This was the first time NTG, worked with a musician and it was very eye opening. Musicians have very different schedules than the average 9-5 client. Being flexible and understanding to the demanding schedules of someone rising in the entertainment industry is paramount to maintaining a healthy working relationship. Sometimes gigs or performances do not end until the wee hours of the morning and they must manage creating their art with booking and managing their finances. We were shocked that even as an artist on a record label, Ms. Fuller was taxed with so many responsibilities.

Moved with compassion, we moved quickly to improve our services to artists by doing extensive research with in the industry. People were willing to give us candid information about the trials and travails of marketing themselves as artists.

Actress Cherish Duke Graduate of the NYU

First Cherish Duke, a graduate of NYU Tisch School of the Arts and a classmate of Grey’s Anatomy’s Brandon Scott , disclosed to us that artists need to be able to update their content easily without a complicated interface or having to go through a web developer

Then we learned about the life cycle of a fan:

a) the casual fan who may have heard a song for the first time
b) the fan who has come to a gig or a performance for the first time
c) the committed fan who likes to stay abreast of all an artist’s performances and CD releases

However, the hugest paradigm shift for us came when we talked to the extrodinary trumpet player Cameron Johnson of the Charles Tolliver Big Band. As Mr. Johnson explained “I am the product.” This helped us realize that the needs of an artists are no different than any other  company or organization. Just like a Pizza Hut or McDonald’s, aggressive marketing tactics are required for them to make money from their art.

Business guru Robert Kiyosaki even noted in his book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad : What the Rich Teach Their Kids about Money — That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!” that anyone can make a better burger than McDonald’s. What sets them apart is their salesmanship.

This aspect of salesmanship is what I try to impress upon all of my clients. As Solomon the wise once said:

The race is not to the swift
or the battle to the strong,
nor does food come to the wise
or wealth to the brilliant
or favor to the learned;
it is better not to be too wise or too good.

Many artist spend a tremendous time developing their talent but put little or no effort into developing their business acumen. They fail to understand that to be a PROFESSIONAL artist means that you are required to engage in a commercially driven environment where some sort of marketing is needed in order for you to make money.

Marketing in very simple terms is where an artist explains to the general public how their art fulfills a certain need or want. Again like Mr. Johnson explained, an artist is the product. Therefore they must be packaged in a way that a potential market or audience will want to buy what they are selling. An artist must put their ego aside and realize that there are millions of people out there that are creating art. Millions of songs, poems, plays, etc. are being written everyday. However, if a person is not making money from their art they are simply an amateur or hobbyist.

A trained artist must also keep in mind that they are competing against people who are willing to perform for free. In today’s globalized economy what sets a professional quality musician apart from the rest is a good internet marketing strategy.

For an artist an internet marketing package should include the following based on their budget:

• Homepage
• Band or Members Bio’s
• Discography
• Latest News
• Show Dates
• Photo Gallery
• Booking Info
• Links Page
• Electronic Press Kit
• Streaming Audio
• Video
• Email List Signup
• Merchandising/On line Store
• SEO with Google Anayltics
• A Social Networking site: Myspace or Facebook
• Email Newsletter
• Mobile Marketing

We here at Nokuri Technology Group, LLC. do not believe in a one size fit all mentality, but simply try to design the most cost efficient solution for our clients. We help an artist choose from the list of above items that will most fit their immediate needs and budget. In addition, the development of the project is just one cost that an artist must consider. The maintenance of the site can also be very extensive, time consuming and costly. That is why in terms of the visual design work, we outsource the design of high quality templates to international artists around the world.

Simply the designing of a web site can take weeks and many hours. Most graphic designers charge $20/hr with a minium of 10 hours needed to complete a design. To pass along these costs to a struggling artist would be unthinkable for us.
In terms of maintence we use the open source Content Management System Drupal.

Drupal is a free software package that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website.-from the Site Drupal.org

Both Alicia Keys and Chris Daughtry use Drupal for their websites. We believe with our help any artist can have the same quality internet marketing strategy as these artists without breaking their wallet.

For more read Marketing for Artists by Brenda Keener.

Here is an article from Noupe.com on ten useful guidelines to consider when choosing a CMS, followed by rundowns on ten great CMS options available and how they stack up based on the guidelines.

http://www.noupe.com/php/choosing-cms-tips.html

While today advancements have been made, consumers and b2b companies alike still have to be very careful when providing information to a website, as well as trusting that the content is indeed accuracte and credible. Here is a link to a handout I created during my matriculation at that stellar technology school Virginia Tech, that provides criteria for evaluating the overall quality of a web site’s content:

Quality and Credibility of Web Sites

Two of CMS that Nokuri Technology Group has expertise is Joomla and Drupal. Deciding between which one is right for organization will depend largely on where you are hosting your website and the needs of your company. Some hosting companies have only one of these available to install, while other companies may have both. To make a decision which one is right for you here is a chart adapted from Alledia.com. Keep in mind however, that their assessment is slightly obsolete, since it is not based on the recent releases of these programs. To find out the most current information about Joomla and Drupal please feel free to email or call us.

	Joomla [-]	Drupal [-]
Community Features	Community Builder. A solid component, but one that really needs an SEF extension to enable Youtube-style URLs.	Very impressive. Users can form groups and expansion of the registraion form is native to Drupal.
Shopping Cart	Joomla has Virtuemart and an integration of OSCommerce, both of which beat Drupal’s ecommerce addon. Use OSCommerce if you need multicurrency options or if you have a payment gateway not supported by VM	Not recommended as it lacks tax and currency options. However, watch out for Ubercart which looks promising.
SEO	Poor out of the box. OpenSEF is OK and improving fast. SEF Advance is roughly comparable quality but costs 50 Euros. Code is not very well adapted for SEO.	The out-of-the-box URLs work well and can be improved with one easy addon. The code is generally lightweight and well-optimised.
Forums	Use Joomla with Simple Machines Forum, which is the path taken by Joomla.org. Joomlaboard integrates natively to Joomla but lacks many key features.	A native and very smooth forum, but lacking in the high end features of the best modern forums. VbDrupal is the best way to avoid this (a Drupal Vbulletin hack)
Multimedia	Yes, plenty of podcast and video options.	Yes - Drupal Video and podcast options also available.
Photo Galleries	Yes. The best are integrations with Gallery2 and the Flash gallery Expose.	Has a default module and a Gallery2 integration.
Event Calendars	Several native plug-ins and integrations.	Not great. There are options but they are far behind those available for Joomla.
Template / Themes	Joomla has a wide selection of free and commercial offerings. Once installed they can be assigned to different pages.	Only one commercial developer. Off-the-shelf choices are very poor. Currently, Drupal assumes one template for all pages, although this can be adapted with effort and will 5.0 will allow templates to be assigned according to URL. Developing your own is the best bet.
Blogs	Some out-of-the-box capability. A good overview is here. Joomla.org uses a port of Wordpress.	Good capabilities, although not a natural blog in the manner of Wordpress.
Document Management	Yes - DocMan.	Not anything worth considering.
User Permissions	Some very major forks can work with Joomla, but this is a very poor area. Joomla is very admin-orientated. A small group of people are going to control and run the site. A lot of members can contribute by adding content, forum posts etc. but it is difficult to increase their permissions further.	Drupal wins hands-down. However, you still can’t manage single members. You need to add them to a certain group.
External Integration	Joomla 1.5 will help greatly with a much improved API and more hooks.	Currently Drupal wins easily with plenty of hooks
Content Management	In the core only Section >> Category >> Content is available. That’s it. No cross-categorization.	Unlimited categories and subcategories. Also allows for cross-categorization of articles.
Multisites Management	Commercial component.	Out-of-the-box.
Documentation	Poor, although work on this is progressing. There is however a wealth of useful information on the Joomla forums. Joomla 1.5 promises to be much more thoroughly documented.(Click here for 1.5 documentation.	Not too bad. (Click here for documentation and here for an API reference guide
SSL Compatible	With hacks.	Yes
Standards Compliance	Not great. Accessible Joomla is a fork necessary to move Joomla towards compliance. Mambo/Joomla dates from before standards were even considered (1999).	Yes. Excellent out-of-the-box.
Internationalization	With Joomfish. Not an easy or straight-forward solution	Yes, Excellent. (via i18n module)
Commercial Community	Very strong. Perhaps the best in the Open Source CMS world. Try Try Joomla Yellow Pages or Joomla.org.	Weak. Difficult to find strong Drupal developers in any quantity. Try Drupal.org, Drupal Yellow Pages or Drupalancers.
General Community	Great. 100s of extra components available, both commercial and open source. Many companies now offering services.	Good community. Often more non-profit than business driven. Excellent forum support at Drupal.org.
Ease-of-use	Joomla has a great graphical interface in separate area of website.	Administrator tasks on the current Drupal version are done via a menu on the frontpage which confuses many. Drupal 5.0 will solve this and also provide an online installer. Still, installing many modules needs technical knowledge.
Learning Curve	Shallow. One of the very easiest CMS systems to learn and customize.	A little steeper than Joomla, but still relatively easy to learn.
Speed	A default installation of 1.0.11 loads in 0.90 seconds. A default installation of 1.5 loads in 1.33 seconds. (Scores from http://sitescore.silktide.com)	A default installation loads in 1.05 seconds. (Score from http://sitescore.silktide.com)
Size	1.0.11 is 16.4 MB 1.5 is 16.7 MB	Version 5.0 is 2.89 MB
Current Situation	Unclear. When will Joomla 1.5 be out? Which version should people currently buiding sites use? One developer recently warned about relying on any firm deadlines or easy upgrades to the new version.	Clear development path. Currently working on Drupal 5. Beta 2 came out at the end of November and a Release Candidate is probably next.
Overall	Joomla 1.5 will be the crucial leap for the platform paving the way for the resolution of many old limitations. Producing a good-looking site with plenty of functionality is a relatively easy task with Joomla.	Drupal is more community-oriented and the current live version is more extensible. That advantage will be greatly shortened once Joomla 1.5 is stable.