Music Promotion Tips from Homeless Balloon

Selling more music with Facebook

2011-12-30T00:54:00.001+01:00

Facebook is the biggest social community on the web, and as an independent artist, you should have a fan page and learn how to use that page to spread your music and collect fans. If you are a relatively new artist (or new on the web), your most important goal should not be to sell your albums or tracks, but to get your music heard and collect real fans. Then you can slowly start to sell your music and begin earning some money.

CD Baby has created a cool guide with the title "Selling more music with Facebook", and you can download your free copy of the pdf here.

10 Tips To Advance Your Music Business Career

2011-12-27T13:31:00.000+01:00

A stream of great articles about music promotion is coming from hyperbot.com, and here is what they call "Best of Hyperbot 2011", ten useful tips we should follow if we want to advance our music business career. The article is written by Hisham Dahud, and here are the first five tips:
No matter where you are in your career, it’s important to look back at the basics. It allows you to think like a beginner again; back to when you could visualize the most possibilities. The following ten tips, taken from a NARIP event in San Francisco, will help move forward your career in the music business - however far along you may be.

1. Have a Plan
Write it down - on a piece of paper. Studies have shown that physically writing things down not only helps in retaining the information better, but handwritten goals can bring clarity and focus. If you’ve already typed out your goals somewhere, rewrite them again on a piece of paper. You may come across new insights that can bring even more clarity and focus to your plan. Furthermore, you should be able to clearly articulate your goals so well that there isn’t the least bit of uncertainty or confusion when you’re out making progress towards your plan.

2. Recognize That Everything Is Sales
As music professionals, we’re all in the business of sales. For some, this can be a hard fact to swallow. After all, music is an art form - a transcendental language that breaks down language barriers across the world. However, it’s also a form of entertainment. In order to sustain ourselves as artists - as entertainers - we must be compensated for our time and effort. At the very least, the art needs to sustain itself. You must learn, understand, appreciate, execute, and learn to love sales. This applies whether you’re on stage, at a conference, or online - consider yourself always on the sales floor.

3. Network
You’ve heard it time and time again: “It’s not about what you know, but who you know.” This is certainly true, but only to a degree. Just as important as whom you know in this business is what you can do for them. You shouldn't be handing out business cards to every potential ally you encounter. You should first ensure that you have something of value to offer them. In a proper networking situation, a mutually beneficial exchange of resources occurs where both parties benefit from one another. If at first you seek to help others, and do so genuinely, you will gain leverage in earning what it is you’re after. Yes, while everything is sales as I mentioned above, it's important to remember the art of “sellling without selling” - to give in order to get.

4. Collaborate / Create Partnerships
In an ideal world, we’d all have large amounts of capital that we can allocate to pay top-quality help. This obviously is not the case, but sometimes money isn’t what is needed to gain the services we seek. If you can’t exchange dollars, exchange services. Either way, you’re building relationships and displaying a genuine desire to help the other person out.

5. Collect and Surround Yourself with Winners
Surround yourself with firelighters – people who recognize your passion (your flame) and encourage you to move forward, and try to avoid the firefighters – people who diminish your spirits by trying to bring you down - intentionally or unintentionally. You’re known by the company you keep, so affiliate and associate yourself wisely. Do some research on successful people and try to model their success. Also, if you haven’t had a mentor yet, consider seeking one out. Personalized and experienced professional guidance can work wonders for your career.

Read all the ten tips here

5 SoundCloud Music Promotion Tips

2011-12-22T23:23:00.000+01:00

SoundCloud is absolutely one of the best sites for serious music artists. If you don't know this site - and don't have an account - check it out and set up your free or paid account and start sharing your music in a great community. The ability to leave comments that pop up as the track is playing, is unique on the web. - SoundCloud is also a great location for music promotion. The Music Think Tank has five easy SoundCloud Music Promotion tips:

Taking advantage of SoundCloud’s growing community of music lovers should be a strategic practice of all musicians, big and small. Sharing tracks, creating sets, and interacting with other users are all essential parts of good SoundCloud promotion. Add to that commenting, following and group joining, and SoundCloud becomes the online pulse of social music.

Looking at the current success of Skrillex and his presence on SoundCloud, you can’t help but get excited about the potential for music discovery that SoundCloud offers. To help gain the most out of SoundCloud and reach the widest audience possible, I’ve put together some tips and ideas that any musician can easily implement. I call them my 5 Super-Social Easily-Implemented Just-Do-It-Already SoundCloud-Tips.

Tip 1: Share

Sharing your SoundCloud tracks is very important. In today’s age of social networking this should not come as a surprise. In fact, this should be second nature by now. When you release a new track or a new set, always remember to share it on Facebook, send out some tweets, embed a HTML5 player on your site, post the music on Tumblr, share the track with SoundCloud users who are not following you already, and send some old-fashioned emails. SoundCloud even lets you connects various networks in their Settings area to assist in this process. Make sure you use it.

Tip 2: Be Free

Everyone likes free stuff, including free SoundCloud downloads. Don’t be afraid to release tracks for free every so often. Many people have grown up not even paying for music anymore. And although that can be detrimental to the starving artist, letting a track go for free can have it benefits. Free downloads have a certain type of virality. When the right fans get their hands on them they can spread across the world at a much faster rate than paid tracks. Use free downloads to produce a larger fan base. With a larger fan base, you have a greater chance of selling more music.

Read the three other tips here

Twitter Music Promotion and Marketing Guide

2011-12-21T22:10:00.000+01:00

Bob Baker is one of the most experienced music marketing experts on the web, and he is sharing some useful tips for using Twitter to reach out with your music:

A YouTube video that offers a quick and easy explanation of what Twitter is and why people use it:

Getting Started With Twitter

How to Use Twitter for Music Promotion by Heather McDonald, About.com

From Twits to Tweeple, Why I Embraced Twitter and You Should Too by Jennifer Laycock, Search Engine Guide

Newbies Guide to Twitter by Chris Brogan

Getting Started With Twitter by Dave Fleet

A Geek's Guide to Promoting Yourself and Your Business with Twitter by Geekpreneur (48-page PDF ebook)

Twitter? It's What You Make It by David Pogue, The New York Times

Read the article here

Berklee's Exlusive Music Business Videos - take a look and learn!

2011-12-17T23:55:00.000+01:00

Berklee Music has some of the best teachers and thinkers when it comes to understanding and navigating in the new music business. Here is a collection of videos on their site. If you enjoy them, you might concider attending one of their business courses, or perhaps watch more of their videos.

Watch the videos here

4 Ways to Treat Your Music Fans like VIPs

2011-12-17T17:03:00.000+01:00

Brian Botkiller has written this guest post for CDBaby's blog, about treating your music fans:

Voice-mail, Vlogs, VIP treatment, and more!
Probably the hardest thing as a musician is figuring out how to promote your music to the masses. We all know that we can make great music, but how can we get people to hear it? This article isn’t about promoting on twitter and Facebook – at least not in the usual ways. This is about coming up with unique ways to promote your music and find new fans.

First off, don’t’ talk about yourself all the time. Talking only about yourself on social networks won’t keep people’s interest. Pay attention to what they say. Respond, retweet, like, interact! Then, when you promote yourself, you may find that they’re more interested in what you’re talking about.

This is where the rubber meets the road. Host contests over social networks, offering up cool stuff beyond just free downloads to people who share the news about your band. Free mp3s are fine,… but what about signed CDs and custom merchandise? Remember, your music is only a very small part of your band’s brand recognition. It’s your main product, but not your only product.

Fans love it when they’re treated like VIPs.
So how can you give fans that VIP treatment?

1. In the case of my band, Vertigo Venus, we opened up a Google Voice hotline (which you can call or text anytime at 505-750-VENS).

It was simple; open a Google account, signup for Google Voice, and link your voice account to a cell phone – it’ll have to be one of your bandmate’s, of course. And then, one big thing; set the voice account to “do not disturb” in your preferences. This will assure that your phone doesn’t ring off the hook or get millions of text messages, but you’ll still be able to get texts and voice messages in your voice inbox. You can offer up cool stuff to fans who leave the most inventive messages, texts, and things like that. And then, you can ask them if it’s ok to add them to your mailing list! Best of all, Google Voice is FREE.

2. Another VIP treatment we’ve come up with is writing songs for your fans – this is something I haven’t seen done before. You can pick your favorite fans and write short songs about them for free (remember the ones that come to your shows all the time – reward them!), or you can ask fans to donate money to you to record the song. Maybe one of them needs a song for their girlfriend? Tell them to go to you for that! You can make a lot of headway in this fashion, and give fans the VIP treatment.

3. Try out a subscription based model for your music. In our case, We call it “Vv365″ – and for a small subscription fee, paid per year (with discounts for buying more than one year), a fan gets all of our music in digital download format, both previous, and new releases, as well as one-offs, studio cuts, and other special offerings. They get music before everyone else this way, and they get the red carpet treatment for new music. You can set this up in Paypal pretty easily, and find a great way to work with fans in ways most others are not.

4. Other ideas include making custom art for fans, setting up promotions with local clubs (see if you can tie in with their email newsletter if you offer to do some footwork and flyer for their business), and making a webcomic about your band’s escapades. Have fun with promoting, and think about the kind of things that you have fun interacting with!

This isn’t everything you can do (the possibilities are endless), but all of these ideas are things you can offer up to fans to help promote your music and your band. Use these ideas on your Youtube (vlogs!), Facebook, your blogs, Tweets, and your newsletter. Remember, connect with your fans! Talking to them means that you’re a real group of people. Tell them about what you’re doing as a band, keep them interested. They’ll thank you for it, and you’ll see your fanbase grow – and in the long run, that’s your goal!

The whole article is here

The Indie - get worldwide airplay for your music!

2011-12-12T17:53:00.000+01:00

The Indie is a web site for independent music artists, and their speciality is to help you get worldwide airplay. They say on their web site:

Get Worldwide Airplay, Now!

Radio has always made it easy for music lovers to discover new music and new artists. In fact, airplay is the single most important vehicle for exposing music to hundreds of thousands of fans in an instant. Therefore, your first task in getting effective promotion is securing airplay--globally!

We're opening the airwaves...
However, getting airplay isn't easy. It requires identifying viable outlets, and enlisting the a dedicated team of professionals to market and promote your song(s). Alternatively, you can build buzz and momentum by getting your music picked up on alternative outlets for global airplay. How? The Indie has partnered with Media2Radio, a company that is committed to delivering results for artists and labels that want real worldwide radio exposure! This is the opportunity you've been waiting for!

Effective Music Advertising

2011-12-06T21:43:00.000+01:00

Here's an interesting article from music think tank about music advertising on the web. Independent artists are tempted to spend money on ads in order to grab new listeners and fans, but is it effective? You will find the facts below:

When it comes to music and advertising, there’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution. What works for some artists will not work for others, and vice versa. However here’s one thing I can tell you for sure: too many artists are using advertising as a blunt force weapon. Simply dropping a picture of yourself, your band, or your album art into an ad unit and then indiscriminately campaigning nationwide for clicks will rarely generate the advertising ROI you need to justify spending on another campaign.

Based upon my own experiences and upon the numerous campaigns I have reviewed over the last year, I believe artists should 1) commit to running numerous test-trial campaigns prior to allocating the majority of their advertising spend to a single message, and 2) seriously consider which geographic targeting option (local, regional, or nationwide) will generate the immediate ROI artists need to justify a continuous investment in advertising.

For test campaigns, if you want to compare click results between campaigns, plan on spending at least $100 to generate 30 to 40 clicks per test campaign. Campaign costs and results will vary widely between advertising platforms. Test a matrix of targeting options, artwork, songs, messages and propositions to determine which combination outperforms all the others.

Read all of the article here

RADIO AIRPLAY 101 - The Overall Picture of Music Marketing

2011-11-30T23:32:00.001+01:00

Bryan Farrish is an expert in music radio promotion, which means that he is sharing his thoughts (and service) to independent music artists like you and me. On his home page, he is sharing this article about the importance of radio airplay:

"There are two options for your independent music in the music business: You can either try to be your own record label (and/or PR firm, music company, entertainment agent, etc.), or you can partner with others who will do the work for you if you pay them. Either way, you need to know who does what.

A Record label, PR firm, music manager, music publishing company, entertainment agency, music distribution firm, entertainment lawyer, music magazine, and most any other entity in the music industry are all part of a "mass media" wheel that generates airplay, publicity, gigs and record (CD) sales. All this is part of a record deal (from a record label), or, it can be used to get a record deal. Alternatively, you could decide just to keep as much of it in-house as possible, thus creating your own operation. This is a realistic option if you will be in the business for five or more years, and you are willing to work at least 30 hours a week at it.

A real record company handles four basic areas of music marketing: Radio, PR (public relations), gigs, and music retail. The radio portion is what this entire site is about; radio is the most complicated part of the music industry, and the most expensive part of the budget of a major record label. If you hire an independent radio promoter, they can also help a little with PR, gigs and retail, provided the airplay campaign is large enough.

The PR (publicity) portion of the entertainment industry is obtained by hiring a PR firm (or PR person). A large record label has these people on staff, but will still hire out for more push. A smaller independent record label sometimes will just try to do its own publicity, maybe by just focusing on some local music magazines. Big mass media music magazines, however, will be beyond what an independent music label can get.

The gig portion of your music marketing is obtained by partnering with an entertainment agency who book gigs for you (good gigs can get you some PR too.) Small music labels will just try to book their own gigs. Note that an entertainment agency for gigs is not the same as an entertainment agent that an actor would have.

For the retail part of the music industry, a record company would hire a retail promoter, whereas a small independent record label would just call stores on their own. Note that this is NOT the same thing as music distribution, which is simply a middleman between the record company and the music retail stores... they just take retail orders once the retail promotion person causes the sales to happen. If you have no retail promotions person, you will have no sales, regardless of the radio that you do.

The entertainment industry has a few other entities you will have to work with... like the music manager (i.e., personal manager) and the entertainment lawyer. While they are not into music-marketing or mass-media details the way a record label or radio promoter would be, they are needed with things like music publishing and general operation once you are on the road (but probably not before.)

As a final note, below are some miscellaneous terms that some new artists seek info on, but which were already covered above:

Record label company
Music royalty
Music record company
Entertainment business
Artist manager
Music industry contact
Publicity agency
PR company
Entertainment marketing
Music management company
Music distribution company
Radio publicity system
Music industry information
Music industry PR company
Radio publicity campaign
The music industry
Music industry marketing company
Music industry resource
Music industry statistics
Marketing music
Music industry contract
Music industry publication
Music industry directory
Music industry management
Music industry magazine

I suggest that you visit Bryan Farrish's page and read more of his articles here!

The Profitable Artist: A Handbook for All Artists in the Performing, Literary, and Visual Arts

2011-11-26T00:39:00.000+01:00

There's a new book out which labels itself as "an essential how-to guide for all artists in all disciplines to acquire the skills they need to be profitable. While all art is unique, the challenges artists face are shared regardless of background, experience, and artistic medium. With decades of experience training and helping artists, the expert staff of the New York Foundation for the Arts have compiled a “best practices” approach to planning and organizing an art career. In this book, NYFA has identified common problems, examined specialized areas of business, ﬁnance, marketing, and law, and distilled these topics in such a way that readers can digest them and apply them to their own experience and practice.

Included are interviews, anecdotes, and in-depth case studies. The skills and guidelines in The Proﬁtable Artist will also translate effectively to teaching and mentoring opportunities that artists may encounter as their career progresses. This invaluable guide appeals to all artists in all disciplines of the literary, media, performing, and visual arts, from recent art school graduates to established artists undertaking new arts businesses to artists seeking more from their careers at any stage of their career."

Check out this great book: here

Best Kept Secret for Advancing Your Music Career

2011-11-21T21:32:00.000+01:00

Minh D. Chau has an interesting article at the music think tank. He starts off like this:

Let’s paint a scenario. Let’s say you’ve got some great music. You’re an up-and-coming independent. It doesn’t matter who you are - the songwriter, the producer, the artist, the manager, or the indie label owner. You’ve generated some pretty good buzz for that music. And, you happen to have $5000 to spend. What should you spend it on? What would really help advance your career?

A. Spend it on advertising
B. Spend it going on tour
C. Hire a publicist
D. Hire a lawyer
E. Hire a college radio promoter

And the correct answer is…

D. Hire a lawyer

Are you surprised by the answer? You shouldn’t be. Truth is, in the world of entertainment, the attorney is king in many ways. They are the silent force behind every deal and advancement. They are the music industry’s silent gatekeeper and its best kept secret (and probably safe to say, best weapon).

Read the article here.

Free Ebook: The Essential Step-by-Step Guide to Internet Marketing

2011-11-19T00:00:00.000+01:00

Here's a great offer from HubSpot: a free ebook with the essential step-by-step guide to Internet Marketing:

Whether you're just getting started with internet marketing or you just want to brush up on the basics, this ebook can serve as your essential guide to setting up and implementing a successful internet marketing strategy, step by step.

From establishing your initial keyword strategy to leveraging social media to promote content online all the way through to analyzing and refining your strategies, this comprehensive internet marketing ebook will guide you through every essential step you should be taking to effectively market your business on the web, whether you’re a software company, a chimney sweep, a tailor, or a marketing agency, to name a few.

This comprehensive guide will cover the following 8 essential steps to internet marketing success:

How to define a keyword strategy
How to optimize your website
How to create blog & other content
How to promote content & participate in social media
How to convert site traffic into leads
How to nurture leads with email marketing
How to be mobile-friendly
How to analyze & refine strategies

Download the FREE ebook here.

Add Your Tracks to The Vimeo Video Music Store

2011-11-18T23:18:00.000+01:00

Vimeo - one of the best video sites on the web - has opened up an opportunity for music artists to add their music to the Vimeo Video Music Store. Users of the site can easily - and legally - license your tracks to use in their video creations. It's sometimes hard for a video editor to find suitable music that can easily be licensed, and Vimeo has changed this with their new feature :) Users can obtain a Creative Commons license or buy licenses for non-commercial and commercial use. Vimeo is so far offering more than 45,000 tracks from many genres. Users can search the library of available tracks by genre or browse more than 100 categories like mood, instruments or tempo.

As a music artist, how do you add your tracks to Vimeo's database? Most of their tracks comes from Audiosocet, which offers a catalog of more than 30.000 songs from independent artist, and from FMA which offers 11.000 songs with a free Creative Commons license. (Creative Commons is a method of marking a musical composition with a license that (usually) gives the user a legal right to use the composition in his work.)

Here's an introduction to the Vimeo Music Store:

You may submit your music to Audiosocket here.

Top Twitter Tips for Musicians

2011-11-17T18:14:00.001+01:00

Steve Lawson (artist and promo guru) has a great article about how artists should use Twitter. He starts his article like this:

"I’ve been getting WAY too many ‘follows’ on Twitter of late from musicians who really don’t get it. So here’s my Top Tips For Musicians On Twitter. You may want to start with my Best Practices In Social Media post, or just jump straight in here.

OK, let’s start by comparing twitter with Myspace, as that’s where most musicians get their start in social media:

Like most musicians, my start on Myspace involved using the search function to find other musicians and ‘fans’ and adding them without any interaction. I accumulated thousands of ‘friends’ in no time, and for about a month was getting hundreds-sometimes-thousands of plays a day. But very little of it turned into any real interaction with them, either at gigs, buying/downloading music or just messages to say ‘hi’.

So I backed off, and stopped actively adding anyone to myspace, and recently deleted 8000 myspace friends in an attempt to make it useful.

So how does that relate to Twitter?" ...

Read the rest of the article here: "here

Download 500 Mbyte of great instrument samples here for free!

2011-11-16T23:25:00.001+01:00

Loopmasters is a cool site for those of us who create electronic music. They have a huge amount of sample libraries with everything from single samples (drums, percussion, hits) to loops, atmospheres, voice samples and instruments like keyboard, synth, bass, you name it. Check out their current promotion where you are allowed to download five (5) FREE SamplePacks named "DJ MIXTOOLS". Go here to download your 500 Mbyte of great samples: download

WARNING: Every Musician's Digital Performance Royalties Are At Risk

2011-11-03T19:18:00.000+01:00

Hyperbot has an important article about a change that some forces in the music industry want:

Recording artists and indie labels: there¹s a movement afoot to change the way that you would receive your digital public performance royalties, and it¹s not a good one, especially for recording artists.

Back in August, FMC blogged about the news that Sirius/XM was considering doing a direct licensing deal, expressing our serious displeasure with the move.

In recent days, the artist community ‹ including AFTRA, AFM, The Recording Academy, A2IM and SoundExchange‹ has been broadcasting the message to their members about the negative consequences of direct licensing deals for digital performance royalties. We applaud our artist colleagues for urging their members signed to indie labels (or self-released artists) to not accept these direct licensing deals.

We here at FMC wanted to join in the chorus and explain to musicians and labels why the current statutory licensing structure is better for all stakeholders.

Read on here

How to Communicate With Fans So You Connect With Them (Instead of Bore Them to Tears)

2011-10-28T21:27:00.000+02:00

Communicating with your music fans is very important. Here's an article you should read, from our friends at the Music Think Tank:

"In the same way that there is an art and craft to songwriting, there is also a craft to writing and using language in general and these word-related skills can play a big part in how effectively you communicate with fans - especially online.

In this article I’m going to quickly address something called “point of view” and why it’s so important — namely, when to use the First Person, Second Person, or Third Person perspective when talking about and describing your music.

You probably learned these things in school. But just in case you forgot the details, here’s a refresher on what they are:

First Person is when you write about yourself: “I just wrote a new song” or “We have a big show coming up this weekend.”

Second Person is when you speak directly to the reader: “You will really enjoy this new song” or “You should come to our show this Saturday night.” (The second example actually combines first and second points of view in both “you” and “our” terms.)

Third Person speaks from a more distant, observer viewpoint: “Suzy just wrote a new song” or “The XYZ band has a big show coming up this weekend.”
Great. You’re back on track with what these three things are. Now, how can you use them to more powerfully communicate with fans?"

To read the rest of the article, click here

Do's and Don't's of Social Networking - Know your fans to keep your fans!

2011-10-26T23:22:00.005+02:00

A great article with the title above is available at the Music Think Tank. It's written by Katey Laurel, and she starts off like this:

"So one of the main things I’ve had to learn this year with the rapid advance of social networking as a direct-connect to your fans is this: DON’T make the mistake of overmarketing to them.

Fans become fans because they LIKE your music, but they are naturally curious about the person behind the music and the LOVE getting to know you even more than they like your music. This is an incredibly important lesson to learn. Keep in mind that the same should be true for you in order for there to exist a genuine relationship between the two of you…be more interested in learning about and knowing your fans than SELLING to them. They will buy your music if and only if you’ve established trust and interest with them as an independent artist. Let’s face it - we’re not Taylor Swift or Beyonce who have had millions of dollars behind developing their brand that is mass-marketed to everyone. We are independent artists with limited marketing budgets and time and genuine care will go a LONG way in your social networking strategies."

Read the rest of the article here

The 4 Reasons Fans Buy Your Merch

2011-10-14T23:13:00.000+02:00

Reverbnation is re-posting a 2010 blog entry from Jed Carlson, Co-Founder of Reverbnation, because it was incredibly well-received by readers - and it contains timeless advice for artists. He starts his blog like this:

I was on a recent panel in Memphis, TN, for The Recording Academy called “Grammy GPS: A Roadmap for Today’s Music Business.” The topic of my panel was Direct-to-Fan (DTF) commerce. In preparation, I pored over data (anecdotal and empirical) from the last 3+ years of working with Artists, Labels and Managers, including recent data from our online DTF product Reverb Store that launched in January of this year.

The first thing that dawned on me was how much DTF commerce is already taking place, offline, in the form of the ubiquitous merch table at virtually every concert on the planet. The Artist Revenue Survey we conducted in 2008 revealed that more than 50% of our Artists total revenue came from playing live shows and selling merch and music at those shows.

It seems logical that we should consider the principals behind the merch table (offline DTF) if we’re going to be properly equipped to maximize DTF online. Core to that is understanding why fans buy products.

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:

To read the rest of the blog entry, go here

Why Artists Need More Than The Social Web To Obtain Sustainable Engagement

2011-09-29T22:00:00.000+02:00

We like to think of the web as one big, endless, interconnected net of relationship fibers where a tug on a single fiber causes random ripples and pulls all across the entire net; that somehow a path will emerge, narrow as it may be, where a ripple can travel from one corner of the net to the other; and that if you - the music marketer - could only simultaneously pull enough social strings, your message would be riding on a magic carpet instead of a thread.

However If the ripple effect worked on the social web, then how come artists with hundreds of thousands of followers and many thousands of fans have so much trouble creating sustainable engagement where the ripples are broad enough (to live upon) or at least endless? Songs often don’t find their intended audiences, seats go unfilled, videos don’t go viral, and messages get quickly swallowed in a sea of social noise. It happens every day; it happens to almost every artist on earth; and the exceptions are rarer than you think.

Read the whole article here

Can't drink enough coffee, can you?

2011-09-25T17:35:00.001+02:00

Everything Derek Sivers learned in 10 years of starting, growing, and selling CD Baby

2011-08-05T19:05:00.000+02:00

AppSumo (Daily Deals for Web Geeks) have shared a set of really great videos where Derek Sivers, the founder of CDBaby and a great speaker, is sharing his best advice for entrepreneurs. He says: "If you're interested in my best advice for entrepreneurs, here's my 45-minute video, sharing everything I learned in 10 years of starting, growing, and selling CD Baby. A few conferences and universities have flown me around the world to give this talk. But now I made a good video of it, so you can watch it for free."

I hope you find it helpful. Enjoy!

Watch the videos!

Why No One is Reading Your Newsletter

2011-08-03T21:05:00.000+02:00

Are you sending newsletters to your fans? If you do, you should read this article by Brian Franke. He is sharing some important things you should remember. Some of the things he is discussing in his article:

• People receive too much email
• “Come to my show” is too Predictable
• Newsletter is sent Sporadically or too often
• WAAAAAAAYYYYY too long
• Gain their trust before selling anything
• Use Autobot response
• You don’t introduce yourself to new fans
• The one-sided conversation
• Use a Newsletter Program
• Send 1-2 newsletters a month
• Be strategic in the time in which to send it out
• Be in and out
• Start using Photos, Links, and Video
• Segment Your List:
• Send a thank you to new fans each month or even after each show
• Engage your fans

To read the explanation for each point, go here

7 Ways to Bring Back the Physical Album Experience in Digital Music

2011-07-27T22:44:00.000+02:00

Chris Bracco at music think tank wrote this very welcom article, where he starts like this:
I’ve been meaning to write this article for a looonnggg time, and I am finally finding the time to get around to it. It really irks me whenever I hear somebody say they are dissatisfied with digital music. It doesn’t have to be some boring, robotic thing, people! Despite what some industry folks may tell you, there are still tons of music fans out there that prefer the experience that a physical music item can provide. I am one of them. Believe it or not, there are ways that artists can bring some of the physical album experience to digital music. Some of it is common sense, and some of it takes a little “out of the box” thinking, but it is indeed possible.

Click to read more

The Ecosystem Of Fans, Artist & Label

2011-07-20T21:44:00.005+02:00

Bas Grasmayer, who is working with online communication at official.fm (a platform for content owners and music creators), has built a great web site where the purpose is to show how important it is to market your music through non-linear communication. One of his points is to show that piracy (downloading music you didn't purchase) don't have to be a problem compared to the massive opportunities that the Internet gives you. - Check out The ecosystemof fans and artists: here

10 Biggest Small Business Website Mistakes - and How to Fix Them

2011-07-15T22:36:00.000+02:00

Jon Gelberg is the Chief Content Officer for Blue Fountain Media, a Web design, development, and marketing company in New York City. I found this article by him where he is pointing at mistakes we should avoid when designing our web pages. This is important also for music artists. As we have heard many times, having a personal and great home page is a must for any music artist who wants to reach out on the web.

Read the article here

Stop giving your music away for free Part 1.5

2011-07-13T20:30:00.001+02:00

Last week, I shared the link to an article at musicassistantnow.com where the message is that music artist should NOT give their music away for free. This seems to have raised some discussion, and here's the comments from the author:

Due to numerous comments, I realize some readers are missing the point of the post. Sure the title grabs your attention, but it is the substance of the article that further explains the thought process behind Call To Indie Artists: Stop Giving Your Music Away For Free.

“Firstly, limit the amount of music you offer for free.”

The article is written in response to the present FREE model. YES music given as a promotional tool can be very effective. I didn’t think this was something that needed to be exemplified. Though we are still learning the magnitude of its effectiveness, it has been proven effective enough to give it a try. Now let me remind everyone at one point in time, personal emailing was a charged service. It is almost insane to pay for that very same service now. Sorry, but I’m against songs following the same path. If the creators have accepted free as a normal, then fans (MORE FANS) will definitely follow suit. We know fans began downloading free music a long time ago, but with the advancing of new music discovery outlets, fans now are more willing to pay for music…..because they believe in the artists that they are supporting. If the industry just willingly accepts free as the main model, then we would have cut off a major life line to many artists. Artists who can’t afford to follow in the steps of what major artists are doing, or even what some successful indie artists are doing.

Bottom line is if giving away free music works for you, then so be it. But there are many other artists out there who are looking to generate money off of their music and the plan of just giving away their music for free does not and will not produce successful results.

Also there are many artists out there who are experiencing the immediate results of giving away their music for free. There is always the test of time that will yield more realistic results.

As always thanks for reading and continue to share your thoughts. With discussions like this, we all add to a better music industry.

Read the comments here

How to Structure a Company to Succeed in the Current Music Industry

2011-07-09T01:38:00.002+02:00

Here's an interesting and important article about how a company should be structured in order to succeed in the current music industry. The article describes the current problems like this:

"There are three problems that affect the current music ecosystem.

1) The current ecosystem does not have a fair and equitable allocation of costs and benefits.

2) The current ecosystem creates conflict and distrust between the entity that markets the music and the artist who creates the music, and the manager who speaks for the artist.

3) The current ecosystem is a quagmire of rights management that makes it difficult to adapt to the changing content distribution platforms.

A new company structure would have to address these issues, so that it could still operate within the current system while having the ability to pivot as the landscape changes. This company is not a label. It is not a management company. It is not a publishing company. It is a music company."

Read all of the article: Click here!

Creating A Great Looking Facebook Page

2011-07-05T15:33:00.001+02:00

Here's a great article by Orli Yakuel I found on TechCrunch about creating a great looking facebook page. The article starts like this:

Like most of you, I too LIKE Facebook, and ever since my last TechCrunch post (How to Build Engaging One-of-Kind Facebook Fan Pages), I’ve been exploring and trying to find new ways to improve the creation process of a Page. This time, I’d like to focus on a how-to for the musicians among you. If you are one of the talented musicians on Facebook, this simple guide should be of great use to you.

First things first, you need to register for a SoundCloud account. That’s actually a good thing, regardless of the Page, because SoundCloud is one of the best quality music services available today. It’s an easy to use service with an elegant layout that allows you to upload your original music and lets you play the files according to the quality of your upload. If you question the site’s potential, think again, because artists like MC Hammer, Moby and many more are already using it.

Click here to read the article!

Generate Demand for Your Music By Rightly Using A Loss Leader

2011-05-08T00:22:00.000+02:00

As a music artist, your music is your business, and you should try to earn money from your music. However, sometimes it is necessary to spend time on an activity that won't generate any direct income at first. A loss leader is an expression that means the part of your product offering that you will lose money on in order to catch new customers. Giving away a music track for free in order to get new visitors to your site, can be one such loss leader. Still, if you give away all your tracks for free, you will risk devaluating yourself and give people the impression that your music is bad because it has no value. - Read the great article from our friends at Music Think Tank (click on the title to go to the article)!

12 Tips to Handle Social Media Overload

2011-04-28T20:49:00.000+02:00

Michael Brandvold is sharing his tips for artists like you and me: We spend too much time on the web handling our social duties. His article starts like this:

This post is slightly at odds with one of my mentors, Michael Branvold. Strange considering it’s based on his great advice on what musicians should do online daily. It’s not that I disagree with what Michael says. It’s that, well, there’s not enough time in the damn day! Time management is a bane to my existence.

Currently, I’m trying to start a new band, filling in with another band, and I’m running a blog on how to run a band. And guess what? I’ve hit media overload. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogging…the social media list grows every day. I try to keep up, but it’s freakin’ hard! Not to mention I have a day job. Refreshing my Facebook page 30 times a day doesn’t help with job security. After backing off for a little bit, I’ve come up with a strategy to manage my time more efficiently. This post will concentrate on managing online activities since they can cut most significantly into a band’s time.

Click on the title to read the article!

5 Psychological Principles To Help You Sell More Music

2011-04-20T23:45:00.000+02:00

Again from the great music think tank, an article about the psychological principles that will help you sell more music. The article starts off like this: "In the past decades, dozens of books have been published about human behavior and the science of persuasion. These books reveal psychological foundations of many marketing-techniques and scrutinize how people make choices and how they are influenced.

One of the classic books in this genre is Influence: The Psychology Of Persuasion. It’s written by the social psychologist Robert B. Cialdini and although it dates from more than 25 years ago, the book is still relevant today. It provides insights in psychological principles that can be applied to a broad range of fields, including music." - Click on the title to read the article.

Make The Most of Your Facebook Page

2011-04-07T21:28:00.000+02:00

It's 2011 and every artist worth their salt has a Facebook fan page. But keeping yours up to date can sometimes feel like a chore. And how do you know if you're really making the most of your page? Could you do things better to encourage your existing connections to share your page with their social networks? Here we describe some helpful ways to make the most of your Facebook page.

HOW TO: Make The Most of Your Facebook Page - hypebot

Overview of Direct-To-Fan Marketing Tactics

2011-02-09T20:56:00.000+01:00

If you're an artist or manager that wants to learn more about direct-to-fan maketing, here is a great video. Mike King of BerkleeMusic delivered this speech at MIDEM last month. It's full of King's insights, as well as, thinking from Seth Godin, Clay Shirky, and Hugh MaCleod. - Click on the title to watch the video!

Have you heard of Video LPs? They may be a great idea!

2011-02-02T18:37:00.000+01:00

It's a fact that more and more video's are watched on the web, and also music artists get lots of new fans when they put good music videos online. Alan Latufka has an interesting article where he introduces something he calls "Video LPs". It's basically a YouTube Video Playlist that consists of a video for each of the tracks on the music album. Sounds like a good idea to me :) Click on the title to read more!

How To Sell And Market Your Music Using The Latest Research

2011-01-24T21:02:00.000+01:00

In the music think tank blog is an interesting article about selling and marketing our music when we use the latest research results. In September last year (2010), the highly regarded research firm Nielsen arranged a survey of more than 26000 people on their music purchasing and listening habits. As music artists trying to build our career on the web, this article is important reading. Click the title to read the whole article.

The Year In Music: What Happened In 2010?

2011-01-03T21:21:00.001+01:00

MySpace has released a comprehensive infographic on what happened in music in 2010. The graphic is slanted towards popular music, but the information is still interesting. Another thing that it chronicles is the groups that broke up and reformed in 2010. There's several of old-school acts getting back together, but only a handful are hitting the road. - Click on the title to read the article!

The Best Music Videos of 2010

2010-12-30T21:37:00.001+01:00

MicControl has a great article about music videos. The pick the ten best videos of 2010. The article shows that creating an original video for your song, is a great way to promote your music on the web. - Click the title to watch and read!

Great email marketing service from Mad Mimi

2010-12-26T01:22:00.000+01:00

I recommend the great email marketing service that the folks at Mad Mimi have created. It's very well suited for independent music artists. Click on the banner and check it out!

Is the album format dead?

2010-12-25T21:12:00.000+01:00

Bobby Owsinski think so, and in this article he gives his six reasons:

I think it’s safe to say that we’re at the end of the “album age,” and although the format will hold on for a while, it’s clearly waning in popularity. I’ve given this a lot of thought and have come up with what I think are the reasons, but be aware, they’re not all exactly what the popular wisdom assumes. So let’s begin with the 6 reasons why the album format has, for all intents and purposes, died.

Click the title to read more!

The most interesting music start-ups of 2010

2010-12-15T00:15:00.000+01:00

Here is an interesting article by Chris Bracco with his list of the most unique, interesting and innovative music technology companies for music artists. Click the title to read on!

Get a great reverb plugin for Mac or PC FREE

2010-12-06T22:35:00.000+01:00

PSP PianoVerb reproduces special kind of reverberation originally provided by piano strings. It generates reverberation using twelve string operators with adjustable damping and decay time. Each of them is tuned to a particular note starting from A(55Hz) to a G#(103.8Hz). The PSP PianoVerb string system can be transposed in the range of +-24 semitones, tuned within a range of +-100 cents and be detuned as well. Transposing to lower octaves produces a bigger and less resonant sound similar to traditional reverbs, while in turn transposing to higher octaves produces a very bright harp-like effect. - You can get this reverb plugin free by clicking on the title above..

Spread your music via headliner.fm

2010-11-18T00:08:00.001+01:00

I just discovered a cool new way to spread your music to new listeners and fans: headliner.fm. They describe their service like this: Spread your music to millions of new fans, connect with other artists and promote your music on Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. Join the pros! Travie McCoy, The Hives, Akon, Diddy, Fun, Boys Like Girls and thousands of other artists already on Headliner.fm. - Click on the title to learn more!

Check it out!

4 Ways Bands Can Cash in Online Without a Label

2010-11-07T21:55:00.000+01:00

We see you out there — the future musicians of the world, pouring coffee, mixing drinks, designing websites for shifty moving companies, all the while dreaming of making it big: signing to a label, cutting a record, reaping the benefits that only a throng of gaping groupies can herald.

While not all of you will make the proverbial “Big Time” — we can’t all be Lady Gaga, nor should we strive to be — that doesn’t mean that you can’t reap some monetary benefits for your musical labor.

Jeff Price, founder of TuneCore, recently wrote on the company blog: “More musicians are making money off their music now [than] at any point in history… Technology has made it possible for any artist to get distribution, to get discovered, to pursue his/her dreams with no company or person out there making the editorial decision that they are not allowed ‘in.’”

We would tend to agree (with the caveat that such openness has also led to a more crowded music scene, with more bands fighting for the public’s attention — but that’s a post for another day).

If you want to start seeing some payback for all your hard work, you don’t have to wait around for a label exec to catch your jazz flute set at the local coffee shop and catapult you to stardom. There are a ton of services out there that can help you make some cash, while also gaining exposure and experience.

Mashable spoke with folks from a quartet of such services in order to help you, the artist, devote more time to your lute than those lattes.

Note that none of the below are get-rich-quick schemes, so it might be wise to hang onto your day job — even if it is designing graphic tees for tiny dogs.

Click the title above to read the rest of the article!

Can Internet Marketing Techniques Sell Music?

2010-10-30T23:07:00.000+02:00

This is a Hyperbot guest post by Seamus Anthony, a Melbourne-based musician.

While music is my first love, I actually currently make more money as a website geek and, to a lesser extent, a writer. So I know how Internet marketing “squeeze pages” work, and how to write and build them.

Meanwhile, I have been going on my merry way making music but not exactly setting the Interwebs on fire.

Then, recently, I was casually watching a music marketing video (by Greg Rollett) and was immediately very familiar with the marketing model he was describing – and that’s when I had my giant D'OH! moment.

Basically Greg was advising musicians to use the very same squeeze page techniques that I get paid to implement for others.

It’s so obvious but I just never thought for one minute to try and use these techniques to sell and give away more of my music.

So I decided to roll out some classic Internet marketing techniques to see if it increased the consumption of my music. (Click the title to read the article!)

An Inspiring Story of Indie Music Success

2010-10-11T20:49:00.000+02:00

This is a positive and inspiring post by Bob Baker of the music marketing blog The Buzz Factor:

Last week I received an email from a Canadian named John Ioannou. The message opened this way:

"Hi Bob. Here's a true story about a musician, his dream, and proof that opportunity knocks!"

I was on the verge of closing the email to read later, but something prompted me to continue. And I'm glad I did.

I've often reminded aspiring musicians over the years that there are many paths to success. There are no guarantees. What works well for one artist often will not work at all for another.

And some of the things that end up working seem so outlandish (and even foolish) at first glance. Such was the case with John's story.

The message continued ...

"There's a really talented kid named Scotty James who attended high school in Canada and decided after graduation that music would be his full-time job.

"Armed with only a guitar and a dream, Scotty humbly has been going door to door to people's homes busking for cash - ten bucks a song to raise money for his first album."

Click the title of this article to read more and watch the video!

Jango Airplay: give your band airplay and new fans!

2010-09-28T23:38:00.001+02:00

I have used Jango Airplay for a while, and I am very impressed about their features and how effectively I have gotten radio play and lots of new fans. If you have a great song that you want people to discover, I suggest that you sign up with Jango Airplay and spend a few dollars to get your song into the playlists. More info here: Jango Airplay

Creative Commons and the independent music artist

2010-09-20T13:29:00.000+02:00

The music production magazine Sound On Sound has a long article about Creative Commons and the independent music artist which I enjoyed reading. My own country (Norway) was one of the last to accept the ideas behind CC, and we have only one Performing Royalty Collecting Society (TONO) where almost all composers and lyrics writers in Norway are members. TONO is not willing to allow their members (I'm one of them) to use the Creative Commons. Here is the article in Sound On Sound:

As the music industry struggles to adjust to the growing effects of the Internet on sales, even traditional concepts such as copyright are being reconsidered. We examine the Creative Commons movement and explain how it could be useful to musicians everywhere.

he traditional approach to copyright can be summed up in three words: All Rights Reserved. In law, copyright owners are granted exclusive rights in the owned work for a set period of time (50 years in the case of sound recordings in the EU), and these include the right to copy the owned work and to issue copies to the public. Yet in recent years, computer technology has made it possible for the public to easily copy and share copyrighted works worldwide. The music industry, which has felt the brunt of these technological changes, has responded with increasingly restrictive technological and legal measures — think copy-protected CDs, lawsuits against both peer-to-peer file-sharing services and individual music fans, and industry lobbying of governments for more protective intellectual property laws. It's hardly surprising, then, that there's a growing antagonism between the industry and its customers. (Click the title to read more.)

Great blog for independent music artists: echo louder

2010-09-11T22:37:00.000+02:00

I just discovered the blog of Bruce Warila. It has some great articles and helpful advice. Bruce writes about himself in his blog:

"Since 2003, I have been involved in strategic planning, product design and managerial roles pertaining to the development of digital products and services for the music industry. I am well versed in all facets of the music industry, music industry startups, music industry products and services, music promotion, music information retrieval science, and the obstacles and challenges that artists, record labels and rightsholders must overcome to be financially viable."

Is your brain exhausted from digital overload?

2010-08-29T13:37:00.000+02:00

The average person today consumes almost three times as much information as what the typical person consumed in 1960, according to research at the University of California, San Diego.

And The New York Times reports that the average computer user checks 40 websites a day and can switch programs 36 times an hour.

"It's an onslaught of information coming in today," says Times technology journalist Matt Richtel. "At one time a screen meant maybe something in your living room. But now it's something in your pocket so it goes everywhere — it can be behind the wheel, it can be at the dinner table, it can be in the bathroom. We see it everywhere today."

Richtel has spent the past several months researching the toll technology and "information juggling" are taking on our lives — and our brains. His series "Your Brain On Computers" describes how multitasking on computers and digital gadgets affects the way people process information — and how quickly they can then become distracted.

(Click on the title to read the full article)

Email 101 for artists

2010-07-20T06:05:00.000+02:00

Here is a helpful article about sending out artist emails the right way, from MusicThinkTank. There are several tips here that any music artist will benefit from picking up.

On File-Sharing: Are You Smarter Than A 12th Grader?

2010-07-14T23:15:00.000+02:00

I just discovered this article (from Music Think Tank) about a 12th grader named Kamal Dhillon who wrote an interesting article about file sharing and the legal side of it. He argues that file sharing may be illegal, but it is not ethically wrong. The essay had been entered into the Glassen Ethics Competition and Dhillon won. Out of eighty entrants in the contest, the essay that won the one thousand dollar prize and got republished in The Winnipeg Free Press, argued that yes, copyright infringement can be morally justified. Click on the title to read more!

Why Music Should Never Be Given Away For "Free"

2010-07-11T12:07:00.000+02:00

Joanthan Ostrow has an interesting article where he claims that giving music away for free, can work against the artist in the long run. He writes:

At this point, most emerging artists are familiar with the (potential) benefits of giving their music away for free:

- Maximizes the possibility of discovery
- Free Advertising
- Can create viral-buzz about your music

But in reality, unless you already possess quite a large fan-base along with the subsequent reach, giving your music away will be the last you hear from most of these new “fans”.

(Click the title to read the whole article)

Business Matters: Freemium

2010-07-09T20:03:00.001+02:00

Important and interesting article in Billboard where Glenn Peoples is discussing if freemium is a valid business model in todays digital music market. Freemium is a business model that works by offering basic Web services, or a basic downloadable digital product, for free, while charging a premium for advanced or special features.

YouTube's philosophy regarding copyright

2010-06-19T11:56:00.001+02:00

Margaret Gould Stewart, who is the head of user experience at YouTube, talks about how the ubiquitous video site works with copyright holders and creators to foster (at the best of times) a creative ecosystem where everybody wins.

How to get your music on blogs (Part 2)

2010-06-17T22:29:00.000+02:00

Here is part 2 of this great blog for music artists looking for ways to promote their music1

How to get your music on blogs

2010-06-14T21:29:00.000+02:00

Part 1 of a great article from the people at Think Tank:

Music blogs have become an extremely effective medium for artists to garner positive, and sometimes career-changing exposure for musicians. Getting featured on a blog can cause significant boosts in music and ticket sales for an artist, and there are tens of thousands of new music blogs springing up each day. The potential reach for your music in the blogosphere is HUGE! However, getting featured on blogs is a very meticulous and time-consuming process. Blog promotion can be frustrating at first, but if you are persistent and work hard at it, the benefits for your music career can be astronomical. As with anything, it’s important to have a plan before taking the leap. Click on the title to read more!

How to solve Royalty Collection Societies

2010-06-13T21:24:00.001+02:00

In may countries, composers and songwriters have organized themselves in so called Royalty Collection Societes that collect money on their behalf when their music is performed publicly or broadcast. Personally, I am a member of TONO in Norway, and they have helped me earn a decent amount of money when my music compositions were used in television documentaries and radio plays in Norway and other countries. I always recommend music composers to become a member of such a society in their own country. In Great Britain, they have PRS, in Sweden SIM, in Australia APRA and ofcours in the States they have ASCAP and BMI.

It’s a great system, and it means that people get paid when their creations are used - particularly in a profit-making context (eg: getting played on the radio; used as mood music in a restaurant or bar; performed live in concert; played by a DJ in a nightclub).

But it’s a far from perfect system. Read more in the article by Music Think Tank!

How to create a great digital music strategy

2010-06-12T12:56:00.000+02:00

"What does it mean to be an artist in 2010? What is a record company? A music company? A recorded music company? How do we define and work on music marketing within an ever-changing environment? 'And what about music?' you might ask me. Surely, music is the core of everything." - This is from an interesting article which gives a great overview of the situation and possibilities that music artists have today. In my view, the conclusions and advice that the author (Virgine Berger) gives in this e-book, is very much in tune with other similar articles I have read the last couple of years.

The paradox of choice

2010-05-21T19:34:00.000+02:00

I recommend the book "The Paradox of Choice" by Psychologist Barry Schwartz. He has some excellent reflections and thoughts about the freedom of choice. I really feel exactly what he is explaining when I look at my huge collection of music files. I often find it hard to choose which tracks I will listen to, and I end up listening to small snippets of a few tracks without getting the musical thrill that I was longing for... The solution? I don't know, but Barry Schwartz is putting his finger on the exact spot.

Using Hashtags To Increase Your Twitter Presence

2010-05-18T22:37:00.002+02:00

One of the most egregious errors for an artist using Twitter is overlooking the use of hashtags (the "#" symbol before a keyword).

Using a hashtag is like including a keyword in your tweet. It's an unofficial feature of Twitter but now widely accepted and supported, and is an easy way for people to search for and find a particular topic.

(Click on the title of this post to read the full article!)

Are A New Breed Of Artists & Musicians Emerging From The Digital Swamp?

2010-05-15T10:20:00.001+02:00

Interesting article: If you accept that music, art and media are effected by the environment in which they were created, then the quantum shifts caused by technology and the net are changing not just the way art is consumed, but also how it is created and the perspective of the creators. That's the premise explored in the forthcoming documentary PressPausePlay.

Bob Baker: Giving Music Consumers These 3 Choices Leads to More Revenue

2010-05-09T00:12:00.000+02:00

Music manager and co-founder of The Orchard is sharing some interesting statistics about music sales. He has concrete suggestions for how you should release your music and set the price.

Plugged/Unplugged: How Facebook Will Change Digital Music

2010-04-24T15:24:00.000+02:00

Plugged/Unplugged: How Facebook Will Change Digital Music

6 rules that makes a band website rock!

2010-04-04T11:40:00.002+02:00

Short and helpful article about making a band website that works, written by Chris Vinson (who has built hundreds of websites for artists during the years).

Hyperbot - music business news

2010-04-03T23:21:00.000+02:00

Another resource for those of us who try to follow and understand what's going on in the music world...

Volume 11 - music news and analysis

2010-04-03T23:15:00.000+02:00

I just discovered this valuable resource with news about the music business. Lots of interesting articles for music artists and listeners!

Free Music Business Handbook from Berklee

2010-04-03T22:57:00.001+02:00

Dave Kusek, Mike King and Eric Beall at the Berklee College of Music have put together a great, new e-book about music promotion. It' a free download. Check it out!

Another ripoff of music artists!

2010-04-03T12:21:00.002+02:00

Independent artists who sold their music through imeem’s Snocap music storefronts on MySpace and other sites will NOT be paid what’s owed after MySpace Music’s acquisition of a part of imeem. This what Wired.com reports. Isn't this another example of hard working music artists getting ripped off? My advice: Don't give away your music for free, but value it like it should be valued. And also: become a member of a suitable Peforming Artist Society in your country, like ASCAP, PRS, TONO etc.

3 Timeless Steps to Music Business Success

2010-03-27T13:04:00.000+01:00

A short but very helpful article at Music Think Tank where the author Andrew Dubber is sharing his thoughts about the few but important steps we need to take in order to gain success as music artists: People hear music, People like music, People buy music and People share music.

Get a free trial at Lynda.com!

2010-03-25T23:53:00.001+01:00

You can now get a free trial at the excellent training web site Lynda.com, one of my favorite places to learn new software for music composing, graphics and web design:

Free 24 hour pass to lynda.com.

Leadership Lessons from Derek Sivers

2010-02-14T18:19:00.001+01:00

Derek Sivers is such an inspiration when he is sharing his thoughts and simple principles, like this one about leadership.

Success is a continuous journey

2010-02-07T18:00:00.000+01:00

Nice talk by Richard St. John on TED.com: Richard St. John: "Success is a continuous journey" | Video on TED.com

What you're NOT doing is costing you

2010-02-04T22:18:00.000+01:00

CDbaby has an interesting guide - in fact a downloadable pdf document - meant to help and inspire independent artists who are building their music career. Check it out!

The greatest Funk Guitar Players

2010-01-30T22:53:00.000+01:00

Nice article on the Gibson Guitars web site about the most influential funk guitar players. I really would love to learn how to play rhythm guitar like these guys! Read the article

Do you want a record deal?

2010-01-14T18:25:00.000+01:00

Here is a helpful checklist which contains the top ten mistakes music artists are making when they try to get a record deal (advice from Discmakers): Read

Music Think Tank - check this out!

2010-01-13T23:00:00.000+01:00

One of my favorite places to go when I want to learn more about the music business and get advice about promoting my music and developing my artist career, is Music Think Tank. Check out their article titled "7 Steps to Reaching Your Music Career Goals in 2010": Read

Book recommendations for creative minds

2010-01-12T21:05:00.000+01:00

The books below was recommended by Derek Sivers, and I am sharing my thoughts about how the ideas in these books can be applied to the promotion of my own music project (Homeless Balloon). You may click on the book covers to check out the books at the Amazon web store.

Ignore Everybody - by Hugh MacLeod
		The second part of the title of this book, is "and 39 Other Keys to Creativity". Hugh MacLeod is sharing thoughts and reflection he has written down through the years. He answers - in an original and often humorous way - questions like "How do new ideas emerge in a cynical, risk-averse world?" "Where does inspiration come from?" "What does it take to make a living as a creative person?" - Hugh MacLeod also has a very popular web blog where his ebook, "How to Be Creative" has been downloaded more than a million times. For me, as a composer and artist, this book inspires me to think in new and creative ways about my music making and music promotion. It's fascinating how the different arts are connected to each other, and artists and creative people working in different fields, can certainly learn from each other. Just discovering someone like Hugh MacLeod, is an inspiration in itself! He also encourages me to remember to be honest to myself, and to accept my strengths and weaknesses. He writes in the book: "Had Bob Dylan been more of a technical virtuoso, he might not have felt the need to give his song lyrics such power and resonance."

Small is the New Big - by Seth Godin
		You may know Seth Godin from his popular blog which was chosen as one of the 25 best blogs of 2009 in Time Magazine. Godin is a marketer, but in the broadest sense of the word. He's interested in not simply how products are marketed, but also how people sell themselves and their ideas, and how new technology can be a game-changer. Just like his blog, this book is full of insights about the social changes wrought by technology and the nature of creativity, and it offers loads of practical advice. Being inspired by the thoughts in this book is just what I need when I promote myself and my music. Challenging myself to think in new and original ways, is difficult and therefore so important. When Godin writes "Your business has to work when it's small in order to survive to the point where it gets big.", I know he hits me on my weak spot. Oh yes, I want to have a successful career, now! What I need to do, is to do things right, and to be patient. A business needs to grow. If I continue to compose the best music I can, and promote it in creative ways, I will be successful. Godin's book is full of small but practical advice, like this one: !If you're going to do it, do it now.!

Meatball Sundae - by Seth Godin
		Another great book by Seth Godin. The message or mission can be summed up like Derek Sivers does in his own review of the book: "Instead of asking how to use the new internet tools to support your existing business, ask how you can change your business to take best advantage of the new tools." Now, it isn't difficult to see how this philosophy applies to me and my music promotion. A couple of years ago, I wanted to release my music on CD, to make it more "official". I was warned by several artist friends who had already experienced that selling physical CD's was becoming more and more difficult. I wouldn't listen to them, so I spent my savings on printing six different CD albums, with nice Digipak sleeves and all. As I started to promote them and ship them abroad (I live in Norway), I realized that the big expense was not the printing of the CD's, but the postage. I also found out that more and more people buy digital downloads instead of CD's. When I am thinking about it, I am doing that, too! So, the market has changed, and I should follow. Godin's principle should be put into practice, which is actually my plan from now on: My next album release will be digital, and I will only print a CD version when customers ask for it. There are companies that will print CD's on demand, so I can satisfy all my customers without filling half of my garage with CD's.

Derek Sivers - tips for music artists

2010-01-11T22:49:00.000+01:00

Derek Sivers is the founder (1997) of the great online music shop for independent artists CD Baby, a big success story. Derek is now giving independent artists his best advice in councelling and on his great web site sivers.org. I strongly suggest that you take a look at some of his articles and also sign up to his newsletter: Read it!

Trent Reznor's advice for new artists

2010-01-11T22:45:00.000+01:00

We all know how angry Trent Reznor was at his record label a couple of years ago (2008) when he found out that the price on the Nine Inch Nails CD's were so stiff that many fans decided that they couldn't afford to buy the album. He then started to release his own music on the web, and he combined free (but registered) downloads with special CD and Vinyl packages that you could purchase. Trent is an experienced artist we should listen to in more than one way! (Personally, I am great fan of his music, and seeing him with NiN in the Apollo Victoria Theatre in London a few years ago, was a highlight! Read it!

David Byrne's survival strategies for emerging artists

2010-01-11T22:41:00.000+01:00

In the summer of 2009, David Byrne (Talking Heads) had an interesting talk with Thom Yorke (Radiohead) about how an independent artist should promote himself or herself. Here is the article in Wired: Read

Learning your music software fast!

2010-01-11T21:59:00.000+01:00

If you are like me, you love to create music, but you hate reading the manual that came with your keyboard, drum machine or music software. The fastest way to learn how to handle your musical instruments or software, is not by reading the manuals, but by learning from other users! With the growing number of web sites taking care of this need, there is hope for us!

YouTube is today probably the number one site with all kinds of training videos today. There are thousands of people who share their tips by showing how they are using their software. OK, so not all them are the best teachers, but you can easily get help by searching and watching the best videos in your category. Store the links to those videos in your own group or channel at YouTube, and you have started to build your personal classroom.

Then we have the professional teachers who not only know their instruments and software in and out, but who also are brilliant teachers. My favorite site is MacProVideo (click the logo below for more info) where you can subscribe to training videos (monthly or download purchases). If you want to be up and running with LogicPro, Ableton Live, ProTools, Photoshop, FinalCutPro etc. fast, you will get help from some of the best teachers around - and by watching these videos, you can set your own speed and repeat lessons whenever you want. Personally, I have downloaded my favorite MacProVideo's to my iPhone so I can always carry them with me. The MacProVideo iPhone application is named NEDi and is a free download from the iTunesAppStore.

Another quality web site where you may subscribe to training videos or buy downloads and DVD's, is Lynda.com which has been in business for many years and has a lot of different software covered:

How to promote your music - the dilemma

2010-01-10T16:44:00.000+01:00

OK, so this is the deal: I am a composer and music artist with several big boxes of audio CD's stored in my garage. I also have my tracks available as digital files for download on iTunes and other major web sites. I am sitting here in my home studio, with my computer and my instruments, and I am wondering: How on earth can I reach out with my music and begin to earn something from it? If I count the hours, days, weeks and even years I have spent making the best music I can - and add the sums of money I have used to get my precious instruments - the conclusion is easy to see: my music project may be valuable to myself and my few fans, but as a business, it has been a failure.

Even if I started to promote my music on the web as early as 1998, I am just beginning to understand some of the basic rules a music artist like me should follow to be sucessfull on the web.

I start by finding web sites for so called independent artists, I register, I upload a couple of tracks, with album graphics and details about myself and my music. I visit these sites several times each day - to check out if anybody have been listening. I'm happy because one listener even left a nice comment! I visit his page, listen to his music, and comment back. I create a new listening station and add other artist's music as well as my own. I invite other artists to listen, and I listen to the station myself. This goes on for a few weeks, and suddenly I realize that I have spent every evening on these sites, trying to get attention and listeners. I then understand that my music will not climb those precious music charts, unless...

...i promote much harder! Should I spend the whole night online, merging with other artists in their endless discussions about what sucks and what doesn't? Should I be brave and promise these artists that if they listen to my tracks, I will go and listen to their tracks? I suddenly realize that 99% of the people who are active on the discussion lists, are there because they want me to play their music - not because they want to play my music. If I invite them to purchase my music CD's or digital downloads, I forget that they are in the same situation as myself: They have spent all their savings on instruments, software, printing CD's, trying out promotional packages - and there is no money left to buy other artist's music...

So, what I need to do, is to reach out to ordinary people, music lovers, listeners - not other artists. And how on earth can I do that?

And also, after a few months, I realize that if I continue promoting my music the way I have been doing, I will loose money, not earn money. It feels so unfair. My music is good, people enjoy it, it has value, hundreds of online music sites are alive because of the music of independent artists like me - and yet I have to loose money when I share my music? Or is the problem that I do it all in the wrong way? Is there a magic clue, a "follow these ten steps" list that could change all this?

I search on the web for tips about promotion, and I find Perry Marshall and other guys, experts who want to sell me their ebooks and share their secrets about online marketing. OK, I try it, and I sign up for Google AdWords, I spend three evenings finding the best keywords that can give me unique visitors to my artist page - and I am hoping so much that some of them will listen to my music and order my CD's. Please!

After two weeks, it's time to fill up my AdWords account with more money. The USD 50 I spent on the first two weeks of my campaign, gave med 2000 clicks and visitors to my artist page. Great! But how many CD's did I sell? Only one, and I don't know if that sale was a result of those clicks. I have a net income of USD 4 when I sell one CD from my home page, after I have deducted the printing of the CD and expenses to promotion, postage etc. - USD 50 minus USD 4 equals USD 46. That's my loss, USD 46. So for me, AdWords didn't help me earn money, but lose money? Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean that AdWords is bad, only that in my case, AdWords wasn't the right tool (or right place to spend money for promotion).

It's time to slow down and think. - And that is what I am doing in this blog. My goal is to be down to earth honest and to share the best ideas and tools for reaching out with our music. - I have just started, so I invite you to visit again to read more - and to participate by making comments below each article, if you want.

The dilemma

"To laugh is to risk appearing a fool.

To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.
To reach out for another is to risk involvement.
To expose feelings is to risk rejection.
To place your dreams before the crowd is to risk ridicule.
To love is to risk not being loved in return.
To go forward in the face of overwhelming odds is to risk failure.
But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
The person who risks nothing does nothing, has nothing, is nothing.
He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he cannot learn, feel, change, grow or love.
Chained by his certitudes, he is a slave.
He has forfeited his freedom.
Only a person who takes risks is free."

(Author Unknown)