The Nashville Feed

The big buzz on the Music Row in Nashville has been Mobile Marketing but I don’t think it’s quite prime time yet. There is talk of reproducing on your mobile phone what you get in-front of your computer including ways of monetization. Problem I see is that the technology hasn’t caught up with the vision and to be honest I don’t think anybody has figured out the net yet. When the money online equals what is made via selling a physical product then you can try to reproduce it via the mobile platform.

I primarily think the online world including mobile is for marketing and then secondarily a source of revenue. Using social networking, video and your own website is the vehicle to expose your music to new fans and connect with existing fans.

Mobile lists are the not as easy as your standard email list. The mobile phone networks are not open access and each provider is the gatekeeper with different rules. Unlike email if you a deemed a SMS spammer the providers aka in the states Verizon, at&t, T-mobile, Sprint and others will ban you from not only their network but probably come after you legally.

There are online companies that have set up relationships with these providers and offer list services to you with out the hassle. Problem is they are expensive and I doubt return on investment can be achieved. I don’t know too many independent artists that can afford that cost.

Another solution is using micro-blogging sites like Twitter.com that notify their users via SMS message when you make an update. The drawback of using another site is that there is one more step (or site) to sign up. Also you don’t control if people allow Twitter to send them SMS messages and you can’t segment your list like you would with SMS list services. Usually with Twitter you updated as needed but if you’re going to use it for SMS messaging you might want to have two accounts. You would have one for the usual Twitter tweets and the other for SMS which is only updated when important information needs to get out.

What other ways or services have you used to reach your audience via SMS?