The Best Music Marketing of 2014

SOURCE: zlybox.files.wordpress.com

Do you think music should be free?


This article from Advertising Age explains the best marketing moves done by artists in 2014. This site seems to be pretty reliable as the author of the article explains his credibility at the bottom of the article. We find out that the author specializing in analysis of content and innovation, plus the site is solely based around advertising in the modern age.

Each of the examples are different things that different artists and musicians did to promote their music and ended up generating tons of publicity and noise around their up and coming music. Most of these are probably well known to a lot of us which is good because that is exactly what the artist hoped for.

Probably one of the most notable move was the accidental download of U2's album onto all Apple devices. Many iTunes users opened up their phone to discover an album that they had purchased. It seemed like they were going for something along the lines of free music. Much of the music in the industry now is not bought fairly. With tons of music streaming sites and the ability to pirate music easily, many fans don't feel the need to actually go out and spend the money on the music. This way, fans could be given the music for free and could listen to it while people who may not have been fans of U2 could become fans because they had immediate access to the album. While people may have gotten annoyed with the initial discovery of this music on their device, but the overall move was quite smart.

On the other side of the spectrum, Taylor Swift not only managed to get her album "1989" to go Platinum, but took her music off of Spotify and sparked a debate around the music industry. Taylor claimed she did this because she thought all musicians and artists should be properly paid for their art. She doesn't believe that Spotify was generating enough profit for her new album. She also mentions that the music industry continues to do poorly but no one takes any moves to try and get rid of sites and other motives that do not give the artist enough money for their creation. While some people applauded her, others called her hypocritical saying if she really wanted to make an impact, she should remove her music from all other platforms such as YouTube and Pandora and keep sales strictly to iTunes and Google Music.

Both sides provided good reasons for why music should or should not be free on the internet. My personal opinion is that I believe music should be available on free platforms because if people discover this music and like it, they are more likely to go out and spend money on the artist's merch and tour tickets. Also, they might end up buying the album for themselves as well. The article also did a great job of explaining great moves made by artists and we continue to see the music community growing and thriving while the overall industry may be struggling.

1. Do you think music should be free or should artists make fans pay for their content?

2. Can you think of other examples that artists used to promote their content effectively?