I’m back! And with me I have some good news regarding the future of evolvor.com, Label 2.0, and what I’ve spent the last 5-6 years trying to accomplish with my life.
The premise of evolvor.com started with a simple concept, and the same concept remains the same today: build a place where artists can learn about business, marketing, and technology.
I am very proud to say I’ve done that. It started as a blog about the web and how to use it, how to learn SEO and social media tricks, new distribution methods, etc. I started gaining a following. This led to networking and various jobs and I started making a (albeit crazy) living.
Then I hooked up with my main man GRO and we started Label 2.0. We thought it would be a great way to help musicians who didn’t have the money to hire people like us to teach them, and also create a business model that didn’t rely on consulting (which is VERY tough folks, especially in this business). We had some initial success, but ultimately we switched over to just making it free. It made more sense to actually get people in there to see what we were teaching and hope some of you have had some success with it.
Since July of last year, things have been quiet around here. I’ve been busy trying to sustain my business through consulting and freelancing, and it’s been tough. Either I spend all day working for a client or I spend all day trying to find a new one so I can eat the next day. It’s been a little nuts. And while I get TONS of inquiries from new artists, many are looking for handouts or just have no idea what they are doing. Working in the business has made me very desentized that there is any hope for many artists out there.
The question I’ve been asking myself this ENTIRE time is, what can I offer an artist that will help them AND how can I develop a business model that will allow me to provide that value?
So I’m going to try out a new experiment that I’m calling the “crowdsourced record label”!
There are 2 parts to how this will work, and it’s really going to be interesting to see how it all unfolds over the coming weeks and months.
The first has a lot to do with our free Label 2.0 service. If you are unaware, Label 2.0 chock full of multimedia training tools to help you spread the word about your music online, and just might be one of the most comprehensive places online to learn about Twitter, Facebook, and a ton of other tools for artists to wrap their minds around.
We haven’t updated the training modules in some time, mostly because we’ve moved on to build more interactive tools for our members which are still a work-in-progress. Now we have profile pages and an activity page that is very similar to a Facebook news feed. In the coming months we will be adding a live chat feature, and even more importantly a voting feature – think Digg or Reddit but for our members.
What’s the point of all of this, you say? Because who else is better to promote a new artist then the artist themselves?
Think about it. We are close to almost 2,000 members now using the Label 2.0 tools and training modules. Let’s say you’re a rock band and you network with 100 bands , and you all share each other’s new single to your 500 Facebook friends. How many people did you reach? 50,000. Would you have been able to do that on your own?
So that’s the idea behind the crowdsourcing record label. Teaching and showing everyone how to use all of these wonderful technologies to spread the word, and helping you network together so you can collectively take a part in the success of others.
So where’s my business model you ask?
Not only will I encourage you to be helping each other out, I’m going to ask you from time to time to buy me a beer; a little donation from time to time won’t be too much to ask! We’re also going to be rolling out some other things that I might ask for a few bucks for, like the live training calls we used to do when Label 2.0 was a paid service.
But not only am I focusing on the crowdsourcing theme as a means of promotion, but I’ve also decided to use it as a means of funding, which starts with the first Evolvor.com Crowdsourced Compilation Contest.
Hosted by ReverbNation, the contest is simple. You pay the $20 submission fee (this first contest is for the ROCK genre only) to get a review/critique of your press kit here on evolvor.com. Each artist will be given a rating from 0-5 based on a number of factors, including obviously sound but also what you’re doing business and marketing wise, to tie these posts into the theme we have here at evolvor.com. You’ll be encouraged to share and praise (or for some of you, defend) our review, which will also affect the grand prize: 20 artists will be chosen to be a part of our first compilation album. This album will be heavily promoted using the crowdsoursing mantra I’ve already discussed, in addition to backing it with a budget and our strong social media presence. Basically the more of you that enter, the bigger the budget will be and ultimately, the more promotion we can give the winning artists.
The sky is the limit on where this can go – are you ready to be a part of it? Don’t forget to join Label 2.0 for free, subscribe to the blog (I’m gonna be getting back to more regular posting), and check out the contest if you think you have what it takes. This is gonna be fun!