Punch Records – Music Marketing day 1

I applied to take part in this course because of my involvement with Culturedeluxe Limited (as it’s soon to be known) – the spin-off record label from the Culturedeluxe music website. There are plans to develop the label and move it away from its hobby roots and I want to be prepared for the step up.

The course was taken by Miles Hesketh from Hedz, aka Mylz from hip hop night Heducation. He’s got a Masters in marketing so we were in good hands. The session started with a fair amount of theory but became more practical as it went on, covering branding, segmentation, positioning and pricing.

There were a fair number of (entertaining) digressions but it was good to be involved in some lively discussion where everyone was coming at the material from slightly different angles. The group included a vocal coach, an MC, a producer and some event managers and we’ll all be looking to apply the same information differently.

I took a few good things away from the session, some impacting the record label, some more relevant to my own day-to-day business. As far as CDX is concerned the following stood out:

Funding

We spoke for some time on funding which, although it isn’t strictly within the course’s ambit, was of interest to everyone, especially as Miles was able to give some insight into what might be available to creative businesses. This isn’t something I’d thought of as being relevant to CDX but I’m starting to change my mind.

Direct marketing

Every marketer I’ve ever heard has gone on about the importance of having a mailing list and Miles was no different. I understand CDX doesn’t have one anymore so we need to start collecting emails again asap.

Promoting Culturedeluxe more widely

Related to direct marketing, we discussed the ‘communications mix’ – the range of media in which CDX’s ‘voice’ is represented. We need to increase the amount of content on the site and also start making ourselves more noticeable, instead of waiting for new readers to discover us. I’ve got some ideas and am going to come back to this one day soon.

Focus

The music website has a good, strong focus and I could easily divide artists into CDX and non-CDX camps. I couldn’t say the same for the record label and I think this is a big weakness. The three releases last year were in different genres – glitch-funk, ambient and indie-folk. While there’s a mission statement of sorts on the site: “giving a voice to some of the world’s best new music” we need to set out exactly where the label’s heart lies.

So day 1 has provided penty of food for thought.

Next week we’ll be covering ‘Plugging: TV, Clubs, Colleges & Universities’ and ‘Street Teams & Fan Base Activitiy: Guerilla Marketing’ with Anna Goodman (Abstrakt Publicity) and Reggie B & Redz (Sony BMG).

Published by Chris Unitt

I work at One Further, doing digital projects with cultural organisations. Follow @ChrisUnitt or find me on LinkedIn.

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