The Selling of the Record? by Z. Miles

Selling records is not an easy business as many of us know. Most artists go through a lifetime of little to no record sales simply due to the lack of education required to REALLY sell records and get the bands product into the hands of those who are willing to PAY for it! Selling records is usually the LAST thing that an artist considers when planning a release. Sure lots of time gets spent deciding on the artwork, song order, packaging, among countless other items, but the Selling of the Record is often overlooked.

Selling a recording to a music listener can be sucessfully completed ONLY AFTER you plan your marketing. Simple steps that you can do yourself WILL help you to sell more product. After 12 years of trial I have compile a guide to The Selling of the Record.

Lets get started....

Marketing Materials

Prepare your camp for the promotional campaign. Get geared up is what I mean. When we do a promotion, we will NOT start anything until we can confirm your marketing materials are ready to go. Ok, what the hell is that?

Marketing Materials include:

• Artist Profile rack card (required)
• Band Photo (required)
• Audio Recording/Release (required)
• DropHit artist profile

Once you have these items in place we can begin the promotion process. CLICK HERE for more info on Marketing Materials.

Choose a Region

The first step to any marketing campaign is to target a region. Initially, you should choose the closest major population market, basically the nearest big city! Population density is key when working on a low budget, your ads, performances, etc will return the best bang for the buck, meaning more people will see each of your ads or live shows. Also, booking multiple shows in one city will save in travel time and expense.

Play Live

Once the region is selected, get out and book some shows!! To this day the single most effective marketing/promotion tool you have is YOUR LIVE SHOW! You've got to play, ALOT. This is where music listeners form an opinion about the band. Are you worth seeing again? Is there something there, something of intrest during the live show or are you standing on the stage like a big arm monkey on ludes? Just because mom, dad and the neighborhood kids think you rock in the garage, doesn't mean you cab pull if off on stage. Hone your skills and don't be afraid to go all the way on stage, make sure once a music listener sees the group, they are a fan for life and will tell others about your set.

Get Press

OK so now your Nine Inch nails on stage, next step is to get some press. Yes solid real world press. Newspapers, Fanzines, Music Mags, Industry Rags, TV, & Radio. Although there are a number of ways to do this, we happen to think that the Staff at DropHit are the best for the price, again the biggest bang for your buck. DropHit WILL get you press, and lots of it. Why? Well one because your paying us to, but realistically because it is easy! We have the connections and a staff that has been on both sides of the fence. No record sales on up to LOTS of record sales. We only employ the services of those that work and thats it!

Sell Records

Now, this is where DropHit works and others do not. Most promotion agencies will simply ask for your money, make the connections to try and get you press, then move on to the next project. On the other hand your DropHit agent will coordinate our promotion efforts directly with your live preformances, record releases, etc. Everything we do for you is done FOR YOU TO SELL RECORDS!

What NOW!

Great, you pay DropHit to promote you. your music is out in the world ,you are playing live shows, doing in store appearances, radio interviews, and your project is being mentioned in newspapers, fanzines, TV & Radio so what now!? Well it takes time for all of this to happen most full scale campaigns take 2-3 months. Although we can do quick 3 week perfomance promotions, we recommend a little more lead time. OK, so once your promo campaign is rolling along, you will work closely with your promotions agent to keep your promo going throughout the duration. We do like to receive pictures and recordings from your live shows, as we will use these to further promote you.

The fans will appear and you WILL sell records. Thats it in a nut shell!

CLICK HERE NOW to get started.