'Music 2.0 Manager' Sets Off Into the Wild Unknown

Music Tank and Terry McBride Create 'Brand Roadmap' for New Act

By Mike Tunnicliffe originally published in Ad Age 'Songs For Soap': June 18, 2008

British music business development network MusicTank and Terry McBride -- "music business 2.0" manager of Avril Lavigne, Barenaked Ladies and CEO of Nettwerk Music Group -- are kicking off a unique, year-long project that will generate from scratch a mold-breaking 360-degree road map for an up-and-coming British act.

The initiative follows McBride's recent MusicTank report that showed how management and labels need to alter their mind-sets in order to cater to the behavior of the millennial generation -- generally defined as those born in the early 1980s who demand content to be available across multiple platforms simultaneously.

In the report, McBride endorses two key concepts that resonate with SFS:

• Constant experimentation is the key to success. This is a common theme for McBride, who has achieved a high degree of success for his acts by developing "unconventional" but thoughtful marketing approaches.
  
  
• Creating an artist "branding road map" that develops a true appreciation of the "artist as a brand" and sets out a clear inventory of the artist's assets -- fans, music and non-music content -- and all the multiple on- and offline platforms for reaching listeners. Once this is established, the idea is to identify suitable content platforms or "highways," which are then weighted according to their importance.

This is pretty much what we've been advocating for some time now on this blog: treat artists as brands and apply the same level of discipline to marketing artists as brands do to their own marketing.