The Annual Mobile Readiness Survey

It's time again for our Annual "State of Mobile Readiness" Survey to the Artist community. This simple survey - takes about 1-2 minutes - will help us assess and measure the progress being made within the music industry toward the adoption of mobile marketing . With more and more fans engaging their favorite bands on mobile devices, we're interested in learning whether Artists are thinking about - or using - mobile technologies to connect with fans.

We'll run the survey through January and publish the results in the next Newsletter and here. We conduct this survey annually (this is the third annual survey) to gauge trends and movement in mobile adoption.

If you enter your email address at the completion of the survey, we'll send you the results of the survey and also enter your email into a random contest to win a $25 iTunes gift card.

Besides, it's fun. Go here to access the survey. And Thanks!

 http://goo.gl/forms/OBTDIrpvR1

The best way to support Artists is to pay them directly

What if streaming doesn't work out for the Artist? If streaming services aren't the answer for the music business, what will be the model for creators moving forward? If it doesn't work out, will there ever be enough money for musicians to make a living?

Technology in this space has been all about making consumer friendly solutions, and streaming provides a solution consumers are looking for – a jukebox in the sky, large catalogs of music, on demand, any time, streamed to any speaker you own. Companies making consumer first products are driven to make the product as cheap as possible. They’re not creating creator-first companies. And so creators are struggling to make a living.

Fans, however, want to support Artists they love. If there are easy ways to let fans pay Artists directly, they will do so. Often they will pay more for music if offered the opportunity to do so.

If streaming services do not convince large masses of consumers to pay for their services, and the distribution of this subscription revenue is not passed to independent Artists, then these Artists will need creator driven technology that helps fans easily support Artists by paying them directly. Fans will step up to the plate, either through patronage, crowdfunding, tips or direct purchases.

Artists have a role here also. Most Artists don’t tell fans how they can support them, or take advantage of tools that make it easy for fans to support them. 

Music itself is not doomed, because we’ll always need it to free our souls. If streaming doesn’t work out and creators stop making music because they can’t make a living from their streaming royalties, fans will step up and support Artists by paying them directly to keep music alive.

  

Can you legally text your fans?

There are a number of high profile lawsuits from consumers annoyed with receiving unwanted texts. We often hear from Artists asking us whether they can legally text message their fans? Before we tell how and when you can text your fans, it’s a good idea to get a little background on the law that determines whether you can text message your fans legally or not.

There's a law about this. It’s actually a federal law, called the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), which is governed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). While you may hear about CTIA or Mobile Marketing Association when researching best practices for SMS marketing, the TCPA is the only actual law when it comes to whether you can text message fans.

Since we're talking about fans that have expressed an interest in receiving texts from you (by texting your bandname to 444999, joining a contest, etc.) we're really interested in what the TCPA says about whether or not you can text messaging mobile phone numbers that you’ve already collected from your customers.

It’s actually pretty simple, if when you collected your customer’s mobile phone numbers, you disclosed the following two things to them in a  “clear and conspicuous” manner, you can text message those customers.

What does  “clear and conspicuous” mean? It means that the disclosures were displayed in close proximity to wherever you were asking customers for their mobile phone numbers. If you did not disclose the following two thing to customers when they gave you their mobile phone numbers, or you didn’t disclose these things in a “clear and conspicuous” manner, you cannot text message them.

Here are the two things you have to tell them:

• By participating, you consent to receive text messages sent by an automatic telephone dialing system.
• Consent to these terms is not a condition of purchase.

The great benefit of the Adva Mobile Service is that we comply with this law "for you", meaning that, when a fan first texts in, we send them a text telling them they can expect to receive additional texts from you. And we provide them a link to Terms, where the second requirement is met.

As you can imagine, most Artists, when they’ve collected their fan's mobile phone numbers in the past (through a sign up sheet at the merch table, for example) have either not disclosed the above two things, or haven’t done so in a “clear and conspicuous” manner. So we tell Artists to get fans to text in, and then everyone is compliant.

Who Owns The Fans?

Hi, At Adva Mobile, we want to help you make the most of your marketing efforts to connect with fans.  Part of that is showing the world more about who you are, your creative talents, and what you know by sharing ideas, starting conversations, and inspiring others with your creative work.  So, that raises a question: who owns all of the content you post on Adva Mobile? You do, and you always have. Whether it's music, a photo, a tour date, lyrics, videos, post, or anything else, we want to make it clear that you're in control of your content. Here are some highlights (you can read more in our blog post): You're in the driver's seat. * You decide when your content goes. If you delete something from our platform, we won't use it anymore. * Share wherever or whenever you'd like. We don't own or have exclusive rights to your content. It's yours, so feel free to repost it anywhere, however you want. What about fans? They're yours. We'll never offer advertisers or other Artists access to your fans. Only you can communicate through us to your fans. So they always know they are communicating directly to you.   We also want to give you even more control over your account so we're introducing some new tools:  * Now there's a single place to see all your fans and how often they are engaging you or your web App. You can upload fan data, either one by one or send us a spreadsheet - to add fans to your mobile marketing campaigns.   * The emails we send when you change your password now include info about the place where the action was taken, so you can rest assured your account is secure.  All of these changes are part of our commitment to put our members first.  With these updates, you can feel even more confident about who controls your content and personal data on Adva Mobile: you.  Thanks for being a member! The Adva Mobile Team

Thew New Shortcode 444999 - What it means

It was weeks of planning, hundreds of lines of new code, and an education for us (and we've been doing this for 6 years!) about the many ways different companies implement SMS Text technology. We were a bit late, but we're up and running successfully and a number of you have already run both incoming and outgoing campaigns on the new shortcode 444999.

The company we are now working with offers a number of attractive features that you will find useful. We're introducing the first of these today in the Adva Mobile Blog and our Artist newsletter - Custom, Flexible Keywords. 

This company has a number of impressive capabilities that are an advantage over our prior text provider (who we love!). Their reports engine is outstanding, and as we integrate our system with theirs, you'll see even more information that will help you understand your fans.

Coupons

Ever take a minute to stop and think about how ubiquitous coupons are in our lives? They're everywhere! I'm not a coupon guy, but even I can't ignore that, like advertising, they must work, because everyone is using them.

There's a really cool way to use coupons as part of your mobile marketing efforts with the Adva Mobile platform. A number of our Artists have discovered this and are promoting sales at the merch table with coupons that are part of an Adva Mobile marketing activity. Here's how:

First, create a simple coupon and save it as a jpeg image. Here's a simple example.

Second, many of the fan engagement features of the Adva Mobile platform including Exclusive Content, Voting, and Contests, include the ability to offer something to the fan as a thank you for participating. That can be your coupon. Here's a picture of where you set that up on the Voting & Contest setup pages.

Now, fans that participate in one of your marketing capaigns, especially at shows, can show the coupon they downloaded at your merch table. This promotes more sales.

This marketing tool is especially effective with Artists that are using the Contest feature during live shows. They run the contest, and the winning fan(s) get free merch for winning, and the other participants that didn't win get a discount coupon.

Get in touch with us here at Adva Mobile if you need any help setting up or executing a marketing campaign with coupons. 

Artist Insight - Driving Your Fans at Shows

Rock masterpieces from the White Album to Dark Side of the

Moon reinvigorated by electric strings, bass, drums and a touch of jazz improv. Founding member, composer, arranger, producer, multi-instrumentalist and father of 3 Will Taylor drives the band and promotes no boundaries - form doesn't matter as much as passion, fun and creativity.

Will Taylor & Strings Attached has been creating innovative music and supporting a music career since 1993, so he knows about the mix between creative and business in forming a musicians career. He's helpful and willing to share his insights with other Artists - there's an entire YouTube channel of helpful advice in the form of 5 minute tips you can find at his YT channel. 

When he joined Adva Mobile and we saw a rapid uptick in the number of fans opting in to receive mobile texts from him, we were curious as to how he was attracting fans. His solution: Sign Up Sheets distributed at every show to every audience member.  "I keep all of the sign-up sheets that my fans submit at shows." Says Will. "We have a very high success rate with guests  filling it out because we usually offer them a free bootleg CD in exchange." They include the request to be put on the text list,  their cell phone number and their wireless  provider. Will has been adding fans into his mobile database and, combined with the fans that join by texting in, over 300 fans are now part of his database in less than a month, with more added all the time. 

Will was also willing to share more info about how he's collecting fan info. Here's a link to a You tube video -  http://youtu.be/BAQpv7WcJvQ  (its about how he specifically captures fans with the form at shows, and here's a picture of the form he has fans fill out.  

Get Will's Free 5 Min Tips to Tame Creative Life so You Can Make More Art and Have a Life. Will's tips here are here: http://budurl.com/subscribew5mt