Music Promo Blog: eBay auction madness offers a great lesson viral music marketing

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eBay auction madness offers a great lesson viral music marketing

I got an email yesterday about about a wedding dress for sale on eBay by a disgruntled newly divorced man. The comment my friend made was, "Read what he wrote." I laughed my ass off!

Yesterday afternoon, the site had 500,000 hits and the dress was selling for $800. End of the day, it had hit 2,000,000 hits and the dress was selling for a few million. Okay, it's now back down to a very reasonable $25,000... WHAT?!

It's a stinkin' wedding dress, but as any collector would note, it's not the dress, it's the entertainment value. This eBay Auction even made the Today Show this morning.

So what does this have to do with music marketing?

This is what they call viral marketing. Something with a lot of entertainment value gets passed around like a virus. I found a couple similar sites that I added to an article, .com eBay Auction Gone Mad!

The point of this is that if you're really anxious to build a fan base in the digital era, you need to go viral. Meaning:

Release a Free MP3 single from your latest album.
Give it away.
Encourage your fans to share it with their friends.
Post it on Kazaa and Morpheous.
Upload it to every MP3 website out there.
Post it to bulletin boards.
Offer incentives for people to spread the virus.

Do it right, and you might be the next viral bandit on eBay.

PS. Find out more about Viral Music Promotion from a couple articles I published four years ago on the topic.

PSS. Seth Godin published an incredible free ebook called, Unleash the Ideavirus. Go download it and learn more about viral marketing.

PSSS. Don't forget to tell your friends about this Mad Viral Marketing success story on eBay.

--posted by Marc Gunn at Wednesday, April 28, 2004
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