Get your music in Movies & Ads - Do's & Don'ts

Here's two great articles from a blog that is new to me and full of great posts - American Songwriter.

They are both about panels held by music supervisors and have a bunch of great tips on how you can optimise your chances of getting your music used in a movie or an ad.

There were some common threads that ran through the discussion—as far as dos, don’ts, and other things to be conscious of—for those searching out song placement opportunities. Here’s what resonated most:

• Do your research before reaching out to music supervisors.

Know exactly what project they are working on and what kind of music they are looking for. If you send them something that contradicts what they need, you’ll most likely be blackballed from the supervisor’s working order. Make sure to include all “metadata” for your songs for digital delivery. “Track 2” doesn’t work. Deliver songs via DropBox, YouSendIt or a similar method. Don’t send mp3s unless agreed upon beforehand.

Read the Nashville panels tips here.

And here's their article previewing it with more direct tips and insight.

Two things that I do in relation to music supervisors:

1. Whenever I watch a movie, I look for the music supervisor's name or if I see their name in an article like this, I note it down. I then find and follow that person on Twitter and put them in a Twitter list of 'Music Supervisors'. The stuff I find out from that is IMMENSE!

2.  I build a music synch page on my artist's website. On there we create a few players defined by mood and / or tempo (we use Topspin widgets but SoundCloud is perfect as it allows downloads) plus details about availablity of the much loved 'one-stop' (meaning that the 'supes' can clear a whole track and its publishing without needing to get a third party permission) and the availability of instrumentals and cut-downs. We also try to note anything else that we think will help a music supervisor find it easy to pick our artist's tracks! Then, we have a page link that we can email at a moment's notice.

Sweet!

 

Your fans don't see your Facebook posts!

So, you thought that just by posting your updates, thoughts and links to your Facebook Fan Page wall, all your fans ('likers') would be seeing everything that you say and do in their News Feed?

Not so, hombre!

The sad fact is that something around 90% of fans never return to the Fan Page once they've liked it, so it is imperative that you get your posts seen in the fan's News Feed. And, with the advent of Facebook's EdgeRank system to determine what shows up in a fan's News Feed, it is the most popular posts from all their friends and Fan Pages that they like which they are showm.

However, there are some things that you can do to try to help make sure that your posts have good EdgeRank and therefore are most likely to show up high in a fan's News Feed.

In short, it's down to the old chestnut of engagement.

A report from Buddy Media that you can download for free here gives you the full facts.

And, Hypebot have a recap of the report's points here.

This is very importnat to your music promotion efforts on Facebook - don't ignore it!

How to find local fans on Twitter

We look at how to find potential fans of your music in your local area in this part of our Twitter music marketing guide.

Obviously, if you can find your fans near to your home base then you radically increase your chances of getting those people to shows.

This video from Ariel Hyatt looks at another way to do this.

 

Don't give away all your music for free

We looked at this issue once before in the context of charging for online shows.

Interestingly, in that particular situation, evidence suggests that charging more increases sales - check it out.

But this post is about the whole idea of the effectiveness of giving away music and whether it is the right course for musicians.

I had a conversation with an artist manager this week who partly believed that giving away music to those who had already become a fan (by being on an email list or 'liking' on Facebook etc) was the best way to use freemium.

I categorically disagree.

I think giving away free music is THE key to building a fanbase in the DIY musician world. By that I mean the exchange of some free music (a selection of tracks - perhaps 6 or so - rather than 1) in return for an email address and the potential fan's time invested in making a judgement on your music. But, I also think that this article makes a great point. Don't just give away the farm on first contact. Give something (preferably from your own site rather than in a Twitter DM) and then entice that listener into a deeper relationship.

Don't bombard them with free material at the get-go! Let the two way relationship build (Funnily enough, using an autoresponder such as Aweber, as we recommend, is the ideal way to do this).

I don't agree with the whole of Dave Cool's article (basically as I know free works for my clients) but the measured approach that he is advocating is very much the way to go!

The argument for giving away your music is that you should simply want to have your music heard, and since people can generally find music online for free, then why bother putting a price tag on it? Live shows, merchandise, licensing, and subscriptions are just some of the ways that bands are encouraged to generate revenue. However, should artists just give up selling their music? Are we to believe that nobody buys music anymore? I’m not so sure that’s the case.

Read the article here.

 

Clever album marketing embraces affiliates

I think you'll read about this everywhere today, but I can't ignore it as it's important and resonates with some consultancy that I've been doing.

I was asked last week to work on the marketing for a forthcoming album for a major label established artist and one of the things that they wanted to look at was the use of 'affiliate marketing'.

If you don't know what this is, it's when somebody is paid a percentage of a sale in return for sending a buyer to a website. It is used a lot by many online retailers (such as Amazon) but hasn't been used a great deal by musicians (Joe Bonamassa being the exception and trailblazer - reading his 'affiliate page' will help explain it as well).

So, I was gobsmacked when the Kaiser Chiefs announced the online digital release of their new album this morning - available only from their own site and in an innovative way. There has been no pre-release to the press for review (save a single sent to radio earlier in the week) and they have decided to make the recordings of the new album available to all at the same time.

In an official statement, the band said their intention was “to create a music experience that can be shared and enjoyed by all and at the same time revitalise and subvert the industry standard”.

"It can re-engage the excitement and spontaneity of offering new music immediately to fans, allowing them to hear the record at the same time as media and critics alike and hopefully giving people a fun experience at being the Kaiser Chiefs A&R department,” they added.

Fans can go to the band's official site - http://www.kaiserchiefs.com/ - and create their own version of the album by selecting 10 of the 20 available tracks and designing their own artwork. The digital album is then bought for £7.50 and then a page is created for that version of the album as an affiliate page.

Fans can then promote that page (i.e their version of the album) and earn £1 for every copy sold.

Sure, there is some seriously cool coding going on on this site to make it all seamless, but it's not an impossible thing for a DIY musician to acheive - there are affiliate systems available available to all budgets. What's more important is that Kaiser Chiefs fans are lapping it up. Alerted by an email from the band (see how that mailing list is important), they are embracing the idea and tweeting about it like mad. The band have very cleverly engaged their fans.

The process of selecting the tracks and designing the artwork is very nicely designed and the code that builds the affiliate page is very smart - helping to make the experience for the fan simple, as well as new and exciting.

There's also a clever little film introducing the idea which connects the online album creation to a real world experience in a very well thought out way as well.

Whether you're a fan or not, you ought to check it out and go through the process of creating the album to see how it's been done.

The best piece on it that I've seen today is this one from the Guardian which details the concept and also some of the band's reasons for doing it this way.

Of course, there will be a definitve physical CD release in the near future as well!

And here's the intro video.

 

8 Facebook marketing tips you might not think about

Althought this post from Simply Zesty is aimed at business users, it has 8 tips that really are just a little more insightful than your usual Facebook tips.

And, they are all applicable to musicians and how you use Facebook to promote your music.

There’s lots of good advice out there for running a good Facebook Page and how you can build a long-term community. I wanted to offer something a little bit different and look at those simple tips that you might often overlook, but are fundamental to running a good Facebook Page. A Facebook Page itself is now almost shorthand for running a social media presence altogether, yet it’s still such a unique medium that many of us are getting our heads around. There’s certainly no tried and tested right or wrong method to it, though many brands are making the mistakes as they go and importantly learning from these. Check out our own tips, and let us know your own below!

Read them all here.

 

How to promote your album

This is a great post (and free pdf) from the CD Baby's DIY Musician blog.

It sets out a timeline for what you need to do to promote your forthcoming album from 12 months before release (or 4 months as a minimum!).

Although I am not set on the idea that every DIY musician should be setting up to release an album (building a real fanbase by releasing singles or solo tracks, gigging and spreading the word online comes first) until they are ready, when you do, this is a very valuable reference tool.

Releasing a new album takes more than just duplicating discs and throwing a party. You’ve got to get the word out if you want your music to sell. But with so many methods of promotion and so many outlets for music discovery, it can be difficult to know where to focus your efforts. Stay calm! This promotion timeline will guide you through, step by step, breaking it all down into bite-sized chunks so you can get out there and start generating press and buzz.

Get it here.