Online Music Marketing:

38 Metrics and 7 Tools To Measure ROI

by Dexter Bryant Jr.

Using the Internet to market and promote your music is one of the most affordable ways toestablish and build a following. The abundance of free tools and music-based social networks hasmade music marketing more accessible than ever for musicians around the globe. Rather thaninvesting boatloads of cash into advertising, PR, and radio promotion, instead musicians investtheir time. Through social networking and direct-to-fan engagement musicians can achieveremarkable results with online marketing.The question that often comes up is how do you know if your online marketing is working? Also,how do you know where your marketing is the most effective?ROI ("return on investment") is a performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of aninvestment or to compare the efficiency of a number of different investments. In the case of music marketing online, your time is your main investment. Tracking the results of your musicmarketing efforts online is crucial to figuring out where your time is being wasted and where it isbest spent so that you can amend your actions accordingly.Below I have listed 38 metrics for measuring ROI and 7 tools to measure with. Use thisinformation wisely =)Metrics:1.Number of subscribers on your mailing list2.Twitterfollowers3.Friends/fans onTheSixtyOne.com4.YouTubechannel subscribers5.YouTube plays6.YouTube uploads of your songs by other users7.We Are Huntedchart positions of your songs8.Blog mentions or reviews of your music9.Backlinks (blogs and websites linking to your website or blog)10.Mixtape/album downloads11.Individual track downloads12.P2P downloads and sharing of your music13.BitTorrent downloads, seeds, and sharing of your music14.Last.fmplays15.Last.fm friends16.PureVolumefriends17.PureVolume plays18.Facebook fans19.Twitter plays throughtwiturm.comortwt.fm 20.Plays and listeners onblip.fm

21.Plays on podcasts22.Plays on Internet radio stations23.Use of your music by DJs in online broadcasts or in night clubs24.Your songs featured on digital mixtapes by well-known DJs25.Online plays streamed longer than 30 seconds (on various music social networks)26.International audience: number of countries where people are engaging with yourcontent (plays, downloads, reads, shares, subscriptions, etc)27.ReTweets of your content (songs, mixtapes, articles)28.100+ concentration of fans in a specific region (touring becomes viable in thatregion)