This guest post from music tech entrepreneur and philosopher Bruce Warila (@brucewarila) is excerpted from a piece on the informative Music Think Tank blog.
With minimal exceptions (taylorswift.com at #14,077), there are 20,000 websites that rank ahead of almost every artist website on earth. Why is it that sites like underjams.com, mudcat.org, museum.tv and twenty thousand other sites are more popular than the websites run by U2, DMB or Coldplay?
...The reason that artists don't rank high... is that the websites (and Twitter accounts) operated by standalone artists can only deliver the “this-website-informs-me" value proposition. Compared to 100,000 other sites on the Internet, even established artists fail to deliver anything valuable on the web but informative (who, what, when) information...Yes, the type of site every artist has now can be a perfect compliment to your offline business, but this post is about calling attention to the work that needs to be done to climb the (web) charts as independent media channels in a converged world where all media is accessible via a web browser or a wireless application.
There's strength in numbers. Consider starting here:
To begin with, ten major artists, thirty to forty mid-level artists, and fifty up-and-coming artists on the same site can deliver additional and expanded value that standalone artist sites cannot. A multi-artist site can go far beyond the “this-site-informs-me" and the “this-site-entertains-me-for-more-than-ten-minutes" value propositions.
If you are looking at sites like friendsorenemies.com or audience.fm or worldaroundrecords.com, I believe these sites are glimpses into the future of multi-artist sites aspiring to become productive media channels. If I were an artist, I would seriously consider starting or joining one of these ventures. Moreover, I wouldn't hesitate (details aside) to drop my own site to pool resources with others that share the same vision.
Read Bruce Warila's full post on Music Think Tank.
