YouTube Lost and Found Elvis Costello Oliver's Army

Susan Boyles destroys 20th Century marketing Album of year in 6 weeks Beats Taylor Swift End of press release mentality YouTube rules

In six weeks, Susan Boyle has destroyed 20th Century marketing. In the next week or two, Billboard will be announcing its album of the year.

Taylor Swift has had Fearless on the charts the entire year. She toured her tail off (unfortunately did not make Top 10 concerts of the year). Was in the Jonas Brothers and other movies. Yet Boyle, who has had her CD out since Thanksgiving, will beat Swift for CD of the year.

How did Boyle do it? A little thing called YouTube. In 2007, I was thrown out of offices for suggesting YouTube & MySpace presence instead of press releases. Boyle's success is directly from YouTube. You can not turn on a newscast without seeing a YouTube related story.

Today I am advocating SmartPhone apps; getting the same reactions from companies as when I advocated YouTube. You wonder why the economy is bad? 20th Century thinking management!

Why I love YouTube (again) The Gin Blossoms I saw at a Tempe street festival Not an immediate fan What key is that in?

BUILDING THE BAND BRAND: 5 things to do when nothing’s happening

Photo taken from Myspace

You’ve posted to YouTube. You have a MySpace page. It seems like no one is visiting your site. You’re in the dumps about it.

First, are you phrasing it right? An old headline trick I learned long before most readers parents were born – put some drama into it. So instead of saying “Nice sunny day,” rephrase as “Hot sun beats down upon earth.” Same thing, just a little more flair.

Here are five things you can do when nothing is happening:

- Post a Tweet. I like to use Friendfeed. If you’re on Facebook or other sites like Digg it will do the updating. Tried Tweet Deck but did not like.

- Go to MySpace and look up people you can add as friends. I was blown away when Beyonce’s cousin Shanica Knowles contacted me with a friend request. You know Shanica as the ever popular Amber from Hannah Montana. Maybe as Aly and AJ’s co-star in Super Sweet 16 the movie.

Here’s how I do it. I look for people I know and see who they know. Through one artist I found one of the biggest influences on my music – Howlin’ Wolf. An up-and-coming blues band, The Aces, whom I met through LinkedIn, would be wise to go to my page and introduce themselves to Bob Corritore, purveyor of one of the finest blues clubs in the nation, the Rhythm Room.

Same thing with Twitter. Type in the name of someone you want to follow. Can’t find them, then try Ashlee Simpson who will lead you to Papa Joe Simpson who will lead you to Jessica Simpson. See. Easy. You could also go to We Follow if you’re looking for The Real Shaq (why?).

- Post a bulletin on MySpace. Easy and it draws attention. Do it once every other day.

- Check and recheck. Find new places to SELL your MP3s. Fix MySpace. Make those tunes 90 seconds instead of the full song (that’s for YouTube). Are they available to buy at MySpace, Amazon and everywhere?

- Another great networking opportunity. Join LinkedIn and list all the places you’ve listed your MP3s for sale (a sales tool) and ask LinkedIn members if they know of more places to place your MP3s.

Jonas Brothers two time losers per Barbara Walters

The previous post addresses how to market yourself as a musician today and in the future. There are lessons for corporate America as well. It is interesting the biggest music stars of 2008, the Jonas Brothers, failed twice, as Barbara Walters noted.

“This time they got to experience failure together,” Walters said of their being dumped by Columbia Records in 2007. “With no money coming in, they found an audience on the Internet.”

What puzzles me is what road did Taylor Swift take to become such a huge success in seemingly less than a year? Her first CD was released in 2006, but 2008 was her big year, even before the release of “Fearless.” Maybe Wikipedia has the answer, “Swift has surpassed the 179 million mark for music streams on MySpace. She is currently ranked in the Top 10 for the most MySpace visits for all genres of music, and is MySpace's current top-ranking Country artist. Swift is the most searched musical artist on MySpace in 2008.”

Funny how 2008’s two largest bands – Jonas Brothers and Taylor Swift – used MySpace. I would add YouTube as well. Matter of fact, for three years I’ve been recommending these. When will corporate America listen and end this depression (recession for the namby-pamby)?

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