With CD sales dropping fast, the music business is exploring nontraditional ways to expose consumers to recording artists. Among the new sales and marketing vehicles are Tara Leigh Music Party and musicShop.
Both launched in November to target female music buyers. Tara Leigh is part of House Party, an Irvington, New York, company that stages Tupperware party-like events that consumer brands sponsor at private homes. MusicShop, run by Sherman Oaks, California, music branding company Musica, is a featured section of Shop.com, the comparison-shopping engine.Through Tara Leigh, former EMI marketing executive Josh Zieman organized 2,500 listening parties at homes throughout the United States. The gatherings attracted a total of 42,000 people, 88 percent of them female.
Tara Leigh grew out of Zieman’s experience at EMI. He was vice president of marketing at the Manhattan label group before heading up business development operations at a Toronto-based digital media company in 2007.
“We were trying to reach adults and market music to them,” he recalled. “We looked at the direct-sales market, which is a multibillion-dollar business, and wondered if you could sell music in that model.”
Photo by alexkerhead