Okay, okay, Radiohead is not the “Dead”
(but they’re closer than you think)

Many of you may remember a few years back when the band Radiohead decided to release their album “In Rainbows” as a name-your-own-price download before it was ever released on CD.  This was considered nothing short of crazy because, at the time, the record companies was still stinging from the whole Napster/peer sharing debacle which almost brought the entire industry to its knees.

So why are we talking about this now?

It’s interesting because this idea of the band essentially giving away their music was considered either revolutionary or completely self-destructive depending on your perspective.  Despite what many members of the media reported at the time, however, this is not the first time a band has chosen to give away their music for free (or at least at a steep discount).  A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about  some of the more unusual marketing techniques used by The Grateful Dead and how they allowed their fans to record and distribute the music from their concerts for free. This was also considered a heretical idea at the time, after all, why would any artist in their right mind give away anything for free?

Was Radiohead’s experiment a success?

Of course it depends on who you talk to but the band did receive a massive amount of attention from the mainstream media.  Just doing a quick Google search reveals articles about Radiohead’s name-your-price experiment written by the NYTimes, Forbes Magazine, Business Week,  NPR, Time magazine along with dozens of other newspapers and magazines.  

Now granted, Radiohead was a pretty successful band before all of this happened (which some say is why they could afford to do it in the first place), but I really doubt that many of the publications listed above had previously written any feature length articles about an alternative band like Radiohead.  So if nothing else, this experiment got them a lot of free publicity.

Simply put, controversy gets people talking.

After all, even I’ve watched enough reality TV to know that in the end it doesn’t really matter if  what people are saying is positive or negative, it’s simply enough to get them talking.  Anyone remember the controversy Robert Mapplethorpe created for himself twenty years ago with his controversial exhibits?  Now obviously, as a working artist you would probably prefer that people to be saying positive things about you, but you may be missing the point here. . .

You see, when people start talking about whatever kind of crazy shenanigans you are up to, these days they naturally start looking for more information online (enter Google) and if you have any kind of  online presence (which you should), they will eventually find you. At that point it’s up to your work to do your talking for you.

As far as Radiohead’s experiment, according to Music Ally all of this controversy may have worked a little too well.

In fact, if anything, the only trouble with the whole thing was that it was just arguably too successful. The whole ‘pay what you like’ experiment became the story rather than the music itself. And that’s not so Radiohead. The band and Thom Yorke initially found themselves answering questions about why they chose to do what they did rather than being asked about the music itself.

In other words, before anyone is going to listen to you and care about what you do, you’re going to have to find a way to get their attention.  I mean I think we can all agree that Lady Gaga is not the best singer out there, but at the same time, we can’t seem to stop talking about her.  Why is she able to capture our attention?   Well. . . I mean, just look at her.

Now I’m certainly not saying that we should all go out and do something bizarre just so that we can move a couple hundred bracelets on Etsy.  What I am saying, however, is that somewhere along the way you are going to have create some kind of distinct identity or niche for yourself and then find a way to get the word out.  For example, one artist that I talked about in the comment section of an earlier post rented out an abandoned bank building and lived there for a month, living and working in plain view.  As far as I know, she didn’t do anything more unusual than paint and microwave burritos, but the local newspapers and media were all over it.

Okay, back to the band. . .

So how much money did Radiohead actually lose on this little publicity experiment? Not much, in fact according to the article at Music Ally, the band ended up making more money before “In Rainbows” was physically released than they made in total on their previous album “Hail to the Thief”.  Not only that but even after being available for FREE for almost three months, the physical (not-free) version of the album shot up to #1 on the charts in both the US and the UK.  It was also the first Radiohead album released on iTunes and sold over 30,000 units in the first week alone. By the end of 2008, the physical CD of “In Rainbows” had sold over 1.75 million copies. Now was this all because of their revolutionary name-your-own-price experiment, of course not.  Radiohead was obviously a very successful band before any of this and they had been selling millions of records since their debut release of “Pablo Honey” in 1993.  What this experiment did do, however, was to get people talking and in the process it greatly expanded their audience.

That’s all great if you’re are already a platinum selling recording artist like Radiohead or The Grateful Dead who don’t really need the money, but I’m lucky if I sell a few hundred copies of my music on CDBaby.  So how does any of this relate to me?

Well the first lesson we can take from all of this is that we need to create great stuff.  It doesn’t matter if we are creating music, sculptures, paintings, or photographs; before we do anything, we need to create top shelf material.  There’s no point in busting your tail trying to bring people to your site if you’re still not ready for the big time.

The second part of the equation is that we need to make our work (and ourselves) “findable” and easily accessible.  Then we have to find a way to make some connections and get some attention. Once again, this doesn’t necessarily mean staging some kind of dramatic stunt.  Creating buzz and positive word of mouth comes from getting your work and your personality out there actively connecting and building relationships with other artists and the word will eventually spread.   This can be through using social media like Twitter, Facebook, Redbubble, Flickr, your own website, or wherever people can talk with you. You can’t just throw together a gallery or Etsy store and expect people to show up.  You need to get out there and sell yourself first, which of course, is the first and last rule of marketing for artists.

How are you connecting and building relationships with your customers and other artists? (Check out our latest poll and see how your fellow artists are connecting)

What have you done to build your personal brand and define yourself to your audience?

What can you give away for free to get yourself noticed and get people talking?

• Taking part in a charity event
• Video streaming your creative process
• Forming a joint partnership with a different kind of “artist”
• Contributing to an online art forum like Wet Canvas
• Commenting on other artist’s blogs [like this one ]
• Creating an short video how-to tutorial
• Teaching a workshop at a local school or community center
• Sharing links and recommendations of another artist’s work
• Creating a short e-book on lessons you’ve learned as a working artist

What other ideas can you share with us?

Here are some other articles you might enjoy:

1. What we can learn from the Dead
2. Are you ready for the big time?

What can we possibly learn about online marketing from a rock-n-roll band that hasn’t even been around since the world wide web was an infant.  When that band is the Grateful Dead, it turns out that we can learn an awful lot.

For those of you who may not be familiar with the Grateful Dead they were one of the first so-called “jam bands” in the U.S. in the 1960′s who later inspired such bands as Phish and the Dave Matthews Band. Because of their unique mixture of rock ‘n roll, jazz improvisation, folk, and bluegrass music the band decided early on to pursue  a niche audience rather than trying to  appeal to a mass audience.

In their book “Inbound marketing“ the authors Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah note that it was this unique approach that helped the Grateful Dead develop a cult like following.

“Rather than compete for mass audiences with the Rolling Stones, Beatles, and other “popular” bands of its time, the Dead had a remarkable sound that resonated very deeply with a niche audience.”

In other words, instead of trying to compete with these mainstream bands directly, the Grateful Dead decided to market themselves to a much narrower audience. Think about  some of the musicians, writers, and other artists you know who focus their work on a particular genre.   They don’t waste their energy in trying to please everyone but instead they focus on their target audience.  Over time the Grateful Dead learned to cater to the needs of their audiences so well, that their fans the “Deadheads” began to loyally follow the band across the country.

The authors of “Inbound Marketing”  talk about how the band not only targeted a different audience, but they approached their business in an entirely new way as well.

“Most rock ‘n roll bands treated concert tours as a necessary evil required to drive sales of their latest album. The Grateful Dead flipped this assumption on its head and made the concert tours the main revenue driver”

The Grateful Dead didn’t rely on album sales to make their money, and instead they focused on the live concert experience. They understood that many of their fans would likely only buy a single copy of their latest album, however, if the band made their live shows a unique and memorable experience, their audience/customers would be far more likely to attend several of the band’s shows.  When you factor in ticket and merchandise sales, this turned out to be far more profitable for the Dead than selling a single album.

Also because the band didn’t focus their energy on selling their studio albums, they began to allow their fans to tape and distribute “bootleg” copies of their music from their live shows. This became just one of the unique aspects of attending a Grateful Dead concert. However, since most bands see bootleg recordings as a drain on their profits and do everything they can to stop it, it makes you wonder why the Grateful Dead would allow their fans to do this?

The answer may surprise you.

According to a recent  article in “The Atlantic” magazine  called “Management Secrets of the Grateful Dead” by Joshua Green

“The connection between the Internet and the Dead’s business model was made 15 years ago by the band’s lyricist, John Perry Barlow, who became an Internet guru. Writing in Wired in 1994, Barlow posited that in the information economy, “the best way to raise demand for your product is to give it away.” As Barlow explained to me: “What people today are beginning to realize is what became obvious to us back then—the important correlation is the one between familiarity and value, not scarcity and value. Adam Smith taught that the scarcer you make something, the more valuable it becomes. In the physical world, that works beautifully. But we couldn’t regulate [taping at] our shows, and you can’t online. The Internet doesn’t behave that way. But here’s the thing: if I give my song away to 20 people, and they give it to 20 people, pretty soon everybody knows me, and my value as a creator is dramatically enhanced. That was the value proposition with the Dead.”

So instead of beefing up security and cracking down on this illegal piracy, the Grateful Dead decided to use this to their advantage.   They realize that since they couldn’t stop it, they would make it a unique part of the concert experience.   In fact, when people began taping and swapping these  concert recordings, the size of the Grateful Dead audiences kept going up because no one wanted to miss out on the opportunity to make or swap a recording.  Not only that, but because the concerts were so highly improvised, people continued to flock to these shows night after night because they knew that whatever happened that night would not likely be repeated ever again.

Green continues:

“Giving something away and earning money on the periphery is the same idea proffered by Wired editor Chris Anderson in his recent best-selling book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price. Voluntarily or otherwise, it is becoming the blueprint for more and more companies doing business on the Internet. Today, everybody is intensely interested in understanding how communities form across distances, because that’s what happens online.”

So what can we as struggling artist take away from this?  Since we can’t directly compete with the big guys (at least not right away) it might be a good idea to look at how other “outsiders” such as the Grateful Dead were able to find success by not playing by the established marketing rules:

Create – Share – Build Community

Create something unique

Create something that your customer, fans, or clients won’t be able to get anywhere else.  Remember that the Grateful Dead not only created their unusual trademark sound, but they also constantly reinvented themselves by making each show completely unique. They discovered that if they improvised and created something different every time, their fans would be more likely to attend their concerts night after night.

Share something of value

Be willing to give some of yourself or your work away. In the beginning, you are going to have to give some of your best work away in order to get noticed as an artist.  Maybe its a song, a poem, an article, or a painting–find creative ways to get your work out there in the public eye.  The Grateful Dead knew that the bootleg taping at their shows probably couldn’t be stopped, so instead of trying they used it to create a wider audience for their work.

Develop a strong sense of community

Sooner or later you need to realize that you don’t have to do this all by yourself.  Many artists are loners by nature and that’s fine although in order to sell your work, you’re going to have to eventually rely on a network of like-minded artists, online resources, and satisfied customers in order to get the referrals and word-of-mouth “buzz” that eventually becomes the backbone of any successful artist’s business.

Even in the pre-internet days, the Grateful Dead were known to take care of their best customers the “Deadheads” by giving them advanced notice of their tour dates, capping the price of their tickets, and giving them preferential seating at the shows.  The band knew that if they took care of their best customers and created a strong sense of community and loyalty, these fans would come back again and again.

What can you do today to help create a sense of community with your future customers?

Please share your thoughts with us in the comments section below.

Here are some other articles you might enjoy:

1. Are you ready for the big time?

Unless you’ve been living an artistic rock for the last two years, you have probably heard about a book called “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell.  Even if you have heard about this book, chances are, you probably haven’t read it.  Why? Because let’s face it, it looks like one of those boring ass business books that everyone takes to Starbucks and pretends to read while they are really checking out the hot twenty-two year old barista behind the counter.  Trust me, I thought the same thing until I finally sat down to read the thing.

Now don’t worry, I’m not about to tell you that you should go out and read this entire book, not only because that would be an abuse of my immense blogging power, but I’m pretty sure that you wouldn’t do it anyway.  So instead I’m simply going to ask you to go to your local library or bookstore and spend an hour reading Chapter 2  ”The 10,000 Hour Rule”

Since I know that only about four of you reading this will actually make an effort to track down this book, I’m going to try and summarize a few of the main points  here.  However keep in mind, that if your goal is to really someday become the art rock star that you envision yourself to be, sooner or later you’re going to have to put in the work. Interestingly enough, that’s exactly what this particular chapter is about. . .

In this chapter, Malcolm Gladwell discusses the success of such people as Mozart, Bill Gates, Bill Joy, Bobby Fischer, and the Beatles. Now because you’re reading a blog called Skinny Artist we’re going to focus our immediate attention here on the Beatles.  As most of you already know, the Beatles were a fairly successful band. What most people don’t know, however, is how long they had been playing together before they ever came to America.

According to Gladwell, Lennon and McCartney had been playing together for over seven years before they become “overnight” sensations in the states.  They weren’t just hanging out together either.  You see unlike your typical high school band, the Beatles actually practiced and played together. . . a lot!  In fact they used to take these trips to Hamburg, Germany and play for eight hours a night, seven days a week!

John Lennon said later in an interview about their experience in Hamburg:

“We got better and got more confidence. We couldn’t help it with all the experience playing all night long. . . we had to play for eight hours, so we really had to find a new way of playing”

Malcolm Gladwell then talks about the results of this expereince:

“All told, they performed for 270 nights in just over a year and a half.  By the time they had their first burst of success in 1964, in fact, they had performed live an estimated twelve hundred times.”

That’s right, the Beatles played over  1,200 live performances before they made it big, which as the author points out, is more shows than most bands play in their entire career.

Hold on, I know what you’re thinking here . .  I’m a painter, a writer, a composer, or a jewelry designer so how does any of this apply to me?  It means that unless you are willing to put in the work necessary, all the clever marketing and advertising in the world isn’t going to sell your artistic creation. Everything we talk about here on Skinny Artist can only help to get your product or service noticed.  Once your customers/clients/booking agents manage to find you, it’s up to you to impress them with the quality of your work.

In the book Malcolm Gladwell estimates that for most poeple, accumulating 10,000 hours of practice will take about ten years. . .

Holy crap, did he just say 10 years?!?

Yes, yes he did.

Let’s think about this for a moment. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to get 10,000 hours of practice/creating under your belt before you can start marketing your work.  This research only implies that you won’t reach the level of true mastery of your art until you have put in your 10,000 hours.  For example, as Gladwell point out in the book, many people would say that even the Beatles didn’t reach their creative peak until they released “Sergeant Pepper Lonely Hearts Club Band” and the “White Album” in 1967-68, which is coincidentally ten years after they started playing together in 1957. (I know spooky, right?)

So what I’m saying here is don’t freak out. You’re going to get better as you go along, and depending on how long you have been practicing your art, you may already be well on your way.  Again, it’s not as if once you hit that magical 10,000 hour mark, you’ll go from completely horrible to awesome jedi master.  Instead, it’s a matter of gradual improvement and finding your true artistic voice.

I guess there are two main points to my story here.  First, all the marketing in the world isn’t going to help you if your artistic creation sucks.  Secondly, the way to get it to suck less, is by continuing to work at it EVERYDAY! Not just those days when you feel like it or when “inspiration” hits you upside the head.  It’s about having the courage and self-discipline to sit down and stare at that empty canvas, the silent guitar, or the blank computer screen for as long as you have to.  It’s about doing something everyday that will take you a little bit closer towards your goal.

Yes, you need to have the right tools as well as the right resources [such as Skinny Artist ] but most importantly, you need to find a way to get the experience of practicing your art.  It doesn’t matter if you end up throwing it away at the end of the day. You need to have that discipline to keep trying everyday to move forward.

So for all of us Liberal Arts majors out there, what exactly does 10,000 hours mean?

The 10 Year Plan:

1,000 hours a year

20 hours a week

3 hours a day (everyday!)

So what are you doing today?

P.S. I know what you’re thinking. . . 3 hours a day is nothing, I could easily do 6-8 hours every day and become ruler of the universe in less than five years.  All I can say is go for it, as long as you don’t burn yourself out, no practice is wasted.  Just remember that the true secret is to do something every day and to never, never, never stop.