How to Promote Music in Web 2.0

After the boom and bust of the first Dot Com Era it is believed that we’ve entered into what’s been called Web 2.0. In Web 2.0 the biggest thing increasing companies, consumer trust and return on investment is intimacy. You now as an internet company and marketer are forced to reach out in unusual ways, at least in comparison to the way Web 1.0 operated. Consumers these days want to know who you are and what you’re all about before they make a purchase from you. Nowadays placing product on a website, no matter how good there quality, is no longer enough to get consumer dollars.

Here are five ways that you as an independent artist can promote your band in Web 2.0:

1. Emails - Setting up your own newsletters with services like Yahoo Groups or Google Groups or a paid service like the email marketing package at Godaddy.com is essential in Web 2.0. The key is to build up your email lists by simply asking. Every show you play at, every blog post, and on your own band website simply ask people to sign up for your email lists and possibly give a free t-shirt, CD, or download to those that do so. From there you frequently contact them with newsletters, updates, and most importantly product offers. Be careful not to try to overly sale products to this list though, only twice a week at most should you directly try to sale your items.

2. Social Networks - Myspace, Friendster, and Facebook are a few of the most popular social networks. These sites allow you as a musician to create huge networks of people from across the world. On them you can also inform fans and friends about your band, upcoming shows, post blogs/podcasts and even make your music available to hear or purchase. You can even sort of create your own merchandise storefronts, assuming you know enough html coding or have a friend that does. Social networks are a new phenomenon, but they are certainly here to stay. If you use this in your music promotions campaign you are sure to gain more exposure and possibly even sales for your band.

3. Online Videos - Places like AOL Videos, Myspace, Brightcove Mogulus, and You Tube are ushering in the newest Web 2.0 interaction – video. Users can upload videos they’ve made and instantly show them to the entire globe. These services are all also free and easy to use. You can use them to post your own original low budget music videos, answer fan letters, give special birthday and holiday greeting, or to announce band news and contests. Videos only further the whole intimacy theme of Web 2.0 and are a great way to get viral marketing campaigns under way. People love sending funny and other interesting video around the web.

4. Blogging - Blogging or weblogging has been around for awhile, just not in its current form. You can get a free blog account from places like Blogger, Myspace, or the popular WordPress. Here you simply create an account and write whatever you want, especially relating to your band happenings. Don’t be afraid to get personal, that’s what most blog readers are looking for. It is important that you update your blog regularly and frequently. Also make sure you frequently answer comments and promote your blogging sites as you would any other website. No one can find what they don’t know to look for after all.

5. Podcasts - Podcasts are basically downloadable radio/television-type programs that users can create to basically do whatever they want with. You can use them as a question and answer forum for your fans, give briefings on band happenings, play your songs or those of other bands you like on a radio type casting, or maybe something creative like a cd listening party online. While most aren’t streamed live you get the idea. You can find a great free podcasting service via GarageBand.com here.

With these five promotional tips you should be on your way to creating your bands first full functioning Web 2.0 promotional campaign. Just don’t forget the key to your success will be frequent contact, being accessible, and breaking down the usual wall that exists between musicians and their fans. Do this and you should find great success in Web 2.0.

Creating a Press Kit That Works

Once you’ve gotten your album all completed, sent it to get pressed, and got those dozens of promotional t-shirts and posters printed there is only one more issue left to do…promote yourself. You need to get yourself out there, not only by gigs and the selling/offering of promotional/swag items, but also by placing your music into influential hands. This of course meaning CD reviewers, magazines, newspapers, etc. The people that can really give your project sales a real boost. Most people only attempt the guerilla marketing aspects of marketing and promotions, but the best option is to do a little of both. But in order to do so you need something called a press kit.

A press kit is basically your quick and brief introduction to anyone from A&R personnel and editors to reviewers and major websites and other media sources. These individuals get tons of material each and every day so you had better not only have your stuff together in the right way, but also have some magnificent things to show to them. Don’t wastes there valuable time by sending them a un-mastered/pre-mixed CD or without having reached any major achievements yet (unless you’re really confident that your CD is extremely well done and pieced together well that is).

When you are ready to create and send out your press kit, here are three tips to keep in consideration:

1. First off, a press kit is simply a brief and quick summary about you and your band. It can be placed in either a binder or a simple folder. Always include business cards both in the folder and within your CD cover in case they get separated somehow. From there you’ll want to have a brief cover letter thanking the individual for reading your material, and maybe even requesting it too. Following this is your band bio, a demo CD, sample tour dates, marketing plans/accomplishments, and any major band and individual music related accomplishments. It is important that you include testimonials from fans and also positive reviews as well, this will prove that you are worth the reviewer’s valuable time. Remember, these people typically are busy and it is important to say as much positive things as possible in the quickest ways (listing items, charts, etc.).

2. The first thing that you must remember when sending such letters is that it is very important that you address them to the proper person. Depending on how big the source is that you’re attempting to get it to, most likely, your press kits will only make it to the actual person’s assistant. You should however still address the cover letter of your press kit directly to the editor or A&R, etc. as a sign of respect to them. Do your homework online with searches, emails to the publication or place, or by calling to trying and get the exact postal address and proper title for the address too. Otherwise, like so many, your press kit stands to be lost with the masses. Plus, it gives you that much more professionalism.

3. The next major thing that you must figure out how you are going to get it seen. Yes, above it talks about how to get your kit there, but this in and of itself is of importance. Some people have gone to the extent of sending multi-colored envelops, writing and drawing in markers, and actually sending in food gifts and other things to accompany the delivery of their press kits. These things will all help your press kit from the start and increase the possibility of your press kit being one of the lucky first that gets opened. From there it is up to your press kit itself and whether or not your music is good enough as well.

Take these tips and you should be well on your way to getting reviewed and finding massive exposure (depending on the media source). This will take time, practice and a lot of perseverance, but the opportunity of having a real live taste maker listen and approve/disapprove of your work to their viewers/readers is worth it. Remember there is no such thing as bad publicity, so just go for it. What do you have to lose?

Music Marketing Tips

Marketing is one of the toughest areas for most musicians to tackle. It requires a lot of focus, hard works and determination even when it seems you are not getting any positive results. On top of these facts you can easily go broke by over paying for advertisements and other marketing services. However, if you are like most musicians, you probably don’t have a marketing budget to blow in the first place. Here are four music marketing tips for those musicians that are on a tight budget.

1. Business Cards- Business cards are the old standby of any business marketing plan. They are generally cheap, well received and easy for those you are targeting to quickly tuck away for a better look later on. You should always carry your business cards with you and look for opportunities to disperse them to your target markets. For example, music conferences, seminars, trade shows for things your fan demographic is known to love, even other bands live shows with similar sounds to yours, etc. Also when you are sending out press kits you should include a business card in the cd case and one with your folders or binder incase they ever get separated from one another. Vistaprint.com offers 250 business cards for free (plus $5.99 shipping) if you allow them to print a tiny logo of theirs on the back side of the card.

2. EP/Demo CDRs- EPs are shortened CDs (5-7 tracks) also sometimes known as demo CDs. Here you take your best songs and compile them all onto CDRs and disperse them to your fans at shows and other forums for free as samplers of your music. This works well in creating buzz about your band and you paid nearly nothing to do this because the songs used should be previously recorded tracks or low budget recordings at most. Labels call this white labeling, it commonly is used to create an early street buzz about an artist or group they are just starting to break.

You have the choice to sell these CDs at venues too, you should earn a fairly nice return on your investment here. You will also have a demo disc ready for press kits and any song contests you may decide to enter in the future.

3. Build an Email List-Though this can be a timely process it is one that is well worth it. There are numerous free group and newsletter services out there for you to choose from that will host and help you manage your email lists. From Yahoo! Groups, Myspace Groups, Google Groups and many other smaller communities. One of the best ways to quickly go about growing a list on the big three above is to use other groups’ members lists and invite their members to yours. The groups you do this with of course need to be similar to your sound or genre or else you are probably risking getting marked as a spammer by numerous people. Be cautious as to how many times you attempt to get members from the same groups as well. Though many will let you slip by once or twice with an invitation, invite number three may be one too many and result in you also being marked as a spammer.

4. Myspace Pages-Many artists are already using Myspace as a great way to market themselves, however not as efficiently as they could be. While they create band pages, add tracks to their music players and invite many friends, they fail to target their friend adds (only targeting those members that are actually in your demographics) and fail to use all Myspace tools to the best of their abilities. Many artist don’t blog, use videos, post bulletins, podcasts, or create groups for their fan clubs. Myspace has over184 million individuals in its community and to not be actively using all it has to offer (for free by the way) is a total waste. Think of all of the word of mouth you could be getting about your band if you gave people a reason to come back to your pages on a regular basis by using these tools listed above.

With these four tips you should have the basis for your marketing plans ready to go. Best of all, you can use all of these tips together for no more than $25 combined (easily). Put these four tactics into use and watch your low budget music marketing campaigns take off.

Creating & Running a Street Team

One great way to increase your fan awareness is with the help of a street team. A street team is a group of members (usually your top fans) that either you pay or that volunteer to help you out in various ways. The most common way that street teams are used within the music industry is for artist promotions and publicity. Everything from going online and telling friends, helping with Myspace/You Tube Exposure, talking about you in forums, chats, and comment sections to hanging posters, passing out flyers and other swag is done by your street team members.

As stated above, many street teams (especially indie) are free to enter and don’t involve any type of compensation. There usually should be some level of screening however to protect you from the potentially lazy, deceitful, and image damaging individuals that may attempt to join your team. Simply because if those you have out representing you are also behaving badly or in any sort of negative manner, at least while they are out promoting on your behalf, it makes you as an artist come off looking bad. Important relationships with venues and other key people and places to your career can be permanently damaged, leaving you with less and less contacts to turn to.

You should always choose team leaders to lead each offline task you perform. Make sure this individual is trustworthy and an effective team member themselves. Once this is accomplished give them weekly or monthly tasks and agendas and ask them to delegate how the tasks are to be achieved. The main key with a street team is to reduce the actual amount of marketing and promotions time you as the artist are forced to maintain. You’ll still have to continue marketing yourself, but this way you’ll have more time and a much deeper reach than on your own. Online you can simply place the most tech savvy individual on your team to go about delegating the tasks you have chosen for either a specific week or an entire month. This can be things like having them to ask people to join your Myspace, visit your site, place banner ads on their various sites and calling radio stations in their area requesting your songs, but always give a specific amount or goal so that members have something to strive toward.

One final key is that you should set up everything up for the specific task. This meaning you should have posters, flyers and other swag or internet banners, radio station phone numbers and address, etc. printed and ready to go before you ever assign a project. Don’t abuse your street team by making them go pick up items or create them on their own (except for tasks/contest for creating fan websites, banners, etc.). They probably aren’t getting paid and are doing this solely to promote and support you, so take care of these types of things ahead of time for them. Finally, remember to reward your street team members, give them access to you other fans don’t get, give prizes to the top performing team members and give away personalized items to help show that you really appreciate them. Do these things and watch in amazement as your street team begins to bring you promotions and exposure like you’ve never even imagined before.

Can You Over Promote Yourself?

This is a question you should ask have already asked yourself as an independent musician. If you’ve created any merchandise or even just started “your band inc.” you should already be marketing and promoting it, as well as yourself. So what is the answer here? Well, sadly, there is no easy answer. Sadly you’ll just have to find out by doing some different types of testing. You see, some people will respond to different marketing tactics in various ways. Just one campaign can be viewed as brilliant to one individual and totally offensive to another. Not only talking about overly sexual/blatantly offensive material here either, no, just sending out an email (even to members on your lists) can rub different persons the wrong way.

So then how do I figure it out as to what’s acceptable in the arena of how much to promote. Simple, just as above, you test the market. Trying various tactics-both hard and soft pitches-in various places and ways will give you the data needed as to how much promoting the average individuals on your lists can take. Realize though that you will have to be sort of detached enough to accept that some “touchy” individuals will immediately opt-out of receive anything else from you just from one more additional email than they are use to receiving. However, generally you as an indie will need to increase how often you mail your various lists. The more times you contact them and stay in touch with them, the more and more intimate your relationship with your consumer/fans will become.

Why is this important? Simply because the more they trust you, the more willing they’ll be to buy from you down the road. Don’t assume every person reads each and everything you send out or that everyone that signs up for your list will ever purchase something. The internet is the land of free products and access and many people don’t feel they should have to purchase things online. Just look at the huge multi-billion dollar copyright mess going on due to file sharing. This is why offering things for free and occasionally intermingling them with your offers will result in the best success. People in general won’t mind your additional mailings if they feel that most of the time they’ll also be getting something free, whether they purchase from you or not. This helps out your bands any way it goes though. Why you ask? Think about it, they are still listening to your free tracks, wearing your billboards–or t-shirts rather, and passing out your free band logo stickers you gave them for joining your email lists.

So in short yes, you can over promote. Filling a person’s email box day after day with relatively the same offers and deals will only result in them regarding you as a spammer and your risking having them block your IP address. So to avoid this, try adding offers to free deals, occasionally/incrementally increasing your email amounts each month and placing in more ads in places that you usually would not in them. It is a delicate balance you need to find here. No musicians or bands experience will be the same though. Some will be able to contact their list daily with offers and personal tidbits while many others won’t. But as time goes on, most people will adapt and more and more you should begin to see better results from your marketing and promotional campaigns. Start this all important testing today and begin your band’s road to marketing and sales glory.

Get Your Songs Published

Publishing is one of the real money-making sectors of the music industry and understanding its importance is fundamental for all aspiring musicians/songwriters.Television shows, commercials, radio, video games and even your own CDs, provide everyday examples of song publishing. Just about anytime you hear a person’s song being played, that band/songwriter is hearing the sounds of royalty checks cashing. That’s how it is done, performers’ rights associations like ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC collect payments on behalf of their members. Any time your song or music is played elsewhere (not including live performances by yourself or your band), you are, in theory, meant to be paid.

But how much? Royalties vary. Local colleges playing your song in regular rotation won’t offer as high a payout as your area’s local and commercial radio stations. And can take time for checks to start rolling in – so don’t quit your day job initially just because you’ve tapped into this market of the industry.

There are a variety of places a keen performer can start. In the past one would have only local acts and the occasional pitch to A&R persons and music programmers that requested a certain type of sound or song for one of their artists to select individuals and groups (local songwriter associations usually). Other than this musicians usually were forced to attempt to get under contract by one of the few major music publishing companies.

With the internet the music publishing game has changed. With sites/services like Taxi.com and RumbleFish.com musicians and songwriters can simply get a membership and have offers actually sent to their email and physical mailboxes. All a musician or songwriter must do today is find the correct listings for their songs and wait to see if they have been passed through to the requesting companies for their review with Taxi.

This process is even simpler with the RumbleFish service. You send in a CD and have the service review it. If the RumbleFish service likes your stuff, they send you a notice and post your music samples to their online automated licensing system. This system allows potential licensees to sample your works and then immediately purchase them for use via downloads.

There are various contracts involved throughout all of these processes that should always be looked over thoroughly with a lawyer. This area of business deals almost exclusively on royalty payments and advancements so be sure you know exactly what you are signing

It is also very important to make sure you have properly copyrighted your works. You can get the forms needed (SR Forms and PA Forms) at Copyright.gov. Musicians historically have been ripped off on publishing simply because they failed to do this one task. Take care of all of your legal obligations and apply the use of these new forums for getting your music published in addition to some of the older tactics and you could soon be reaping the rewards of publishing royalties.

What’s Your Five Year Plan?

It is often said failing to plan is planning to fail. Yet many in the independent music community choose not to make plans for their own careers. This makes absolutely no sense though! As an independent musician you are literally in competition will millions. Not only that, but you are in direct competitions with artists and companies with literally millions and billions of dollars behind them. These individuals all make plans, so why is it you as an independent musician feels it unnecessary?

The answer to this may not be as simple as one may think. Some independent artists simply may have never known or even thought to plan things out. How would you plan getting signed to a major label and becoming an international superstar anyway? This is one of the biggest road blocks a musician can hit in trying to create a plan for their music career. Artists usually don’t actually have enough knowledge about the industry itself to create a solid enough plan in the first place. That being said, here is a list of 3 things you as an independent musician should look to do to begin to reach toward that ultimate goal of music career success:

1. Gain more knowledge about music in general and the music business itself. This is an industry that can create massive fame and wealth for a select number of individuals. That is why so many are making serious strides in being in it each and everyday. This is also why you must respect it as such. You wouldn’t look to become a doctor without the necessary training, right? Then why would you even attempt to do so with your so called passion? Get books, attend seminars and conferences, network with everyone you can, train under higher-ups, read articles, subscribe to trade magazines, maybe even look into some college courses. These things will bring you that much closer to your desire and you can start doing most of them right now.

2. Network. This step is easily one of the first steps you must take. Only through networking will you gain access to those you really wish to know as an independent artist. You must know somebody that is in to get into this industry so networking is a must. You must begin to go out and interact with your local scene and continuously reach out to others already doing what it is you are looking to become. They are the gatekeepers to your desires and can cut your timetable and even your learning curve if you make connection with them. As an independent musician it is up to you and not anyone else to make and manage these connections, so realize that in this sense you hold the keys to your networking success.

3. Lastly you will want to begin to formulate a support team. Your support team will eventually be a lawyer (specializing in the music/entertainment industry), a publicist, manager-most important key person, an agent, and possibly an accountant (for tax issues of course). These individuals aren’t all needed right away, but as you move forward will definitely move you toward success, that’s their jobs after all. You must however make sure that these individuals are trustworthy and honest. You don’t want to place your career into the hands of someone seedy do you? Of course not!

These are just a few things you as an independent artist must think of while creating your five year music career plan. How you actually go about it is completely up to you though. That’s the beauty and pain of being an independent artist–Everything Is Up To You! Realize the importance of your need to plan though and these numerous decisions as they come along become easier and easier to deal with. If something doesn’t fit into your goals and plans, simply disregard them and refuse to move down that direction. Take these ideas and expand on them and you will soon begin to see the fruits of having your music career plan.

Creating a College Promotion Plan

Of the numerous places to play live college campuses are one of the best for musicians to play. There is a huge surplus of people, great demographics for the music industry and trend setters. This all combined could mean big money for indie and major acts. However, one must know not only how to get gigs at colleges, but also how to promote properly. Here are some tips for setting up a killer college music promotions plan:

 

Flyers – Flyers are a great to get people’s attention. They are cheap, easy to create, and easy to disperse. As far as distributing them goes you simply go onto the campus and hand them out, hang them up near the college campus and even get them placed within local stores (usually mom and pop stores and cafes near the campus).

 

Cafes and Coffeehouses – Getting gigs at coffeehouses and cafes near the college campus you’ll be playing at prior to the show date will help word spread about your band quickly too. Simply book these gigs as you would any other gig and promote them as well. This way you not only get money for the gigs, but an all important buzz too.

 

College Radio – Though college radio isn’t necessarily great for publishing royalties it is great for local bands, particularly one coming to play at the college campus. Getting your cd in the hands of these DJs is as important as with any other DJ. This way some people on the campus will already be familiar with your sound and songs which will make for a more energized show.

 

Sororities and Fraternities – Sororities and Fraternities are well known to throw some awesome parties. All parties need music and not only that, often times those in sororities and fraternities are viewed as cool and edgy trend setters by many. Sending a bulk amount of CDs to these groups prior to an on campus show can give you a big boost in the fan department. Major labels do this all the time and often times send so many that the sororities and fraternities actually distribute CDs to party goers as a gift.

 

Placing these four ideas into effect will help out your promotions on college campuses easily. Though they are very simple to do they work great. Do them on each and every campus that you frequently play on and look to see bigger and bigger promotional successes.