MARKETING DANCEHALL REGGAE IN GHANA

Greetings and blessed love, welcome to this forum to discuss the development of a genre of music that is so dear and entrenched in our lives…reggae dancehall music…

Some GOOD NEWS – IT’S EASIER TO BE A STAR NOW THAN EVER BEFORE because of technology

I will be talking about how to market yourself and in the process, your music. So what is marketing?

Seen as we live in a global village now, we will look at marketing our in an international context zeen?

Marketing involves finding out what your listeners want and then giving it to them at a profit…..

So as dancehall artistes and business people how do we do our marketing….

Need to conduct research to know what the dancehall consumers want and what will excite them

All sorts of research can be done – primary and secondary talking to people, monitoring the scene, watching videos, listening to other people’s music, reading etc

Then you can create for your fans, knowing what your competitors are doing and know that the consumers gonna love it up, zeen

Now having created, gone thru the various stages of your production….doing your first demo of the song or songs and then testing them, going back and working on them then further testing (with critics, friends, shows etc) before doing the actual work then and ready to release….

How do you promote it, generate publicity and then reap sales after release or even before

Some of you are doing it and some aren’t….question is why not all of us

Now to be a musician in this age you gotta be computer literate…

How many of you are computer literate?

Those of us who aren’t should quickly learn, Musiga runs introductory courses in IT and you can also get one in your hood I am sure

We all know the traditional ways of marketing music I am sure –

Do your demo, go to the studio, cut your tracks, press into hard copies, vinyl, tape and CD.

Then you organize release then sell through record shops and play shows and also sell at the shows with some merchandising – supporting all this with airplay on radio and tv and the print media

Then you repeat the cycle over and over again

Now in comes what we call the New School or New Music Economy

And that’s a whole new ball game

What it means is that it is relatively easier to become a star that it ever was in the history of music.

Now dancehall has been discussed extensively so what we doing now is looking at how to do the marketing aspect of the runnings

The New Music Economy involves the extensive use of the internet and the tools it brings

So if you are a musician and you have your website LETS SEE YOUR HAND, FACEBOOK, TWITTER, MYSPACE etc

So we on course then

Question is how effectively are we using it?

Someone will say ah why should we start looking in the direction of online and then even run things there….

In Ghana

Ghana Internet Usage and Population Growth: 2000 - 2009

YEAR 2000 2006 2008 2009 2010

User 30,000 401,300 880,000 997,000 1,297,000

Pop 18,881,600 21,801,662 23,382,848 23,887,812 24,339,838

% Pen. 0.2 % 1.8 % 3.8 % 4.2 % 5.3%

Facebook 621,000 2.6% of pop

Considering the recent developments in the Telecommunications industry I can say that in two years time internet penetration in Ghana would be double digits……

Apart from the mobile phone penetration, you also have Glo’s fibre optic investment and you gonna have the other Telcos upping their game so hey the internet is gonna go boom and as musicians we have to be ready to join the train…

For me it’s all about knowing where your core fans are and meeting them there!!!

I mean my 13 year old son downloads music from the internet and he’s taught his 7 yr old brother to do same so they always hustling for credit

Lady Gaga within a week sold more digital downloads of her single than

So how do we as dancehall artistes capitalize on this new frontier – I believe in 2 years anyone who isn’t using the internet to do their marketing will be doing themselves a disservice.

Internet Penetration

So we refreshed our memories with how music was marketed in the past – from demo to shows….

In the New Music Economy – before you even put out your demo…you have a following of like how many thousand fans – built from your network of friends online across the entire social media spectrum - Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Baddoo, Ning all the networks you know

Today’s musicians, both mainstream and indie, are using social media to connect with fans, build anticipation, and generate revenue in new and unique ways. The products range from singles to mix tapes to digital six-packs, even some crazily designed USB sticks, vinyl, and the occasional traditional album.

All though there are no clear cut formula for achieving success, I would hazard this formula for marketing dancehall music for either artistes, managers, event organizers:

1. Be a Brand – from appearance in all forms through to interaction – you should be describable

2. Be IT literate

3. Know the marketing tools available and how to use them – there are a million and one tools out there but I will list just a handful

a. Your Website which should be linked to Myspace, Facebook with Rootmusic, Twitter where u can share your music using Twiturm ( Snoop doggs joke about running for governor since he has more followers than President Obama on twitter, Youtube, Reverbnation, Livestream, Skype, Linked in for those on the business end of the Dancehall runnings….if you can’t afford your own website, you can start off with the others then as you grow in the business, you build your own website

4. Choose at most 3 social media channels and maintain a presence if you are a beginner so you can manage them well or get someone to do that for you

a. increase your visibility, discoverability and sales online

5. Build a network of fans, followers, bloggers – they say the show with the most friends wins, so little wonder that Lady Gaga with her 30 million little monsters worldwide is the ish now with over 20 million digital downloads, also Lil Wayne’s online presence is worth studying

6. Constantly update and interact with your fans – share information, show dates, run contests for them, give them discounts and offer freebies eg share music and videos – Asem’s Pigaro was blue toothed at the Accra Mall even before it started playing on radio, sell your music and do free shows

7. Get your music on the portals of the Telcos for digital downloads, use as ringtones etc

8. Use BB services, emails and text blasts to publicise your events, activities etc

9. Build a network of Brick and Mortar links – for print media, radio and tv and internet radio

10. Market your self vigorously – know how to do your proposals to the corporate world and exceed their expectations eg Samini and MTN, Ayigbe Edem and Glo

In summary I’ll say brand yourself well, master IT, establish an online presence and interact well with your fans and sell to them and make a gooooood living.