Phygital Qr Codes

I'm a big fan of QR codes and I really think that they will become increasingly widespread.

We like to make one, create a poster with a simple and obvious call to action (e.g. 'Scan the QR code to sign up to XXXXX mailing list and get a free EP straight to your phone' or similar) and post it at gigs with the link being straight to the sign-up form on the artist's site.

Works a treat!

I saw this company's QR codes as a result of @Buzzsonic posting a link to their greetings cards - which are great.

But, I love their 'phygital' codes such as the one above for the Shazam app, where they manipulate the code using images rather than the standard black and white - which I think makes a big difference and entices people to scan the code.

Plus they look cooler.

Check out Stupid Creative and their phygital QR Codes here.

How to get noticed!

I've been posting a lot of these videos from TruSound because they are compiled from interviews with people who've made it in the music biz.

That doesn't mean that what they say is gospel but it does mean you should listen to what they say and give it a chance before deciding whether to act on their advice or discard it.

This one's great - all about getting noticed. A lot of it is old school and not about online profile, but that aside, what they do talk about is really good.

The one thing many of them ARE talking about is how they created their own scene, starting local and building their visibility in that little niche. This creates the start of a following and fanbase which itslf can become the foundation to build from.

Listen to the guy from Godsmack at 4.30 saying that he and his band focused on a 60 mile area around their home town and they would be at every show (local band or national band passing through) that fit their genre and they'd network and flyer like crazy. Old school networking and promotion that works.

Bottom line - get your music straight, then work your ass off, play shows, flyer, network and build a buzz locally. That buzz will be noticed. Go from there!

6 ways to fail promoting music online

I have spent well over an hour today reading the two posts that this post on Hypebot links to. Re-reading, in fact, in the case of the first one as I'd seen it when Chris De Line posted it in April.

It was time well spent.

And then I left a 500 word comment on the latest one, which I have reproduced below as I don't want it lost in the mists of time. I think it's important.

The post on Culture Bully is excellent and points out some extremely important things that musicians do wrong when promoting themselves online.

I think everyone should read it.

How to fail at promoting music online

And here's the link to the first post.

Music bloggers are nice people if you give us a chance.

And, lastly, here's my long comment that sums up my view.

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Chris

I disagree about your point on the effectiveness of artists promoting themselves to blogs.

I recommend it to artists but with significant caveats, most of which line up with your points.

I've been on both sides of the fence as a blogger, and a manager and someone looking for PR for my artists.

In my experience the modern online marketing of music can be enhanced by intelligent promotion to music blogs.

But, the key is to have great music!

The problem you and every other blogger has is that 99% of what you are sent is crap. People don't tell these 'artists' that they are not 'good enough' and that they need to spend time perfecting their art before spamming every blog known to man looking for a break.

When their music is worth a moment of someone's attention and then a positive emotional response, they will find it easy to attract online attention.

This can and should be done in a systematic way with targeted blog promotion being one strand.

I encourage artists who do have material that is ready for wider attention to start with lower traffic blogs and ones that are not just about music (local sites, what's on, demographically related - e.g. skate sites if you make skater music).

DO personalize as you said.

But, often, don't email at all. Just read the blog, leave comments and be part of the community around that blog.

Every blogger I know reads their comments and so notices those from an artist and checks out their site (if they've linked it in the comment). If the music is good, often a blogger then approaches the artists and offers to cover them.

Do you have this experience?

Why focus on low traffic blogs? - because it's all incremental.

For the DIY musician the journey to sustainability of a career or superstardom (whichever is their aim) is about a growing process done in public which attracts fans over time.

To target high traffic 'name' blogs with your first EP is to welcome rejection and feelings of failure.

Start small and leverage your presence on a raft of smaller niche blogs over the time that you and your career develop.

This is a strategy that does work and is a very good reason why artists should bother to spend time cultivating a select band of blogs who may form a supportive base for the next step in their efforts.

How many? I'd look at any stage of an artist's career to be interacting on 100 or so tightly focused blogs (i.e. that are musically, genre and demographic appropriate). Some might think that's hard to do in terms of time or too much.

But, if you're a musician and in a scene, shouldn't you want to be involved in it, online and offline? I don't see why people would see contributing to their scene and getting promotion from it and within it as a chore.

Done right, reaching out to blogs works for musicians.

 

Tumblr Time

You need your own website - fact.

But, you might also benefit from a Tumblr site.

Less formal, a place where you can post thoughts, photos, inspiration, random stuff.

I'd still have a sign up form that goes to your same mailing list system (Aweber if you need help deciding!) on your Tumblr though!

You might be reading this on our Tumblr site - the way we use it is OK. It suits our purpose of quick posts pretty much every day (and we save our main site for larger, deeper posts), but it's not really best practice.

Still, people check it out....a lot.

You can make your Tumblr as simple or as complicated as you like. It can be styled or left very plain. The added advantage is that there is a community on Tumblr just like Twitter and Facebook and they reblog posts avidly - so it's genuinely a way that people can discover you and your music.

This piece in Billboard lists 30 great music Tumblr sites that will give you plenty of inspiration.

If you think it's worth adding to your network I'd recommend posting a little something about your life and how that fits with you being a musician at least once a day, saving deeper content posts for your main site, posting there maybe once a week.

That's a general 'rule of thumb'.

Here's the Billboard list again.

The modern musician NEEDS time

I could've titled this post in a number of ways and actually deleted and changed he title a few times.

I don't normally do that, but I hoped to attract attention and make people take the time to read the article it links to, because it encapsulates the whole truth about what being a musician is all about today....and it's written in business management speak by a non-music industry writer!

But it's EXCELLENT. Read it here.

Smart managers realize every artist is a standalone business that generates income from multiple revenue streams. A manager's job is to create those businesses and run them well. This requires thinking globally and being agnostic about which revenue stream or territory is the most important. As long as those channels can deliver the aesthetic the artist wants and make a profit, the business is a success.

But the business of relationship building is not a quick one. Artists have to earn the respect of fans, convert that respect into trust, and, eventually, convert that trust into faith. Building communities takes time, and it can only be achieved over the long-term. In this model, artists can no longer be treated as interchangeable hit makers.

This writer understands the turning point we are at.

Make your music, work hard to be as good as you can be, put it out there and grow and develop in sight of and with help from your fans. They will come along with you.

The second KEY lesson in this article is:

Value the artist-fan relationship as highly as traditional rights.

i.e. don't just make music and try to sell records. The value is in the long-term relationship with your fans - and that's not just a monetary value, it's artistic, cultural and emotional as well.

Those fans will sustain you for a far longer period (including fiancially) if you treat them properly and maintain that relationship.

Read the whole thing here....please.

SEO for bands

We made a video on band website seo - which, in my own humble opinion, is really good.

We often talk about the need for bands and musicians to discover at least the basics of search engine optimisation so that they can attract more traffic to their site.

More traffic = more fans = more sales. The post on our site proves the point with data.

I was reminded of our post by this one from Prescription PR which is methodical and detailed yet easy to follow.

Search engine optimisation (or, for you acronym-loving hipsters, SEO) is a hot topic for any business; appearing in the top 3 results for a particular search query can mean the difference between loads of clients and none. But is it any use to bands and musicians? Well, yes. For two reasons:

• Firstly, you need people who like your music to be able to find your website when they search for you (and quite possibly, you want it to appear ahead of any Myspace pages, Facebook pages etc.)
• Secondly, you want people who might like the kind of music you make (for example, Nu-metal-Dubstep-Shoegaze-Emo-Chillwave or whatever the latest bollox is popular in Shoreditch) to come across you when they search for your band.

It's well worth a read.

And, just to round it off, this is an older post that I have bookmarked and still refer to as it approachs the issue of seo from the 'what not to do' angle.

 

Even major labels understand the need for the artist website!

There's loads of stuff in this article that you should check out as it's major label digital music marketing people telling you what they do!

But, for me, this was key:

Snowden said he thinks of fans acquired through a Facebook page or Twitter profile as being at the beginning of the process. Ultimately, he wants to bring those people to the artist's website, get them to join a community there, and become a customer who buys CDs or digital downloads.

If even the majors get it, you should to.

Read the whole article here.

If you don't have your own artist website at the hub of what you do, fix it!

Exactly what makes a hit song today?

This is brilliant and scary at the same time.

Might be that the very last thing you want as a DIY musician is a so-called 'formula' for a hit.

There are many other factors causing you to be a musician and pursuit of pop fame may well not be amongst them.

Good for you.

But, people, such as Jay Frank whose work I love, are putting songs under the microscope and working out what they can about how measurable factors affect their hit potential.

This may miss the point as far as lyrical, musical and emotional nuance is concerned but at the very least this data tells you what radio wants to play and therefore make a hit.

Read Jay's book - Future Hit DNA - and check out this post about the latest US data for this year.

Here's some of their up to the minute conclusions:

• The current song length average is 3:51.

• The current intro length average is 0:13.

• The average time that it takes for the first chorus to hit in top 10 hit Pop songs is 0:39.  This number has been stable over the last two quarters.

• Love/relationship themed songs have been in a steep decline since Q3-2010 (where they accounted for 63% of all songs), and now account for just 17% of all top 10 hit Pop songs. Hooking up themed songs have been on the rise since Q3-2010, and how account for the majority of top 10 hit Pop songs at 38%.  Inspirational themed songs have also been seeing a steady increase in number, climbing form 0% of songs in Q3-2010 to a now second place 25% of songs in Q2-2011.

I'd maintain that 'hooking up' is essentially the same subject material as 'love', but you get the point!

Read the whole thing here.

 

 

 

Great Songwriters

There's lots of little gems of advice in this piece from the Guardian where 5 songwriters pick their own favourite songwriter.

In each case there's a bit about what they think makes the other great - technique, subject matter, etc.

For example, Dianne Warren on Paul McCartney:

As a songwriter you need a gift for melody, and for saying something you've heard a million times in a different way. There are only so many notes and ideas, but you twist it and turn it and make it new, by the chords or melodies or a weird key change. In just a few years, the Beatles created this genius body of work, and those songs will never go away.

Well worth a read.

How to promote your event

Image by TheArches

I just came across this great site - Digital DJ Tips - written by a British DJ with years of experience.

A lot of the posts are technical and about making club records, DJ'ing and the like, but equally lots are about wider music making and music promoting issues - and the content is really good.

I spent hours wandering about reading stuff and you probably will too.

I could've chosen anything about music promotion but decided to list this 4 part series on hosting and promoting your own events. Of course, this works especially well for dance music and running a club night, but it can be applied to any genre with some tweaking.

Plus a lot of the promotional principles apply to anything!

How to Promote Events - Part 1

How to Promote Events - Part 2

How to Promote Events - Part 3

How to Promote Events - Part 4

 

 

YouTube allows stores!

We went YouTube crazy a while ago - believing that it was the most essential place any musician should have a profile. The traffic is huge and the opportunities enormous.

We're even more convinced now.

And, this latest development adds the ability to sell your wares right on YouTube via integration with various partners such as Topspin.

Through a feature called the Merch Store, YouTube partners will be able to sell artist merchandise, digital downloads, concert tickets and other experiences to fans and visitors. YouTube has partnered with a number of companies to launch these stores. Topspin is helping power merchandise sales, concert tickets and experiences; SongKick will help sell tickets for concerts; and iTunes and Amazon will power transactions for music downloads.

Read about this development on Techcrunch here.

What is the future for the DIY musician

Thanks to @AngeliqueSC (again) for sending this to me.

Dave Kusek's presentation on the future of the music business has a disticntly DIY musician bent.

Slides 16 onwards are very applicable to the indie musician and are must-read from 28 onwards!

View more presentations from Dave Kusek

Selling to 4 levels of fans

This is a great post from the ReverbNation blog that sets out the nreleatively simple idea of making a tier of products available for different types of fans.

The following illustration is an attempt to visualize four types of fans that buy for different reasons. Any given Artist may have fans in any or all of the buckets, depending on where they are at in their career. You’ll notice that I added a ‘value’ arrow that increases as you go up the illustration. This value arrow is based on a combination of the price each type of fan is willing to pay multiplied by the number of potential fans in each group. Your biggest supporters are willing to pay more than some of the other groups, but there will likely be fewer of them, especially as you tour farther from home.

Check the post here.

Link your YouTube videos to your site - BIG deal

I recently learnt about this very cool trick and then saw this post on ampmusicmarketing that teaches you how to do it.

This is a BIG DEAL!

We started using this IMMEDIATELY that we found out about it.

The instructions explain how to add a link to the bottom of your video on YouTube which links to your own site.

YouTube lets you do this in the description of a video but the usual on-video annotations can only link to other videos on YouTube.

So, getting a link to your site that offers viewers a free download of the track that they are watching if they sign up to your mailing list is really special.

The instructions are great but they leave out a couple of key points.

1. Don't worry about paying for the clicks. Although this is supposed to be about using Google Adwords and Youtube Promoted Videos together, you don't have to aim to get the video ranking high in YouTube's paid search in order to get the off-site 'call to action' link on your video.

Set it up and bid very low - 1 cent will do it - and you'll be allowed to add the link but you'll get very few, probably no paid clicks and it'll cost nothing.

The video will still show the off-site link everywhere that it is played.

2. This link is better than the link in your description as it will display everywhere that your video is embedded. So, make your video, put the CTA link in and then try to get it spread to other sites where your description wouldn't show, but this CTA link will.

DO THIS, it's brilliant marketing for almost free.

Here's the link again.

 

Tunesat - monitor your music on TV and the internet

We wrote a piece about an amazing radio airplay monitoring service on the main site.

Then I heard about this service, Tunesat, which is a similar service in that it uses audio recognition to track plays of your music, but its focus is on plays that happen on TV and on websites.

As such, it is particularly useful for people whose music is getting used a lot for soundtracks or licensed for synch uses.

Since a lot of use of music for background scenes on TV is covered by blanket licences (in a lot of countries, but not the US) you will often not know when and where your music is being used. Tracking it like this will mean that you can have the data you need to make sure that the collection societies are paying you what you're owed.

Of course, if you're making music for commercials, this service will be especially useful.

It's not free but it is reasonable on a track by track basis.

Check it out here.

Music Blogs are great - but beware the hype

So, following the previous post about how a blog review can break a band, you also need to watch out about the hype.

There's a new artist breaking through right now called Lana Del Rey - I'll be surpried if you missed the buzz!

Strangely enough, two of my songwriter clients have worked with her and they both think she's the real deal with real talent and vision.

But, that's not the point here.

The point is that in this Pitchfork article there is a very telling paragraph that you need to consider when you head down the route of pitching to and being loved by blogs.

As of 2011, the closest thing we have to MTV's old "buzz bin" is music blogs-- entities with the exact same vested interest in mainstream cool-hunting that your television once had. The only problem is that the people who read, write, and obsess over them are hyper-aware of what a tempting audience they are: They're sensitive to pandering and "fakeness," wary of being used to piggyback toward another audience. Appeal to them successfully, and long arguments about music-industry machinations and "authenticity" are more or less inevitable.

In other words, the bigger the blog, the harder it is to get them to take notice and the more you'll be accused of hype and style over substance if you succeed.

Nothing's ever simple, eh!?

Read the whole thing though as it's got a lot of insight into how an artist can come to attention in the web 2.0 world and also how the imagery and style can help send the mesage that the artist wants to get across.

Blog reviews REALLY make a difference!

I owe this post to @Lefsetz and to @iancr - one mentioned it and the other made it!

It's from Ian Rogers must watch weekly online TV show - This Week in Music - which is geting better all the time.

He's talking to Marc Geiger, web-head, tech bloke and long-time promoter about the power of the music blogs.

At the end, he says, "you can break a band off one review"!

Think it might be worth getting blogs to talk about your music?

How to use Facebook as a musician - Free Guide

This is a REALLY good guide from CD Baby on how to set up and use Facebook as a musician.

Not much else to be said other than you'd be foolish if you didn't go and get it.

Here's the guide on CD Baby.

When to send emails to your fans

I got this infographic from the Kissmetrics blog, where you can see it at full size.

It's made for businesses who send email to consumers, but the info is just as valid for musicans.

It can make a MASSIVE difference to how many people open and respond to your emails if you time it right.

Why YouTube, Facebook and Mobile matters to you

I just got these images from a post on Google+ by Mike Stenger.

I hope neither he nor the CEO of Salesforce from whose presentation they are taken are offended!

These images tell you why you need to be promoting and marketing your music on Facebook, YouTube and on mobile.

The Growth of Facebook and YouTube:

Facebook and iPhone app growth:

The growth of Smartphone use:

The growth in use of Mobile Apps:

 

 

 

How and where to flyer your show

If you don't want your flyers to end up all over the street like the guys above and to actually bring some people to your shows, then you need to learn the best way to use them.

Chris 'Seth' Jackson has some great ideas in this post.

Usually, bands scatter their fliers across the city. This is wasted paper and money. If you’re going to scatter fliers across the city, don’t do it for a show. Instead, just do it to promote your band’s website and your band’s name. That will get you more mileage.

For maximum effect, you should put the fliers in places close to the club with a lot of foot traffic. Better yet, pick spots where people have to wait like the bus stop. Try outside of other clubs where people smoke. Ask businesses if you can put fliers up in their shop where people have to wait in line.

Read it all here.

Also, you might find Amanda's post about getting a gig useful here.

Sampling - a cautionary tale

What was supposed to be a quick comment on a Danish sampling case turned into a pretty complete piece on sampling and what every musician should know!

So if you want my take on sample clearance - get over to the main site!

 

More Facebook 'How To' Guides

Thanks to AngeliqueSC - a social media, digital world pro!

She reminded me that I had posted about the 'How To' guide written by Facebook for musicians to help them (you?) understand how to promote you and your music on Facebook.

It is a MUST read.

But what she pointed out is that there are now a bunch of these guides - for Celebrities, Politicians, Journos etc.

A lot of the content is exactly the same - all the basics on page creation and general best practice - but there's different little tips in each one.

Well worth a look at them all to see what else you can learn about marketing your music on Facebook.

See them all here.

 

Making a demo

Here's another good video from TruSound - this time all about making a demo.

What's great about these videos is that the people being interviewed are successful musicians, producers and label execs and they are simply telling it like it is from experience.

This is good quality stuff!

Once you've made the demo, read our thoughts on submitting a demo.

CD Baby's Facebook Music Page

I'm going to keep posting stuff about how musicians should use Facebook despite knowing that in a matter of weeks the introduction of Timeline is going to radically alter the best practice!

We'll deal with it when it happens!

So, for now, CD Baby have rolled out a new tool for all their users which is a way to sell your music (that you have on CD Baby) directly from your Facebook Fan Page.

Great stuff if you use CD Baby, and being able to sell directly from Facebook is going to become increasingly important.

But, I also think that this 'Music Store on Facebook' now needs to be added to your shortlist of music page apps (along with BandPage and damntheradio and ReverbNation's MyBand) as a slick all-in-one way to have all your music activity on one tab.

Well worth a look. Read about it all here.

Future of Music

Go and read the brilliant presentation by JWT on the future of music in our new post on the main site.

It's full of insight and great ideas that you can use.

Read it here.

Don't forget about the physical!

[[posterous-content:pid___0]]We all get misled by the digital revolution and end up believing that everyone is happy to have a digital version of music, movie, photos or art.

But, that's clearly not the case.

We are tactile creatures and like to collect physical objects.

There's still a place for physical media.

If you use Topspin and follow their 'rebundling' philosophy, you're used to offering the digital version of a record as the entry level and the enhanced offerings will include physical CD's vinyl, special packaging, merchandise elements etc.

This, as ever, great piece from Prescription PR looks at the need to include physical goods in your offers to fans.

I thought  I’d devote a bit of time this week to underlining something important: that although the digital revolution has in general made the likes of CDs, tapes, minidiscs and records look very obscure, and cheap as chips, paradoxically it has also – in certain contexts - made them look very hip and a potential source of lots of moolah.

Raed the whole thing here.

Direct to Fan 4 'The Fans'

I just read this piece in the NY Times all about Topspin and how great 'direct to fan' is for artists.

The “direct to fan” connection has existed in various forms since the earliest days of the Web. But musicians and managers say that only in recent years, with the rise of companies like Topspin and its competitors — among them Bandcamp, FanBridge and ReverbNation — have the tools become sophisticated enough to run all aspects of a band’s online business. Among the services are selling tracks, running fan clubs and calculating royalty payments.

Read the whole piece here.

But then I watched this video below of Ian Roger's weekly online TV show and I realised something that I knew, but that I hadn't really realised the true significance of before.

Direct to fan is and needs to be great for your fans as well!

Running your music career with a significant 'direct to fan' element is great for your fans. I know that sounds kind of obvious. I also know that an artist shouldn't look at 'direct to fan' as just a marketing technique to extract dollars from fans - it's an ethic to be applied as much as a way to maximise revenue.

But it's easy to think that you're building a direct pathway to fans and to lose sight of the fact that it's a truly reciprocal relationship. You can't lure fans in with a freemium offer and then just pummel them for cash!

They need to be getting plenty out of the arrangement - the much lauded 'engagement' is important from their side too.

This was highlighted to me in the video at 43.55 and on from there where the guys are talking about the latest Pixies ticket offer offered via Topspin.

The tickets were for shows in California and they sent the offer out to their Topspin hosted email list of those people only in the SoCal area.

BUT, more importantly, they didn't tweet it, didn't do any press releases and embargoed anyone on 'the team' from talking about it.

So, you had to be a Pixies fan to hear about it. The hardcore on their list heard about it and spread the word fan to fan.

The tickets were sold out before the news got past the Pixies fanbase.

And that's how it was supposed to be and should be.

What's my point? Well, just that if you're building a direct to fan part of your business, treat those fans with the utmost respect and consistently give them the chance to be first in line.

Here's that video (see 43.55 for the bit I mention), but the whole thing is great, talking about Facebook, streaming and how it's all going to affect music.