I’ve heard it in three different places, and it sounds something like this:

It’s the year 2012 and the average person has his personal portable system. It’s a phone; it’s a video and music player, an electronic organizer, and GPS system all in one. It knows your likes and dislikes and updates the system to fill it up with content based on your presets. Just like you have a water, gas, and electric bill, you will have an “Entertainment” bill.

So how are indie bands going to sell their music if the perception is you should get it for free (as most teenagers don’t think twice about downloading a song) how will they make money?

Here is a possible answer:

Acts such as Kiss (and the Kiss army) Green Day (Idiot club), and country artist Terri Clark (Hat Brats) have tied in  “Membership areas” into their sites. Now what you can do is for those RABID fans, give them what they want: YOU. Behind the scenes thoughts (blog), pictures, demos of songs, etc. Something the “average” fan may not NEED to have. But by giving this to our members, they feel special.

Prince topped the charts a few years back after being vacant for many years. How did he do it? He “gave away” his new CD with every concert ticket purchased. Those counted as CD sales and BOOM, he was on the charts. Why can’t independent musicians do this? You could sell a membership to your eager fans for $20/year and then part of the membership perks is (you guessed it) your CD. You can throw in some bonus tracks as well. Now next year if you do not have time to record a new CD your membership site will generate income (possibly funding CD #2) while bands without a membership site make zero.

I am familiar with membership software. I’ve used two (one for the SchoolofPodcasting.com and one for marketingmusician.com). I found one that fits the musician nicely. It’s called DL Guard and you can sell single downloads, or create a shopping cart, apply coupons, create bonus items (buy this product and get product 2 for free), and here is the fun part, it can create a MEMBERSHIP page for your fans. In fact you can set it up so that people who purchase product #1 automatically gain access to your membership area. It works with PayPal and many MANY more payment options. It also gives you conversation stats (so you can see that 100 people visited your product page, and 15 purchased your product). Another bonus is there is a one time only fees (no monthly fees like many membership software titles).  You can see a demo I did of it at www.musicianscooler.com/dlg

Watch Video

Dave Jackson
Author
Get Your Band Out of the Basement and Keep Them Out of the Asylum
www.musicianlibrary.com