I am a professional.

I'll be appearing on this panel tonight:

Promoting and Marketing Music: Part I
DIY Marketing to the Public

Monday October 30, 2006
6:00 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.

Chicago Cultural Center
Yates Gallery 4th Floor
77 E. Randolph Street, Chicago, IL

Build relationships with your audience to create fans, and do the marketing yourself. Panelists will advise on the growing array of direct marketing tools artists may find effective to gain fans and attract new audiences. Panelists will discuss their experiences making the best use of internet sites like MySpace, Email newsletters, Music Downloads/Podcasting, self-distribution and sales of music as well as managing your website as the hub for all of these activities. In addition, the panel will discuss how to integrate the new methods with traditional marketing such merchandise, street teams, flyers, posters, cds, performing live, attracting media coverage and commercial music distribution.

Moderated by:
Mark Roth, Chicago Music Commission / Centerstage Chicago

Panelists:
Jim Kopeny, Chicagoist / Tankboy Productions
Jay Prasad, Pure Entertainment
Micah Taylor, Direction Marketing
Doug LeFrak, Feisty Management

All forums include post-forum networking.

It should be interesting to see how my views stack up against those of a few of my peers on these subjects. I think this particular topic is ripe for some great discussion given the speed with which the underlying structure of said topic keeps changing.

Plus, what better do you have to do on a Monday evening just after work?

Scott at Chicagoist was nice enough to write up tonight's panel here. Go and read it for a little more background on this series of talks.