Music Marketing Lesson From Almost Famous – They don’t even know what it is to be a fan.

Posted on April 16, 2013 by Michael Brandvold

Time for another music marketing lesson from the movie Almost Famous. This lesson comes fro Sapphire, one of the Band-Aids(groupies) who follow the band Stillwater.

Sapphire: They don’t even know what it is to be a fan. Y’know? To truly love some silly little piece of music, or some band, so much that it hurts.

I have written about this in the past, that I don’t think it is possible for a band to actually be a fan of themselves. Yes you can love your music, but you aren’t a fan in the same sense as all your other fans, you can’t ever be. You will never experience the “hurt” your fans feel when listening to you, talking about you, seeing you in concert. What this means for bands, do not ever forget how important your music is to your fans. Even the song you don’t like may have special meaning to your fans. Never take it lightly that someone feels so connected to something you might just think of as another song.

It is this “hurt” your fans feel for you that is the connection you should hope to create with your fans.

Lessons from Almost Famous, Lester Bangs “Be honest, and unmerciful.”

Posted on April 2, 2013 by Michael Brandvold

Another lesson taken from one of my favorite movies, Almost Famous.

Lester Bangs: “My advice to you. I know you think those guys are your friends. You wanna be a true friend to them? Be honest, and unmerciful.”

Lester is saying this to the lead character William Miller in reference to bands and your relationship with them as a writer. But this is solid advice for bands and for fans.

Fans… be honest and unmerciful with your favorite band. Be truthful about what you think of the new album, what you think about the show, about their new t-shirt. Don’t kiss their ass. They may not like to hear what you think, but they need to hear the truth. Because you don’t like one specific thing does not mean you hate them. Don’t get caught in the trap of thinking you have to say you love everything. One more things for fans, be careful thinking that musicians are your friends. Hopefully the band truly appreciates and values you, but you aren’t their best friend.

Bands… Be honest about what you are, what you are doing, why you are doing it. Don’t try to be what the you think the fans want. Don’t try to be what you think the clubs want. Be honest to yourself and your music, be what you want. You need to believe in what you are doing at your core. Be unmerciful with your career. Don’t take no as the final answer. If you don’t make it in a year and you believe in what you are doing, don’t give up. The game is not over. Show no mercy and keep pushing forward.

Music Marketing Lessons from the Movie Almost Famous – A Lesson in Mystique

Posted on March 26, 2013 by Michael Brandvold

One my of all time favorite movies is Almost Famous by Cameron Crowe. While recently watching it dawned on me… there are some great lessons to be learned from Almost Famous.

This first lesson is about mystique. One of the greatest music marketing success stories related to mystique was KISS during the 70s. They created mystique by never being photographed without their makeup. As their success grew the desire to get a photo out of makeup grew. With the internet many people will quickly say mystique is impossible. Don’t give up so quickly. Try to create even a little mystique… don’t reveal everything for your fans. Keep just a little bit unseen, let them crave what they can’t see.

Here is just one example… you are in the studio recording a new album. You have decided to take pictures to share with your fans. Start by only sharing pictures of your gear, don’t immediately start with photos of the band members. Work up to that. Let your fans start by wondering what the band looks like.

“As long as you can’t see what’s in this hand, you’ll always want it more.”

Downloading Music Is Forgettable, Buying It Wasn’t

Posted on October 11, 2010 by Michael Brandvold

I have great memories of trips to the local record store on Tuesday, seeking out something specific, or in many instances just walking the aisles seeing what catches my eye. My friend Gary Guzman and I used to make the half hour drive into Chicago to visit Rolling Stone Records, picking through the new vinyl, eventually making the change to CDs. It was a weekly event, right after work we jumped in the car. We would often have a list of what we hoped to find. I would mark my calendar with certain new release dates, like it was a holiday, so I would not miss them as well as count down the days. It was a pilgrimage.

There is a line in the movie Almost Famous that I love, “If you ever get lonely you just go to the record store and visit your friends.”

Where do you find your friends today?

For most of my life, buying music included a pilgrimage. The closest place that sold CDs took an hour drive to get there. I still have a few memories of the trips I would undertake on Tuesdays just to get my hands on a new album. While I never got to experience the thrill of waiting outside of a record store, hours before it opened, with hundreds of other fans clamoring to hear an album for the first time. The release of new music still represented an event to me; something to be looked forward to.

In the early days of file-sharing, downloading songs still had a process. You had to search out the album information, plug it into the engine, and comb through until you found the correct files. Then, you waited. It could take hours. Playing the songs for the first time constituted as an event too. There was still built up anticipation and the sublime feeling of hearing a song for the very first time.

That’s all gone now. Even file-sharing music isn’t an event anymore.

BitTorrent downloads music so fast that there isn’t any waiting. If a fan dreams something up, they can have in the matter of minutes. Then, they play the whole album. Likely, they’ll just play a couple of songs. After that, they may not listen to the album ever again; it will just sit in a folder. If they don’t like what they hear, they’ll probably delete the album instantly, never giving it another chance. When is the last time that you and three of your friends stayed up late, eyes pursed on the computer screen, in the hopes of being the first ones download an album?

It doesn’t happen. Those friends streamed the songs on YouTube or downloaded it off BitTorrent a month before it came out. In most cases, they know what the music sounds like. They’ll get around to buying it. But you can’t hug an MP3.

“No one will ever fondly recall the night they downloaded a new album. The ritual of standing in line at midnight to obtain a physical copy of a piece of music is now over. Thanks to MP3 format, ritual, nostalgia, traditional physical music spaces, physical forms and aesthetic value are all aspects of music culture that are dead or dying.” (Read on.)

via Downloading Music Is Forgettable, Buying It Wasn’t – hypebot.