I have a member in my Artist’s EDGE Membership whose primary audience is over 60 yrs. They’re not likely on MySpace – and if he hadn’t targeted them specifically, he’d still be struggling.

So, you need to target your market and put all of the branding efforts you described in the format and locations where they will most likely find you. Otherwise it’s just spitting in the wind.

Give as much as you can and nurture fans without the friction of price.. allow people to really become fans of the artist, not just a song.

Great summary!

Hoover

More tips at http://www.tmpublishing.biz

Good recap!

To add to your 5th point: mobile apps are certainly important, however one of the problems with apps is of course that different hardware requires separate apps (iphone, blackberry etc..), and as you point out most solutions out there now are costly.

If I can point out an alternative: we have recently launched a platform that allows bands to go mobile, and have chosen to focus on a web-based solution for now (it’s a bit like wordpress for bands).

By not requiring people to download a specific application for your band, and instead directing them to a URL, you can attract a larger audience.
Also, we believe that there is a lot of value in allowing bands to “merge” their mobile websites when they play gigs together to give access to all the bands’ information (and real-time updates during the gig) through a single URL.

We think this is a viable alternative to the “1 custom app per band” model, and it’s free to use.
I believe this to be the first platform of this kind to be made available – in any case feel free to check it out @ http://www.gigdoggy.com

Cheers