The Internet presents a wealth of opportunity for the small band or local artist to promote music, earn extra money, and even turn their passion into careers. But in order to get the most out of the World Wide Web, you need to be focusing your marketing efforts in the smartest possible manner and maximizing your earning potential. Make sure that if you think you are ready for a career in music, you are not neglecting the following rules of making it to the top:
Use social media to connect. There are many social networking sites out there, and it really doesn't hurt having a presence on each one. But twelve accounts can be awfully hard to manage if you are also trying to create new music, schedule live shows, and balance your web presence. It is for this reason that you may ought to think about an aggregate tool such as Threadsy that allows you to make updates to all networks using one interface. When you can consolidate work like this, it saves you the cost of hiring a social networking manager, and it allows you to focus on creating music.
Make sure you have maximum exposure. There are many ways to reach people online. Individually, it may be difficult to grow a network, but combining your efforts allows you to reach the maximum number of people with the minimum amount of effort. Of course, it all starts with making great music, but after that, you should be trying anything you can to build links and get your name to the top of the search engines.
Give your audience incentive to find you. Link building is a part of all these steps, and integral to web marketing success. One of the best ways to build them is to give your audience a reason to find you. Suggested methods of accomplishing this: give away music for free. Run promotions on band merchandise. Generate products that build a sense of community.
Don't just create music. Create relationships. Developing a unique sound that people will want to listen to is the cornerstone of any great band, but the ones that stay around create followings. Behind the scenes web content, smartphone applications, and allowing your fans to provide easy feedback makes you accessible, and accessible bands will always be there for their audiences, come rain or shine.
Balance your creative side with your business side. Playing music is a passion. It can turn into a business. You have to make sure that it becomes enough of a business to turn into profits, but never let your passion for it go away. The minute that happens is the minute that you no longer have anything worth promoting, either in the virtual or real worlds.
Get "Mean Business" for only $5 (AUD) using the codewordthistle
As an independent musician you probably all ready know it, if you do not, you better get with it. Marketing and promoting your music online is the way to go today. Even major signed artists are going this route, some major players even going to the extent of releasing a new album in digital download format only.
Digital music sales or digital music downloads have now reached the 50% point of all music sold. That means that pretty soon there may not even be a need to have a physical product. Needless to say it will sure beef up the budget for independent artists not having to put out for CD pressing and manufacturing. Not to mention how much easier it will make your music distribution initiatives.
So, long story short, where am I going with this? What I am saying is that you should be putting the majority of time, effort, and money, into promoting your music and project online. You should seek Internet music publicity in a larger proportion over traditional print publicity. After all, look at all the print newspapers and magazines going out of business today or transferring all their publications to a strictly online version. Yep, we should face it; If you are not not on the Internet band wagon yet for promoting and marketing your music, you better get there quickly. Keeping in touch with your fans in as many ways as you can is the way go today. Do not make them come to you, reach out to them.
To briefly summarize, here are a few of the methods you should be employing as an independent artist in order to promote your music and music career, and stay in touch with your fans in the today digital age.
Para Social Relationships Online
You should be setting up a presence for you or you band on as many social networking websites as you can. Surely you have a myspace website, which we all know is important, but today, that is just not enough. You should be keeping your fans and potential fans informed constantly by using social websites such as Twitter, Facebook, iLike, Squidoo, iMeens, Reverbnation, and there are many more. Socializing in music forums specific to your music genre is another thing you should be doing a lot of. Setting up meet and greets via these Internet portals is also quickly becoming a new way to keep interactive with your fans.
Official Band or Artist Website and Blog
Your official band or artist website is important as well. It should be as professionally designed as possible and be consistent with your artist image. This is your home on the web and should be updated and kept fresh constantly. It should have a news page, a press page, and audio page which should be kept fresh with new news, press clips, and music.You should also have some interactive functionality going on at your home page so fans can get involved, place comments, and interact with you. A blog is another great way to keep fans informed provided you keep it fresh and updated as well. With a blog, fans can subscribe via RSS Feed, and everything you post will be delivered instantly to their desktop. Very powerful.
Online Press Kit and Publicity
An online press kit, also known as an EPK (Electronic Press Kit) is a promotional tool that every artist or band should have, even if you have a print or digital press kit. The online EPK allows you to quickly send out your bands information and music samples to venues, labels, agents, and even fans for the purpose of music promotion.
Widgets -- A Big One
Widgets, as I write this article, are a relatively new form of online music promotion but if used properly are an extremely powerful method of viral Internet marketing. Essentially a widget is a digital screenshot of your profile and can contain streaming or downloadable music, bio, publicity, etc. It also enables you to gather fans email addresses. The widget code should be placed on each and every website from the official, to as many social sites, including your myspace site as possible. The beauty of widgets is that they enable fans to actually grab the widget from your website and place the code on their own website, hence spreading the word to eventually thousands of new fans. You can get your widgets free just by signing up for an account on a place like reverbnation.com. Are you starting to get the meaning of Viral Music Marketing?
Digital Mailing List
I should not have to mention it but unfortunately most new artists at early stages of development I take on still do not get it. That is, the vital importance of a digital email sign up module on all websites. Gathering your fans and potential fans email address and storing it in a database for distribution is crucial. What you can do with that mailing list is amazing. Announce all show details; hence bringing out more fans, send out a new news or publicity announcement, broadcast a contest, and announce new CD releases; hence more record sales. A digital mailing list is something no artist, either independent or major should be without.
Advertising on Genre Specific Web Portals
Another good online idea, if it fits your budget, is to consider banner advertising on music portals that are within your music genre. You can advertise a new release, a tour, or a new deal of some sort. Some music portals get many thousands of visitors a month and this can definitely increase your exposure. Make sure however, that the banner is professionally designed and animated if possible. Some of the genre specific music portals I speak of will only charge twenty to thirty bucks a month to advertise your brand. As I mentioned, if you have disposable money in your budget, it sure cannot hurt.
Search Engine Marketing, Drive the Traffic to all of Your Websites
Needless to say, you can have the most professionally design, stunning, and functional websites online but if no one visits them they are not much good, are they? So you want to take some time and effort to explore search engine optimization. Find out all the techniques search engine savvy techies use to get ranked high in all of the search engines and especially in music related results. Search engine optimization, done right, is not easy if you do not know much about it. Again, if you have a few extra bucks in your budget you may want to consider hiring a search engine optimization expert. Getting your band found in the search engines can be an awesome boost to your awareness.
Digital Distribution
Distributing your music online is key. As I mentioned in the first or second paragraph of this article, digital downloads now hold 50% of all worldwide music sales. It will very soon be exceeding physical CD sales completely, never to turn around again. You should make your music available for digital download on as many digital distribution portals available. Some of these include Amazon, Napster, Rhapsody, and there are a ton more. When making your product available online for digital download make sure to include a profile on each portal. Also find out how they do their sales stat reporting. You want to make sure you are getting the proper credit for sales in the industry as on sound scan and sound exchange for your downloadable sales.
These are only a few tipss and suggestions for marketing your music online. There is a great deal of other methods as well. The way to gain exposure for your music on the Internet is exploding with new strategies everyday. Make sure to keep up with this and use every possible technique at your disposal for a greater chance of music success. Good luck!
Generally speaking, when one thinks of music distribution we think of expensive CD recording, CD replication and manually delivering them to radio stations and music stores. This is a costly and time-consuming exercise....as well as expensive. It is also a massive gamble. How do you know that radio stations will even acknowledge your music, let alone play it? How do you know that your CDs will sell at least enough to break even? You don't and it's one long, unpredictable, frustrating roulette game.
Unless your band is 'known' far and wide then I highly advise against the above means of achieving success. You may strike it lucky and sell a few CDs from a record store if they happen to not only play your CD at a time when your target audience may be in their shop. Receiving anything remotely like a 'result' from a radio station is even less likely. The custom is that, if you're lucky, the station will play one track that a few listeners pick up. To make a tiny crack in this market, your bands name and website needs to be mentioned.
Pretty grim stats, eh?
Now that we've arrived here in 2010 there is no need to be creating and delivering CDs and quite possibly with a rather nasty credit card balance. There are so many music internet sites and internet stations screaming out for your music....in digital format. Once your digital recording equipment is purchased, then you're hot to trot. No more booking costly recording studios, needless arguments over cover notes and so forth. You can pretty-well record your music at home....and it's FREE!!!
You can upload your music and/or email you music....as little or as much as you think is an appropriate amount to relevant internet music sites ant internet music stations. In all of these instances it is advisable to include a brief bio. and band photo. I highly advise checking out the internet music sites and internet radio sites that seem more suited to your genre of music. Now that your digital music has been distributed to exactly where you want them to be, it's a bit of a waiting game. Relax. The wheels will start to move soon enough. Again, all of this is FREE!!!
There are sites that I advise avoiding. Sites that demand that you submit at least one track that is a free download. Other sites, mainly the major distributors pay little attention to the small guys like us. They charge you to have your music for sale on their site. Case in point; myself. I have one album with a major distributor. This album is selling for more than an album by The Rolling Stones! Why is this? I have no control over the price of my own music.
Once the above-mentioned album is due for renewal....it won't be.
The Bandcamp player that you see to your left gives me total control over the albums price. Additionally, you can stream the entire album as often as you like. If you opt to purchase the album, simply enter the codeword thistle to receive a 50% discount.
To the younger bands starting out, I cannot stress enough the importance of carefully examining each music site that they are considering. I am currently re-assessing ReverbNation for numerous reasons based on my professional outlook....
If you are an independent musician, serious or newcomer to the independent music scene then Bandcamp is the spot for you. If a no-frills, 'cut to the chase' approach and want an easy-to-follow website that allows streaming music to load quickly, then Bandcamp is also a great resource. A minimal and sleek design makes things easier to navigate, and a faster connection like satellite internet means dozens of songs are instantly listen-able....and it's FREE!
Bandcamp isn’t yet another place to put your music. Rather, they power a site that’s yours. So instead of ads for Sexy Singles Chat and so forth, your fans see your design, your music, your URL. The independent musician retains all ownership rights, whilst the owners of Bandcamp stay in the background handling the technical aspects.
The Bandcamp player that you see to your left is for my 12-track album "Mean Business." The 'visible' price is $10....BUT....if you enter the word: thistle at checkout, you are able to observe the hefty discount....whilst still having the option to proceed with your purchase (which can now be made via PayPal as well). This aspect offered by Bandcamp have seen a marked upturn in my music downloads. I feel that independent musicians are crazy not to capitalize on this feature.
Musicians tracks are offered in mp3, AAC, FLAC or Ogg. The independent musician can choose between giving away free music downloads, setting a price or letting fans name their price – it’s all up to the independent musician. Fans have easy tools to share your music with their friends, and most importantly we do it in a way that drives traffic back to you. The independent musician is also given complete transparency into how your music is spreading with outstanding, real-time statistics. You can see where your fans are coming from, what they’re listening to, even which tracks they’re obsessed with versus which ones they’re skipping over.
Fast, dependable streaming and downloads of your entire catalog, adorn your tracks with all the metadata they need to sail into iTunes with artwork, titles, and so on intact, and mutter the various incantations necessary to get your site top-ranked in Google.
As mentioned in the title of this blog, independent musicians keep 100% of sales which, hopefully, will see more independent musicians making their music at a competitive price within the online music industry.
It doesn't seem all that long ago that having your music recorded let alone be distributed globally with the mere click of a button. Having said this, however, in the grand scheme of the contemporary music industry none of us should be particularly surprised by this. The Beatles are probably the most shining example of (amongst other music landmarks) how quickly music can be revolutionised almost every time they entered the recording studio in their post-touring years.
With the advent of online music, which appeared literally minutes after the internet, came an outstanding amount of music of all genres. For this to occur, however, independent musicians required the appropriate recording software. Due to the high and fierce demand, free recording software became available at every turn. The opportunity is now at the fingertips off all and sundry to discover how to make money.
Independent musicians who had been struggling financially to merely record an album were now able to capitalise on this flood of high-quality free recording software. The only adaptation that was/is required of them is to conduct their recording in a manner to accommodate the 'new' recording software. A minor adjustment at worst.
Once an an independent band had recorded a sufficient amount of music, they were then able to place themselves on the countless music sites that are available. Additionally the majority would have their own website too. This should be, in theory, the focal point with regard to learning how to make money.
As fast as the internet is at sharing, the accumulation of a size-able and loyal following is nowhere near as rapid. This often led many independent bands to make a critical mistake; namely putting all of their music on every possible site. Why is this a mistake? Simple. The bands followers have nothing to look forward to. In my book, "Online Music Traps," I recommend bands to only place a few of their songs online. This way, they always have 'something up their sleeve.' Believe me, it works. I'm still getting new fans who comment on tracks that are almost three years old.
As mentioned earlier, independent bands have to alter their recording style to suit their free recording software. Additionally, the music is presented in a different format. The most commonly accepted format is mp3. If your recording software doesn't output your music in mp3 format, I highly recommend the Audacity File Converter. Again, this is a free addition to your recording suite.
If you are finding yourself recording a high volume of songs, you may wish to provide some of your music as free mp3 as a "thank you" for their support.
