Band Essentials Before Distribution

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!

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Digital Music Distribution.

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....


....Stay tuned. My verdict will be posted here. 

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Keep 100% Of Your Digital Sales

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. 

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