Recently I released a paper titled the best practices of the online promotion of new musical content. I pushed it through some networks and sent it to contacts I’ve made while studying the music business and the results have been phenomenal. Giving away something good for free really does work! Some highlights.
I submitted it to Techdirt, probably my favourite technology blog, where Mike Masnick blogged about it. This blog post was then mentioned in the daily newsletter of the ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.
It was also posted to the great Make It In Music blog, as a guestpost. Students of the music business course at the NYU were given this paper to read. Someone is even making a Spanish version of it to increase the reach of the paper, especially in Latin America. Thanks Pp! I’ve also been spreading it around LinkedIn with some pretty good results.
Wow!
To be honest, part of the strategy of my thesis was to build some momentum, release it, make it go viral and brand myself as an expert on this topic, but even this paper is making some ripples.
The ironic thing is that in the paper I say that giving away something of value for free can be a great promotional tool… especially if what you’re giving away is easily reproduced and easy to share. The reception of the paper proves exactly that.
Extremely motivated to get that thesis done asap and start utilizing the momentum I’ve built! More soon!
As the regular readers of my blog probably know, I’m writing my graduation thesis about the future of music distribution. Due to some setbacks and unforseen circumstances, this thesis has suffered some delays. However, using the knowledge and insight I gained in the past month, while studying my thesis’ topic, I have compiled a paper called the Best Practices of the Online Promotion of New Musical Content.
It looks at artists like Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse, Mos Def, and Groove Armada, and analyzes what they’ve been doing right and wrong and why they’ve been doing it in the first place.
So while you wait for the thesis and the launch of FutureOfMusicDistribution.com, how about going through this 20 page paper?
To download and read the whole paper, just use this link:
Over the last weeks I’ve been in Prague, in Greece and have also been working hard on my thesis about the future of music distribution, which is due in about 2-3 weeks. This weekend I’m going to the Bulgarian countryside, which I’m very excited about, since I’ve lived in this country (off and on) for a year in total, but have never seen the core of Bulgaria. The countryside is very important to Bulgarians and I love seeing it, because you see some old practices that have left our western societies for decades.
When I come back, I’ll make a video compilation of all the pictures we took in the last few weeks, in Prague, Greece and then the Bulgarian countryside. It will be great. I promise!
And now a request
I’m doing a survey for my thesis about the future of music distribution. It takes about 9-10 minutes to fill it in and as a reward I offer you 9 free songs of a great variety, one for every minute you spend on the survey.
Do me a HUGE favour and spread this link around a bit, to music lovers or people that don’t care much for music… It doesn’t matter, I’m interested in all of them. Please consider blogging about it, putting it in your Facebook or Twitter status, etc. and give your friends some free music and help out a student in the name of music and education!
As you all know, I’m writing my thesis about the Future of Music Distribution. For this thesis I’m going to be doing a survey to add more authority to the findings of my thesis so far. As an incentive for people to fill out the survey, I figured it would be appropriate to offer them FREE MUSIC!
The idea is as follows:
After filling out the survey, the users will be shown the end page.
I’ll get some cover art, plus 10 tracks. I’ll put the cover art at the top, then tracklist:
1. Artist – Song (Download)
2. You – Your song (Download)
3. Artist – Song (Download)
etc.
The word download will link directly to the song, whereas I’ll make the artist name link directly to the profile page / website of the artists. It should be a good deal for everyone involved I believe
I’ll also offer the whole thing in one ZIP file, and will include an information file with all the websites etc. I’ll also edit the artist websites into the ID3 info of the MP3’s.
Will do my best to make this a good promotion opportunity for all those involved!
Please get in touch with me asap, because I want to launch the survey within the next 36 hours!
And to my fellow expat bloggers who are reading/viewing this…please do something similar! I’m very curious to see how you’re living!
BasBasBas.com is about my life abroad. I regularly write about my adventures in Istanbul, Bulgaria and travels in the region, but like to ponder about the future also. If you’d like to stay up to date, you can subscribe to my RSS feed or get email updates in your inbox. You can also follow me on Twitter.
When I got back to Holland I first moved back to my parents but really want to live in my old city, Utrecht, again.
How I Got There
I looked at a few places online and replied to some, was invited to one. They were renting out a furnished room for 5 months, since one of the guys was moving abroad for his study. I figured I’d take the offer and just find something new in the summer – but it turned out I was moving to Istanbul, so everything worked out perfectly.
How I’ve Lived There
It was an all-male house and in the half year I lived there I lived with Remco, Niels, Jurre, Tim and Pim. It was an all-male house with a nice living room and everyone had quite spacious rooms. The bathroom and kitchen were also quite big. This is the only time I’ve lived in an all-male house and I never expected to enjoy it like I did. After this place I moved to yet another all-male place…
Well, not really Turkish prison, it was a state dormitory in Istanbul and one of the better ones. It just wasn’t for me though.
How I Got There
I decided that in Bulgaria I didn’t get the culture shock I anticipated, so I decided to take it one step further. The language course I was taking housed me in this place for 3 weeks. I couldn’t wait to find my own apartment.
How I’ve Lived There
Well, I got some flu from the climate change, so I spent a lot of time near the toilets, which were not European toilets, no they were holes in the floor, with a little tap for water and a little bucket to use for washing your ass… with your hand. There were no power outlets in the room, so I had to go to communal study areas to charge my telephone or to use my laptop. There was also no wireless internet, but there was an internet cafe in which I spent quite a lot of time. See the video below for my impression of this place:
There were some fun parts. Every morning I’d meet with the international students for breakfast and we were off to the language course and in the evening we’d often leave the place to go have a beer somewhere. It was nice, but it still sucked. More than Uilenstede. Much, much more.
I got in touch with an agent and looked for a few flats. We were in a rush because we had to move out of the dorms, but plans fell through and in the end we couldn’t finance the flat we found. I got to work with some friends at my university and called a whole bunch of places, but with no luck. I ran into a Danish guy I knew and he gave me the card of his landlord and told me the guy had more places. I then called him and he said “ok, can you meet me in 1 hour at the Starbucks in Moda? Ok, bye”. Well, I rushed my way to find the place, since I had never been there before. I found it on time and the guy showed me three affordable apartments. I said I’d probably be interested in one of them and the guy immediately gave me the keys. I told him I’d have the rent in a week as I needed to find some flatmates, which was no problem.
How I’ve Lived There
I found 3 flatmates; one from Germany, one from Italy and one from Poland. 2 guys, 2 girls. I figured it would work well, however I should have listened to my feelings when getting my flatmates in. There was one person that didn’t sit too well with me from the beginning, but I ignored my gut feeling, because I really needed to fill the flat up and let this person in. Because of this, I could never really feel at peace or at home in the apartment, which was a shame, because it was in a beautiful location. Looking back, I also realize I had a slight culture shock and it was hard to deal with that if there’s no place where I can really be at ease and feel at home. Also, just when I arrived I got some stomach flu – maybe because of the change in climates – and it stayed with me for about 4 months (maybe it was stress though). It was a great half year though, living in Istanbul. I had a really light schedule in university and had plenty of time doing things that really mattered; like developing my knowledge about topics I’m interested in and networking with people there – oh and of course hanging out with fellow students.
That’s it. Part 3 soon… Including a video of my newest apartment here in Sofia, Bulgaria!
BasBasBas.com is about my life abroad. I regularly write about my adventures in Istanbul, Bulgaria and travels in the region, but like to ponder about the future also. If you’d like to stay up to date, you can subscribe to my RSS feed or get email updates in your inbox. You can also follow me on Twitter.
He had some interesting things to say, like his principle of Music Like Water, which states that in the next few years, users will be paying a tax in some way to collectively license musical content. I had a talk with him for about 25 minutes which I posted on my thesis blog.
If you want to have a listen to it also, you can download it as an MP3 or use the stream below.
I’m working for a record label here in Bulgaria, working on the internet side of things, mainly promotion;
I’m doing an assignment for a political party here and helping them out with their internet campaign, since the parliamentary elections are coming up;
I’m making videos for SpinEARTH.tv – although haven’t finished any recently… Actually, I attended a show and accidentally deleted the video I made there. F!!K!
I’m going to be speaking on a conference about self-development and social psychology in Prague next month and brainstorming about what I want to say. I want it to be groundbreaking and paradigm shattering!
On top of all that, one of my best mates visited me for 7 days last week annnnddddd we saw the sun come up quite a few times.
Will resume a more regular blogging schedule soon though.
BasBasBas.com is about my life abroad. I regularly write about my adventures in Istanbul, Bulgaria and travels in the region, but like to ponder about the future also. If you’d like to stay up to date, you can subscribe to my RSS feed or get email updates in your inbox. You can also follow me on Twitter.
As if the amount of blogs and micro-blogs I have right now are not enough… I set up yet another blog. For my final thesis I’m studying the Future of Music Distribution. While I was studying I realized that instead of saving my notes in a document on my computer, it would be easier to post them to a place where I can access them from every computer. Then I thought “why not make them public?” So that’s what I did. I present to you my new blog, The Future of Music Distribution.
Don’t worry, I’ll still be blogging here, but instead of posting 5 updates per day regarding this topic on this blog, I’ve chosen to keep it separate. My ‘life’, travels, pictures and views go on here and all stuff related to my final thesis go on there. Visit The Future of Music Distribution now!
BasBasBas.com is about my life abroad. I regularly write about my adventures in Istanbul, Bulgaria and travels in the region, but like to ponder about the future also. If you’d like to stay up to date, you can subscribe to my RSS feed or get email updates in your inbox. You can also follow me on Twitter.
Groove Armada, the famous big beat, electronica and trip-hop producers, are sharing their newest EP freely with their fans through a nifty downloading scheme. One of the guys from Groove Armada recently stated about filesharing that “it’s utterly futile to try and stop people, just like it was stopping people creating mix tapes once they had two decks and a tape recorder”.
You can download Groove Armada’s newest mini-album by clicking hereor on the picture (provided by aeter). All you need to do is enter your age, since the deal is sponsored by Bacardi rum and you have to be above the legal drinking age in your country, and your email address to receive the first song of the album immediately and to acquire the rest later.
This is very interesting to me, since I’ll be doing my final thesis of my bachelor degree very soon and it will be about the future of music distribution. It is very obvious that labels need to adopt new business models and that the old models simply don’t work anymore, since music is going back to being a service, instead of a product, so access is the most important thing. Groove Armada have realized this very well and have started this music distribution campaign which is bound to go viral (it already is).
Apparently Groove Armada spoke about this deal with Bacardi at the MIDEM Conference in Cannes, France where the music business meets every year. Below is an example of one of their chillout songs, for two more famous songs, check out Superstylin (big beat) or My Friend (lounge/electronica) on YouTube.
For Groove Armada’s new mini-EP, click here. If you’re a music lover like me, also have a look at The MiX-Files where I post my DJ sets as Spartz (for drum ‘n bass), spacescape (experimental & psychedelic), and EvilAngle (house/eclectro/breakbeat).
BasBasBas.com is about my life abroad. I regularly write about my adventures in Istanbul, Bulgaria and travels in the region, but like to ponder about the future also. If you’d like to stay up to date, you can subscribe to my RSS feed or get email updates in your inbox. You can also follow me on Twitter.
“Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles, discouragements, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.” - Thomas Carlyle
About Me
I'm Bas, 24, an International Comm. Management student from The Netherlands. Since the summer of 2007 I've lived in Sofia, Bulgaria, for a total of one year and Istanbul, Turkey for half a year. I'm currently back at home in The Netherlands. I write about the future of music, living abroad, traveling, all things 2.0, the future, and a little activism. I love photography and making videos, so my posts are often accompanied by those media. More on me? Check out my social media profiles:
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When I got back to Holland I first moved back to my parents but really want to live in my old city, Utrecht, again.
As if the amount of blogs and micro-blogs I have right now are not enough… I set up yet another blog. For my final thesis I’m studying 
Groove Armada, the famous big beat, electronica and trip-hop producers, are sharing their newest EP freely with their fans through a nifty downloading scheme. One of the guys from Groove Armada recently 
