Anyone who's read at any length about the new, digitally-based music business paradigm knows that it's entirely possible for an artist or group to make a living in a post-label world where album sales are no longer the industry-sustaining cash cow they once were.

    According to a vast number of trend pieces, all you need is a robust social network of fans, a killer marketing concept, and a Kickstarter campaign to become the next Amanda Palmer, who last year raised over a million dollars from her fans that funded a self-released album,Theatre is Evil, that made it to number 10 on the Billboard 200 chart.

    The problem is that musical ability and a knack for marketing aren't necessarily connected -- for every master salesman like David Bowie there's a reclusive Neil Young who is just as musically gifted but can barely be bothered to take a publicity photo. Or, as Shoutabl co-founder Travis Donovan puts it, "These days when you start a band, you're just inundated with all of these places you feel you need to be. It's so fragmented, it's so disconnected, and artists have moved away from the idea that they're a valuable destination, that they can curate a community around themselves without handing over that community to Twitter or Facebook, who really don't care about your financial interests."

    "My example is always Tune-Yards," says his partner, Travis Morrison. "She's the most interesting American musician working, and her website is like an image with links to her Facebook (FB) and Twitter accounts. Her front page should be the most interesting website in American music. It's not right."

    Shoutabl, currently in beta, is Donovan and Morrison's attempt to apply the digital strategies they learned while working at the Huffington Post toward solving self-marketing for the Neil Youngs of the world. The platform allows users without programming skills to assemble customizable websites that can host content from musicians' social networking accounts and a basic built-in blogging setup, as well as offering a simple way to push content back out through those same accounts, as well as serving media hosted on sites like YouTube (GOOG) and SoundCloud.

    On top of their experience pushing content for HuffPo, Donovan and Morrison both have real-world experience promoting their own bands. Donovan was a member of the Phoenix metalcore band Not Quite Bernadette. Morrison was the frontman for a dancey, punk-influenced Washington, D.C. outfit called the Dismemberment Plan back in the 1990s, and he has been using technology to help manage the band's business since "just as email was becoming legit." The group recently reunited -- they'll release Uncanney Valley, their first new album in 12 years, in October. Shoutabl is a direct reflection of his experience in the new independent music business.

    "There's this huge pile of B-plus products for artists' needs," says Morrison. The multiple products don't individually provide a comprehensive solution for marketing one's music. Bands can host tracks on SoundCloud, sell them through BandCamp, communicate with fans on Twitter, and advertise live appearances on Facebook. Bouncing between sites that solve only part of a problem is a hassle many artistic types just don't want to deal with. "I hate doing it, and I'm a power user," Morrison says. "It's exhausting! I mean God forbid you actually try to set up a WordPress instance!"

    任何一位或多或少了解过基于数字化的音乐产业新范式的人都知道，今天已经进入了后唱片时代，专辑销售已经不再是音乐产业昔日的摇钱树，歌手或者音乐团体完全有可能过上体面的生活。

    大量的时髦产品显示，只需拥有一个强大的粉丝社交网络，一个杀手级的营销理念，同时在众筹平台Kickstarter上举办一场筹款活动，就可以成为下一个阿曼达•帕尔默。这位女歌手去年凭借从粉丝手中成功筹集的一百多万美元资金，制作了一张自我发行的专辑《邪恶剧场》(Theatre is Evil)。这张唱片最终荣登公告牌200强专辑榜(Billboard 200)的第10位。

    问题是，一个人身上不一定能够同时具备卓越的音乐才能和超凡的营销技巧。音乐圈内既有大卫•鲍伊这样的营销高手，也不乏尼尔•杨这样的“隐士”。尽管尼尔•杨同样具备非凡的音乐才华，但他几乎连一张宣传照片也不屑于拍摄。或者，如 Shoutabl网站联合创始人特拉维斯•多诺万所言：“现如今，如果你组建一支乐队，你就会觉得哪个山头都要占领，让人觉得分身乏术。这些山头一盘散沙，各自为阵。歌手们已经不再认为自己是一个有价值的目标，不再认为脱离Twitter或者Facebook就能打造一个以自己为中心的社区，而Twitter或Facebook并不会真正把他们的经济利益放在心上。”

    “我的榜样永远是Tune-Yards，”他的合作伙伴特拉维斯•莫里森说。“她是美国最有趣的音乐人，她的网站就像是一张与其Facebook和Twitter账户相链接的图像。她的首页应该是美国音乐界最有意思的网站。这种情形是不对的。”

    多诺万和莫里森试图在目前处于测试阶段的网站Shoutabl，应用他们在《赫芬顿邮报》( Huffington Post)工作期间学到的数字战略，帮助音乐界的尼尔•扬们解决自我营销问题。这个平台允许不具备编程技能的用户搭建可定制网站，而这些网站不仅可以承载来自音乐人社交网络账户的内容，而且内置了一个基本的博客设置，提供了一个把内容通过这些账户推送出去的简单方式，还可以充当YouTube 和SoundCloud等网站音乐内容的媒介。

    除了拥有为《赫芬顿邮报》推送内容的经验外，多诺万和莫里森还具备宣传各自乐队的实际经验。多诺万是凤凰城金属核乐队 Not Quite Bernadette的成员之一。早在上世纪90年代，莫里森就在一支朋克乐队担任过主唱。它名叫“肢解计划”(Dismemberment Plan)，以舞曲风格为主，在华盛顿特区颇具影响力。自从“电子邮件刚开始被接受”那时候起，他就一直应用技术来打理这支乐队的业务。这支乐队最近重新团聚，还计划在10月份发行12年来的首张新专辑《Uncanney Valley》。Shoutabl直接反映出他在全新独立音乐产业的经验。

    “歌手们需要一大堆电子产品，”多诺万说。多个产品无法单独地提供一个全面的音乐营销解决方案。乐队可以把歌曲上传至SoundCloud，通过BandCamp销售，在Twitter上与粉丝沟通，在 Facebook推广现场演出。在多个站点之间跳来跳去，但却只能解决一部分问题，这是许多音乐人根本不想应对的一件麻烦事。“我讨厌这样做，我是一个高级用户，”莫里森说。“那样做太劳神了！我的意思是，如果你真的尝试着创建一个WordPress博客，连上帝都看不过去！”

    Helping technically un-savvy musicians get operational online is a growing field. "There seems to be a whole set of expectations, and a whole set of businesses, built around that concept," says Maggie Vail, former vice-president of the influential indie label Kill Rock Stars. Last year Vail left the label to become co-executive director of CASH Music, a nonprofit developing free, open source software intended to give musicians, "the most basic layer of music technology: things like digital sales, physical sales, and email collection, basic things that artists need to run their website," as well as an educational curriculum to show them how to apply it. "The technology isn't difficult," she says. "There's no real reason why someone connecting your PayPal account to an Amazon S3 should be taking 15% of your money. That's a manager's cut." (Shoutabl offers physical and digital sales via Topspin Media, which charges a 15% fee but doesn't take its own cut.)

    As well as pulling together assorted "B-plus products" into one platform, Shoutabl also adds in services with the potential to produce the online equivalent of music scenes which in the past have been defined largely by geographical proximity. "Artists are becoming more business-independent," Morrison says, "but they don't want to be on their own culturally, they don't want to be on their own socially." Musicians can not only find and connect with each other in the way that SoundCloud does (and MySpace once did), they can also combine resources and promote each other.

    For instance, the Dismemberment Plan has a Shoutabl page, Morrison has one for his solo work and another for his other band, the Burlies, and assorted members of both groups have their own projects. Shoutabl lets each of them "exploit the Venn diagram" (as Morrison says) of their overlapping fan bases. With their permission, the Dismemberment Plan can, for instance, push blog content announcing Uncanney Valley's release date to the pages of each act associated with them. Bands also can use an advertising system baked into the platform to serve targeted ads on each others' pages. Donovan calls it the digital version of someone onstage telling the audience to check out their friend's upcoming show, a way to magnify the scope of a marketing campaign while maintaining an organic sense of community. Combined with the ability to sell merchandise through Shoutabl pages, it can provide an easy way to monetize their work that few platforms can match. Eventually Donovan and Morrison would even like to see networks of musicians using the platform to launch collective fundraising efforts, for instance to underwrite the launch of a record label.

    The ultimate goal of Shoutabl is essentially to empower musicians with the skills of an advertising or marketing professional, without them actually having to learn those skills, and to allow the ones who weren't born with innate gifts for self-publicity to concentrate their energy on simply making music.

    "Artists aren't Internet experts," Donovan says, "but we kind of are."

    "A lot of what we're doing," Donovan continues, "is taking strategies that we know, that are proven to work really well at pushing out content, and we're trying to ease bands and artists into these best practices. We're trying to kind of subtly teach them best practices or just to do them for them so they don't have to think about it."

    Morrison laughs: "The idea of even making a musical artist say the words 'best practices!'"

    帮助不精通技术的音乐人在线运营业务是一个不断发展的领域。“围绕这个概念似乎产生了一整套期望和业务，”玛吉•维尔说。她曾经在颇具影响力的独立唱片公司杀死摇滚明星(Kill Rock Stars)担任副总裁一职。去年，维尔离开了这家唱片公司，出任CASH Music基金会联席执行董事。这个非营利性组织致力于面向音乐人开发免费的开源软件，包括“最基础的音乐技术，比如数字销售，实体唱片销售，电子邮件收集，这些都是音乐人运行自己的网站时需要掌握的基础技术，”以及一个教程，旨在向他们展示如何应用这些技术。“这些技术一点都不难，”她说。“有些人仅仅帮助你把贝宝(PayPal)账户和一个亚马逊(Amazon) S3账户连接在一起，就收取15%的佣金，这是完全没有正当理由的。那是管理者揩的一层油。”Shoutabl通过Topspin Media提供实体和数字唱片的销售服务，后者收取15％的费用，但这家网站自身并不提取佣金。

    除了把各类“电子产品”汇集在一个平台之外，Shoutabl还增加了一些有可能产生相当于现场感受的在线音乐场景服务。过去，音乐现场主要是由地理位置的临近性决定的。“音乐人的生意正变得越来越独立，”莫里森说。“但他们不想局限于自身的文化领地，也不想囿于自己的社交圈。”音乐人不仅能够以 SoundCloud那样的方式（MySpace也曾经发挥过这样的作用）发现彼此，互相联络，而且能够结合资源，互相推广。

    比如，肢解计划乐队在Shoutabl 上拥有一个网页。莫里森为自己的独唱作品开设了一个页面，为他的另一支乐队Burlies开设了另一个页面，两支乐队的各色成员都拥有各自的项目。莫里斯表示，Shoutabl 让他们每个人“充分利用维恩图(Venn diagram)”，即相互重叠的粉丝群。比如，在获得他们准许的情况下，肢解计划乐队可以将其公告新唱片发行日期的博客内容推送至每一个与他们相关联的活动页面。乐队也可以使用一个内置于平台的广告系统，在彼此的页面上传播有针对性的广告。多诺万声称，这就好比某位正在舞台演出的音乐人提示观众关注好友即将上演的演出。只不过，它是这种行为的数字化版本。这种方式不仅可以维系一种有机的社区感，还能够放大一场营销活动的辐射范围。结合其通过网页销售商品的能力，Shoutabl能够为歌手提供一种将作品变现的简单方式，几乎没有其他平台具备类似的能力。最终，多诺万和莫里森甚至希望这些歌手网络使用这个平台发起集体筹款活动，为唱片制作募集资金。

    就本质而言，Shoutabl的终极目标是赋予音乐人一种达到专业水准的广告或营销技能，而且无需他们真正学习这些技能，从而让那些不具备自我宣传天赋的音乐人专心致志、心无旁骛地从事音乐创作。

    “歌手可不是互联网专家，”多诺万说，“但我们算是。”

    多诺万说：“我们正在做的许多事情，都是实施一些已经被证明能够非常有效地推送内容的策略。我们正尝试着帮助乐队和歌手逐渐掌握最佳实践。我们其实在潜移默化地向他们传授最佳实践，或者干脆代替他们来完成这部分工作，这样他们就不必操这份心了。”

    莫里森笑着说：“让一位歌星说出‘最佳实践’这个充满商业意味的词汇的确是个好创意！”（财富中文网）

    译者：任文科