Law on the Row: The long tail wags the dog! An independent artist succeeds using the Internet

I have often advised my clients in the past that the new direction for independent artists is what I refer to as "guerilla" marketing, meaning finding alternative means of marketing your product. One of the most explosive methods of doing that over the past few years has been the Internet. One of the problems with marketing yourself on the Internet, however, is how do you get people to come to you? The void of the Internet is so vast, that finding an artist whose sound is something that matches your musical taste is even more difficult than finding a needle in a haystack!

So, it is a beautiful thing to see an artist actually breaking into the Billboard charts catapulted in large part by her success on the Internet, particularly her MySpace page. Her success story gives hope to every artist whose desire is to put out a record, throw it up on the Internet, and have people flock to listen.

Enter Indianapolis, Indiana singer-songwriter Sally Anthony whose "eTeam" of over 125,000 fans, including over 40,000 friends on MySpace, helped propel Anthony to stardom. Thanks in large part to that online community, Anthony's first album, Vent, released in 2004, sold over 175,000 physical and digital copies. Two releases from that album spent months on the R&R pop chart.

Her new album, Goodbye, released October 23rd, has already sold 14,000 digital copies. It has already reached the top of the pop charts at walmart.com, FYE Digital and iTunes and on November 7th landed at No. 9 on the Billboard Heatseekers Chart. The album is being distributed by her company, Gracie Productions, through Imperial Records/EMI.

Anthony is succeeding because she is treating the music industry as broader than just the radio promoted, hit-driven, plastic disc business the major labels seem stuck in. She is viewing the music industry as an entire package, generating buzz wherever she can, from the ground up rather than from the top down.

I predict that we will start to see more and more of these types of breakthrough artist as the popularity of YouTube, Facebook, MySpace and other online communities grow in popularity and as the pioneers of the Internet find more creative ways to index diverse product, match it to the tastes and purchasing patterns of Internet users, and make recommendations - sites such as LivePlasma, Pandora, Audiobaba, Last.fm, MyStrands and, of course, Amazon,

As radio fades into the annals of history alongside the monolithic corporate conglomerates that are record labels, these innovative types of indexing sites will help those artists in the deep dark recesses of the "long tail" find an audience for their music. By the way, if you haven't read Chris Anderson's treatise on this subject, The Long Tail, buy a copy and dissect it now. The long tail consists of that product that is not in the mainstream -- not on the shelves of Wal-mart -- but product that is still sought after and purchased by people. Maybe it's only ten people per month, but people still want and buy it. It is the millions of artist that fly below the radar of the "hit-driven majors." These are the artists who can benefit from the exposure the Internet can provide.