The blog Mic Control has some modern and great ideas for how to motivate your fans to get excited about your latest promotion. We all know the promotion leading up to your latest release is make or break the success of your group. Get inspired!
headliner.fm Sizzle Reel from headliner.fm on Vimeo.
Do you use Headliner.FM and want 10,000 free band bucks. All you need to do is link your Twitter, Facebook AND Myspace before Friday at 4 PM and you will have added promotional power for your music.
Your complaints have been answered... a decade or so later. iTunes has now enabled 90 second previews for all songs over 150 seconds long. While you don't have a choice in the matter the music world seems to all believe this will help increase sales. Let's hope so.
A service there has long been a need for, a way to get advice for your music career and composition from real music business professionals. With Music 180 you can talk to the same producers, songwriters, managers and other pros who work with some of the biggest artists in the business today. The site will be launching this winter and looks like it could be a very powerful tool for musicians.
"How does my band get international exposure?" That is a complex question with complex answers, but for musicians that want a quick DIY cheat sheet with a couple of tips, dare to venture a bit further and check it out.
Keeping the energy up at your gig is a crucial part of playing live. Over on The Evolver blog they have a great article that shows how many popular groups maintain energy levels at their shows. They profile groups like Duran Duran and Wilco and show how their sets are constructed and how they subsequently affect the audience's reaction.
- No Sleep Records have signed Now, Now
- All Teeth have signed to Panic Records
- Dev signs to UNI Republic
- Superball Music has signed Dredg
- Tooth and Nail have signed Hyland.
- Like Moths to Flames have signed to Rise Records.
Sentric has up a fantastic post that can make many of our lives easier. We all still get files from our luddite friends who use file sharing sites like Megaupload, Mediafire, YouSendtIt, etc. There is an easier way both Soundcloud and Dropbox are miracles for filesharing, please learn how to use them so we can all live in a much better world. Read Sentric's tutorial here.
This week I spent lots of time with many different musician friends. Oddly enough a discussion came up more than once was what to do about lulls in the momentum of a group. The musicians talked as if these lulls were inevitable things in a bands schedule. I was dumbfounded since my experience is that every group I have worked with that is really going somewhere has no lulls. They look at me but didn't believe me so I had to describe it in practice.In the groups we work with, often times you still need to do an hour or two of work every weekend, because YOU HAVE TO. Even when you are moving, you have to stay up late or wake up early to get a few hours of work done. When your group really is going somewhere life never gets in the way of your music work getting done, your music work gets in the way of your life because it HAS TO be done. This is one of the biggest things that separates a group staying stagnant and a group that is progressing and building a following. Just remember to also make sure you bring in the lulz into the equation.
A netbook can be one of the most powerful tools a group can have at their disposal. Whether it is for collecting email addresses or just getting band work done these can be one of the best portable tools around. The problem facing many of us is we hate Windows and want a mac. Thankfully LifeHacker made this great video on how to make a Hackintosh and put Mac software on a PC. Check out more details here.
PayPal has announced they will now be lowering their fees on low priced digital goods. The fee decrease will be in the form of micropayments and you will now pay about 10 cents on the dollar. They also will have a two click solution that most notably will allow fast transactions on Facebook. Read more here.
Eventbrite is one of the best resources for people putting on a DIY show and wanting to keep an organized way of selling tickets etc. They now have an iPhone App that will scan barcodes making it so you can ticket your event just like the professional venues do. Read more here.
Earlier this week we made a strong argument as to why Quit MySpace Day is not the best idea. The Music Think Tank now has up an article that shows just how important MySpace is in Google results. Check it out if you need more proof as to why you must keep your MySpace page up to date.
Cash Music who makes some of the most powerful DIY band marketing tools has updated their Tweet for a Track code and removed the need for you to specify a callback URL or find a Twitter ID along with the username.A great addition to one of the best utilities at a band's promotional disposal. Read more here.
A nice, quick and funny overview of much of what is out there in the digital music world.
While Napster may have had life after death, we don't see this happening for Limewire. Anyone who ever paid to use Limewire in any of it's incarnations received this email from the service last night and I think it is safe to say, we won't be surprised if this is the last we hear from them.
While championing bands being DIY on this blog every day, I also deal with labels, lawyers, press people booking agents and much of the old guard every day. One of the things that is both disheartening and encouraging is the people who have been in the business for a while really do refuse to change. It is easy to watch people shout on Twitter about this and assume it is the rich fat cats at the top of the corporate board rooms, but it is not, it goes from there all the way to the veterans of the supposedly innovative indie music scene.
The encouraging part of seeing how much these people refuse to change is that every time they do, they are shocked by the result. When they embrace analytics tools, incentives for fans to download free music and other parts of the new music business they seem shocked that they worked. The fact is if you embrace many of the new tools and information available (on blogs like this) I can assure you as someone dealing with big labels every day, you have the the upper hand in this situation. Use it to your advantage. I feel encouraged!
The encouraging part of seeing how much these people refuse to change is that every time they do, they are shocked by the result. When they embrace analytics tools, incentives for fans to download free music and other parts of the new music business they seem shocked that they worked. The fact is if you embrace many of the new tools and information available (on blogs like this) I can assure you as someone dealing with big labels every day, you have the the upper hand in this situation. Use it to your advantage. I feel encouraged!
When we talk about future ways for musicians to make money one of them that keeps coming up is paid broadcasts that go direct from the musician to the fan. It looks Ustream is now about to become a big player in that game as they unleash their Open PPV program which will enable broadcasters to charge their fans for ad-free content that they can charge fans for. An exciting new feature from a great service, read more here.
Zambia's first hip-hop star talks shop on how to promote music overseas. Follow the tips. Conquer the globe.
Release strategies are always an interesting and insightful thing. Every artist must cater their budget and specific demographics to make it most effective. We always find it interesting to see where each person will place emphasis in their budget and thankfully the blogger David Huffman has detailed how he would spend his dollars. Check out a great article that may help you understand how to promote your next single.
Recently the very smart and insightful Andrew Dubber called for yesterday to be Quit MySpace Day, despite my usual love of Mr. Dubber's posts I find this one to be silly and hyperbolic. The fact is many music groups have enough trouble reaching the top of Google search results. What often comes up first in those results and gets them to the top of these results is their presence on MySpace.
The fact is until the day that Google deems MySpace not worthy of top position on their search results it is silly to quit MySpace. Your presence on MySpace ensures when potential fans Google you, you are able to be discovered easily with little effort for the new, potential fan. Until that changes, Quit MySpace Day is a very bad idea.
The fact is until the day that Google deems MySpace not worthy of top position on their search results it is silly to quit MySpace. Your presence on MySpace ensures when potential fans Google you, you are able to be discovered easily with little effort for the new, potential fan. Until that changes, Quit MySpace Day is a very bad idea.
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