Michael Zapruder is an award-winning musician who serves as Music Curator for Pandora , the Oakland-based internet radio service based on the Music Genome Project. As curator, he directs all aspects of music collection, curation, and cataloging for Pandora's stations. Zapruder has been with Pandora nearly since the inception of the Music Genome Project and was appointed as Pandora's music curator in 2004.

There are any number of ways to get your music on Pandora. We're always looking for new music to play for our listeners, so we watch all kinds of blogs, radio stations, show listings, charts and things like that. And while we don't automatically add everything we see in those places, when an artist reaches a certain level of visibility we like to try our best to make that music available on Pandora.

So that’s the first thing you need to know. If you are connecting with an audience or community in a strong way; if you're playing good rooms and getting attention, you will have a fine chance of getting into our collection.

We know we can't find everything, though, so for the many deserving bands that we miss for one reason or another (and for bands that are just starting out), we offer a web-based music submission process that is free and open to everyone.

Here's how it works:

1.    Register for Pandora (the submission process is connected to listener accounts, so you can use your existing account if you have one).

2.    Go to http://submitmusic.pandora.com and follow the directions for submitting.

3.    If your CD meets the requirements for submission (you have to have a valid UPC code and the record has to be for sale in the Amazon CD store), you'll be prompted to upload two songs along with any biographical or press information and any links you'd like us to know about.

4.    When we get to your submission, we listen and make a decision about whether your submission is right for us.  (This takes time, so be patient.)

5.    If you're accepted, we send you an email with a customized mailing label that you'll use to send us your record. If we pass on your record we let you know on your submission page and we encourage you to keep us posted on your future work.

Lots of people ask us about the Amazon requirements, so here's the skinny:

We use UPC codes as identifiers to display the right artist information and album art when something plays on Pandora. We want to be able to show as much information about the artists we play as we can, and UPC codes make that possible.

Requiring albums to be available in the Amazon CD store guarantees that we will have usable metadata for every album we accept, which in turn frees us up to spend our time listening to your submissions instead of entering song titles and such. It also means that interested listeners will be able to find and buy your music by clicking the Amazon link in the Pandora tuner.

You can get your music into the Amazon CD store for free using a service called CreateSpace. They press on-demand CDs for Amazon purchases. For people who have CDs for sale already, there is a vendor program that Amazon offers that charges an annual fee as well (and in case you're wondering, we don't have any financial stake in the above services).

So, what are we listening for when we get to your submission?

Well, for unknown bands the fundamental question we have to answer is: will fans of this kind of music be excited to discover this on Pandora stations?

We also consider how the submission might add to our existing collection. We may have more of a need for Black Metal, a less visible genre, than for something more common like Indie Rock (that's not to say that we close the door on any genres, but the state of our collection sometimes comes into play).

We have a few basic internal guidelines for listening to every submission.

For one thing, our reviewers never have to give a reason for accepting music, but they always have to explain their decision if they are rejecting something. This only seems fair to us.

Also, we try to keep our personal musical preferences out of the decision-making process. The fact that a reviewer may not enjoy Darkwave or East Coast Hip hop or anything else really has no place in the decision about whether our listeners would embrace that music.

We are looking for excellence. Tim, Pandora's founder, often says: "You have to earn your way into Pandora." We try to make good decisions about whether the music lives up to that high standard.

When it's all said and done, though, we know that with music and art we can't ever be 100% sure we're making the right call. We can never completely transcend our own subjectivity. Our way around that is to keep it simple: we try as hard as we can to give your music a fair hearing. We do our best to be conscientious with your work.

If we do get it wrong (and we do sometimes), we'll find out about it; and when we see your music being reviewed or appearing on a chart somewhere, or when you're playing the Fox Theater here in Oakland, we'll make sure to get it into the collection right away!

Best of luck to everyone who is considering submitting their music or has already done so, and thanks from all the reviewers here for your interest in being a part of Pandora.

Rick Goetz is a Musician Coach and Music Consultant by way of a fifteen year career as a Major label A&R executive at Atlantic and Elektra Records a musician and a music supervisor. Throughout his career he has played bass for members of the Cult and Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings and on the industry side has worked with artists like Kid Rock, Matchbox 20, Sugar Ray and Damage Plan. His current client list ranges from Grammy award winners to people just looking to get their foot in the door. You can check out Rick at www.MusicianCoaching.com or twitter.com/musiccoaching.

 

Ever gone ego surfing?  If not, it’s time to start.  Sure it may seem self centered and masturbatory but probably not less than anything else about the quest to make sounds for a living.  If you haven’t tried it – it’s simple.  Enter your name or your band name into Google and see what comes back.

Why Google?  Well according to the February Search results posted by Silicone Alley Insider In February of 2010 Google domestic core search volume was 65.5% vs. 16.8% for Yahoo and %11.5 for Bing.   Google is the 800 lbs. Gorilla.  The reason want control over where you come up in search Engine results?  According to a recent study by icrossing - roughly 95% of all clicks for what people are searching for come from the top page of results across the big three search engines.  I’m going to guess you are coming along with me on this ride and see where this is going – you have to be able to be found when someone is looking for you and preferably they should find you through a destination page that you have 100% control over.

A word about websites in general – if you don’t have one – get one.  MySpace and ReverbNation are fantastic tools but they are only tools at the end of the day.  For perception alone it is required that you have a website – it makes you appear considerably less fly-by-night than the bands who only use social network profiles.  It sends the not so subtle message that yes – I make music for a living and yes- I am serious about my job.   A website does not need to be complicated and does not need not be expensive to do what it is supposed to do.  A website is to get people looking for you to be able to find you and to listen to your music and your message when they arrive there – that’s it.

I often hear that SEO (Search Engine Optimization) can’t be done for art or for music.  There is some truth to this in that unless you are making music for a certain purpose like “Music for Meditation” or “Music for Halloween” it is very hard to determine exactly what keywords (words people enter into a search engine) would lead people who are fans of what you do to your homepage.  On the other hand, a well-optimized site can ensure that your most important keywords (your band name, the name of your last album, the name of your single / song in a recent TV commercial) can be found.  It is best to have your site set up to be found just in case your promotion and marketing activities get you some placement where people would know your song but not your band name (TV placement, radio play, opening slot on a tour – whatever it happens to be).

Here are some very basic things to consider about SEO.

1)    Your band name.  If you have a simple ordinary one-word band name that is a commonly used word – you might be in trouble.  The more people who search for that word – the harder it is for you to manipulate the search engine algorithm to ensure you come up in the top positions on a search Engine Results Page.  In this instance an Artist like DeadMau5  or Deadmaus would do really well  because of the deliberate misspelling and a band like Stand for Dublin are going to have trouble coming up for a search for their name alone.  If you are just starting out and haven’t really branded yourself yet take a moment to consider whether or not people will find you based on your name.  If you don’t know how often people are looking for a given word or phrase give the Google Adwords Keyword Tool a try.

2)    Your Website Text.  Search Engines read a webpage from top to bottom, left to right.  This is why owning the domain name that is your band or performing name is very important.- so important that people will pay lots of money for domains that get lots of traffic.  Owning the domain name with your biggest keywords (usually band name) is the biggest single advantage you can have in showing up first in results.  Also along those lines dot COMs seem to rank better than dot NETS and any other suffix for your desired keywords (by way of example – radiohead.com) except for dot EDUs which are not available to the general public.  It is also important that your home page have real text on it rather than flash or a photo.  I can’t tell you how many people ask me why they aren’t coming up in results only to look at their website and see that the “text” on their homepage is actually part of an image file and therefore not helping your case with search.

3)    Tags.  Header tags, Meta tags and title tags.  Learn what these are and make sure your web designer has these filled with keyword heavy descriptions including the band name – i.e. “The Righteous Dudes – polka music from Plymouth”

4)    Breadcrumbs.    Also called external links.  The more sites that link back to yours the more search engines think your website is worth.  The caliber and quality of these sites that link to yours are also important because people who overdue the gaming of their external links tend to wind up on sites called link farms that can actually negatively impact your SEO.  All that said make sure that all of your social network profiles – Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, ReverbNation, Linkedin etc point back to your site.  Search Engines also value sites that link to themselves even if it is just from one page of your site to another.

5)    Anchor Text.  The words that are highlighted on what is usually a blue underlined link to another page are called Anchor text.  What those words are can help determine how well you show up in results for those words.  You never want to highlight the word or words “here” or “click here” when you have the option to use anchor text.  Use your band name or whatever keywords you think will help potential fans arrive at your site.  I run a site called musiciancoaching.com but lately I have been trying to boost my search results for the words Music Consultant.  ß--- That should help.

6)    Frequency and Consistency.  Do you know why the most boring businesses out there blog about their products?  I assure you it is not because they enjoy it but rather because search engines favor sites that are regularly updated with new content.  As an artist you should make sure that your shows, new albums, press releases etc are online regularly anyway and if you use rich media (photos, mp3s, videos etc) make sure that all of the files are tagged with the words you want people to find you with…

There is much,  much more to ranking in search engines but if you weren’t at all familiar I hope that was a bit of help to you.  If you set up your website correctly to begin with you won’t have to scramble to make sure that people can find you when your promotion efforts begin to bear fruit or when people have heard about your band and just want to see what you are all about by entering your name into their favorite search engine.  Specifically try making Amazon album lists including yours, iTunes iMixes and post on the message boards and blogs of artists who have fans that you think will like you.  If you do it in a non spammy way and you have a good product these things will help you tremendously.  As always though a good product is always worth more than good product development.

E-commerce pioneer, lifelong musician, and technological guru, Patrick Faucher is the CEO and Co-founder of Nimbit . Patrick graduated with honors from Berklee College of Music with a background in computer science and database architecture. Preceding the web’s explosion as a commercial marketplace, Patrick helped launch some of the very first e-commerce websites for renowned artists such as Aerosmith and Phish. In the late nineties, he led the development of BuyItOnline.com, an online shopping mall, which was sold for $60 million in 2000.

Background:  Formed in 1983, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones are often credited with the creation of the ska-core genre, a form of music that mixes elements of third wave ska and hardcore punk. The band released seven full-length albums, three EPs and a live album while touring continuously before their announcement of a hiatus in December 2003. They reunited in the fall of 2007 and performed at Cambridge’s Middle East club.

At the beginning of this project, the Bosstones had no fan database, an inactive (fan run) Facebook page, and had not released an album in seven years. 

Campaign Goals:  

• Recapture fans and build contact database
• Sell 500 VIP ticket bundles
• Market new album release to U.S. fanbase, sell 10,000 units
• Create a basis for future touring, merchandising, and promotion
• Sell out venue for Hometown Throwdown concert series

 

Strategy: 

Step 1 - (re)Engage Fans:Create multiple entry points for fans to receive free MMB tracks in exchange for offering new/updated contact info.  Provide opportunity to join "VIP" list with exclusive access to pre-sale Hometown Throwdown tickets. 

Step 2 - Reasons to buy:  Place pre-sale bundles (including tickets and merch) in VIP-only storefront on MMB’s new website.  Bundles have multiple offers/price points:  single ticket, ticket plus CD & vinyl, ticket to 3 shows plus CD & vinyl, t-shirt plus CD & vinyl.  

Timeline:

October 2009

• Start promoting via Facebook, MySpace and website, offering free track of a new song, and teasing the new album.
• Use redemption codes to track three different giveaway campaigns (via email and download cards).
• Start recapturing fan contacts through website and Facebook.
• Set up VIP offer to hard core fans for special presale bundle of new album with ticket to upcoming holiday shows in Boston ($50-$100 price point).
• Oct 31 (Midnight) – Message sent to “VIP” list.  Ticket presale bundles up for sale on website for three Hometown Throwdown shows. 

November 2009

• Nov 1^st – General ticket sales for HOB shows go on sale.
• Public pre-sale of new album available at website and on Facebook MyStore.
• Added a 4th show after original three sell out, blast to email list and Facebook.

 

December 2009

• New album ships to major retail outlets.
• Special bundles with vinyl album offered exclusively on website.
• Appearance on Jimmy Kimmel live.
• Shows at House of Blues and Middle East in Boston.  Over 8,000 people attend.

 

Results:

• 600 VIP ticket/album bundles sold in 25 min. from MMB’s website.  Average price:  $40.00
• 2,800 fans redeemed promotional codes for free music
• 7,000 new Facebook fans added (100% increase)
• 5,000 new contacts added to fan list including sales and demographic info
• 4,000+ units sold of new album

 

Nimbit Platform tools used:  Nimbit MyStore for Facebook, nimbitSkin storefront, download cards, promo codes, redemption widget, print and manufacturing services, nimbitRetail+ account ($20/month)

Eric Hebert is CEO of Evolvor Media and blogger at evolvor.com, in addition to co-founder of Label 2.0, and online music marketing community that teaches musicians the ins-and-outs of marketing and building a brand online. Eric has an extensive background in SEO , Social Media, and content development, working for some of the biggest names in the business and sharing his knowledge to assist artists and musicians to help promote their music.

 

One of the most important aspects of being a musician these days is trying to understand how to efficiently use the web to promote your tunes to people in the hopes of creating a rabid fanbase. Unfortunately, most do not understand the underlying principles of how to use your website in order to actually get the attention they are looking for.

Most view a website as a “traditional” advertisement and construct one with that mindset. Many bands build glossy looking Flash-based websites that, while visually appealing, do very little to help the band out. They think a website needs to be a pretty-looking page that visually grabs the viewer into wanting to listen to the music. Other then maybe some bio information and pictures, their usually is very little content on the site for the viewer to learn more about the band and the music. And usually these websites take forever to load and are just downright annoying to navigate around.

If you’re not using flash, chances are you just have an old-school static html site. Again, the graphics might be pretty and your music might be available to stream or download, but there is probably little in terms of interactive content.

And that’s the big thing about marketing online that everybody misses – building content. The goal is to increase traffic, and building content (and knowing how to get that content indexed in Google to gain visitors from Search) is how you go about getting people to come to your site, learn more about you, and then perform calls to action that will being them into your fan “filter”.

Now, while you CAN add content to a traditional website the old-fashioned way, chances are most musicians aren’t entirely web savvy enough to do it themselves. And, after you start adding a LOT of content, trying to mange all of it by constantly adding new links becomes tedious and inefficient.

If you REALLY want to get serious about using your website to interact with your audience, then you need to get with the times and build a dynamic website using s Content Management System, or CMS.

A few years back you would have had to pay an arm and a leg to get one custom built; luckily today (and thanks to the open-source movement), you can download FREE software to get you up and running with a state-of-the-art CMS in literally a few minutes.

Wordpress is an awesome piece of software that, once you learn how to use, will completely change how you view publishing content on the web. It’s easy to install, customize, and has a back-end where you can easily add new blog content using a visual-rich text editor that allows you the freedom to add content right from your browser. You don’t need to know code in order to get it up and running (but hopefully as you get comfortable using it you’ll teach yourself how to work around the code for further customization.

Here is a screenshot of what a basic post/page layout looks like in the Wordpress dashboard to give you an idea on how it works:

What’s really cool about Wordpress (other then being free and easy to install) is the large community of developers that support the software and help make it more powerful. You see, Wordpress is open-source – which mean anyone can take the code and add whatever they want to it. This large community of developers creates “plugins” which takes the deafault Wordpress software and adds extra functionality to it.

So while by default Wordpress is primarily a blogging/publishing platform, it’s capabilities are endless with the thousands of (mostly) free plugins out there. Want to optimize Wordpress for SEO? Need to add social media buttons to your posts? How about a contact form? There is an endless supply of plugins that make your site 10x as powerful.

So what about design? By defauly Wordpress has a simple (but boring) design. Luckily you can easily create a CSS driven “theme” that can alter your Wordpress install’s design – because, as with the plugin community, their is a large Wordpress design community that creates professional themes that are also available for, you guessed it, 0 dollars.

So lose that flash site and start building interesting and interactive content that engages people to want ti become a fan; you have no excuse to learn how to install and customize Wordpress and start building relevant web presence to promote your band.

Fiona McLaren is a Label Liaison with Last.FM and based in London

Promoting your music online these days is meant to be easy - but due to the sheer number of sites out there it might not always seem that way. This is a brief guide to why Last.fm should be one of the main sites you use to promote yourself, and how to get the most out of it with minimal effort.

The Last.fm music database

First off, you might already have a page on Last.fm without realising. Huh?

This is how it works. Last.fm is built on the data generated by our community of music fans (21 million of them!) ‘scrobbling’ their music collections. ‘Scrobbling’ means that when a Last.fm user listens to an MP3 on their PC or iPod, the title of the track and artist name is entered into our database – and, if a page for that track and artist has yet to be created, we automatically create one. In this way we’re building a massive, ever-growing database of information about all the music ever made.

So, if you have any music out there already, chances are one of your fans is a Last.fm user who’s scrobbled your music to our database – so you might already have a page on the site. (If not, you can always create one yourself.)

But don’t panic: even if a page already exists, this doesn’t mean we have your music actually on the site. We’ll only have this if you’ve given it to us or we have a deal with your label. So the first thing you need to do is register and upload your music: http://www.last.fm/uploadmusic.

What makes Last.fm different?

The important thing to note about Last.fm (and what makes us different to other services) is that we start promoting your band for you from day one. As outlined above, as soon as one of our users listens to your music it is ‘scrobbled’ to Last.fm. From this point on, we’ll start recording the number of times Last.fm users listen to the track, and more importantly, start actively recommending it to other users with similar music tastes to the people already listening to you.

We know you’re busy, so we also get our users to help out on a lot of stuff: they can upload band photos, write biographies and describe your music using tags. All these things are essential in maintaining an active community, based around music discovery and sharing tastes. What it means for you is that once you have a page on Last.fm, it can be kept up to date thanks to our users.

The Artist Royalty Programme

What’s more, by uploading your music you’re not only helping people discover it, but you can also get paid every time anyone listens to it on Last.fm as part of our Artist Royalty Programme. Enrolling in this scheme allows you to earn money each time your track is played by someone using our On Demand service, or if it is streamed on one of our radio services.

What next?

If you want to go all out and make sure that you get the most out of Last.fm, then here are my top tips for promoting your music on Last.fm.

1. Make your music available for free download

Assuming you have already registered for our Artist Royalty Programme then your songs will automatically be available as free on demand streams for our users. However by making one or two songs available as free downloads your artist will instantly become more visible on Last.fm as we promote free content more vigorously than anything else.

2. Upload Videos

Just as we promote free content, we also push videos straight to users who might be interested in them via their recommendation dashboard. You can upload as many videos as you like and whilst promotional videos are the obvious first port of call you can also upload live performances or anything else you have kicking about, which leads me onto...

3. Create special content

If you want to raise your profile on Last.fm by leveraging your existing fanbase, a great way to do this is to upload special content to Last.fm. This could be in the form of a video tour diary, studio diary or interview, or it could be a preview of your new album interspersed with you chatting about the tracks. Not only will this be promoted automatically on Last.fm, adding interest for existing users, but you can also promote the content via your own mailing lists or MySpace page using our range of embeddable widgets.

4. Add upcoming events

Last.fm has an extensive events system that recommends events users might enjoy, as well as allowing them to invite their friends and see what other people are attending. Adding your artist’s upcoming events is a great way to keep people informed and interested. Plus, if you’ve followed the above steps, hopefully you now have a few of our users who are curious to check your band out!

5. Get involved

Last.fm is a community-based site and so conversation is important. Start using your own personal account, and join some groups. As you start to figure out the landscape you’ll be able to work out when it’s appropriate to mention you’re in a band. If people already trust you, they might be more inclined to listen when you mention an upcoming release or gig. You can also communicate with existing fans through Last.fm via things such as journals, so jump in and have a play!

6. Get an extra boost

If you’ve got an album coming out or a tour to promote, and thus some money to be spent, Last.fm also offers highly targeted advertising. We know what our users like which means that you can make your budget stretch further by only reaching those people you know will be, or should be, interested in your music.

 

The goal of the Indie Artist X Project is to develop a basic, actionable music marketing plan designed around simple strategy, prioritization of tactics, easy to use tools, and a reasonable budget that can be implemented by any artist who has the inclination to follow it. About.com Music Careers, Artists House Music, Hypebot, KnowTheMusicBiz.com, MusicianWages.com and Revolution Number 3 have banded together to create this community based music marketing plan.  We will be working with one anonymous artist to design and implement this music marketing plan then track and report the actual results over a four month period. To keep up with the latest news on the IAXP follow the project on Twitter and Facebook.

Below are the Indie Artist X Project statistics for the month of July. Since July is the first month of the project we plan to use these numbers as our baseline. Now the goal is to see if we can implement marketing strategy and tactics that will move all these metrics in a positive direction through the remainder of the project and beyond.

July Stats:

Band Metrics Score:            183 / Bronze

Website Unique Visitors:    355* (10 days only)

Website Total Visitors:        628* (10 days only)

Website Sales – CD’s:        Waiting on Report

Website Sales – MP3’s:      Waiting on Report

Website Sales – Merch:      Waiting on Report

Fan List:                              739

Live Show Attendance:      1120

Live Show Net Sales:          $1650.00

Live Show CD Sales:          $510.00

Live Show Merch Sales:     $460.00

Distribution Sales:               Waiting on Report

Licensing Royalties:             $0.00

BMI Royalties:                      $0.00

Soundexchange Royalties:  $0.00

MySpace Royalties:             $0.00

 

Some notes about July’s IXAP reporting:

• Band Metrics is a relatively new service so it’s not yet entirely clear how to interpret the score of 183. It’s assumed that if the IAXP marketing efforts are successful that the Band Metrics score will increase accordingly.

 

• Indie Artist X launched a new website on July 21^st so we only had 10 days of website traffic data to report during July. The indie label that released IAX’s two previous records hosted and managed the original website and didn’t provide site traffic details to the artist.

 

• The Artist’s indie label also handled direct e-commerce transactions and fulfillment from the artist website and only provided semi-annual reporting so we don’t have any data to report for website sales during July. The label is winding up their operations and has agreed to let IAX handle direct website sales and fulfillment moving forward. Since IAX is now using the Audiolife for ecommerce sales and fulfillment on their website we will have monthly sales figures to report in the upcoming months.

 

• Distribution for the indie label is handled through InGrooves. Again, since the label only provides semi-annual reporting we don’t have distribution sales for report for July. The label has agreed to allow Indie Artist X to work directly with the distributor moving forward so we expect to have more frequent and better distribution sales reporting available in the months ahead.

 

Where are the streaming and online radio royalties?

Many indie artists have long complained about not receiving PRO royalties for terrestrial radio airplay. The census taking methodology the Performance Royalty Organizations (ASCAP, BMI and SEASAC in the US) have traditionally used to track terrestrial radio airplay falls well short of capturing actual plays for individual songs.  In defense of the PRO’s, trying to track actual terrestrial radio airplay for every individual song from every single radio station is no easy task since up until the last few years terrestrial radio stations traditionally used manual, hand written logs to track what songs were played. Given that compiling aggregate terrestrial radio airplay data from hand written logs is all but impossible the census methodology did seem somewhat reasonable, even if it was bound to exclude plays and ultimately royalties for many indie artists.

I am a big fan of the opportunity Internet radio provides for indie artists. However, after reviewing the Indie Artist X statistics from July it’s hard to comprehend why there are simply no royalties from BMI or Soundexchange at all. A quick check of IAX’s profile on Last.fm shows the artist is approaching 4000 plays. I personally hear Indie Artist X’s music daily on my Pandora station. Despite clearly receiving Internet radio airplay, being registered with BMI and Soundexchange and having their most recent record posted on multiple Internet radio stations for the last two years, Indie Artist X has never been paid any royalties for Internet radio airplay or on-demand streaming. Yes, IAX did write the songs and owns the copyright to all their music.

So where are the Internet radio and streaming royalties for Indie Artist X?

Is the problem that Last.fm, Pandora, Imeem, etc. are simply not reporting all their plays to BMI and Soundexchange? Are BMI and Soundexchange collecting royalties from the Internet radio stations but not paying royalties to Indie Artist X? Are the royalty organizations applying the same dated and flawed terrestrial radio census methodology to calculate Internet radio royalties even though the play data for each song is captured electronically and stored in databases by the providers?

These are all troubling questions. Admittedly, I don’t know where the breakdown in this process is occurring.  I’m no copyright attorney or topic expert but I’m operating under the assumption that the copyright law and court rulings that have set current royalty rates are supposed to apply to all artists receiving Internet radio airplay, not just those in the Billboard Top 200.

All of the above mentioned organizations and companies owe their very existence to the songwriters and musicians that create music.  It’s time they figure out how to calculate and pay royalties on a per play basis for all artists. Even a few thousands Internet radio plays deserve compensation.

Despite the very public debate and the tremendous amounts of time and money spent lobbying Congress and the Copyright Royalty Board over Internet radio royalties it appears the Internet radio providers and royalty collection organizations have left Indie Artist X out of the equation.

Noah Dinkin is a co-founder of FanBridge , the world’s most popular email and mobile fanlist management platforms.  The service is free for most bands and just $7 and up for artists with huge fan databases.  Feel free to leave comments or advice of your own below and check back often in weeks to come for more tips on this important topic.

 

#1. Own YOUR List!
I can’t say this enough to musicians. Having MySpace or Facebook friends is not a real fan list. Same with Twitter. They are all great services and each has a different purpose, but how much of the actual real info do you have of your ‘fans/friends/followers’ on those places? Can you easily view a list of everyone’s real name, email address, location, phone number, etc? The answer is no, yet many musicians forget this because the service is the hot internet site of the moment and everyone says “oh, you need to be on [insert site here].”

You should have a presence on these social networks (more on that in a later post), but you need to use these services to feed people to YOUR fan list. Fan Relationship Management services like FanBridge give clients html code that let them put a signup form on their MySpace, Facebook, website, etc, so their fans can sign up direct to the band’s own list.

Once you have built your own list, you can do amazing things with it that you couldn’t do otherwise…things like:

• Targeting messages by zip code and radius (so you don’t need to blast your whole list)
• Scheduling messages to be sent at a certain time
• Grouping fans based on custom criteria (street team, bloggers, groupies, etc)
• Tracking your messages to see who opens, clicks, and much more
• and a ton of other cool features that save you time and build your career.

#2. Communicate Regularly
Most musicians know they should regularly communicate with their fans, yet they are often at a loss for things to say. I’m here to tell you that you shouldn’t be stuck on what to say, but rather make sure you talk to your fans on a regular basis!

Why do fans signup for your list? To hear from you!

Don’t be boring and only tell them about this show, that show, and your new album. Tell them about YOU. They want to be fans of your music AND you as a person. Talk about great movies you’ve seen recently. Talk about other artist’s albums you’ve recently listened to. Come up with a “special” city of the week/month and explain why.

When we look at the fan list size of artists who communicate regularly and artists who don’t, it becomes very clear. The artists who talk to their fans regularly (whether it is once every two weeks or once a month) have lists that are constantly growing and better interaction (opens/clicks). Artists who send an email every few months because they have “nothing to talk about” are ones whose list sizes either stay flat or actually decrease.

Make sure to use a service, like FanBridge , that includes a “Forward to a Friend” link in the footer of every campaign.  This lets fans easily pass your message on to their fans and services like ours will allow you to track who’s doing it.  It’s a best practice to take this info and reward those people that are spreading the word about you. They’re likely your most avid fans, and rewarding them will incentivize them to continue to promote you and your music among their own groups of friends.

#3. Include Links to Places You Want Fans to Go
This one seems obvious, but you’d be surprised at how many bands do not include a link to their website in each message. Not only should you be including a link to your website, but you should have a link to your MySpace/Facebook/Twitter/etc profile, your merch store, a place where they can download your music, your tourdates, and anything else that’s important. You’ll be surprised how much more traffic you get when you start including links.

A service like ours will make it as easily as possible for clients to include links in their campaigns. For example, by checking one box, you can automatically include links to buy your music. We also track every link you put in a campaign, so you can see EXACTLY who clicked on which link in your message, and when they clicked. This is very valuable info, and will help you target future campaigns to specific people based on their past actions.

#4. Go Professional
Don’t try and do it yourself using outlook/apple mail/gmail/msn/hotmail/yahoo/aol/entourage/custom server scripts. Unless your core skills are computer programming, email/mobile deliverability, and related things, you are probably better off leaving the fan list management to a professional service and focusing on what you do best: making and playing music. There are a few providers out there (some suck, some are great), and obviously we’re partial to FanBridge for a band’s fan relationship management needs.  You want something that’s simple, intuitive, and will help you to easily and efficiently maximize that relationship between your fans and your music.  And you don’t need to pay an arm and leg these days to get that.

 

Loren Weisman is an accomplished music producer and drummer based in Seattle, Washington. Having worked on over three hundred albums, Loren has also worked on numerous television, film, video game and radio productions, from New York to Los Angeles, Boston to Seattle. Loren is the founder of Brain Grenade Entertainment LLC , and the author of the Freedom Solutions Recording Plan. Loren has also written The Artist's Guide to Success in the Music Business, a book to help independent musicians achieve self sufficient and sustainable success coming in early 2010.

 

Seriously. It's time for some artists to get a clue about social networking sites, specifically MySpace and play counts, page views and friends. It has gone from ridiculous to completely freaking insane.

For those of you who might not be aware, there are a number of artists out there that actually spend money on “marketing firms,” as they have been calling themselves, to get more Myspace hits, friends and plays. This is foolish. This does nothing positive for these artists' careers. 

In fact, it hurts them. Now while a few people might think they look cool because they have hundreds of thousands of friends, the industry as a whole is recognizing it for what it is: an artist who is wasting time trying to present a false fan base and a presence that truly does not exist.

Yes, at one time lots of hits, friends and play counts on MySpace had a small level of significance. These factors stood as something that people paid attention to some four or more years back when MySpace was new and these “add or play bots” did not exist. As MySpace was in the forefront and more artists were joining, there was a large and wide differentiation of who was being looked at and who was not.

These were contributing factors to some artists even receiving deals, but only contributing factors. NO ONE--repeating here--NO ONE has gotten a record deal or contract based solely on the amount of friends and plays they have on MySpace. Yes, the stories are out there, but at most it was only one small factor that added to a number of other factors and justifications that got the artist a deal.

Getting a deal just based on Myspace stats sounds much cooler though, doesn’t it?  Just not true though. Think about it: who with the money, the means, the understanding of the industry and the resources would sign an artist off of just those facts alone? NO ONE.

You want friends? Plays? Hits? Then earn them. Personally add a few people a day to your Myspace, Facebook, Bebo, etc.  Add a message and market yourself by reaching out to people and groups on these sites. Take the right and professional path to truly get people to hear you.

Sometimes, and those times are few and far between, these bots and programs can cause a few real people to find out about you and create new honest friends and download sales.  Most of the time, however, it is not like that. Instead of real fans, bots and programs play your songs, ping your site and push to spam up your friend count. Some of these spam additions are people that will just approve and never even check you out. That makes it a worthless contact and nothing that is helping you at all.

Now, let's really do the math.

Yesterday, I was on a Myspace site of a really shady artist I came across and had never heard of before.  I found this artist while searching a genre and a few keywords. This artist had 765,781 page views, even though the pages was very weak and the music weaker. Yet every song had over 100,000 plays. RED FLAG ONE! All the songs had over one hundred thousand plays? So over one hundred thousand people decided to listen to every single song on their page?

BULLSHIT.

Let's add to the equation that they have almost six thousand friends. But if every person checking out this artist also listened to every single song and added the artist as a friend, wouldn't the artist have a lot more friends? For the 765,781 visits that of course must have been from all different people, only on person, that’s right, Houston, one person in every 127 decided to add this artist as a friend?

Umm, uhh, let's see here...and NO.

And then it gets even worse!  The industry is completely aware of these bots and programs to add friends. The people you want to listen to you often do not have that much time. So, when they immediately see the traits of someone faking popularity, instead of impressing, you are immediately discrediting yourself. Think about this when writing your press kits as well. Do not highlight friend counts, page visits or song plays. Highlight the things that matter, like show attendance and  sales. Highlight your logo, your professionalism, your music and how you are ready to go to the next level based on your efforts and achievements, not your contrived appearance.

Also… Stop using quotes from Facebook, MySpace and other online sites where any one can review. It may good a good review but at the same time, you could have written it.

It takes more time to professionally and honestly achieve your goals.  It is more challenging, but it is worth it to appear strong and solid in front of your fans and industry professionals alike.  You will shine brighter than most others.

Conclusion

Spend the cash on advertising on MySpace or Facebook. Spend the money with the pay-per-click advertisements or the small localized marketing ads. They are worlds more effective. Keep track of your actual sales instead of hits in order to show potential labels, managers, and talent buyers your viability and profitability.

Take the steps to appear as professional as possible to leave a lasting impression on those you are really trying to impact. It will help you move forward productively and effectively, while also bringing you more exposure, creating a better buzz and, hopefully, deriving profit.

You are an intelligent person.  Act like it. Spend your money on things that will actually help your career and not things that give the appearance that your career is more than it really is. 

 

© 2009 Loren Weisman

www.braingrenademusic.com

Watch out for Loren Weisman’s book “The Artist's Guide to Success in the Music Business” coming soon.

 

I recently participated in a panel discussion on online music marketing with Jed Carlson of ReverbNation, Lindsey Kronmiller of Merge Records, Mike Robinson of the Annuals / Terpsikhore Records and moderated by Heather McDonald of About.com’s Music Careers. The panel was hosted by Secondhand Freespace at The Local 506 in Chapel Hill, NC. Below is a recap of some of the topics we covered and my take on the top priorities for successful music marketing.

1. Write Great Songs

If you are trying to attract the attention of music fans it all starts with great songs. It’s understood that this is much easier said than done but it is a critical starting point. Great songs with mediocre / poor marketing will ultimately trump mediocre / poor songs with great marketing when it comes to attracting and keeping the attention of music fans over the long-term. Artists should make sure they have a reasonable balance between the amount of time and effort they spend on social networks, designing merch, creating videos, email campaigns, etc. and the time and effort they spend perfecting their craft.

2. Get a Website

If you are serious about a career as a musician you should own a url that includes your name (or bands name) and have your own website. If you don’t already have a website check out Bandcamp and Bandzoogle, they both provide full featured and inexpensive website solutions specifically for musicians. The central point for all marketing activities should be the artist’s website. Marketing efforts that drive fans to MySpace, YouTube or iTunes help foster relationships between fans and MySpace, YouTube and iTunes, instead of directly with the artist.

3. Direct Marketing

I firmly believe an artist’s success in achieving a sustainable career in music is tied directly to their ability to build and nurture an ongoing, direct relationship with their fans. Both FanBridge and ReverbNation offer an impressive set of direct marketing tools that can help artists communicate directly with fans and drive traffic to their website and live shows. Both companies help gather and provide important information that can be used to better understand their preferences and demographics.  To learn more about effective email marketing to fans check out this blog on Email 101 for Artists.

4. Direct Commerce

Buying directly from an artist helps strengthen the direct to fan relationship. Direct commerce also provides better margins for an artist than selling through a third party like iTunes or Amazon. Selling direct also provides the artist with more flexibility and creativity when it comes to bundling sales of music with t-shirts, tickets or unreleased tracks. Make sure fans can easily purchase music, merchandise, tickets and anything else you sell directly from you / your website. Both Audiolife and Nimbit offer direct commerce solutions for musicians that can be easily added to any website, MySpace or Facebook page.

5. Metadata

Metadata is all the collective information associated with a particular track, release or band, summarized and available in a digital format. Metadata typically includes track titles, track lengths, ISRC codes, album art, genre, band bio’s and publishing information. Accurate metadata is of significant importance since it is the information fans need to identify a particular artist or song in the very crowded digital music world. Digital retailers, MP3 players, computer based media players, online & satellite radio and mobile phones all use metadata to provide their users with information about the songs and artists that are playing. Not having the titles of your MP3 tracks or CD show up when it’s being loaded into a media player will appear amateurish at best and at worst prevent your songs from ever being played by that fan again simply due to the hassle factor of trying to locate an another unlabeled track in a large digital music collection. Be sure to register the metadata information with the three primary companies that manage metadata databases for the industry: All Music Guide, Gracenote and Muze.  All three companies have different procedures for accepting metadata from directly from artists. Check out each of their websites for details.

6. Digital Distribution

Even though artists should encourage fans to buy music directly from their website it’s still very important for artists to have their music available for sale at the leading online music retailers (Amazon, eMusic, iTunes & Rhapsody at a minimum). The leading online music retailers have large user bases and fairly good recommendation tools for music fans to discover artists similar to the ones they already enjoy.  Retailers typically work exclusively through distributors and don’t accept music directly from artists. There are many very good, inexpensive options now available to artists for digital distribution including CD Baby, ReverbNation and TuneCore.

7. Live Shows

Playing live shows is one of the most important aspects of an artist’s career since it provides a great opportunity to directly connect with fans, sell music and merchandise, add fan names to the email list and (hopefully) earn money from ticket sales and / or the venue’s door receipts. Electronic press kits have emerged as a very effective and low cost way for artists to submit their music, bios, photos and videos to promoters or music buyers at the venues they would like to play. There are several companies now providing electronic press kits for artists including OurStage, ReverbNation and Sonicbids.

8. Internet Radio

Internet radio is continues to grow at a phenomenal rate. According to a recent Arbitron study, the weekly online radio audience in the US has grown by one-third in the past year alone. Internet radio now provides independent artists with unprecedented access to a large and growing audience and promotional opportunities that had only been available to label backed artists. Many of the leading Internet radio stations such as AOL, Imeem, Last.fm, Pandora and Yahoo accept submissions* directly from artists so there is no need to incur the cost of hiring a radio promotions person or firm to work a new release to Internet radio stations.

Another benefit of Internet radio is that artists actually earn royalties. Soundexchange collects royalties from internet, cable and satellite radio stations then pays those royalties directly to the performing artist (and copyright holder) for streamed tracks. Make sure you are registered with Soundexchange!

9. Awareness

It’s important to have a presence in the primary places where music fans discover new music. The big social networks, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, are good places to start. It can seem like there are endless options available to artists for promoting music online. What’s the best way to prioritize them? Before signing up for the latest / greatest site for promoting music to fans be sure to check out their site traffic through Compete or Alexa. The data isn’t perfect but it will give you a general idea of whether or not they have enough fan traffic to justify the time required to regularly maintain another presence on their site.

Once you have an online presence established it’s very important to keep the content, especially tour dates, regularly updated. Managing and updating each of these sites is a painful, time consuming hassle. ArtistData is a free service that solves this challenge by automatically updating “artist websites, social network profiles, concert databases, Twitter, official news feeds, iCal, local press, fan newsletters, and even tour books” when artists upload tour dates to the ArtistData site.

10. Hire a Fifth Beatle

Finally, don’t try to do all this online music marketing by yourself. Give serious consideration to Pandora radio Founder Tim Westergren’s Fifth Beatle for The Digtal Age suggestion and you just might have time left over to write some great songs!

*Internet Radio Submissions Info

AOL Radio:

Mail Submissions To
AOL Radio
Pete Schiecke
770 Broadway
4th Floor
New York, NY 10003

Immem:

Artists can build their own profile page and directly upload music

Last.FM:

Artists can build their own profile page and directly upload music

Pandora:

Mail Submissions To
Music Genome Project Submissions
360 22nd St. Suite 440
Oakland, CA, 94612

Yahoo / LAUNCHcast:

Mail Submissions To
CBS Radio
Seth Neiman
1515 Broadway, 46th Floor
New York, NY 10036