Peter Wells is the SVP of Operations and Customer Advocate at TuneCore. Peter began as a classical pianist, English literature teacher, senior technical writer at Cisco and director of label relations at eMusic, where he built a deep knowledge of the music business.

 Part IV: Good Marketing and Bad

Things get a little tricky from here, because marketing and promotion needs context: what’s right for one person could be very wrong for another, at any price. Everyone has a different idea of “success,” so what is “success” to you? Do you want to:

• fill the local bar every third weekend with forty or fifty happy drinkers, sprinkled with a few die-hard fans?
• fill a football stadium and tour the world on a private jet?
• remain perpetually “alternative,” always outside the mainstream, attracting fans that despise Top 40?
• record and sell your church choir’s concerts only to the congregation?
• see your music up in the biggest, most powerful music store of any kind in the world (iTunes), and don’t care if anyone listens or buys?

How about sales? Is this your hobby or career? Do you want to make back the cost of your instruments or buy a mansion in every major metropolis in the world? Are you supporting a family with your music, or a drug habit, or a charity, or are you hoping for a bit of mad spending cash reserved for fun purchases only? Are you dead-set against MP3s, or compact discs? Are you vinyl only, or compose exclusively on software for DJs to download and mix? Are you against the idea of selling music at all?

TIP #3: Define Your Own Success

Before looking into any kind of marketing and promotion, ask yourself:

• Who do you want to hear your music and why?
• How do you want them to listen?
• Do you want them to buy your music, and when, and how?
• Where do money, fame and your own musical career fit in?

Notice the first question—why should you ask why? Your music is good, right, isn’t that reason enough? And why should it matter how they listen? Isn’t it understood you want them to buy your music? What does “buy your music” really mean? These questions all highlight a trap, and if you don’t ask why, right at the beginning, you’re going to fall into it and exhaust yourself pursuing the wrong marketing and promotion.

Everyone markets and promotes for a different reason. A toothpaste manufacturer is wholly interested in making money (or perhaps branding), and selling toothpaste is how they plan to accumulate it. They promote their toothpaste to encourage people to buy it, they market their toothpaste to drive desire, to build demand. Music isn’t always so commercial: in fact, most people feel contemptuous towards music produced solely to sell or brand. Many consider it crass consumerism, or devoid of art. When you bring in beauty and art and even politics (if you don’t think music can have political aims, listen harder), the goals of creation are often very much at odds with making money.

So get a good idea of what you want your music to do. You wouldn’t be reading this article if you didn’t want it to get into at least a few hands, and presumably you’re not averse to making money when they get it. So now you have to ask “who, when and how,” and each of these has a value. Here are a few scenarios:

I want my music in EVERYONE’S HANDS, IMMEDIATELY, and in EVERY POSSIBLE FORMAT. I’m sure you do, since that means the most people will have the greatest opportunity to become familiar with your music, come to love it and buy it, in whatever format is easiest for them. Making things easy on the consumer means making it rough on the distributor. Are you really unwilling to disappoint the guy who insists on buying your album on 8-track? It’s going to cost you a fortune to make 8-track tapes, and fulfillment is going to be a nightmare (be prepared to ship them one by one). You can have all these, but you’re going to spend millions and millions of your own dollars on TV, radio, print ads, billboards, promotional giveaways, a full blitz. You’ll have to sell more than the Beatles and Elvis combined to make all that money back. No label is going to take that kind of risk on you, and unless your measure of “success” is to get your music to everyone and hope it’s liked, this isn’t a good strategy.

I want my music in AS MANY HANDS AS POSSIBLE as SOON AS POSSIBLE in THE MOST POPULAR FORMATS. Better—now you don’t have to make vinyl or reel-to-reel tapes, you are willing to let it grow a bit (what does “as soon as possible” mean?) and you’re willing to give up on some potential customers. This would still bankrupt any but the biggest labels, and unless your music is so beloved it outsells Cher and Pavarotti, this is another overoptimistic goal.

I want my music to reach AS MANY TEENAGED BOYS IN AMERICA as possible BEFORE THE SUMMER SEASON ENDS as UNENCRYPTED AUDIO FILES. Finally, you’ve reached something that’s actually reasonable, but it’s still wildly expensive. That demographic (teen boys) is heavily exploited, especially in summer. That’s also the group that tends to patronize music pirating software, so you’re running a higher risk by insisting on DRM-free audio formats. Labels target teen boys all the time, as do movies and the snack food industry and just about everyone. It’s possible for you to wade in, but again, heavy on the wallet.

I want my music to reach EVERY CIVIL WAR RE-ENACTOR in RICHMOND, VIRGINIA in time for CHRISTMAS on COMPACT DISKS and MP3s.Christmas is a long way away (I’m writing in August), and there are plenty of services who can help you in time for Christmas, as it’s a common demand. Richmond, Virginia, is a big city, but a little hard work with fliers by you and your friends could probably reach the few physical places where re-enactors gather, and they perhaps have a Website whose administrator you can reach out to. Just about everyone can play a CD these days in America, even if they don’t have a computer, so very few will be disappointed. In fact, you probably already know much of this crowd already, because why else would you be writing music that would appeal to such a narrow group?

Hidden in these scenarios are the keys to understanding not only the right kind of marketing and promotion, but also how to value it, put a hard dollar amount on it, and ultimately deciding where to put your marketing resources.

In Part V, Finding the marketing and promotional sweet spot!