Now I’ve used the word ‘music industry’ here to encompass anything connected to digital music stuff, music 2.0, social media, whatever you want to call it. Truth is, the keyword today is convergence.

But if you’re struggling to come to terms with new terminology, new technology and new services I did a comprehensive scan of resources you can print out on PDF that’ll really set you up with an information boost if you’re playing catch up and haven’t got the time to dig around.

There’s some fantastic resources out there and some inspirational writers like Seth Godin, Andrew Dubber, Gerd Leonhard, Derek Sivers and even digital distributors Tunecore all offer some brilliant insight and the best news is its all out there for you to grab free as a bird. And legal too!

Promotion

Music Industry Survival Guide. This compact guide from digital distributor Tunecore crams a lot into its 30 pages covering college radio promotion, iTunes promotion, street marketing, music discovery, mp3 blogs and press and media tips. Some people actually charge for this stuff. There’s seven PDF guides from Tunecore including a vinyl 101 for bands/artists wanting to press up vinyl records.

Their other guides cover mastering, publishing, copyright and mixing.

Mastering The Music Website Cycle.  EasyB.com make e-commerce software for artists to sell music direct from their own websites. The handy 36 page guide goes into some detail on how to make and manage a successful music download website. They draw up a checklist of plans for structure, content and design. Again, some great pointers for many who may find the task a little daunting.

The Leading Question-Voice Of The Fans. This survey undertaken by UK digital music industry company Musically was aired at Midem this January. 1300 music fans were questioned across the USA, UK and France.

The data breakdown revealed that the artist website was the number one destination for keeping in touch followed by email lists, Google search, MySpace, YouTube and Facebook.  Also 88% of the overall international demographic said the death of the album was exaggerated.

There’s some interesting insight into fans attitudes on things like subscription models, illegal downloading, digital behavior and music delivery.

How To Call Attention To Your Music. I like Derek Sivers, he’s something of a visionary and I like what he has to say just about all the time. This 70 page PDF really is an essential read. Derek has a way of being very concise in what he has to say, everything seems like it has a bullet point and it just makes things more useful and precise. In his own words.

“My advice here is a combination of my advice from my own experience, and my advice from watching the experiences of other successful musicians.  I never intended to sell my advice. I just want musicians to succeed.”

Seth Godin’s, How To Sell A Book (Or Any New Idea) explains the art of building up your own tribe. A group of people connected to each other, to a leader and to an idea.

“If you don’t have a book that can galvanize a tribe, if you don’t have a product that will spread, if you don’t have a service that will generate passion among a group of people, you must stop what you’re doing and start over.
Most of all, this kind of thinking changes what matters about marketing.”

Start A Video Strategy. Technology has been demystified so much and become so affordable that a video ‘strategy’ is something that even the most hard up artist can consider. $200 nowadays gets you a HD video camera, there’s  free video editing software and you don’t even have to worry about bandwidth either.

Barenaked Ladies’ single “Wind it Up” as performed by fans who entered the Barenaked Ladies’ air guitar contest.

Netvalar’s (nee Howard Clark) PDF offers some simple advice. Get your fans involved.

GenyRockstars offer ‘100 Social Media Resources For Musicians’ a brilliantly simple roundup put together by Greg Rollett. Greg’s 25 page PDF rounds up the best of the social networks, micro blogging communities, streaming and collaboration sites, forums, blogs and artist tools.

This is a great jumping off point if you don’t know where to start. And that’s understandable considering the sheer amount of websites vying for attention in today’s market.

Andrew Dubber’s ‘The 20 Things You Must Know About Music Online’ is another essential download, put it on the list with Derek Siver (see above). Dubber writes about the changes facing independent music businesses.

“You don’t have to be a computer whiz – you just have to understand some
basic  principles.  I  reckon  there  are  about  20  of  them.  If  you  understand these, and apply their principles, you’re of to a good start in the new media environment.”

He continues.

“Don’t believe the hype.  Sandi Thom, the Arctic Monkeys and Lily Allen are not super famous, rich  and  successful  just because of MySpace. PR, traditional media, record labels and money were all involved.”

Dubber goes onto discuss the Long Tail, Web 2.0, connection and cross promotion (online and offline), professionalism (“If  this  is  your  business,  you  need  to  be  businesslike.”) and distributed identity.

“From a PR perspective, you are better off scattering yourself right across
the  internet,  than  you  are  staying  put  in  one  place. Memberships,
profiles, comments, and networks are incredibly helpful.”

Media Futurist Gerd Leonhard is another forward thinking pioneer we have a lot of time for in these parts and he offers a bunch of PDF studies available on his website, including Future Stories No. 1: Blogs will be Record Labels , Open Letter to the Independent Music Industry, and Future Stories No. 2: The Future of Telecom.

He also has his 230 page book  ‘Music 2.0’ available as a free PDF download. The dead tree equivalent at Amazon was selling for $25 (it was out of stock at the time of writing).

One reviewer summed it up better than I could.

“Gerd Leonard delivers a profoundly insightful and positive look at music’s future – a survival manual, depth chart, and trail guide all rolled into one.”

Like another reviewer said, the music business needs thinkers like this author.

And some more from Seth Godin and a talk he did on the future of the music industry a year ago. Luckily for us he made ‘On The Future of the Music Business’ PDF transcript available to all.

“Music is not in trouble. I believe more people are listening to more music now than any time in the history of the world. Probably five times more than twenty years ago”

Finally, for those in the UK that care about that kind of thing, the Official Charts company (the people who compile the top 40) have a useful PDF called’, ‘Getting Your Singles Online’ (A BPI Guide for Independents) which is essentially a run down of the do’s and don’ts and qualifying rules to chart stardom.

Related Reading,

New Music Strategies (NewMusicStrategies.com)
TubeMogul (TubeMogul.com)
The Manual-How To Have a Number One The Easy Way (Timelords PDF)
Music Industry 2.0 (The Motley Fool)
Midemnet Blog (Midemnet)
Music Business 2.0 Without the Bullshit (AudibleHype.com)