Interview with John Oszajca
Interviewer: First, a couple of introductory questions for anyone that may not be familiar with your music career. Can you give us a brief over view of your experience in the music business?
John Oszajca: Sure. Basically, I’ve been performing music both as a solo act as well as with various bands since I was 15 years old. In 1999 I found myself in the center of a gigantic record label bidding war which lead to me signing with Interscope Records, for what was said to be one of, if not the, biggest new-artist recording contracts of all time.
Interviewer: Wow, that’s amazing. So what happened?
John: Well, to cut a long story short, the album didn’t sell very well. I could bitch all day long about why I think that was, but the bottom line is that the album didn’t break any sales records and without even a warning I was dropped from the label.
Interviewer: Ouch, that must have sucked.
John: Yeah it really sucked actually. (Laughs) But what are you gonna do?
Interviewer: What did you do?
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John: Ultimately, I just kept trying. I took about $100,000 of my own money and recorded another album. My lawyer and manager shopped it but there were no takers. So I found a new lawyer. Still no takers. So I found a new manager. Finally with a lot of cajoling, I landed a new deal with a Warner Brothers subsidiary, who signed me to a one-off recording contract. Long story short, they did almost no promotion for the album and, not surprisingly, it didn’t sell very well either. So I started all over again. I recorded a new album, this time for $7,000. As luck would have it, a friend of mine, producer Ryan Page, was starting a new indie label called Dreamy Draw Music. We worked out a deal and my third album, Elephant Graveyard, became the label’s debut release.
Interviewer: How did that do?
John: Terribly. (Laughs)
Interviewer: You’re not exactly selling yourself here, John.
John: I know, I know. But that’s when things began to change.
Interviewer: What do you mean?
John: Dreamy Draw did all of the things you might expect a small label with a small budget to do. They brought in an affordable publicist, sent me out on a small tour, did some college radio promotion, and the record just didn’t move in a way that was significant. Sure I sold albums, but not the tens of thousands that everyone was hoping for. After about six months I was starting to think that maybe it was time to focus on another project.
Interviewer: So did you?
John: Actually yes. I didn’t give up on Elephant Graveyard completely, but I did start thinking it was time to start earning some money from something more reliable. That’s when I started reading about internet marketing. I got suckered into a couple of those adds you see promising hundreds of thousands of dollars a year making money online. I have no interest in working for anyone else, so I thought, hey, maybe there’s something here. Well, I can now tell you that all those ads you see are definitely a bunch of crap. I wound up buying hundreds of dollars worth of courses promising to make me rich, most of which really didn’t teach me much. Each one offered a tiny little nugget of something useful but for the most part they were a bunch of junk. But I was desperate and so I kept reading and hoping, and after reading literally dozens of these things, I started to get a bit of an idea of what Internet Marketing was all about, I even created a few websites promoting other peoples products and started to see a few sales trickle in. I started to see some light at the end of the tunnel. That’s when I started experimenting. I’d tweak a website here, an advertising technique there, and much to my pleasant surprise the sales increased. Within about six months I was generating about $5,000 a month in sales.
Interviewer: Wow, so those get rich quick scams weren’t scams after all?
John: No, they were mostly all scams. But they gave me just enough of a glimpse into internet marketing that I could carve out my own techniques from the basic ideas that these supposed “gurus” were sharing. And when I saw that I could sell cookbooks, or pet care products, or whatever else online, it seemed obvious that I could sell my music as well. So I set out to start marketing my music just as I marketed these other products. The thing was, it didn’t work very well, at first. I mean, the traffic came in, and there was a sale here and there, but I wasn’t seeing the kind of conversion rate that I was seeing with non-music products.
Interviewer: Why do you think that was?
John: Well, I beat myself up asking that same question for a while. I started to think maybe I just wasn’t that good. I mean how many times am I gonna do this before I get the hint, right? But then I realized, while there are many exceptions to this, the primary thing that internet marketers do, is solve problems. They find out what words people are searching for and for those that are problem based, they offer a solution, for a price of course. How to lose weight, how to train my dog, even how to market my music online, these are all problems that people have that they turn to the internet to try and solve. If you can offer a real solution, you can make money, really good money. But music isn’t a problem. In fact it was somewhat scary to realize that the niche I was in, music, was a completely saturated market, with an extremely low price point, a product that is very expensive to create and that didn’t fill any immediate need.
Interviewer: I see what you’re saying. But that’s not much of a solution. I mean, musicians can’t just give up, right?
John: Of course not, and neither did I. What I did was make a list of what does work when trying to sell music independently in the off-line world. When I broke it all down the best method I knew for selling CD’s was performing. The problem is that with every tour I’ve ever done, I lost money. Sure, I would sell a ton of CD’s, even make money from the gigs themselves, but if you are paying for a van, gas, hotels and musicians, its just friggin’ near impossible to make touring profitable. It’s certainly not sustainable until you get into a whole other stratosphere. But, I asked myself, why does touring work? And the answer I came up with was that touring allows you to create a real relationship with your audience. Their attention is focused, they get a full understanding of what you’re all about, they get a feel for your personality, your integrity. Often you talk to them personally. Heck, I can quadruple my CD sales simply by standing next to the merch table after the show and making myself approachable.
Interviewer: Sure, I know that’s true from my own experience.
John: So I started thinking about how I could replicate this online. And with that, it all became pretty clear. The answer was in the list.
Interviewer: You mean the mailing list?
John: Exactly. Something you here a lot about in internet marketing is “working your list”. Research has shown that the average person needs to see an ad about 7 – 10 times before they are comfortable making a purchase. So, some internet marketers follow this line of logic by putting their advertising efforts into developing a mailing list rather than just directly selling a product. Then, over time, and mixed in with quality content, they offer subscribers products related to the niche, which in this case is music.
Interviewer: So you’re talking about what exactly? Creating a newsletter?
John: Short answer, yes. But now that in itself is nothing new. Musicians send out newsletters all the time, but there are a couple of things that musicians generally don’t do. Generally speaking, musicians don’t send out the right messages, they don’t send them out enough, they simply don’t have enough people on their mailing lists or put the right efforts into building it up, and one of the biggest mistakes musicians make that is essential to the success of many other businesses is that they don’t offer an upsell or a back end product. In other words, a product or service that they can charge their customers a premium price for down the road.
Interviewer: Wow, that’s a pretty interesting idea. I’ve seen it with a lot of other business but not with music. What could a musician do that would work for something like that?
John: I’ll answer that in a second, because you know, it’s funny how you worded that question, because that was really the hurdle that I had to get over when I first started trying to apply all of these traditional internet marketing techniques. I found that because music is what it is – its subjective, its exclusive, its art and not a thing that people need but rather something they want but only if you can move or touch them – I found that you couldn’t sell it in many of the traditional ways. It just wouldn’t move with cheesy sales pitches. Every strategy I tried had to be modified to fit music, but what was important was that the model and the thinking were the same as with traditional internet marketing.
Interviewer: I know what you mean. My Myspace account is bombarded with emails from musicians asking me to check out their band and I’ve always wondered who the heck actually goes and buys this stuff? Who even checks out their websites these days?
John: Totally, and in my experience, very few people actually do buy music from those kinds of tactics. Every amateur marketer, myself included at one point, makes the same mistake. They think that they need to hard sell. We are so conditioned by all of the bad marketing and spam out there that the second we are in a position to try and sell something we do the same exact thing that we hate. People are actually pretty smart and sophisticated these days, especially music fans. They know bullshit when they see it and if you sell too hard people will usually just move on. Generally speaking a potential record buyer needs time. They want to check you out from a distance. If they like what they hear, they’ll keep listening. If you make a sincere enough impression on them, create some interaction, they’ll buy. That is where the mailing list comes in.
Interviewer: Right, okay, so I think I get pretty much everything you’re talking about here about the mindset of the music consumer, how internet marketing is a great way to sell music but that the techniques need to be modified because of the nature of the product and the audience. But, so, in practical terms, what does that all mean? Can you basically explain step by step, what a musician who wants to emulate your tactics needs to do to start selling albums?
John: Sure, absolutely. Now, there is just no way I can tell you everything you need to know in the amount of time we have here. However I can present the basic strategy that I use to sell my own music online. And if you do these things you should definitely start to see results. In fact, if you do these things well, you should be able to build a career that is both profitable and sustainable. But in a nutshell the basic components are these. Create a
simple web page that offers something for free – ideally some downloadable music of yours – in exchange for a persons name and email address. This page is the gateway to your entire online presence. Whatever website you have, no one is getting in until they give you their email address. Next, you need an autoresponder. If you’re not familiar with autoresponders, they are applications that allow you to create a sign up box and place it on your website. Next you need to write an initial series of at least 3 to 7 emails and program them to go out to your list every 4 to 7 days. These emails shouldn’t try and sell anything at this point. You are just letting your subscribers get to know you. Perhaps offer them some more free stuff of yours, or ask them who their favorite artist is, let them know that they can email you any time; anything that builds a relationship. Then, maybe in the fourth or fifth email you might send them a message about your album and how and why they should get it. But again, don’t over sell. You should never send out an email that you wouldn’t send to your friends. The more natural and real you are when you communicate with your list, the more you will sell.
Interviewer: But what about all the people who are searching for your band because they want to learn more about you, hear your music, etc? Won’t you lose them if they have to sign up for something before getting into your site?
John: You will lose some, but the truth is, the rate at which you will profit from a visitor if you cannot first build a relationship with them is so poor that I think scaring off a few visitors in return for the increased subscription rate is well worth it. Often the lack of information on your gateway page in itself provokes enough curiosity that people will sign up just to see what’s inside the site. Plus, if you follow some of my traffic generating tips there will be no shortage of information about your band on the internet. So it’s not like people aren’t going to be able to find out what they want to find out
about you, but if they want the info from the source, they gotta join your list. In my course, “Music Marketing Manifesto” I go over every detail regarding how to do this, why you do it, and I even give you email templates so you know exactly how to write an autoresponder series and what to do when the series runs out.
Interviewer: You mentioned traffic, that’s probably one of the most important components. How do you get the traffic?
John: Okay, that’s a big question with a very long answer. The short answer is that it depends. It depends on whether or not you have a budget or if you want to get the traffic for free. It depends on what your particular skill set is. If you are a good writer and have a little bit of time to spare. You can write music reviews of your band or of other artists that are similar to yourself and include a link that links back to your web site. Then you post those reviews in article directories. The directories themselves will send you some traffic but the idea is that the review will go viral. By submitting your review to certain directories you are granting other websites the right to publish your reviews on their websites provided they don’t alter it or remove your links. While the directories alone will bring in some decent traffic, if a large e-zine publisher decides to publish your review that can translate into a huge amount of free traffic. In fact, I have heard of articles showing up on over
10,000 websites. Imagine what that kind of exposure can do. You can also do banner swaps, post in music forums, or you can simply pay for it via any of the many advertising programs out there. The list is endless really, and each technique presents its own benefits and challenges. My advice is to pick one and start experimenting. See which one works best for you. It took me a long time to figure out what works, and even longer to hone my skills, but restructuring my approach to marketing music has been one of the most liberating things I’ve ever done. To be honest, I was about ready to throw in the towel. I just couldn’t sell records without spending a fortune. The beauty of these techniques is that they will continue to grow my fan base for as long as I have music available. No matter how old I am, no matter if I tour, no matter if I ever even record another album. While I strongly suggest you do tour and record as much as possible, the great thing about these techniques is that they allow you to be completely autonomous. Your career is not hinged on industry trends or fads at all. You can release successful records under the radar or you can use these techniques in conjunction with a radio, press and touring campaign and really push things into overdrive.
Interviewer: I was just going to say, if a band was able to develop a mailing list of 10,000 responsive fans. I would imagine that any record label would be pretty crazy not to take a look at signing them.
John: Totally. If the band even wants a record deal at that point, because the truth is, with a list like that, they may not need one. And a mailing list of 10,000 people is completely doable. 50,000 is not at all impossible, even more. I mean, a list of that size will take either some real effort or a decent budget, but it can be done. On the other hand, even if your list contains only 500 names, that’s still something to work with. You can build a profitable career around that. It isn’t going to make you rich, but it will be your own, very real, following. If you nurture that following and continue to work at it, it will grow and it will generate income. When I think back to all the opportunities I’ve had over the years, MTV, Rolling Stone Magazine, national tours, Woodstock, it physically hurts to think where I would be if I had been as focused on list building as I am today. The other really important thing to do is to create upsells or back end products. Basically, more expensive products to sell to people who have already purchased from you.
Interviewer: You mentioned that earlier. That seems like that might be difficult with music. I mean, it’s not like you can say to your list, “hey, thanks for buying my CD, now how about a time share in Costa Rica”. (Laughs)
John: No, certainly not. But you could create a membership site that is full of exclusive content, maybe a weekly or monthly video chat, whatever made sense, and charge, 30 bucks a year for it, even at 10 bucks a year, with 3,000 subscribers, that’s $30,000 a year. For a solo artist, that’s enough to live on. And that’s before CD sales, gigs, merch, etc. Merchandise is an obvious example. The White Stripes released a camera that sold for $180. Imagine selling 1000 of those. It’s all about getting to know your fans, and then getting a little creative. Different things will make sense for different artists. Even T-shirts can be great upsells if you present them right to your list. It’s amazing how what might otherwise seem like just a crappy T-shirt can be transformed into an exclusive “for friends of the band only” piece of memorabilia if you play on certain psychological triggers and launch a product intelligently.
Interviewer: So there is an art to the launch of an album as well?
John: Absolutely. Most artists simply send out an email saying their record is going to come out soon. Then they send out an email that says it came out, “buy it here”, or something to that effect. That’s not very exciting soundingat all, and it’s not going to break any sales records. Instead you need to create a sense of urgency and ideally exclusivity. One of the ways you can do this is by offering some kind of bonus, maybe a free track or two, for only the first 48 hours of a record release. If they don’t buy when it comes out, they will never have the chance to get the track again. This rewards your subscribers for being on your list. If done right this will not only drive sales up dramatically but it will also strengthen your relationship with your fans. The record launch is a huge part of your campaign and I can’t possibly lay it all out for you in this interview, but in short, you need to build awareness, heighten curiosity, create urgency and then let the environment you have created sell your CD, not a sales pitch.
Interviewer: Well I think that about wraps it up. As a musician myself, you’ve really given me a lot to think about. I’ve definitely made a lot of the classic mistakes you mentioned that most musicians make. I’m going to have to rethink a lot of things.
John: I made the same mistakes, hell, I’m still making mistakes. This stuff isn’t easy. But the good news is that anyone can do it. Discovering all of this literally changed my music career and because of that my life. I really feel that anyone can follow these steps and develop a real following that generates real profits. In my newsletter I send out free strategy tips every week and I want anyone listening to [reading] this to know that I’m here to help. If you have any questions please feel free to email me. I’ve been around the block more than a few times in the music business and I’m happy to help in any way that I can.
Interviewer: Well, thanks so much John. You’ve given us some great strategies and I think I’m ready to go out there and apply some of them to my own music career based on what we’ve discussed here today. You can’t get much better advice than from a major label recording artist turned guerrilla internet marketer. So, I appreciate you sharing all of these great insights, tactics and strategies with us. Thanks.
John: You’re welcome. It’s been my pleasure. It’s been a lot of fun doing this. I live and breathe this stuff and its fun to share it with other musicians. I know how hard it can be to put yourself and your music out there and to not get the recognition you deserve. I sincerely believe that if you apply these techniques you can build a successful music career. Some will grow slowly and others will skyrocket, but if you work hard at it, everyone has the ability to make their mark and to really matter to their listeners, which in the end is all I think that every musician really wants.
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This report has been provided by:
www.MusicMarketingManifesto.com
It has been provided to give you a broad understanding of how to develop a successful internet music marketing strategy. He has also developed an advanced step-by-step music marketing strategy course in which John gives you detailed instructions on how to apply all of the techniques mentioned in this interview and many more.
To find out more about John’s music marketing strategy course go to www.MusicMarketingManifesto.com
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Important Note
Warning: Sending unsolicited bulk, commercial or otherwise unwanted email is a crime in the United States and can result in exorbitant fines and even jail time. Because I am not an expert on the legalities of email, I highly recommend that before you build an email list you fully understand the laws that pertain to your jurisdiction. The following link should help you to better understand the CAN-SPAM law.