I have been spending the last week trying to figure out just what it is that motivates users to join music related web sites. What I have sadly discovered is that Glam and Cool out weighs individual promotional and marketing knowledge savvy as well as Money Motivation. Lets take a look at what I have found. I created this site with a specific Marketing and Promotional direction in mind such as offering real money to promote and reward Independent Musicians as well as try to implement a unity concept, meaning that with numbers you will be able to compete and have a real world impact with the Big Dogs out there such as the likes of the

RIAA (Raped In Ass Association) and their thugs.

Well lets look at the early stats, I mean this web site has only been around four months or so in any real since. On the first month we got 80 unique visitors with a steadily growth thru January with a stat of 356 unique visitors and this month which is only half way thru already at 242 unique visitors as of this post. The reason I mention Unique Visitors is because this is the real stat that matters in dollars as far as advertisers are concerned. It is a combination of cookies and IP address which is a little more accurate than just lumping an entire housing subdivision as the same person.

So with all of this being said, I scoured the Music Web Sites and found a common denominator between them all. All of them that I found really don't offer anything real and tangible to the user for the most part but what they do offer which actually means very little is a cool little profile page so you can add eye candy and your own little player widget etc. All of these things are cool but don't pay the bills and they also don't really expose your music all that much. You see people still have to find you or know about you from somewhere else, hum are they putting you on the front page of their web site? does that cost you $ ? Do people have to search for you and how are they even going to know about you in the first place. Most of your fan base will come and then keep it to themselves and maybe some of their close buddies but they wont really perpetuate your efforts in reaching more fans and real world exposure efforts. Hell most of your fans won't even buy your downloads they will steal it instead or just not bother. They will buy your tickets if they can get out with their buddies to have some real world fun.. The ones that do buy your downloads or CD's are the types of users or fans you must replicate and grow to larger numbers. You can't do this by using your existing fan base these loyal fans that represent the smaller portion of your total fan base have to help you do this or you have to reach out and market into new groups or fan bases. For the most part fans just go there to be cool with you being cool there at your cool little profile club house. Well some of you will and some of you won't get it. Sadly most don't it seems.

Most of these cool sites spend a lot of advertising dollars and some are even associated with the Big Dogs etc so they pull users with an already existing user base. They definitely have the users but nothing much gets done as a whole for the majority of the groups actually enrolled there. Just a handful of insider or big money groups get the real attention and just a handful of the others get some. Now I could be wrong but so far this is what I have sniffed out of all of this. It mind boggles me as to why I have had so many unique visitors come to this site but never join for a dollar amount that most of these guys usually end up drinking at a bar in one night's outing or a couple of value meals at lunch time etc. Wow this site is really asking for too much isn't it. You all hear stories as to how a few of these Independent musicians have scored big with lots of albums and lots of downloads and yes this is very true and it will grow in the future as well but this is a very small fraction of the total picture of Independent Musicians out there trying these same routes and never scoring anything. It's that lottery mentality thing.

Well with frustration comes change, so I am going to spend the next 6 months not concerning to much with the tangibles anymore and instead work on the Cool Factor to get this site up to a better competition level with these other so called Cool Sites. I will have a Myspace type of Profile page where you can add your own background and all of the eye candy stuff more like VIRB than Myspace, VIRB is a larger readable screen I think. Also there will be a fan base profile module. In the meantime this will be the last month for any contests and Venue Promotions. Lets get real here, 350 plus unique visitors and no registrations, the second month had 250 plus unique visitors. People are just not joining this site no matter what tangible thing I offer up for them. They just want Cool and this site is not meeting up to their Cool Standards. Wow and to think that many unique visitors are seeing the Jamacast musician of the Month, Hell that should be enough to pay $100 for. Does anybody know how much it cost to run a freakin 1 inch ad in a local news paper for one week. You might get lucky and have 10 people read it. I have a friend who said one time to maybe charge a high premium to use this site. This would create value in the minds of the users who are also more serious about their music and promotional efforts. Is this the way to go? I'm beginning to wonder actually. Is this basically the reason why the Big Dogs who are in charge are the ones in charge maybe? Do we pick and choose by class status this way or do we try to educate everyone like I have been wanting to do here? I always thought strength in numbers was the key here. I'm getting the numbers but building no strength unless people join!!!

Groove Out!!!