4 posts tagged “music”

If you're in a band or a solo artist playing the local music scene, of even if you tour regionally or nationally, but aren't signed to a major label, this post is for you.  If you're pressed for time, just check out the Dick Dale interview referenced at the bottom of this post.

Continue playing live and use the internet and related social networking and media to your advantage.  If a major label approaches you for a deal, my recommendation is: don't accept it.  If you're big enough for a label to be interested, then you've already made it.  Keep doing everything independently and keep all your own profits.  Most bands that sign with major labels won't make any money -- the label will get it all.  Plus they'll own the rights to the music.  In this modern world there are a ton of ways for indie artists to make their own money without a label.  The one thing a label can get you is publicity, but you can do that yourself, too.  And you can do it for free -- it just takes time.

Most decently successful local bands by now know the power of online networks like MySpace.  Local bands can have fans worldwide by investing some time into a good MySpace page.  You can sell you CD's as well as shirts and other merch online just as you would at a gig.  And you get to keep all the revenue.  And you answer to nobody but yourselves.  Your art is yours.

People that listen to music don't care about your label.  A label can get you airtime, though -- often through payola (which does still exist).  However, a bunch of radio stations have "local music" shows on which they showcase local acts.  Check out the websites of local stations to see how to get on one of these.  Maybe check with the venues you play at to see if they can put some of your music in a radio spot advertising an upcoming gig.

Most of the following advice works for anyone trying to use the internet for marketing in the web 2.0 era, but specifically for musicians:

Use MySpace.  It's probably the best social network for local bands (because it has the crowds -- it's by no means a quality site otherwise).  Embed your music (at least samples) into the page.  Tell the crowds at your shows about your myspace page and include it on your marketing materials (posters, etc.). 

new content: Add new content to your myspace page and/or your other blogs you may have.  This will improve your site ranking with search engines and get people to come back to your site(s).  Also, as with any other kind of blogging, it will make it more likely that other bloggers and social media people will end up linking to you.

The idea is to grow your community -- whether online or not.   As you can afford to (time or money), play gigs in other big cities in the region. 

Advertising: get your gigs listed on local events calendars -- in print and online.  Submit your gig information to sites like pollstar.com.

Make sure to interact with your community.  If someone comments about your band, in any social network, comment back.  If they tell you about their band, check them out and let them know if you like them.  They'll then be more likely to come to your next show or link to your site(s) because there's a personal connection.  You're always more likely to check out a local act if you personally know someone in the band.  Run "ego searches" on your band to see who's talking about you.  If you're mentioned in a blog, make your own post and link back to that blogger.  Make a comment to the blogger's post and thank them for the link -- assuming the reference is positive.   If the reference isn't positive, maybe you can still start a dialog with the author and convert him.  As you write new content, link to other bands' sites or blogs.  Then they may link back to you.  And don't think of it as being in competition with these other bands.  Because people don't buy only one album and call it good.  They want to find all the music they like.  If someone buys an album from a band that's like yours, they're likely to buy your album too.

In addition to all the social networking you can get into, I would recommend online sales/distributions services that can sell your songs via the internet to the worldwide audience.  The biggest one the comes to mind is cdBaby.  I'd check the terms of use of such sites to make sure that you're not locking yourself into an exclusive deal, though.  You'll want to be able to sell through as many channels as possible.  Another service is Magnatune.  Users of that service pay what they feel the music is worth, but there's a set minimum, I think.

Dick Dale gave an excellent interview a while back where he agrees with me about staying away from the labels.  He instead recommends being a good business person and retaining the rights to your music.  Credit: the interview was done by TommyLiberto.

Who's in those photos?  It's a local band in Des Moines called Only.

The new Zunes from Microsoft are out (as of yesterday).  They're a little cleaner and shinier than the first generation ones.  They have a bunch of new features and there's a new version of the Zune marketplace and software, too.

I recently ordered a 1st gen. zune and according to the FedEx site, it's at my house right now, so I'll be playing with it tonight.  It's one of the infamous brown ones.  I ordered it because apparently the brown ones didn't sell very well and I bought it for about $90 (for the 30 GB model).  The other ones were still closer to $200.  You can get the new 80 GB ones for $250 (but they don't have brown ones anymore).  However, as I write this, Amazon is currently out of stock.

Probably the coolest part of the new hardware is the new touchpad.  You can use it as a regular touch pad and press the different parts to navigate.  But it's also touch-sensitive and you can flick your finger across it to scroll through your songs (or whatever media you're browsing at the time).

The Zune marketplace (the equivalent of the iTunes store for iPods) has been completely re-written.  The zune software was originally based on Windows Media Player.  The new version doesn't seem as mature.  There are a lot of things that you should be able to customize, but can't (at least not yet -- I'm sure Microsoft will be making a ton of updates to this over the next several months).  The software now has built in support for podcasts, too.  What's Up with Tech isn't listed yet, but should be soon.  The user interface of the zune site (zune.net) and of the zune software/marketplace/whatever isn't as intuitive as it could be.  One of my main complaints is that they break some primary rules of usability.  They try to be cute with their naming conventions instead of naming the links what they actually are so that people can figure out where they should click.  They should read Steve Krug's "Don't Make Me Think".  Another complaint is that I can't edit all the values of the ID3 tags for my MP3's.  For example, you can't specify the mood for the song.  I use that a lot when choosing songs for a party, etc.  I'll still probably keep using MusicMatch for that reason.  Also, instead of having 10 or even 5 gradations for "preference" for you songs, all you can do is say that you like it or not (yes or no), represented by a full heart icon or a broken heart shaped icon (the previous version of the zune software let you specify the number of stars (1-5)).

I had some flaky performance on my computer with the new zune software, too.  Every once in a while, like when switching between certain programs (I had Photoshop running) the zune software would all of a sudden pop to the front and/or it would flicker a lot.  I'm sure most of these issues will get worked out by Microsoft very quickly (especially the bugs as opposed to the missing features).

One cool part of the new software is the now playing screen (the image below).  However, I still wish there were more features.  For example, whenever I see the now playing screen, I want to click on the album art to get more information (you can't).  Or I wish I could see the album art bigger (throughout the app), but not possible.  By looking at the image you get a feel for the music in my collection.

Another good thing about the new software-based features is that they're supposed to be backward portable to the 1st gen devices (which is a big part of why I bought one of the old ones, knowing that the new ones were coming out).  I'll let you know how it goes.

Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora, will be in Des Moines for a user's meeting on the evening of Thursday, September 27, 2007.  If you like music, and if you're not familiar with Pandora or the Music Genome project, you should definitely check out:
Pandora.

It's a great way to hear new music that you're almost sure to love.  You just tell it a song or artist you know you like and it will find other music that's similar.  But it's much more complex than just picking other songs from the same genre.  The people of the Music Genome project have analyzed thousands of songs to identify tons of features that can be used to compare them to other songs, so they aren't using anything as subjective as "genre".  Then as it plays songs for you, you can give the song a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" and your preferences for that "station" will be further tuned.  Just go try it out (it's free) and you'll get the idea.

They've had a tough year due to a bunch of stupid legislation regarding royalty fees for internet radio.

Wanting to keep my blog up to date and not wanting to get into anything too serious...

I just picked up a few new CD's:

• Trivium - The Crusade
• Burden Brothers - Mercy
• Tenacious D - The Pick of Destiny

My friend, Sparky, told me about Trivium.  This is the first I've heard them.  Some of the songs sound like old Metallica (and other metal of that era) to me.  Other songs sound a lot newer, but it's all quite good!  They're technically very good musicians and much of their stuff would probably be considered speed/thrash metal, but the vocals are understandable and they have good, often pretty hooky melodies.

I haven't listened to the Burden Brothers one yet, but I heard and liked some of their other stuff.   Plus I was a fan of the Toadies.

I saw the trailer for the Tenacious D movie (after which the new CD is named) and in it, I only heard their older songs.  But this CD contains all new material.  Not as good as the other, self-titled, CD, but still pretty good.  Plus it was on sale so I figured I'd buy it and not be a douche and/or pirate stealing Jack and Kyle's Rocket Sauce! :)
In case you don't know what I'm talking about, view Jack Black's anti-piracy psa here.

Whenever I listen to new music (or see live music), I always feel like I should be practicing playing guitar more than I do.  By the way, I just saw Black Label Society live last week -- killer show.  Maybe I'll play some tonight.

'Till next time, Rock On!