The Indie “Tree in the Woods”

This past week, I had a conversation with Patrick Faucher, the CEO of nimbit (www.nimbit.com) – a leading software company that is empowering independent musicians by giving them an easy way to promote their music, their merchandise, and their brand – and actually earn money doing it. There are other companies out there trying their hand at the same thing, but nimbit is one of the few that I know that makes it extremely easy because they’ve come up with a way to seamlessly integrate a range of promotional tools, all of which are designed to put more dough in the pocket of the fabled “starving artist.”

Interestingly, I’ve had lost of conversations with folks in my network of professional, independent musicians, most of whom agree that they don’t rally know of anyone who is truly “making” money selling stuff on the Internet. The truth is, that’s been a continuous challenge for everyone who has jumped on the web with the goal of making a buck. Even the largest businesses in the world – like HP, Apple, GE, etc., continue to try new ways to crack this nut. In fact, if you remember the dot com explosion in the late 90’s, every business tried to “get on the web” – but most of them couldn’t figure about a way to turn the effort into a revenue stream.

In recent years, however, many large and small business have been able to achieve that goal – and at the end of the day, the main reason they are able to do it is because of one thing: marketing. It goes back to the simple analogy: If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it actually make a sound? The trick is how to get people in to the woods to watch the tree fall – and more importantly, how to sell tickets to that ceremonious tree-falling to profit from it.

It’s extremely easy for anyone to build a website today and get their music online. Heck, I did it… which is proof that any bozo can! But the really hard part is how to monetize that effort an promote your music, you brand – whatever it is you have to offer – with a compelling call to action that will drive people to get out their wallets and hand the cash over. This is still probably one of the biggest challenges facing the indie musician today, and truth be told, this is where sweat equity comes into it – because in order to market successfully, you have to have an audience that you can “market to.” How to go about building that audience is hard work – and most indie musicians are going to accomplish that through growing a solid fan base by performing. It can take months, often years, to accomplish that, but how these musicians leverage that fan base along the way can either accelerate or stall the process. For example, if all you do is e-mail your fans about the next show, it may take years to get anywhere. Some musicians I know enlist their most enthusiastic fans to be part of viral “street teams” to spread the word about the band, even book gigs in certain cases. Most often, it only takes a small incentive to motivate these folks – a free t-shirt, or free music (CDs, individual tracks, etc.). There are other companies that are trying to help indie musicians just build audiences – like Fansurge – started by a good friend of mine.

The bottom line is, to successfully earn money at this, indie musicians have to really “work” their network – or fan bases. Companies like nimbit are helping to facilitate that process by tighltly linking the promotion and sales process into an easy format – but the real magic will happen when musicians can leverage nimbit-type tools to a mobilized audience that is ready to help this artist succeed. That’s the toughest part – and the best “widgets” that I know for making that happen are still the artists themselves.