Music Marketing the McDonald's Way

Face it. Unless you get millions of streams on Spotify or YouTube, the return you get for paying a curator to force your music onto playlists has questionable value. So why bother?

Many don't so what other options are available to get your great song track heard? How do you gain loyal fans and followers that motivate you to keep jamming and creating more fire?The traditional method, of course, was to tour, sell CD's and pay for advertising--the holy trinity of music promotion. Today, the goalposts are constantly moving with covid limiting performances. Yep. It's still out there lurking big time.

I remember the first time that I ever met a music promoter in the flesh. I was managing an RV resort in New Mexico and this squat little guy pulls up to the office in a beat up Dodge, leaves the engine running and rushes into the office with posters, flyers and demo CD's pushing some lame Country & Western band touring the Southwest whose name he dropped and I forgot. Really, he looked like some door-to-door salesman pushing a product that nobody wanted or needed and now the whole scene reminds me of Michael Keaton in the movie, The Founder--the flip side story of how the burger franchise, McDonald's got started. I felt sorry for the guy but little did I know that the owner of the resort would soon ask me to do the same thing.

He had a jones for this banjo player called Mean Mary who was actually very good and a keen performer with a cool personality. He wanted her to play at the resort or some other venue in that little scat town and I had to either set up a venue or find one. Most of time, I got flat out rejected. Nobody would even hear me out but at least I got free lunches at some nice restaurants charged to his account for being out and about. 

Now Country & Western is not my go to genre, but hey, as the song goes, "I like music, any kind of music" so long as it's done well.  But I'll never forget talking to a theatre manager (which was not a cold lead), thinking I would wrap a deal, get Mary booked and win kudos from my boss for some reason. It seemed like a sure thing, a slam dunk, and I was ready to pop the champagne. We got on the Internet in his office and he listened to about 30 seconds of the song (the average play time for most streaming music listeners) and cut the clip and said, "I can't sell out the place on that." So I learned a few things which stuck with me through the years, not only as a home product salesman and half hearted book promoter later, but as an aspiring music biz man today:

1. People like to buy but not get sold.

2. You have to get a lot of no's out of the way before you find a yes.

3. Product is important but persistence is more important. After all, McDonald's sucks but they still sell billions of cow pies around the world regularly.

4. Build an image and a brand and keep it strong. Make your God given face recognizable.

5. Pray for constant blessings and guidance because I'm pretty sure that angels like to bump and rock as the rest of us.

And finally, everything you do, do for the glory of God and to promote His gig!