Approaches to music’s digital divide

Solid commentary by Grant Robertson at The Digital Music Weblog regarding a Reuters article on how labels and music marketing pros should think about audiences.  Younger audiences are more prone to snap up singles digitally versus 35+ audiences who tend to be full-album oriented.  He uses the new singles by India.Arie and Dashboard Confessional (right) as examples to make this point:

Artists and labels alike would do well to pay attention to demographic divides like this when planning the marketing, length and even the format of new albums, and I’m certain the successful ones already do.

It’s not so much the India.Arie’s that face heavy competition from independent music, upstart labels and self promoted musicians. The artists that skew towards the young end of the demographic, and thus serve an attention span challenged audience who are more eager to try new things, face exponentially increasing pressure from single serving indie artists and myspace superstars.

This all goes back to some basic marketing questions:

1. Do you know your audience?
2. More importantly, do you know what that information means?
3. Finally, how does your organization use that information?

Thanks to Hybebot for the heads-up about this.

Tags: music marketing, digital divide, India Arie, music downloads, Dashboard Confessional