Maria Piscopo has another great article in Communication Arts (if you don’t subscribe, you should) and it is also available online. This one is about email marketing and it makes some very important points–like that you have to offer something more than just a promo to make it work best for your business.
Music
Recently on one of the photographer forums there was some discussion about using music with slideshows or on a website. The slideshows were mostly in the context of wedding clients or other direct-to-consumer work, and the websites were both for that market and commercial (editorial, corporate, advertising) photographers.
Now, I can totally understand photographers wanting to use music with their images. Many photographers are musicians themselves (at some level) and MTV changed the way we as a culture view both images and music–combining them so that not having them together seems almost odd in some ways. It seems to make sense to use sound to complete the sensory experience as much as possible–if you could do smell, taste, and touch too I think many of you would.
However, music is often NOT a good idea for marketing your images, especially on websites. First off, many buyers are in open office environments and so sound is not welcome. Secondly, your musical tastes may be very different from your buyers and that can result in your buyers having negative reactions to your work just because they hate the music. At the very least it can be distracting–there have been some studies recently examining listening to music (as well as things like audio books) and driving. The data indicate that sound distracts the driver significantly. In other words, drivers have a hard time concentrating on what they see when they have non-driving sounds (i.e., car and street noise) in their heads. We can make a not-too-huge leap of logic to conclude that music may distract from concentrated visual-related actions, like reviewing images.
Now, I will make a small break from my main point of no music on websites to say that if you have a wedding business, using music can be a good thing. The bride (and her mother, usually, maybe the groom) want to imagine their perfect day and that includes music. Picking the right music is important, but it can work.
But for commercial sites, I’d say “no” to music…if for no other reason than this last point: you probably are using that music illegally.
You must license music to use it on your site. There are no excuses for NOT doing this. It makes me so frustrated to hear photographers saying things like “I’m not selling the music so why should I pay for it!” or “It’s promotion for the musician–they get a credit line!” or “I put a link to their site, that should be enough!” Let’s see…where have we heard those lines before…oh yeah, I remember, from every site owner who uses images illegally! Pot/Kettle/Black…mean anything?
Look, you cannot base your business of selling licenses to reproduce intellectual property (your images) and then not respect others’ intellectual property rights–writers, illustrators, designers, and, yes, musicians. You can’t complain about the unfairness of having to license other creative work and then demand it for your own work. It’s simply wrong. It doesn’t matter if the recording industry is corrupt and the artists get pennies from a license (have you seen what some photogs get from stock sales these days?)–it is the law and, more importantly, it is fair and ethical to stand up for intellectual property rights for all if you are in this business.
Oh, and you must license any of this material for use in slideshows, too–whether as a promo, on a disc with images you are delivering to clients after a shoot, or (especially), for anything that will be shown to a group–like at a wedding.
So, I suggest dropping music from most/all of your materials and, if you are going to choose to use music in any way, license it for that use. It’s not hard to do (most commercial tunes are licensable via BMI or ASCAP).
If only photo licensing were as simple. 🙂
Happy Holidays!
As is my tradition, Burns Auto Parts purchased a big load of games (no Prozac) for the San Diego chapter of Toys For Tots. The donation was made in the name of all my clients and friends, as a way of thanking you for all your support–passing the good stuff on to others.
I couldn’t do what I do without you. Thank you, deeply, for another successful year.
As is also tradition, BAP will be closed from the 24th until January 2nd, so let me take this opportunity to wish you all a happy new year and a successful 2008!
A Creative Lube for Your Lover
There’s a new Creative Lube available (free, as always, and also available on iTunes) but this one isn’t for you creatives directly–it’s for people like me who are romantically involved with a creative. So go download it and give it to your spouse/lover/partner.
37 Signals on Self-Promotion
Great post about “getting ink” from 37 Signals. I’m particularly fond of the quote from Steve Martin. I saw him recently interviewed and he made the same point there. It’s a good one.
Quickbooks Pro Major Bug!
If you are using Quickbooks Pro 2006, Mac version, DO NOT run it! It seems that there is a bug that is deleting data! Here are two links for more info:
A contest with good rules
Here’s what sounds like a fun and creative contest…and it involves shooting FILM! Even better, the rules are clear: the photographer owns the images. Woo hoo!
Make sure to read the details, though. It might be more challenging than you first think…but that’s a good thing. 🙂
New Manual
For those of you who don’t get the Manuals in your email (and, thus, get them a month before posting!), there is a new one posted on my site.
More sporadic
You’ll probably have noticed the posts have been a bit here and there lately. That’s partially because it’s the holiday season with all its added stuff-to-get-done-ness, and partially because my father unexpectedly had a heart procedure on Monday. He’s doing well now and already back home (got a 2nd stent at 81 years old), but I was understandably not thinking too deeply about work during the hospital-related events.
Now that he’s on the mend, my only excuse is, happily, the season.
SB2 video preview
ASMP has posted a preview of some of the video you’ll see at Strictly Business 2. Go here, then look to the right-hand side for links to Flash and QT versions.
If you haven’t signed up for SB2 yet, what are you waiting for?