics that have vaporized significant components of the business model that drives traditional publishing.
The most popular books of the holiday season have become cat toys in a price war between online and offline retailers. Newspapers still hang onto a portion of seasonal ads, but the retail chains that place them have consolidated into a much smaller cohort, and much of their spending is bifurcated between old and new media marketing. Magazines intended to help the reader primp for Christmas parties are, in many cases, half as big as they were just a few short years ago.
Pages are down, spending is down, revenues are down, and the biggest feature of this holiday season in the media kingdom has been layoffs and buyouts at Condé Nast, Time Inc., The Associated Press, and yes, The New York Times.
(And it’s not just Manhattan-centric endeavors. Published ambition has been diminished by new realities elsewhere, most recently in the announced closing of The Washington Post’s remaining domestic bureaus. Last week, in an interview with Howard Kurtz, the executive editor, Marcus Brauchli, said it plainly: “We are not a national news organization of record serving a general audience.” Yeow.)
That feeling of age, of a coming sunset, is tough to avoid in all corners of traditional publishing. Earlier in November, the New York comptroller said that employment in communications in New York had lost 60,000 jobs since 2000, a year when the media industry here seemed at the height of its powers.
I arrived in New York that same year as part of Inside.com, a digital news site conceived to cover a media space that was converging and morphing into something wholly new. The site covered the mainstream media’s efforts to come to grips with new realities and efforts by new players to cash in on emerging technology.
Few of us could have conceived that in the next decade some of the reigning titans of media would be routed. Profligate dot-com ad money that had fattened print went away in a digital wipeout, and when digital media came back, it was to dine on the mainstream media rather than engorge it. After 2000, jobs in traditional media industries declined at a rate of about 2.5 percent annually and then went into a dive in 2008 or so. (Inside.com, an idea before its time — hey, let’s charge for high-quality, business-oriented content — disappeared after about 18 months.)
That carnage has left behind an island of misfit toys, trains whose cabooses have square wheels and bird fish who are trying to swim in thin air. The skills that once commanded $4 for every shiny word are far less valuable at a time when the supply of both editorial and advertising content more or less doubles every year.
Where do all the burgeoning pixels come from? Everywhere, and cheap at that. An outfit called Demand Media now tests headlines for reader salience and cranks out thousands of articles and videos daily that it pays about $20 apiece for.
Web crawlers grab expensive content and replicate it far away from the organizations that produce it. Various media labs are now testing algorithms that assemble facts into narratives that deliver information, no writers required. The results would not be mistaken for literary journalism, but on the Web, pretty good — or even not terrible — is often good enough.
For those of us who work in Manhattan media, it means that a life of occasional excess and prerogative has been replaced by a drum beat of goodbye speeches with sheet cakes and cheap sparkling wine. It’s a wan reminder that all reigns are temporary, that the court of self-appointed media royalty was serving at the pleasure of an advertising economy that itself was built on inefficiency and excess. Google fixed that.
Certain stalwart brands will survive and even thrive because of a new scarcity of quality content for niche audiences that demand more than generic information. The chip that was implanted in me when I arrived at this newspaper — you might call it New York Times Exceptionalism — leads me to conclude that this organization will be one of those, but the insurgency continues apace.
Those of us who covered media were told for years that the sky was falling, and nothing happened. And then it did. Great big chunks of the sky gave way and magazines tumbled — Gourmet!? — that seemed as if they were as solid as the skyline itself. But to those of us who were here back in September of 2001, we learned that even the edifice of Manhattan itself is subject to perforation and endless loss.
So what do we get instead? The future, which is not a bad deal if you ignore all the collateral gore. Young men and women are still coming here to remake the world, they just won’t be stopping by the human resources department of Condé Nast to begin their ascent.
For every kid that I bump into who is wandering the media industry looking for an entrance that closed some time ago, I come across another who is a bundle of ideas, energy and technological mastery. The next wave is not just knocking on doors, but seeking to knock them down.
Somewhere down in the Flatiron, out in Brooklyn, over in Queens or up in Harlem, cabals of bright young things are watching all the disruption with more than an academic interest. Their tiny netbooks and iPhones, which serve as portals to the cloud, contain more informational firepower than entire newsrooms possessed just two decades ago. And they are ginning content from their audiences in the form of social media or finding ways of making ambient information more useful. They are jaded in the way youth requires, but have the confidence that is a gift of their age as well.
For them, New York is not an island sinking, but one that is rising on a fresh, ferocious wave.
E-mail: carr@nytimes.com
http://twitter.com/carr2nRecommend Next Article in Business (39 of 41) » A version of this article appeared in print on November 30, 2009, on page B1 of the New York edition.
From AdAge. Customer Centricity Is More Than Just a Marketing Trend
Stay on top of the news, sign up for our free newslettersWhy Customer Centricity Is More Than a Marketing Trend
Its Definition Has Implications That Should Reach Deep Into the Marketing Organization
by Michael Radigan
Published: November 30, 2009We live in a world of trends. The Walkman, Pinot Noir, the Lambada, animated gifs, tree hugging, the mullet. Some endure; some don't. One recent trend in marketing is customer centricity.
Michael Radigan Nearly 2 million results -- that's how many pages show up on Google when you enter the keywords "customer centricity" (heck, it even has its own Wikipedia page). The philosophy is far from radical, but it's also one that is sadly not commonly executed in many marketing organizations. So what does "customer centricity" mean, anyway? A dime-store definition is this: "Customer centricity" means focusing on the customer you're talking to rather than on the product you're trying to push.
Seems simple enough, doesn't it? But this deceptively simple definition has implications that should reach deep into the vitals of a marketing organization.
Let me play this out a bit more. Let's assume that you acknowledge the concept of customer lifetime value. Are you also factoring in the expense of that marketing? If so, my guess is that you're looking at it at a global level (campaigns or products or programs), because breaking the expense side of the equation down to a customer view can be technologically challenging. It requires boatloads of data and sophisticated analytical models based on more time-series regression analyses than you can shake a stick at. So, mostly, we take a fairly straightforward propensity-to-purchase model and rank our audience. Then we select the top X deciles in that ranking and invest.
In a truly customer-centric world, that's no longer good enough.
Previously, I wrote on the topic of "wasted conversations," and there was some lively debate about "missing the importance of brand awareness." However, brand awareness, brand preference, brand impact, etc., can all be measured and tracked. Certainly, a single conversation doesn't have to result in an immediate sale, and that's why the lifetime-customer view is so fundamental to a customer-centric philosophy. Repeat business is what makes our Wall Street godfathers happy, after all.
Another implication of this customer-centric, lifetime-value view of the marketing relationship is this: We have to stop living in a 90-day world. This is particularly important when it comes to the importance of factors like brand awareness, because the measurable effect of brand advertising on sales lags behind that of stimulated sales, stubbornly refusing to limit itself to a convenient 90-day window of time. We not only have to shift from product centricity, we also have to move away from calendar centricity.
So. Here we are on Planet Customer Centricity. Let's take a look around. We embrace the concept of customer lifetime value, our horizon stretches way beyond the fiscal quarter, and we understand the role of brand advertising as much as we know that of the directed-sales stimulus. Now, let's take another look at the expense side.
"Given your current propensity to purchase, Judy Six-Pack, we can send you an e-mail, but we can't send you a $5 coupon. Or, we can talk to you on Twitter, or through a Super Bowl ad, but we can't afford to send you a catalog. Because if we do, our aggregate CLTV/E won't hit target."
Now we know who is worth talking to, and how, and when. For those "wasted conversations," we still have non-addressable, wide-reaching, inexpensive "air cover" to build and maintain awareness, to increase propensity to purchase. Now, our job is to convert the customer from a waste of our resources into an asset that will provide lifetime value to us at an acceptable level of investment. How will we do that? By offering Judy Six-Pack value in return. Yes, another funnel.
So, moving from Earth to Planet Customer Centricity isn't merely a shift in focus from widgets to individuals. It's a whole new marketing mindset that will transform much of current strategic planning, marketing and media optimization, and force us to revisit the way we conduct conversations with our customers.
So here's a revised definition: Customer centricity means focusing on the customer, both in terms of the value you offer, but also in terms of the long-term value that the customer will provide in return.
The good news is that by embracing a truly customer-centric philosophy, your CFO will be a much happier camper, because now you can quantify your investments and returns in a way she understands.
There are plenty of ways that your customers will benefit, too, but I'll save that for another post. Right now, I have an appointment with my barber. Goodbye, mullet.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
2 Comments
By FFcommunicator | charlotte, NC November 30, 2009 02:12:21 pm:Yes, that's the way it's supposed to be but agencies are slow to understand this model. Firms and their clients must establish and nurture trust. Sadly, many firms are still out there trying to make a quick buck. Read "The Trust Manifesto" at http://www.famefoundry.com/1085/the-trust-manifesto@FFcommunicator
Fame FoundryBy KilmanAtwood | dallas, TX November 30, 2009 02:44:33 pm:Michael,
What you want your customers to think of your brand is "wow, they think of everything." The only way to get there is with data, and as you put it "boatloads of it."When customers start saying "they really get me and they think of everything" is when you have become customer centric. You have to understand your customer, and they need to understand you. It's extremely hard because large brands have to pool everyone together in user groups and other breakdowns because it is just to expensive to have each customer as it's own data point.
Customer centricity is much more achievable for small businesses. Small businesses need to get a system down early and invest into that system as the company grows. Companies trying to become this are behind a huge 8-ball.
Adam Atwood
Kilman Atwood Inc.
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Friday, November 27, 2009
Thank you, Lifehacker. 61 Free Apps We're Most Thankful For
As we prepare to stuff our faces with a bountiful Thanksgiving feast, we turn our Thanksgiving spirit to the gobs of free software we love to say thank you to the developers, and to give our computers a feast of their own.
Earlier this week we asked you to share the free apps you're most thankful for, and after rounding up thousands of your suggestions, considering our own favorites, and performing a little spreadsheet magic, we've cooked up our own cornucopia of excellent free software and webapps we're extremely thankful for. So whether you're an American celebrating the season or not, the selection of apps below is like gravy-drenched turkey and mashed potatoes for your computer. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!
61 Free Desktop Applications, Webapps, and Tools We're Most Thankful For
- Firefox (see also: Power User's Guide to Firefox 3, Top 10 Firefox 3.5 Features)
- VLC (see also: Master Your Digital Media with VLC, VLC Hits 1.0 with Better Playback and File Support)
- CCleaner (see also: Five Best Windows Maintenance Tools)
- Dropbox (see also: Use Dropbox for More Than Just File Syncing, Sync Files and Folders Outside Your My Dropbox Folder)
- 7-Zip (see also: Five Best File Compression Tools)
- OpenOffice.org (see also: OpenOffice.org 3.1's Usability Tweaks, OpenOffice.org Screenshots Preview a Ribbon-Like Toolbar)
- Google Chrome (see also: The Power User's Guide to Google Chrome, 2009 Edition)
- µTorrent (see also: Tweak uTorrent's Settings for Faster Downloads, Five Best BitTorrent Applications)
- Notepad++ (see also: Five Best Text Editors, AutoSave Adds Reassurance to Notepad++ Editing)
- Gmail (see also: Our full Gmail coverage)
- GIMP (see also: Gimp 2.7 Beta Improves Text Editing, Streamlines Saving)
- Paint.NET (see also: Paint.NET Releases Big Update, Still a Killer Photoshop Alternative, Paint.NET Plugin Lets You Open Photoshop Files)
- Microsoft Security Essentials (see also: Microsoft Security Essentials Free Antivirus App Leaves Beta, Stop Paying for Windows Security; Microsoft's Security Tools Are Good Enough)
- Revo Uninstaller (see also: Lifehacker Pack 2009: Our List of Essential Free Windows Downloads)
- Evernote (see also: Evernote 3.5 Beta Brings Tons of Tiny Fixes to Windows, Expand Your Brain with Evernote)
- Thunderbird (see also: Thunderbird 3 Release Candidate Available for Download)
- Audacity (see also: Geek to Live: Make a ringtone from any MP3)
- ImgBurn (see also: Turn Your PC into a DVD Ripping Monster, Five Best CD and DVD Burning Tools)
- Picasa (see also: Picasa 3.5 Organizes Your Photos with Facial Recognition)
- Skype (see also: Our full Skype coverage)
- Pidgin (see also: Ten Must-Have Plug-ins to Power Up Pidgin, Five Best Instant Messengers)
- Ubuntu (see also: First Look at Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala, Dual-Boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu in Perfect Harmony)
- iTunes (see also: iTunes 9 Improves Syncing, Network Sharing, More)
- foobar2000 (see also: Screenshot Tour: The beautiful and varied world of foobar2000, Hack Attack: Roll your own killer audio player with foobar2000)
- Foxit Reader (see also: Five Best PDF Readers, Lifehacker Pack 2009: Our List of Essential Free Windows Downloads)
- FileZilla (see also: Five Best FTP Clients, Build a Home FTP Server with FileZilla)
- VirtualBox (see also: The Beginner's Guide to Creating Virtual Machines with VirtualBox)
- TrueCrypt (see also: Geek to Live: Encrypt your data, Five Best Portable Applications)
- Avast! (see also: Five Best Antivirus Applications)
- Defraggler (see also: Five Best Disk Defragmenters)
- KeePass (see also: Eight Best KeePass Plug-Ins to Master Your Passwords, How to Use Dropbox as the Ultimate Password Syncer)
- Opera (see also: Opera 10.10 with Unite Media Server Released)
- AVG (see also: AVG 9 Free Now Available for Download)
- Digsby (see also: Five Best Instant Messengers, Digsby Sees the Light, Removes (Some) Bundled Crapware)
- Google Reader (see also: Our full Google Reader coverage)
- Winamp (see also: Win7shell Adds Windows 7 Jump List Support to Winamp)
- Google Earth (see also: Google Earth 5.1 Speeds Up Your World Browsing)
- TeraCopy (see also: Five Best Alternative File Copiers)
- Launchy (see also: Our full Launchy coverage)
- Transmission (see also: Lifehacker Pack 2009: Our List of Essential Free Mac Downloads)
- Eclipse IDE
- SpyBot Search & Destroy (see also: Five Best Malware Removal Tools)
- Adium (see also: Adium Updates with Security Fixes, Better Facebook Integration)
- PuTTY (see also: Add Tabs to PuTTY with PuTTY Connection Manager)
- Songbird (see also: Songbird 1.0 Release Official, Fixes Bugs, Plays iTunes Purchases, Killer Add-ons Make Songbird So Much Better)
- Sumatra PDF (see also: Sumatra 1.0 is a Blazing Fast Replacement for Adobe Reader)
- XBMC (see also: Build a Silent, Standalone XBMC Media Center On the Cheap, Customize XBMC with These Five Awesome Skins, Turbo Charge Your New XBMC Installation)
- Blender (see also: Learn Blender with free e-book)
- CDBurnerXP (see also: Five Best CD and DVD Burning Tools)
- Everything (see also: Everything Finds Windows Files As You Type, Top 10 Tiny & Awesome Windows Utilities)
- HandBrake (see also: HandBrake Updates to 0.9.4 with Over 1,000 Changes, 64-Bit Support)
- Rainmeter (see also: Rainmeter 1.0 Brings the Enigma Desktop to Everyone)
- AutoHotkey (see also: Turn Any Action into a Keyboard Shortcut, Hack Attack: Knock down repetitive email with AutoHotKey)
- Google Calendar (see also: Our full Google Calendar coverage)
- MediaMonkey (see also: MediaMonkey 3.2 Syncs with More Devices, Adds Auto Folder Watching)
- Quicksilver (see also: A beginner's guide to Quicksilver)
- WinSCP
- Google Voice (see also: Make Unlimited Free Calls on Your Cellphone with Google Voice, How to Ease Your Transition to Google Voice)
- Boxee (see also: Build a Cheap But Powerful Boxee Media Center, Boxee to Launch Beta with Loads of New Features)
- AdBlock Plus (see also: Top 10 Must-Have Firefox Extensions, 2009 Edition)
- Media Player Classic (see also: Five Best Video Players)
In case you're curious, here's a broad look at how your votes broke down among the 10 most popular:
The list above represents every application that garnered roughly ten votes or above. The highest vote-earner, Firefox, pulled in a couple hundred. If you're interested in how the full count went down, you can check out a Google Spreadsheet of the results here. Happy Thanksputering!
Send an email to Adam Pash, the author of this post, at tips+adam@lifehacker.com.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Aarggh... Where was this article when I was fronting my high school garage band? From Forbes. Digital Toolkit For Rockers
So you want to be a rock and roll star? You'll need more than an electric guitar, a few gigs and some cool T-shirts.
© Kirk Weddle/Getty Images
Recording
There are a variety of software products on the market, including Apple's GarageBand, which comes loaded on all new Mac models. (It also allows you to upload your creation to your iTunes account.) Cakewalk's Sonar Home Studio 7 and Digidesign's Pro Tools are also popular products.
Digital Distribution
After recording, the next step is getting your work up on the Web. MySpace and Facebook accounts are typically the first steps for a band's Internet presence. Artists can also upload their music at www.amiestreet.com, where song pricing rises with its demand. For a small fee, musicians can establish an account with Tunecore, a digital music distributor that's a popular way to get one's music on iTunes. Artists can also apply directly to sell on iTunes at www.apple.com/itunes/content-providers/. Another popular networking and content management site--which even allows you to create an iPhone app for your band (albeit for a $195 activation fee)--is www.ilike.com.
CDs
For those looking to sell physical CDs as well as downloads, try CDBaby. Pricing begins at $35 per album. And since some distribution networks work together, an account with CDBaby or Tunecore can allow fans to buy and hear your music from the enormous catalogue at www.lala.com. To get your songs heard on Internet radio station Pandora.com, you'll need to apply by sending the company a physical CD. More information is available at http://blog.pandora.com/faq/#31.
Help, Please
Since all of this can be a bit time consuming, there are companies, such as ReverbNation, that serve as one-stop shops to help artists promote themselves. ReverbNation distributes music to retailers and allows bands to create their own electronic press kits, and Web sites with widgets for videos, tour schedules, merchandising and other items. It also provides musicians with data about their fans so they can better target their audience. The cost to access ReverbNation's tools is $35 per release per year.
And for the musician looking to gig beyond his or her local venues, try www.sonicbids.com. For $6 a month, artists can create electronic press kits and find out about gigs, including big events like the annual CMJ Music Marathon in New York.
© Laurence Moutin/Getty Images
Background Reading
As always, knowledge is power. It should go without saying that each site has its own terms and cost structures, so read the fine print. Many artists increasingly find that they need to handle their own legal, accounting and publicity work, meaning a strong knowledge of the music business is essential. Among the many books on the changing industry: The Future of Music by David Kusek and Gerd Leonhard; The Indie Band Survival Guide by Randy Chertkow and Jason Feehan; and Donald S. Passman's All You Need to Know About the Music Business, an industry classic, just revised for the digital era.
In the end, however, nothing substitutes for talent and hard work. That means honing your craft through practice, performance and recording. "If you are good, word will start to spread," says industry analyst Bob Lefsetz.
The music biz AS WE KNOW IT may be threatened. Or is it? Read on and let the music play! Business Plan: Become A Rock Star
Somewhere just south of the Canadian border, Jesse Elliott, the lead singer and primary songwriter for the rock band These United States, is typing out a message on the band's Twitter account.
"TORONTO! The Drake! TONIGHT!" it proclaims, announcing the next stop on the group's current tour.
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The band, which hails from Washington, D.C., and Lexington, Ky., is keenly aware of the power of the Internet to build a fan base. Elliott tweets regularly, and the group's MySpace page features "widgets" like video links and a tour schedule, as well as links to iTunes and Amie Street, where listeners can buy These United States' music.
"Technology has kind of cleared the way for bands like us to make an impact," he says.
It has undoubtedly up-ended the music industry, putting the creation, distribution and marketing of music in the hands of individual musicians. In the post-Napster era, the number of would-be recording artists is booming, but for independent musicians, it's increasingly difficult to rise above the pack. That means the story of the emerging rock band looking to make a living from music is more than ever a small business tale.
"They're having to be much more entrepreneurial and build their own buzz if they want to get a company to notice them," says Donald Passman, author of All You Need to Know About the Music Business, an industry favorite.
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To be sure, These United States since early 2008 has had the help of an independent record company, United Interests. But representatives from the label say it was the group's MySpace presence, as well as Elliott's ability to work the blogs and the band's nonstop touring that grabbed their attention. Of course, they dug the songs as well.
Even for signed acts, social networking can complement a record company's publicity efforts and boost record sales. But for groups that think of themselves as musical start-ups, it's easier than ever before to start generating revenue. All one needs is some recording software and Web savviness. An account with a digital distributor like Tunecore allows artists to sell songs through Apple's iTunes store, eMusic and Amazon.com.
Not surprisingly, the digital revolution has created a niche for companies that facilitate online marketing and distribution work for budding rock stars. Through ReverbNation, which has nearly 500,000 artists as members, musicians can create Web pages, digital press kits and access widgets for their Web sites. The company will also send music to online retailers, and it provides artists with data about their fans.
ReverbNation Chief Executive Mike Doernberg says bands can "harvest the value" of this data. For example, a group might find that most fans access its music through MySpace. With this information, the band can tweak its MySpace page to direct visitors to other sites where it has a lot of control over content. Knowing one's Web site traffic numbers is important too, since record companies consider metrics like unique visitors and number of downloads when they're considering offering an artist a deal.
Record companies are also using digital tools to help them find new acts. For example, using Tunecore's technology, three Universal Music Group labels earlier this month launched Web sites where musicians can upload their songs for consideration by talent scouts: www.unimodigitaldistribution.com, www.republicdd.com, www.idjfirstlook.com and www.interscopedigitaldistribution.com.
However, there's a caveat to all of this digital wizardry: None of it matters if artists ignore the principles of small businesses in every industry.
"The first criterion is you have to be good, which almost no acts are," says Bob Lefsetz, an industry analyst who runs the Lefsetz Letter, a popular and candid industry blog. "If we find something good, we want to tell everybody we know about it."
In the same vein, nothing replaces hard work. A prime example: Seattle-based musician Eric Elbogen, whose project Say Hi is a true do-it-yourself effort. For years Elbogen has handled his own recording, accounting and business management, releasing five records between 2002 and 2008. He now works with Barsuk Records, which this year released his latest album, "Oohs and Aahs." Say Hi also tours constantly, and Elbogen has had his music placed on popular shows like Gossip Girl and Melrose Place.
Getting one's music on TV can be difficult, but it's not impossible. Rumblefish is a Portland, Ore.-based company that helps artists get their music licensed for commercial use. Alexandra Patsavas, owner of Chop Shop Music Supervision in Los Angeles, says bands typically have their music sent to her through a reputable agency (this gives a music supervisor comfort that any legal work is being handled correctly), but it's also common for a group to simply submit its work directly.
According to Passman, independent and emerging artists have one advantage when it comes to getting heard on TV: "They're cheap."
That brings up an important point: Don't expect to become rich doing any of this. Getting a record deal from a major label is still a long shot. Labels undoubtedly can help artists get their careers to the next level. For example, former MySpace phenom Colbie Caillat became a bona fide pop star after signing with Universal Republic Records. But some acts like working with smaller, independent labels, and others prefer not to sign at all, keeping control over their work (and revenue) in their own hands.
Whatever route an artist chooses, technology has made it easier than ever before to make a little money from music, and if one combines this with hard work, it's even possible to make a living at it.
"In some regard, it's become a level playing field," says Elbogen.
See: "Digital Toolkit For Rockers"
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