Global Self-Promotion License Application

Beginning in 2010, anyone self-promoting on the Internet has to obtain a Global Self-Promotion License (GSPL). Failure to do so, will result in the revocation of your Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and YouTube accounts; moreover, repeat offenders will lose their license to blog and comment on the Internet.

We all have attention capital accounts. Attention capital accounts are recharged via great user experiences and energizing content; whilst overwhelming choice, bad design and unrefined content have the opposite effect.

Music Industry Self Promotion Privileges Calculator
Please use the Self-Promotion Privileges Calculator (SPPC) below to determine which self-promotion license you qualify for.

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Posting and announcing your gigs.

So you have a show and you want to promote it. Many artists take this pretty simply. They post on their website, announce it on Myspace, share it on Facebook, sometimes list it on Craigslist and then maybe send it to a local music magazine. There is this idea that people will just make the effort to find out about you. Now in some cases that can be true, but with each gig and show it is much more effective to pull those that already know you, reach out to those that might be some what familiar with you and connect with people that have never heard of you before.

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MTT launches the Indie Maximum Exposure 100 Blog

As of today, you will find a new menu item in the Music Think Tank menu that is simply labeled 100.

The Indie Maximum Exposure 100 blog was created by a team of industry experts and by artists that are making a full-time living from their music. 

The 100 is an essential read for all artists; it’s a clear and concise guide to 100 important things every artist should consider.  Check out the Indie Maximum Exposure 100 on Music Think Tank.  Here’s a category list:

The Entire List (100)
Fostering Relationships (13)
Making Money (12)
Mindset/ Who You Are Being (16)
Online Resources (Where to Submit) (20)
Recording and Releasing Material (8)
Social Media/ Internet Strategy (16)
Touring/ Live Performance (15)

Happy 'Quit MySpace' Day

Everyone uses MySpace - because everyone else uses MySpace.

But the site fails to recognise or make use of the fact that they have what could well be the greatest asset on the internet: EVERY FRICKIN’ BAND ON THE PLANET.

We all have our complaints and issues with MySpace. It isn’t all it could be - and while it’s improving in increments, it’s not good enough. This article is a call to arms. It’s time for a revolution. Either they start doing independent music right - or we ALL walk.

Let’s give them one year - then we’re gone. Here’s why.

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In Defense Of 1,000 True Fans - Part I - The Mountain Goatsl

Since I started my career in this business. I’ve always been working within the 1,000 True Fans model.

Here’s my story: In 1996, I was living in Boulder, CO and I had just started Ariel Publicity, my boutique PR firm.

Acoustic Junction and Zuba two local bands became my first clients. Both had been staples in Boulder for a couple of years, and both made fantastic livings touring and selling their independent releases from coast to coast. They did this with no label, no distribution, and no major marketing budgets: just a manager, a tour manager, and me.

I also represented The Toasters, Bim Skala Bim, The Slackers, and Skinnerbox, (and practically everyone touring during the third wave of Ska).

These artists and dozens like them all made full time livings from playing and touring.  They had a core group of fans that supported them by seeing several shows a year, buying merch and buying albums.

Today, it feels revolutionary when we hear about bands that make a living based on their music.

What happened? What changed?

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You’re So ‘Yester-moment’

It’s no longer the flavor or the month or what used to be called 24/7 or wall-to-wall coverage. The new media cycle, at least for this nanosecond, is called “perpetual movement.”

In other words, spin or die. That’s the latest from Internet guru Michael Moritz, a Sequoia investor who backed Google, Yahoo and the Sugar Inc. blog-networks.

Quoted in a recent New York Times article, Moritz says:

“Perpetual movement is the essence of survival and prosperity online. If online media and entertainment companies don’t improve every day, they will just wind up as the newfangled version of Reader’s Digest — bankrupt.”

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Proper care and maintenance of networking sites

Networking sites are great promotional tools. Everyone from the indie artist to the artist who has a massive advertising and marketing budget has one. But when is it time for house cleaning? When is it time for certain things to go away? A good deal of what is posted is unimportant, boring and, let’s face it, stupid. Now, if you’re just another face on Facebook or Twitter, it doesn’t really matter. However, if you are an artist, a band or someone who is trying to promote and market, those little stupid updates can harm you more than help you.

So what is the answer?

Simple. Do some housecleaning now and then and make sure you are providing the information, the image and the promotional materials that will reach the most people in the best way. Be smart in a world of social networking. Twittering, face booking and whatever other term you can come up with where people are putting out the dumbest information that might only apply to the fewest people and end up causing the most problems and over all disinterest possible.

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Twitter 101 For Musicians - Free PDF

. I’ll keep this short. Twitter has a really good how to guide for business but the exact same rules apply to artists and musicians. Go here to download it

Top 5 Ways to Track Your Social Media ROI

With the influx of so many social networking sites, and ways to start conversations online it’s sometimes hard to understand what it all means and how it’s helping your music career.

This week I’ve come across some great sites that break down your Social Media Buzz. These sites can give you actual hard numbers/metrics and reports on how you are getting a return in your investment of time online.

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How to use iTunes to drive up your iTunes revenue

I have a friend in Brooklyn who is an accomplished artist/producer, doing astonishingly well selling his music on iTunes. Since iTunes is where the vast majority of online music is purchased I asked him if he would sit down with me and explain to me how he promotes himself exclusively from within the walls of iTunes.

I was enthralled by what he had to say. It turns out being a top seller on iTunes is not just a random thing that occurs. You must promote yourself within the walls of iTunes just like you have to promote yourself everywhere else.

My friend asked not to be named and so it is not revealed (it turns out the top indie promoters on iTunes are very competitive).

He took me on a step-by step breakdown on how to get started effectively promoting yourself on iTunes. This is a labor-intensive process but it yields fruitful results.  My friend earns hundreds of dollars a month from his iTunes sales.

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Cyber Fluff Freedom

One of the best online music resources to emerge in the last couple of years has to be The Hype Machine. For the uninitiated, The Hype Machine is an aggregator of MP3 music blogs that allows punters to search for blogs and websites that have both written about a particular band and also made an MP3 available ‘for evaluation purposes’.

Type in the name of a band and it returns a list that you can plough through and listen to right there on the page, or alternatively follow the links to the original sites and read more. Think of it like a Google that returns nothing but music and reviews, and to understand how comprehensive the service is, how deep it digs into the lonely corners of the internet, you can even find reviews on and music by Friends of the Stars.

A statement such as ‘it’s an aggregator of Mp3 music blogs’ would have made absolutely zero sense as little as 5 years ago, so we’re very much not in Kansas anymore, and it hasn’t taken long for savvy folk to cotton on to the fact that blogs are a great way of reachinga wider audience.

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Twitter is radically changing the way musicians are building communities of supportive fans around them. Are you still resisting it?

Musicians Twitter Roadmap

By Ariel Hyatt (@CyberPR) & Laura Fitton (@Pistachio)

[Note from Music Think Tank: This is a comprehensive post on Twitter.  If you are an artist and you have not heard about or used Twitter, you shuold read this post.]

It has been over 18 months since I joined the Twitter community and since I began to really use it something has shifted for me radically. Using Twitter has directly contributed to my life in meaningful ways.

I must admit that when I first saw it, I wanted to cry.  Why would anyone care about what it is I do?  As a still recovering traditional publicist I couldn’t really understand the benefit for my artists if I was using Twitter.  After all, it’s about my clients not about me. How wrong I was…. It turns out the social web isn’t directly about you, it’s about other people: The audience that you become engaged with, and how you interact with them and with them in mind magic can happen.

Some things that happened since I joined Twitter:

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Social Media, Blogs and Music: Some Philosophical Thoughts

These days the music marketing world is all abuzz with phrases such as - Social Media, Social Advertising, Facebook Ads, Mass Media Networking Advertising…..etc, etc.. In recent months I have been a panelist at the L I S A seminar in Portland and the Hawaii MusicTech Conference in Honolulu. L.I.S.A., which is an acronym for Lessons In Social Advertising, was aimed at marketers and advertisers who [for some reason] don’t understand social networks or haven’t yet worked out how to advertise effectively to them. It focused on topics such as ‘What is social advertising?’ and ‘How do you get young people to recommend your brand?’ The Hawaii MusicTech panel was presented by the Northwest Chapter of NARAS [The Grammy Org] of which I am a Board Director, and we discussed how musicians could effectively use social networks such as Facebook and MySpace to reach an audience and communicate with them.

Two sides of the table as it were. One group wants to advertise, or push, their messages to a mass audience, while the other wants to create a network of like-minded people who hopefully will pull content such as free MP3s and then “evangelize” on behalf of the musicians by spreading messages by electronic word of mouth. With no hint of schizophrenia I happily migrate between both camps. What follows here is an attempt to share my thinking with bands or musicians on what works and what doesn’t when it comes to embracing the many social networking sites that are available to them.

To understand and embrace social networking is to place the idea that says “technology makes this possible” to one side and embrace the idea of the basic human need to stay in touch with other like-minded people at all times. As Clay Shirky says “The desire to be part of a group that shares, cooperates, or acts in concert is a basic human instinct.” Think about rock concerts for a minute…..

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