Choose your audience, choose your brand

After talking to many musicians on different occasions and trying to find who is more likely to be able to tell me about their promotion efforts online, I realized that my chances of finding an active online musician are much higher among young musicians (those between 20 to 40 years old). It is rare to find an older classical musician who promotes himself online and is not skeptical about the whole online business.

I guess the same works for the audience. A musician can really choose his audience by choosing where and how he promotes himself. If an artist wants a young audience, he has to focus his efforts on online resources that include social networks such as Myspace and/or Facebook. If a musician is aiming at the traditional older classical music crowd, he has to focus on traditional advertising, including the written press like newspapers and magazines.

By choosing an audience and a method of promotion, an artist can shape how he is perceived as a musician and what his brand character is.

Not surprisingly, all pop and rock musicians, who naturally aim for a younger audience, are very familiar with online promotion. But classical musicians are legging behind, with a much smaller number of online pioneers in the field.

I hope the current generation of upcoming classical musicians will change this equation.