Thursday 24 November 2011

How to get your music in a movie!

I just stole the first video to get your attention - but if you go here you'll find 7 videos of music supervisors telling you all the stuff you want to know about getting your music used in movies.

These folks are the ones that have done the music synchronisation for some massive films and the clips are from the New Mexico Music in Fim summit 2010.

This is very valuable stuff!

Go and watch or bookmark the whole lot here.

QR Codes Primer

QR Code use is really taking off.

Don't know what a QR code is? It's those square odd looking boxes of pixels that you see on posters, packaging - all over the place now. It stands for 'Quick Response' code and once scanned with a scanner on a smartphone it will transmit information or open a webpage.

Powerful stuff and, despite some naysayers, the recognition and use of QR codes is growing exponentially.

I think they are now something that every musician should be using to send fans to their website, to a mailing list sign-up form, to run a special competition etc.

This post from Aweber has a great basic guide.

Through the magic of QR codes, consumers can interact with your brand in unexpected places. Mobile web means they can explore your content away from their home computer.

That’s why QR codes make the most sense in print – on billboards, stickers, fliers, signs, business cards, in magazines, anywhere people might see them on the go. The point is to drive them to your mobile site to make a purchase, join your mailing list, download a coupon, find out more about your business or something else that makes their interaction with you easy and enjoyable.

Read it here.

As a bit of inspiration, look at this very clever Christmas promotion that JC Penney are using - a customer records a personal message to the person they are giving a gift to and they can scan it and hear the message as they open the gift.

Imagine doing that with a personal message from the band as a tier offer on your fan funding project for your next album.

How to be EVERYWHERE

This video is a run through of Pat Flynn's Blog World presentation.

His original post with links to the things he mentions is here.

Follow Pat on Twitter here.

Pat is a well known marketer online who has created a very large audience for himself through his open and honest marketing methods.

He talks about how to promote a blog or products online, but what he says can be applied to promoting music pretty much wholesale.

In this video he talks about the three biggest ways that his blog has been discovered and where the majority of his followers come from.

And they are:

iTunes (because of his podcast);

YouTube;

Links from other blogs

Although the concept of creating valuable useful content that applies to bloggers who teach something (how to blog, how to surf, what's the best camera etc, etc) isn't 100% applicable to how you can spread your music and your brand as a musician, there are many lessons in here that you can adapt.

Podcasting is a great way to get your fans in tune with you, your tastes and your music - an effective way to bring your tribe (as Seth Godin calls them) closer to you. Those podcasts can be about your music and what's happening with your band and career but they can also be about the wider world of music - with elements that relate to your music.

And, as we said in this post - Why musicians should be bloggers - there is a MASSIVE opportunity for musicians to place themselves at the centre of a niche, genre or scene by becoming the authority blog on that particular scene. The strategies that Pat talks about here are then very useful for building an audience.

In short, every musician trying to get noticed should be looking to get a presence in places where there are huge numbers of people looking for music and info/news about music - YouTube, blogs and iTunes are obvious places for that.

Watch and you will get some great ideas!

 

Wednesday 23 November 2011

Wordpress, SEO and your music website

This is a great video about how to make the right Search Engine Optimisation choices for your website.

If you don't yet have a website to promote your music, you are living in the dark ages.

Admittedly, this video is some pretty detailed information on how marketers set up their websites to make sure that they rank in Google (and other search engines) for the keywords they want to rank for.

It makes sense for every band to aim to do the same.

If this is all new to you, the very knowledgeable Michael Brandvold and Brian Thompson are running a webinar on How to use Wordpress for your Website in a few weeks time.

It will be great.

Here's the video for the SEO geeks:

Tuesday 22 November 2011

Facebook Music Page upgrades from FanBridge

The dedicated 'Music Page' on your band's Facebook Page is becoming a 'must-have'.

We've written before about RootMusic's BandPage and FanBridge's DamntheRadio, but the latter one has just really upped it's game with the introduction of the Partner Ecosystem.

This is just a fancy term for the fact that you can now plug in loads of apps from other services that you might already be using, such as SongKick for gig dates and tickets, Topspin for music sales, IndieGoGo & Pledge Music for fan funding - and loads more.

This makes DamntheRadio a very flexible choice for your Music Page.

Check it out here.

And this is an example of how easy it is to integrate Topspin.

Monday 21 November 2011

Why D2F?

Why D2F?

Well, because building your fanbase through direct means is both long-lasting and rewarding for both the fan and the artist, but, crucially it is now a reality for every artist with access to the web....

...i.e. everyone.

This seismic shift in how to reach your audience and keep them close is discussed in this very good video.

You can see the original post at the Midem Blog here.

Thursday 17 November 2011

Google Music DIY Artist Hub

Gamechanger?

People who write about the music industry love that word. They use it all the time and apply it to every new disruptive idea.

But, this time they could be right.

The big news for most folks about today's launch of Google Music is all about the service for music consumers - the unlimited cloud storage, the download store, the social sharing.

And it's a big deal - can they catch iTunes? - we'll see.

But the part that is potentially truly disruptive and amazing for the average DIY musician is the 'Artist Hub'.

This allows every DIY musician to have a direct relationship with Google, to upload and sell songs through Google on an Artist Page.

Build your artist page, set your own prices and sell your material. Google Music users can play their music purchases instantly on any device.

This is THE BIG DEAL.

People are already complaining that Google are just copying Bandcamp or CD Baby - and they are to a degree. But having the biggest (the behemoth) company of online services and seacrh offering to host your music store and hub could be a massive win for the DIY musician.

You cannot deal direct with iTunes as a DIY artist, but you now can with Google.

You can also tie your Google Music hub to your YouTube channel - the de facto place for music search. That is very smart integration.

A $25 set up fee and a 30% cut to Google is comparable to Tunecore, but is of course an additional expense for artists as they will still need to use a digital distributor to reach other services such as iTunes.

Only available in the US for artists but with a global roll out close behind, this is big news.

The Google Music Artist page is here.

And this Digital Music News article is worth reading.

 

 

Wednesday 16 November 2011

The Tanning Effect

I'd like this post to send you off to read about the topic elsewhere! The topic being how hip-hop has affected all mainstream culture in the last 25 years and what that means for how you market products (including music).

And, this doesn't just mean how you market hip-hop. It's an exploration of how mindsets, attitudes, clothing and music - of all styles and genres - have been affected.

The starting point is a book called 'The Tanning Of America: How the Culture of Hip-Hop Rewrote the Rules of the New Economy' by a very smart markeing guy, Steve Stoute.

Read this Huffington Post introduction which has this extract from his book:

Yes, it's true that in the past the idea of pushing brands would have been seen as inauthentic, or something you did after your career peaked, or as some kind of selling out. But no longer. Why not? Why wasn't it selling out for rappers to embrace and promote Versace when it would have been seen that way for rock 'n' roll and R&B icons or pop superstars? Well, one reason, as we saw with "My Adidas," was that it's not a sellout when it's authentic to your taste and style anyway and you're already doing product placement for free. It was part of the art and far from selling out; Andy Warhol proved that when he painted iconic pop art portraits of products like Campbell's soup cans, paying homage to one of the most classic, enduring American brands ever.

When I asked Jay-Z for his insights, he pointed out that many of the rock musicians had come from sustainable backgrounds, seeking acclaim for their talent and a level of cool that playing music gave them. For rappers coming out of the projects, getting paid and bettering yourself is part of gaining credibility. Jay reminded me also that it's not selling out when a kid in the projects sees a guy rapping about Sprite or the Gap because they know he'll be getting the money and that feeds his or her own aspiration. It's not that being acknowledged for talent and great work isn't desirable, but getting paid trumps those goals. I agree. I don't think many hip-hop fans ever subscribed to the concept of selling out, not when you come from nothing and a deal can become part of your rags-to-riches success story.

And watch the video above of him interviewing Jay-Z.

Steve Stoute can be found interviewing Jay-Z further as well as Jimmy Iovine and others here. Well worth it.

And, go and have a look at how Stoute has used his understanding to market mainstream brands in a way that speaks authentically to the target audience.

You can see his company's campaigns here.

And read this interview where he distills his thinking.

There's plenty to learn here!

Tuesday 15 November 2011

Direct to Fan - Inside Information!

This video is great.

It's a panel from lat year's Midem convention which is a group discussion between 5 people who are very involved in the DIY musician and direct-to-fan worlds.

There's loads of great ideas and facts in the video and it's worth watching the whole thing.

At its core the message is that if you are creating quality content starting with your music, and if you let your fans share it, they will. The music must be great, and then you need a LOT of other 'content' - photos, videos, remixes....whatever - and then deal with your fans direct.

If you DON'T understand this, you will make your chances of success much, much lower.

Build a community of people that care and build from that point!

7 tips to maximise shares on Facebook

Social-network-flow-chart
I could've just tweeted this, but I know I'll be coming back to it many times and it's easier to bookmark if I post it here!

7 great insights into what makes a post on Facebook get shared.

As Mari says there is a shift from 'Likes' to 'Shares' - don't freak out, 'Likes' are still very important as they are social proof but Facebook users are clearly getting used to sharing posts to their walls.

Facebook recently changed the way users interact with content on fan pages: any user, including non-fans, can now post on fan page walls and like/comment/share fan page content. In other words, a Facebook user does not have to first like your fan page before they can interact with your content. This is a good thing!

Since this change, the emphasis has shifted slightly from gaining more likes (fans) to increasing the number of shares on each piece of content. When you craft your fan page updates in a manner that naturally inspires fans and their friends and visitors to your page to share with their networks, you set in motion ripples of viral visibility. Basically, free additional exposure.

Over the past several weeks, I’ve been observing which posts from fan pages and from personal profiles (with Subscribe enabled) garner the largest amount of shares. I also recently asked my Facebook fans and friends for examples of great posts with large numbers of shares. Following are seven tips I’ve compiled for you that seem to help create the most shares:

Read the 7 tips here.

I've pointed this out before but to see this work for an artist just go and look at the wall of Stanton Warriors here - they do a great job of engaging their fans with photos, videos, chat and snippets of their life as working DJ/producers - http://www.facebook.com/stantonwarriors

Monday 14 November 2011

Passion and Persistence

Passion_and_persistence

Image by woodleywonderworks

We have unwittingly had a theme in two of the last three posts on the main site:

Is my music good enough?

Never Give Up

Although the article that this post links to is about productivity (and it's very long - 6000 words or so), it's also very close to that theme we've been writing about - whether you have the passion and persistence to commit yourself to what you hope to acheive. Will you learn how to improve your material and will you keep going relentlessly?

Have you got the passion and persistence that you MUST have if you're going to get there?

I'd recommend that you find the time to read it - the central message is very well put and ought to make you consider whether you're going about your music career the right way.

Please read the whole thing here.

Here's one section that I found particularly good - I hope the author doesn't mind me clipping such a big chunk, but it ought to make you want to read the rest!:

Myelin, neurologists have recently discovered, is basically the key to all human talking, reading and learning skills. If you view every human movement or thought as an electrical impulse travelling through a circuit of neurons, then think of myelin like the insulation which wraps around these fibres and increases their signal strength. “The more we fire a particular circuit, the more myelin optimizes that circuit, and the stronger, faster, and more fluent our moments and thoughts become” recaps Coyle.

He then looks at research by Simon Clifford into why South America (specifically Brazil) is a hotbed for footballing talent. His findings showed that the popular way of playing football there, known as Futebol de Salão, had a big influence. The game is played on a small court and uses a ball that is half the size of a regular football yet weighs twice as much, so rarely bounces.

A study by the University of Liverpool found that Futebol de Salão players touch the ball six times more per minute than people training with a normal ball on a regular pitch. Futebol de Salão players were able to wrap their football talent circuits in more myelin over a shorter period of time. It also meant that when they played on a full-sized pitch, players felt like they had “acres of space”.

The book also highlights the story of the Brontë sisters, and their love for character creation and writing short stories as children just to keep themselves entertained. Juliet Barker, a six year curator at the Brontë Parsonage Museum revealed that the sisters wrote “twenty-two little books averaging eighty pages each in one fifteen-month period”. That’s a lot of writing.

Coyle once again links this back to Myelin, noting his belief that the sisters’ talent was developed through little more than constant practice. To add even more legs to that theory, Barker says that “The first little books weren’t just amateurish – a given, since their authors were so young – they lacked any signs of incipient genius. Far from original creations, they were bald imitations of magazine articles and books of the day.”

Many of you will know that Charlotte Brontë went on to write literature classic Jane Eyre with her sister Emily producing another, Wuthering Heights.

Coyle comes to the conclusion that passion and persistence are the key ingredients of talent and success. Why? “Because wrapping myelin around a big circuit requires immense energy and time. If you don’t love it, you’ll never work hard enough to be great.”

Do go and read the whole article here.

Friday 11 November 2011

Facebook Music Page from Nimbit

Facebook_music_page
Nimbit have added to their exisiting 'Storefront' (myStore) Facebook app to make it a really good option as the hub of your presence on Facebook.

Nimbit is a good option for driving all your direct to fan efforts and realistically you'd only use this as your Facebook Music page if you were using Nimbit for all it's functions - but this alone might persuade you to do just that.

The update is a feature called 'Spotlight' which gives you a customisable are on the first tab of the app. Of course, it's also directly integrated to the sales platform on Nimbit.

Well worth a look.

Thursday 10 November 2011

Click to Tweet - great new Twitter service

Clicktotweet
If you want to get more people to see a particular post on your website or to buy tickets or take some specific action, you want that message to spread to as many people as possible.

This new service, Click to Tweet, enables you to create a pre-written tweet for people to click on. This will open their Twitter account with your message prepopulated with your Tweet.

So, you can email all the people on your fan list (you do have one of those right?) or put the Tweet in a short post on your site or your Tumblr and specifically ask people to click it and spread the word.

Here's an example:

Please click this to Tweet about our latest post on How to promote your music on Spotify -

http://clicktotweet.com/wev2i

Of course, you could change the text in that link to 'Please click to Tweet about this' or similar.

When clicked, it'll open your Twitter account and have this Tweet ready to go - "Great piece on how to use Spotify to actually promote your music - http://ow.ly/7oQUc".

Please do so we can see how well it works!

As a way of encouraging people to spread the word I expect to see this be very effective.

Use Click to Tweet here.

Getting Signed

Simple post - these TruSound videos are awesome.

And, scary as it is to the true DIY musician, over 70% of artists STILL want to get signed - these very succesful artists and execs talk about how that happens!

Wednesday 9 November 2011

How to leverage LinkedIn

Linkedin_for_musicians
We have a post on using LinkedIn as a musician - it's got some good ideas about why & how musicians can use LinkedIn to further their careers.

I was reminded of it when I came across this free pdf today. It's written for general business marketing but since it's very much a basic intro to LinkedIn it's usable by anyone, such as musicians!

Topics covered include how to set up a LinkedIn profile properly, using Groups and Best Answers to get noticed and connect with people and proper use of Recommendations.

Well worth a read - sign-up required.

Tuesday 8 November 2011

Google launchs G+ Fan Pages

We owe our old chum @Buzzsonic for spotting this slideshow.

Google has announcd Busines Pages for Google+, meaning that you can now set one up for your band, label, or other music enterprise.

I'll be doing this when I have a nano-seond to spare.

Manwhile the slideshow has the goodies.

and there's a good piece from Zdnet on the launch here.

How to build an artist website...and profit from cover songs!

How_to_build_a_website
Two separate things, entirely.

I'm very proud of this little gem that we unearthed today as it has two truly brilliant articles in it that every musician should read.

It's a monthly bulletin pdf from the UK's independent music organisation, AIM, and in it there's a bunch of stuff.

But, the two things that are bang on for indie and DIY musicians are:

How to build an artist website - by Tony Morley who runs The Leaf Label. This guy has loads of artists that he works with and has seen a lot of artist websites, so he knows what works. This is a BRILLIANT article that covers everything that you need to know about building your artist website. PLEASE READ THIS! Tony also covers the other basics you should be thinking about - Facebook, Twitter etc (he gives our Twitter for Musicians guide a nice nod - thanks Tony!).

A guide to making money from cover songs - by Alex Holz at RightsFlow. Another great article that looks at ways that covers can attract attention and make you money.

There are also other bits and bobs in this 22 page pdf. GET IT here.

 

Friday 4 November 2011

How to promote your music on Spotify

Promote_music_spotify
I have had a couple of things that I needed to sort out for artists that I work with relating to their presence on Spotify, so I ended up writing this piece on the main site on 'How to promote music on Spotify'.

Read it there!

 

Wednesday 2 November 2011

10 steps to music success

Tensteps
This is a brilliant 'must-read' post from Emmanuel LeGrand in which he sums up the thoughts of many very successful web 2.0 savvy music indsutry people on how to make yourself a success in the modern music world.

It ends up being a 10 step method which talks about creating great music, connecting with fans, collecting email addresses and so on.

At it's core it has this message which applies today as much as it did 30 years ago:

In the mid-80s, Island Records – then still independent and owned by Chris Blackwell – sent to all its affiliates around the world a poster which showed a colourful drawing of an island with a coconut tree surrounded by the sea. The tag line was: “A terrible thing happens when you don't promote...” The answer came in the form of one word in very small font size: “…nothing!”

Read the whole post here.

Tuesday 1 November 2011

Whales & Baby whales want to give you their money

Las_veags_whale
Whales & Baby whales - terms from the gambling world to refer to big spenders - are, according to this article, responsible for as much as 50% percent of the income where a business model begins with a free option (such as online social gaming).

@Lefsetz pointed this out in an email yesterday:

When you employ a freemium model, a small percentage of your customers will generate a significant part of your revenue. This is why you must offer expensive tickets and merchandise for these diehard fans.

...which he got from this article on allthingsd - a must read for it's views on where the music industry is going in terms of how an artist will earn an income - not from selling recorded music in the long term is the conclusion!

And that's why the freemium model to build a mailing list of fans with whom you engage continually (rather than in an album cycle) will allow you to offer your 'whale' fans music experiences that will form a large chunk of your income.

That article link again.