Taking the Crowd to the Cloud - Social Media for the Music Industry

From a promotional email from headliner.fm, there was this time-limited offer for a reduced price for the book entitled: "Taking the Crowd to the Cloud - Social Media for the Music Industry" by Kelli Richards. This book is sold on Amazon USA (not in the UK), and the Kindle version of the book was going for US$3.99 (after tax it was US$4.59).


This is a really up-to-date guide to help change the business mindsets of artists/artiste managers/producers/music marketing people, making them more aware of the ever-changing landscape of online communities, social networking, and emerging marketing and publicity avenues. 


With the advent of social media and online direct-to-listeners kind of business model, the powers of marketing strategies are shifting from huge labels into the hands of the individual artists and groups. This book discusses the inevitably changing mode of future content distribution, and how artists can prepare themselves to fully harness this new medium to directly reach out to more listeners than ever before.


It also talks about strategies that targets the present consumer behaviours, how to engage listeners and fans. It also advises strategies to draw them in, to interact with them experience with them so they can have a deeper understanding of the artists/groups and their music. 

I am still slowly going through the book (I am reading multiple books in parallel). However, I highly recommend it based on what I have read so far. 

The author takes a very down-to-earth approach to recommending our course of action when it comes to publicity, what to (and not to)  post on different social sites. Her examples are very current, and she has great insight on where the content business will head towards in the near future.

Whether you are an established or professional artist, in the distribution business or simply a music hobbyist, this is a real eye-opener with a broad view of the business.