NZ musician magazine have just announced that the NZ Album Chart is set to include sales of Albums at gigs.

"RIANZ have announced that to reflect buying pattern changes in the declining retail market, sales of music albums at artists’ gigs will from now on count towards the Official NZ Album Chart. Previously only traditional retail sales counted toward the chart, with online sales added about two years ago.

The new changes open up the chart rules around who is eligible to file sales returns, bringing artists themselves into the equation. Venue sales returns will have to be signed by the artist, the venue and the record company, with the sales figures counted as being made on the day of the gig and eligible for that week’s chart. Strict rules will govern how the returns from gigs are managed and CEO Campbell Smith says RIANZ have the power of audit over every return with some pretty severe penalties for falsifying sales information."

This could have a number of implications for those artists who actually care about getting in to the NZ charts as at present it only takes approx 20 album sales to get in to the top 100 Album chart!

For the independent labels and artists this could mean that you stand a much better chance of getting in to the charts if your primary channel for music sales is direct to fans. On the flip side this could also mean that the big international acts will dominate the top slots in the charts when they play those big gigs at the Vector arena. It will be interesting to see how this is administered and what impact it will have on the chart once it is implemented.

It couldn’t find any evidence online to say NZ is the first country to implement this kind of response to the changing music market, it seems the UK and US charts haven’t implemented this yet and I would guess they never will due to the sheer number of venues and acts involved.

Here’s a few possible implications once this gets up and running, let me know how you think it will impact on music sales and if you even care about the NZ music charts.

• Roy Ayers will reach number 20 in the album charts after selling CD’s at his show in Auckland in October, nice work Roy!
• Ddub dominate the charts in 2009 after playing a 88 date non stop tour of NZ!
• Small collectives of musicians band together to put on regular tours and constantly feature in the charts after selling low budget compilation CD’s at their gigs.
• Bands spend less money on traditional marketing channels to launch their Albums and instead focus on building a strong social media presence so they can mobilise their fans to attend their live shows and buy their CD’s. (you should be doing this already)
• Bands stop playing in-stores and just play proper gigs!
• Mixtapes by talented local hiphop artists get the recognition they deserve.
• Dance music promoters begin to setup record labels and sell music direct to a captive audience.

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This week I’m starting a series of podcasts recorded at a recent seminar I presented in conjunction with The Depot Artspace and The Creative Peoples Center. The seminar took place last month and focused on the subject of promotions for independent musicians. I decided to break the rather large topic of promotions up in to 3 specific areas; tour promotion; album promotion and digital promotion.

This first podcast features Rebecca Caughey covering the topic of tour promotion and marketing. Rebecca is the Managing Director of Funktion Music Media . She currently manages Shapeshifter and Ladi6 and is a tour publicist for artists such as Bic Runga and Brooke Fraser .

I’d like to thank Bec’s for her contribution to the day and the depth of information and advice shared. The full podcast is 85mins long and well worth listening to as it covers topics from the changing role of the artist; writing press releases and bio’s plus a step by step guide covering how to put together a marketing plan for a tour.

Make sure you don’t miss out on the next podcast by either signing up for the Bluevibe studio newsletter or subscribing to the RSS feed. The next podcast features Lauren Clough from Maiden New Zealand Entertainment taking us through a detailed plan of how to launch an album in to the New Zealand market. The final installment focuses on digital promotion and features Matt Turner from Kurb promotions .

***** Update: you can check out all the recordings from the seminar over at the new Creative People’s Centre website. *****

You can also listen to this seminar online over at the excellent online radio station Jam radio . This series of podcasts will feature in a new monthly show I’m putting together for Jam radio focusing on the music industry with advice for musicians covering a range of industry topics and a few interviews with local musicians and industry figures.

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It’s a pleasure to finally let you all know that the EP is now back from mastering (thanks to theproof.co.nz) and ready to be let loose on the big wide world. I’ve discussed a few options for the promotion of the EP in previous posts and wanted to ask a few questions to get some feedback on my ideas.

The first thing I’m working on is a prize promotion to accompany the EP consisting of a Vestax Handytrax turntable; Presonus Inspire 1394 sound card and some vinyl and sample CD’s. I’ve got the gear sorted through a deal with local distributors but what I’m trying to figure out is how should I actually “give them away?”

I really wanted to do the promo giveaway because with this kit anybody can get started making tunes, the sound card comes with cubase so you can load up the samples from vinyl or CD and your away. I started on an emu sampler and playing with trackers and really wanted to get people in to making their own tracks. My big question is how do I make the most out of the promotion. I really want to get this EP out to as many fans as possible and also not lose money on the launch. Simple goals which shouldn’t be too hard to achieve with the right promo.

I have a few idea’s but wanted to ask for your input on the promotion. How do you think I should do it?

• Include an entry form with each CD sold? This could only happen if I get a whole bunch of CD’s done which I don’t really have the budget for?
• Some kind of “buy the full digital EP and be in to win” promotion?
• Everybody who comes to the launch party gets a copy of the EP and is entered in to the draw to win the prize pack?
• Buy one of the tracks from the EP from an online distribution company of your choice and go in to the draw…..
• Register for the Bluevibe newsletter and go in the draw…..

After researching EP sales on CD with quite a few retailers it just doesn’t seem worth getting a run of CD’s pressed up, especially when your an unknown artist. This is the main reason for thinking about going digital only with a batch of promo CD’S. I’ll be uploading the tracks from the EP over the next few weeks so check back for some Bluevibe goodness and drop me a mail or leave a comment with your opinion on the prize pack.

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Finding your fans is something that we all should be doing on a regular basis and one of the simplest ways is through the many social music sites. So here’s a quick outline of my plan for building up my network of fans before I release the EP. This only focuses on the social music sites that I’m currently involved with and doesn’t cover all the aspects of my digital strategy which will also include posting on forums, commenting on blogs etc. If you have any other suggestions for building up my music networks then let me know by adding a comment, any help is always appreciated and I’ll be posting about my experiences with these different strategies as we go along.

So here’s the plan at the moment:

• Myspace – many people think myspace is dead as a way of finding music fans and specifially music buyers but it’s a platform which still needs some attention. I’ve really only been using myspace so far to find collaborators which has been really successful but now I’m going to start building up my network of music fans.
• Last.fm – I have an account but haven’t really been using it so I’m really going to start spending some time getting to know a few of my neighbours and getting involved in the community.
• Facebook – I have my Bluevibe studio page but haven’t really started to push it yet. I need to learn a little more about how to make the most out of the facebook community before getting things going.
• Coopr8 – a great music community out of the UK with some real music lovers on board. This is a niche community site which I’m going to be spending some time on to build up a network for the EP.
• Voeveo – I currently sell my ring tones through Voeveo but they also have a social aspect to the site which I’ll spending more time getting involved with over the coming weeks. I also won a promotion package last month with Voeveo and will be working with the team there to promote the EP.

As you can see focusing on some of the social media sites I’m currently involved with and really making an active contribution to the community is something which I’m hoping will help to build a good level of awareness around the launch of the EP and my music in general. Social music sites should be seen as part of your digital promotion strategy but I actually feel that your music sales should be a secondary consideration behind the huge number of other benefits you will see from being involved in sites like last.fm and Coopr8. Discovering amazing independent artists and supporting the music you love should always be the driving force and not clocking up as many friends as you can find! Call me naive but it’s the real personal interactions which will help the music scene and your career both online and off.

I’ll be posting about the full promotion plan in a few weeks and will be getting a few local experts on board to help me put my plan together. Finding fans for my music in New Zealand will mostly be done through some of the more traditional methods and will consume the larger part of my small budget for this release. I’ll be talking to a few people about how to get really creative with your cash when it comes to promotion and outlining a few of the ideas for you here. If you’d like those posts delivered direct to your inbox then subscribe to my blog and just sit back, relax, listen to some hiphop!

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As part of NZ music month voeveo.com ran a competition to win a $15k promotional package on their website. All you had to do was upload some content to sell on their site and you went in the draw. The good news is (as you probably got from the headline) that I won one of the 5 promotional packages which includes a featured artist page, promotion on the homepage and a google adwords campaign to drive traffic to my page on the voeveo.com website.

Voeveo.com sells content for your mobile phone including audio, video, games and images. I uploaded 4 ring tones to the site which only took me about 20mins to register, complete my profile, and upload and categories the 4 ring tones. You can head over to the Bluevibe studio page on the voeveo website to check out the ring tones. Whats even better is that if you register as a buyer on the site you get $9 prepay on your account which you could use to buy all 4 of the Bluevibe studio ring tones, nice.

Mike from voeveo.com got in touch to let me know I had won the package and has also agreed to hold off on the promotion until the release of the new EP which is now finished and will be out in July. It’ll be great to have the EP available through voeveo.com for all you mobile music consumers and everybody else will be able to grab it through an online music store near you! I’ll keep you informed of the release details in a few weeks time once we’ve got our plan together. This will be the first official Bluevibe studio EP so we’re still working on the best options for the release. I’ll be doing a few posts on independent distribution and promotion over the next few weeks and welcome any thoughts you might have on getting the EP out to the masses.

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Dave Hooper from MusicMarketing.com is setting up a new section of his excellent blog and is giving away free advice to musicians who subscribe to his mailing list. Not only is this a great opportunity for bands it’s also an excellent way for Dave to generate content and get more subscriptions.

Dave will be talking one on one with the “winners”of this offer and sharing his advice with his readers. This looks like a great idea and I’m really looking forward to reading the results, I’ll be subscribing to see if I can get some advice on the release of the new Bluevibe studio EP which is actually one step away from being finished, finally!

It will also be interesting to see who actually gets the free advice? It would be great to see bands from all over the globe, from different genres with different demographics of fans. Will selling an album to punks in the UK be different than selling a dub album to New Zealand fans?

If you write your own blog this type of direct connection with your audience could be a great way to give something back to your readers, create some content and expand your email list all at the same time. As a blogger asking questions of your readers should be something you actively do and I think Dave is taking this to the next level by offering this kind of interaction.

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