The title of this entry is, of course, a reference to a line in the movie Field of Dreams. For those of you who don't know the movie, Kevin Costner plays an Iowa corn farmer who hears a voice saying, "If you build it, they will come," understands that he is supposed to build a baseball field, and when he follows through with that the Chicago Black Sox (all long since dead) show up. So do hundreds and hundreds of other people. It is a good movie, one somebody described as "magical."

That's a good word for it, because the idea that simply building something like a baseball diamond or, let's say, a CD is absolutely no guarantee that anyone will come at all. That is a bit of a sad thing for those of us who love to create things like songs, CDs, tours, or even blogs and websites. Having a MySpace profile, for instance, is no guarantee that anyone (except Tom) will ever find you.

You can even have distribution, that elusive benefit that in the pre-Internet days was the Holy Grail for many artists. "If I only had distribution," some artist would say to me, "my music would sweep the world." Distribution is important, I agree, but if you have the Internet you have distribution, so what is limiting you now?

Marketing. The same thing that limits many of us.

Or rather, the lack of marketing. Now there could be other things that are missing as well. Your content might not be any good, in which case marketing will have a little harder time. You might be charging too much or too little for your work, in which case marketing has more to overcome. You might not be unique in any way (although I believe you are), in which case marketing will make you so (even if your unique feature is your sameness) and then start selling you or your CD.

Do I sound cynical? I don't mean to, but I do want to know what you think about the role of marketing in the world of music, our field of dreams.