This video has some great insights from a bunch of industry professionals.
My favourite element is the bit from Jon Webster at about 3:00 where he talks about how every artist needs to make something happen for themselves before they look for a manager or a record deal (or a DIY release).
Self Starters are the future successful musicians!
I was amazed yesterday when two artists separately told me that they didn't have CD's for sale at their shows as they couldn't afford a full production run of 500 or so.
I was amazed that they didn't know about small scale replication.
Of course, you can burn CD's at home and do pretty good quality artwork but often the on-body print lets that method down.
For some years I have been sending people to Kunaki - a service where you upload all the parts of your CD to a site and they make them individually on demand. The quality is great and you get a full colour on-body print. These are replicated CD's not made from a glass master but for small runs they are perfect. You can then link this online CD to your band website so that you hold no stock and each time a CD is needed Kunaki makes it and ships it.
Of course, you can then also order, say, 10 or 20 at a time yourself to sell at gigs.
You can also use these to stock a CD Baby store etc.
Amazon offers a similar service with Create Space. I don't think it's as good as Kunaki.
There are more too - just search for 'CD on Demand'.
That's all. Hopefully this has switched on a lightbulb for those that didn't know!
Watch this video for a pretty solid education about music publishing - that is how your songs (not the recordings you make) make you money.
It's very good.
And when you've watched it you can do yourself another favour.
As an unsigned or indie musician, there are 2 great companies that offer a great music publishing service. In the UK you should look at Sentric Music - they will, in fact, collect your royalties worldwide and you don't need to be UK based to join. Their service is free to join and they only take a small percentage of the royalties they collect.
They have a great article on the basics of music publishing here as well.
And then in the US, check out Song Trust. Their model requires an annual fee instead of a share of royalties.
Both companies are great options for new and unsigned bands - they offer short term deals and they take no ownership of your songs so you are free to go and do a deal with a larger publisher should that day come.
Oh, and they can be trusted!
SoundCloud is pretty much a must for any aspiring musician these days - and it's obvious that a community of musicians and creatives ought to be somewhere that you can find support and fans.
Now they are getting to be really helpful in advising musicians on best practice tips for their own service.
We wrote about their overall guide here - definitely check this out - but they keep adding to it.
The latest posts are this one - How succesful SoundCloud users build meaningful connections in the SoundCloud community.
This comes with lots of bits of audio interviews (naturallly....) from those users.
And the other is their guidance post - How to build your SoundCloud community. This is full of great usable suggestions.
If you're not on SoundCloud, you should be and this will help you get started.
I thought that we'd covered this post when it was published on Social Media Examiner in July, but we didn't!
And, this week I have been doing a lot of work on YouTube - how to get your videos noticed and spreading. It's not easy but there are some tricks that we're testing at the moment. We'll let you know how they do.
The one KEY that we have missed before in our efforts for our artists (even though we've pointed it out in other posts!) is to use YouTube as a social network. The younger you are the more you probably do this (that's what the demographics show) but most don't. What does that mean? - well, add friends, ask them to subscribe, create favourites and get liking videos (and ask for likes back).
All that interactivity seriously boosts your channel and videos inside YouTube's ranking algorithm - more so if you can get views, comments, favourites and likes within the first 48 hours of uploading. This is a GREAT thing to ask your fans to do for you by emailing them and asking them to log in to YouTube and watch the video and favourite it, comment on it or like it.
This MASSIVELY increases your chances to appear in the 'recommended' or 'related' video lists which in turn exposes you to a wider audience.
We're trying to test how well this works - and it looks good - and we have a few other tips that we hope will make these 'best practice' approaches work even better.
It's also becoming clear that having your video embedded off YouTube on third party sites is a BIG deal to YouTube and proves that your video is hot - and hence they want to encourage more people to see it. Again, getting your video embedded on other people's blogs as soon as possible after you upload it becomes a marketing goal.
So, if and when we get some specific feedback from our own efforts, we'll let you know.
In the meantime, as I said at the top - I came across this post again in my search for tips.
It has some great basic tips that you MUST be using. Check it out here.
And here's the video from one of those tips. We've only just started adding this to our videos, but it works in a big way! An annotation that links directly to the 'subscribe' button for your channel. This video shows the old layout, but it explains it well. I'd recommend adding a 'Subscribe to us for more videos' annotation to every video you have on YouTube.
It WILL increase your subscriptions and that will help your YouTube marketing. Best tip - have the subscription come up at least twice, maybe three times. First time after 20 sconds or so, second time just after half way and thirdly, right at the end as the video ends.
We've written about Jay Frank before.
He has written the definitive take on the data that drives hit songs - their length, subject matter, structure etc.
He's about to release another take on this entitled 'Hack your hit' in January 2012.
For now, in this interview with Topspin's Ian Rogers he talks about hs new model label but also reveals some of his data secrets on how to craft a hit!
I was talking to a musician a week ago about how he was going to focus attention on his solo career since he was about to move on from a band in which he felt he was doing all the work.
One of the things we talked about was creating a blog that centred around the scene he is in - either a local scene that covers all types of music played by local bands or a global scene defined by genre.
The blog would talk about that scene and he would be seen as a leader and have a platform to talk about his own music and to place it into the context of the genre / local scene.
I think this is a very powerful way for any musician to build an audience - and we wrote about it here - Why musicians should be bloggers.
Then we talked about adding podcasting to that blog.
Podcasting is a way bigger challenge than simple blogging but it is also a whole other way that people can discover you and your music.
The same idea of centring the podcast around a scene applies but this time you're doing it as an audio podcast that people can get from your site, or, crucially iTunes.
Make it good and people will discover you and you will build an audience.
I'd go as far as to say that any DIY musician (whose music is up to scratch) can build an audience by making themselves the centre of attention in a specific niche by using a blog, YouTube, Twitter and podcasting.
There's a great article on the basics of podcasting here.
And the man who knows everything there is to know about podcasting is known as Podcast Answer Man and he has six free video lessons that cover the basics here.
The first one is below.
ShareSquare isn't just another company blooming in the wake of the QR Code phenomenon.
I hope that you're not a QR Code naysayer - the statistics show that the understanding and use of them is exploding.
Every musician needs to use them where appropriate.
What I like about ShareSquare is that they are focused on musicians and artists and their system isn't just a QR code creator - it also has a CMS (content management system) that allows you to create a mobile optimised HTML5 app.
That means that you can link the QR code to something specifically designed to show your content on a mobile and get your fans to take a specific action. You also get amazing tracking info and very customisable apps.
There's a free trial that might well be worth giving a go but then the lowest price is $99 per month so it is not for all. The free trial has to be worth a go when you have a big gig coming up though!
That said, you can learn a HUGE amount about music marketing on mobiles and with QR codes just by reading all their tutorial info here.
We've tipped you off about a bunch of 'how to' guides for Facebook in the past, so why another one?
Well, this Facebook marketing guide from MakeUseOf is good, simple to follow and covers the basics. It's not completley up to date and it's written for business rather then musicians, but it's worth reading to broaden your skills of spreading the word on Facebook.
I look at all these free guides as a way to pick up a few tips. I'm not always looking to get the definitive guide in one place (we're saving that for when we get time to write a guide or two!).
And, on this page at MakeUseOf you'll find LOADS of free pdf guides on various things that are really useful skills for the DIY muciaicn. You have to give them your email to download the guides but then you get a password that gives you access to all of them.
They include guides on the following topics:
How to build a Wordpress site - very useful skill!
How to use Google Apps and Gmail - proper use of this is a great way for a band to manage their communications and diaries etc.
How to use Dropbox.
Recording with GarageBand.
How to use Twitter.
So, loads of great stuff. Can't believe that I hadn't ever found it before!
Here's the Facebook Guide again.
And here's the page with all their free guides on it.
