Music Marketing: Press, Promotion, Distribution, and Retail: book review

I am going to start by saying that “Music Marketing: Press, Promotion, distribution, and Retail” by Mike King is a very informative book. The book lays out, in some detail, ways to achieve success in the music business through the various outlets available to bands these days. The book doesn’t strongly emphasize any particular avenue or approach, but does give a fair amount of do’s and don’ts that can really be helpful to bands trying to break through to the next level.

However, this book is not for the fly-by-night reader. I would venture to say that a typical band member picking up this book and trying to grasp the concepts in it, would be pretty hard pressed. Most of the stuff in this book seems to be designed from the perspective of a publicist, marketer, or music business insider. While this does work on many levels and gives some great insight into areas a band may never think of, the reading is more in-depth than I would have ever cared to endure when I was in a band. Even as a Marketing major, some of the concepts in this book are a little beyond my grasp.

The book has a heavy lean toward the Boston-area (which is where the book was published, incidentally.) It’s not that big of a deal, but I mention it because the music scenes vary from one city to the next and a city-centric focus may be off-putting to some readers. The book also has a much heavier focus on bands that have already kind of established themselves and are trying to make it to the next level or get signed. So, I would caution brand new bands from picking this book up. Furthermore, many of the concepts in this book cost a lot of money with little focus on guerrilla tactics of marketing.

A band could get a few key components from this book, however. Since the book does provide press release examples, promotion examples, and insider interviews, a band could use this as a tool to help model their own marketing efforts. Another good thing about this book is that it provides a workshop exercise at the end of each chapter for a band to understand the concepts better and flesh out their marketing strategy.

This book is great for someone who wants to become a music marketer specifically or a publicist perhaps. For a band, however, it might be a little too much to handle while trying to flesh out the best music you can (because that is the most important part, even according to Mike King in his book.) Don’t get me wrong – a band should probably know the stuff in this book as they progress – but, my advice with this book, if you are really interested in picking it up, is to give it to the person running your merchandise booth, to a friend that isn’t in the band but wants to help out, or to a parent that would help. Give it to someone who really has the time to work on and understand the concepts in this book.

“Music Marketing: Press, Promotion, Distribution, and Retail” can be found at Amazon.com for less than $20 new, and is also available as a Kindle edition.