Kyle Archer Babson

Hi, welcome, and thanks for visiting my site. If you don't already know me, here's a brief introduction.

I'm a digital marketing specialist in my twenties, and a graduate of the University of Kansas with a BA in English Literature.

I currently reside in Kansas City, MO where I work as Marketing Manager for Musictoday, a Live Nation Company. In this position and in my free time I explore music, marketing, and the web. This blog aims to highlight my most interesting explorations.

Take a look around and contact me if you have any questions or just want to say hi.

kyle(at)kylebabson(dot)com

I'm causing trouble.

Note: The opinions expressed in this blog/site are my own and in no way reflect the opinions or positions of my employer.

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Manchester Orchestra & Kevin Devine, ‘I Could Be the Only One’ (Two-Song Bundle) — Song Premiere - Spinner UK

I love this idea. Engages current fans with new content, while building awareness with a new targeted audience. For many local or regionally touring bands it’s common practice to “trade shows” with a band in another town. This is a modern version of that.

My question: I wonder if more could have been gained for each artist by doing this themselves? Spinner gets about 1.5m unique visitors a month, which is great, but how many of those will actually become long-term fans? By the three comments on the post, I’m guessing not many.

My suggestion: Bands could easily execute this kind of promotion on their own sites. The benefit is the opportunity to collect email addresses, sell merch/music, and further communicate who each band is.

Looking for a new wallpaper image for your iphone? Try a concert poster.

Scaled down, the image size should be about right for your iphone screen, and your options are practically limitless.

Wilco usually has some pretty great designs.

10 Things I'll Miss About Crozet, Virginia

1. Mountains - When I moved to Virginia 2.5 years ago from the flatlands of Kansas, the mountainous tree covered terrain was the biggest shock. It took a good year or more to get used to, but I’ll miss the views and the feeling of always being surrounded by nature.

2. Mudhouse - I really like coffee, so when the local chain of coffeehouse’s opened a location in Crozet I was pretty happy. Small cups, over-priced, but I couldn’t resist.

3. Charlottesville - Charlottesville is a smallish college town, with more history than you can shake a stick at. I usually made my way into town at least once a week to walk the downtown mall, eat a meal at Bodo’s or Eppie’s, or see a show at JPJ, The Paramount, or the revolving door of smaller club venues.

4. UVA - The University of Virginia has so many unique traditions, a beautiful campus, and it was founded by TJ himself, the university really enriches the area. Go Hoos.

5. Traffic - There is none, forgetting about rush-hour was life changing.

6. Crozet Pizza - I’m not a huge pizza eater, but Crozet Pizza is the best I’ve ever had.

7. Weather - Central Virginia boasts a mild climate. It’s rarely too hot, and I got by without a real winter coat most of the time.

8. Community - Crozet is currently going through some growing pains. New developments around the city are bringing rapid changes. The newer residents are thrilled to have more to do, while the old timers are not so sure they want to see their home town change so much. Either way, they all care deeply about the community. That’s something I wasn’t used to, but I learned a lot from it, and look forward to connecting more with my community in Kansas City.

9. Starr Hill Brewery - I don’t drink a lot of beer, but when I do I try to make it something special. My favorite brew is still Boulevard’s Unfiltered Wheat, but Starr Hill makes a number of pretty good alternatives. It didn’t hurt that the brewery was connected to my office.

10. Musictoday - I’m staying with Musictoday, but in a weird kinda way I’ll miss the old chicken pot-pie plant.

Overall, I’m glad to be back in Kansas City, but I’ll always look back fondly on my time in Crozet.

“ Pink Floyd’s use of @musictoday’s Facebook App instigated 19, 412 interactions this month http://bit.ly/5rwn54 ”

Kyle Babson (KyleBabson) on Twitter

If you have video content, it should be part of your marketing strategy.

Yes, your videos belong on youtube, vimeo, and any others you can think of. It’s pointless however for you to drive traffic to these sites, and brand your videos with their logos.

Find a white-label video hosting/player partner and turn your videos into a traffic-driving tool.

Musictoday - We take care of the fans/customers, even when it’s the CEO of a competitor.

Coheed and Cambria use Facebook’s Page analytics to gain some geographical insight on their fan-base, and then reach out to a subset of their audience. This is a great example of how to interact with your fans/followers, without blatantly asking them to reply or post a comment.

“ Musictoday seems like a company that really “gets” social media and cares about their customers. ”

Musictoday connects « Beth Feather’s Blog

Comment on a recent blog post about Musictoday and our social media strategy.

The Changing Music Business: The Chart | GOOD

Eventually this chart will even out.

In the long run “Live revenue” will be a greater percentage of the overall industry revenue, and “Recorded revenue” will be less.

That said, the current trends can’t continue forever.

There will always be money to be made from recorded music, even if it’s all freely available. See Nine Inch Nails.

On the flip side, Jay-Z, U2, The Rolling Stones, and Madonna will eventually be too old to charge $300+ for a ticket. At that point, it will be the challenge of the live music industry to get music fans to more shows at a lower ticket price.

Corey Smith's New Album Streaming via SoundCloud

Want me to check out your music?

Send me your track

For Rent

I spent the better part of the last week house hunting, and I picked up a thing or two about marketing real estate.

1. Your “For Sale” or “For Rent” sign says a lot about the property and the landlord/owner, whether you intend it to or not.

2. By not posting pictures with your Craigslist ad you’re telling me I should ignore your property.

3. Finding housing online is a minefield of confusing, deceiving, and poorly designed sites. The door is wide-open for somebody to create something new and better.

4. I found my new home on Facebook’s Marketplace. I recommend it, it’s a lot harder to hide when you’re posting with your real name and picture.

(via themcrookedvultures)

Them Crooked Vultures, the new supergroup of Dave Grohl, John Paul Jones, and Josh Homme, “leaked” their debut album this week on YouTube. Not your standard leak practice.

My thoughts. I love the branding of the static image in the video player, and the fact that each image is unique to the track currently playing. Great that the branding goes with it wherever it might be embedded.

The tossup here is that while you gain traffic by being on an extremely high traffic site, you lose a bit of control, and aren’t able to use the embedded player to drive traffic where you want it. Only back to YouTube, which makes the e-commerce aspect of the promotion difficult.