How to learn about music promotion in your spare time

Music promotion is one of the pillars of your future success....but keeping up with this blog, loads of others and learning new online skills is eating up all your time that you should be spending writing, recording and rehearsing!

What can you do?

Some music industry gurus out there say that “musicians shouldn’t spend their time learning how to be marketing experts, instead they should be dedicating as much time as possible to writing music – the marketing should then be outsourced to someone who enjoys it”.

Go and read Marcus Taylor's post about how he fits it all in!

Creating your entertainment brand the Gene Simmons way

You might not like this and you might think Gene is a cynic, but you should read the article and watch the video either way!

Gene is honest about what he applied by way of music marketing and that he had a plan at the outset to create the band and the show that he  knew people would love.

Simmons took great care to point out KISS has also lent its name and likeness to 3000 licensed products, from condoms to caskets. “We’ll get you coming and we’ll get you going,” he quipped. (Motorcycles and hi-def TVs are also in the works.)

There’s a logic to all this, which revealed itself not-so-subtly as the session progressed. Kicking off a montage for Family Jewels, a Gene broadcast over our heads intoned, “Why do people seek my advice? Successful band, successful business, successful family.”

That attitude, encapsulated in those words, about covers it.

Read the whole piece and see the video here.

Split 7" - cross the divide

This is a great idea for your music marketing.

Cee-Lo and Band of Horses are covering each other's tracks on a limited 7" release.

I was raised on punk rock. A genre that took DIY to another level. One of the more popular ways of gaining new fans was/is to release a split disc with your friends band. Cross pollinate fanbases, create new fans, make some money, and typically have an awesome time and a huge split launch gig.

Read the post at New Rocstar Philosophy.

Foursquare and interacting with your fans

Bob Lefsetz ran this piece last week about Foursquare and argued that it is a relevant social network for the music industry.

I am a fan - I'm on there - and I can see that it does have a very strong appeal for any business with a bricks and mortar presence since the owner can offer incentives and convert casual vistors into returning customers.

It is however harder to see how an artist can effectively integrate Foursquare into their social media efforts.

Some ideas would be to use it on tour to invite fans to meet-ups, to soundchecks etc, or for a more established artist, how about a tour of their route to the top where fans check-in at places that were important steps on their joureny to earn badges. I'm sure that over time people will come up with some great ideas.

Have a look at it and see how you could use it.

Don’t worry so much about getting paid!  Like Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare, focus on building a sticky platform/attraction first.  The money will come after!  It may not even come in ways you can foresee!  Stop talking about getting paid and start building your tribe!  Fans of acts will give them ALL their money.

Read Bob's piece here.

Sampling and what you need to know

I was a music lawyer many moons ago and I learnt the way that the music business works.

I wrote a definitive piece on sampling as it then stood (1994 this was), and I have cleared many samples that others thought impossible - I know what I'm talking about!

So do Tunecore in this article, which is a great primer.

One thing that it doesn't cover is the misconception that artists always tell me as if it's gospel. Most people believe that if they use a sample in a track and they get sued for the infringement, the damages that they would have to pay if they lost would be related to how much money the record made. This is NOT the case. There will be factors that determine the damages and these depend on what part of the world the infringement and the case take place in. BUT.....you can be sued for damages that outweigh the profits from the record many hundreds of times - enough to bankrupt you.

My advice - DO NOT have a hit with an uncleared sample!

Similarly, ignorance is not a defense. If you, create a derivative work without knowing or intending to do so - e.g., you put a riff in your work that is so similar as to be seen as a derivative work of another's copyrighted material, but you didn't know about this prior work - you are still infringing on the copyright holder's exclusive right to create a derivative work. However, if you can show that there was no knowing or intentional infringement, the damages will be less than if you intentionally and knowingly infringed.

Read the Tunecore article in full here. If you use samples you should know this!

YouTube can be the key to adding fans

I am a massive believer in the power of YouTube to build your fanbase and break artists - just look at the post we did on Pomplamoose.

This article makes some simple points but serves to remind that YouTube is very rapidly becoming the key place online where you can reach out to fans.

Be there and be inventive. It rewards handsomely.

A recent study of 12 – 24 years shows two things, radio is still important to breaking a band followed up by You Tube and then social networks. A key part of your digital strategy needs to be YouTube. Most bands think a good YouTube campaign consists of posting a music video and walking away and if you don’t have one you are out of luck.

Think live videos – stats show that an inspired cover is a key gateway to get fans listening to your original music.

Encourage fan video at live shows, give members of your fan club special access to film your set at each venue.

Document the recording process and post it regularly.

Most importantly, be accessible to your fans. Find ways to interact with them, in and age with high quality video in every phone – every moment is a you tube moment.

Read the whole article here.

How to write a great artist bio

We have written about how important a bio is to your music promotion on our blog before.

It's an essential part of what you need to do. So many, however, are horribly boring and you need to make yours stand out.

This is an older article but it gives some great ideas.

A bio can be a tough nut to crack for independent artists. So how do you write a good bio?

First of all, proper spelling and punctuation are imperative. Don’t have errors in your bio!  Have other people proofread your bio, especially if this isn’t one of your strengths. (I’ve been guilty of spelling and grammatical errors plenty of times myself – just make sure you don’t let yourself off the hook too easily. Proofread. Care. It matters)

Structure your paragraphs in a way that’s easy to read. Be digestible. Giant paragraphs and run-on sentences are amateur and make your bio difficult to read – not what you want!

As for the content, there are many ways to approach it. Here’s one of them.

Read the whole article here.