Thursday, July 07, 2005
Thinking Inside the Media Box
A composer pal emailed me not long ago to express delight in seeing her friend, guitarist Sharon Isbin, on an episode of a popular Showtime drama series. She went on to marvel at the subsequent spike in sales of Sharon's CDs, having assumed that since her appearance wasn't, after all, on a music show, that the TV watching audience would somehow lack interest in Sharon's music-making. My gleeful response was that as I like to see it, the only separation between listeners and music is that which exists due to our self-limiting perceptions.
Here's a rather counter-intuitive idea to squeeze into: the more we as artists refuse to consider differences in target audiences, the more successful we'll be! Hey, that sounds pretty cool, huh? It completely flies in the face of the way things are currently set up, whereby radio stations [read: advertisers] strap themselves into a demographic straight-jacket. And, let's be frank here folks, it's mostly those of us on the inside of this happy musical tunnel who happen to know what's coming down the tracks in concerts, recordings and the like. Admit it: we all tend to see the same type of people at the same concerts and then shake our heads wondering why larger numbers of new people aren't there. Duuhh! Just as I don't have a clue when the next forensic science lecture is, so it is for the criminologist who has no idea about any of our events. Yet.
Doesn't virtually every human like music? I'm not surprised in the least that Sharon's sales would zoom after such a mass media appearance. And it's especially wonderful and significant that an artist of her caliber participated in something mainstream like a TV show that has little or nothing to do with music.
This is what we all need to be doing far more of: integrating ourselves into the society in which we live, and making ourselves RELEVANT to our neighbors! The ivory tower of yore has collapsed. Blah blah blah, I know you've heard that a million times this week. But we've got to earn the interest of our audiences and find ways to reach them and to be seen as part of the fabric of our culture, rather than the fancy-schmancy gold thread that no one can afford to buy that we would like to see stitch that fabric together. That's not reality. Or it is, but only to an aging, wealthy population which less and less reflects who our society and its media consumers actually are.
I'm a big outside-the-box kinda gal, and I believe that in addition to the usual [and important] routes of promoting our work within our predictable community, like Sharon, we need to explore ways to get noticed in lots of non-music markets. Let's see, Tom Myron has a penchant for examining wild turtles at nose-snapping range before releasing them back to the lake, so how about some articles on him and his music in Reptile World? Herpetologists like music. David Toub's musico-medical double life is intriguing; surely there are surgeons across the nation who would enjoy correcting cataracts to one of his podcasts. Opthamologists like music. With all the time Frank Oteri spends listening to CDs, electronic and stereo gear mags should write about his compositions. Soldering experts like music. And I think the beer makers of America might be quite interested in my latest offerings, if only they knew what a fine sponsor of their product I can be on occasion. People who belch like music! Oooh, this is so easy. On the heels of Greg Sandow's and S21-ers' recent blogging about Oprah and her promotion of Faulkner, yup, that's what I'm talking about here.
So, let's hear some great, or even not-so-great, market cross-pollination stories and media expansion ideas from any of you reading this!
posted by Alex Shapiro
5:19 AM
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