The goal of the Indie Artist X Project is to develop a basic, actionable music marketing plan designed around simple strategy, prioritization of tactics, easy to use tools, and a reasonable budget that can be implemented by any artist who has the inclination to follow it. About.com Music Careers, Artists House Music, Hypebot, KnowTheMusicBiz.com, MusicianWages.com and Revolution Number 3 have banded together to create this community based music marketing plan.  We will be working with one anonymous artist to design and implement this music marketing plan then track and report the actual results over a four month period. To keep up with the latest news on the IAXP follow the project on Twitter and Facebook.

Below are the Indie Artist X Project statistics for the month of September:

September Stats:

Band Metrics Score:            241 / Silver

Website Unique Visitors:    979

Website Total Visitors:       1187

Website Sales – CD’s:        $0.00

Website Sales – MP3’s:      $14.99

Website Sales – Merch:      $0.00

Fan List:                                774

Live Show Attendance:       215

Live Show Net Sales:          $850.00

Live Show CD Sales:          $240.00

Live Show Merch Sales:     $320.00

Distribution Sales:              $1,340.61

Licensing Royalties:           $0.00

BMI Royalties:                    $305.56

Soundexchange Royalties:  $0.00

MySpace Royalties:             $0.00

Some notes about September’s IXAP reporting:

·         Indie Artist X spent much of September in the recording studio so they weren’t able to play many live shows. The new songs sound great but the lack of live shows this month definitely impacted the growth of the fan list, live show revenue and direct-to-fan sales of CD’s and merchandise.

·         BMI pays! Indie Artist X received a PRO Royalty check in September from BMI for $305.56. Finding an unexpected check in the mailbox is always a nice surprise.

·         Despite regular IAX plays and streams on Pandora, Last.fm, MySpace, iLike and Imeem there are still no royalties reported or paid from Soundexchange.

·         The indie label that released IAX’s last two records only pays / reports periodically. In September IAX received a check for $1,340.61 for year to date royalties. Distribution is handled through InGrooves.

·         Band Metrics measures activity across several web properties where IAX maintains a presence including iLike, Last.fm, MySpace, Twitter and YouTube. Band Metrics also measures terrestrial radio play but hasn’t picked up any spins to date for IAX. The Band Metrics score for September moved to 241 from 233 in August.

·          Direct CD and Merch sales for August were $0.00. The website ecommerce store is not yet set up for CD and merchandise sales since IAX is still waiting on the artwork files from the indie label that released the last two records.