Why Your Current Songs Probably Won’t Work For Film/TV

You’re a songwriter.  You’ve got dozens of songs that you’ve written and recorded.  Maybe you wrote them for yourself hoping to perform them one day.  Maybe you wrote them to pitch to other artists.  Either way, these songs have been sitting around for some time now and you want to do SOMETHING with them -  ANYTHING.  So, you think to yourself “Maybe I can get this song placed on a film or television show.

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6 Things Every Artist Needs From The Jump

Every rapper thinks they are the great, they think they are ready to change the game, and that’s good. However, before you can get to the top, you have to build the foundation from the bottom. With the internet today the world is at your fingertips, you just have to have the right tools.

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Taylor Swift Made The Choice To Not Fight YouTube

You may know very well the story of Taylor Swift going against Apple and Spotify because these two decided to stream artists’ music without paying them any, or very little, royalties. After Taylor Swift pulled her entire repertoire from Spotify and called Apple out for originally not intending to pay publishers, labels or artists during the free three-month trial, she finally made up with Apple. Following a quite restless time, Swift tweeted she is putting her album on Apple Music ‘and happily so’.

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"Break A Leg". Dave Grohl Creates A Limited Edition Of Merch

It seems like everybody heard about Dave Grohl’s accident in Sweden and how it created a massive buzz. First going on stage after the injury, than - an epic Iron Throne that saved the following gigs.

But the story has no ending and Foo Fighters’ team created a limited edition of merch dedicated to this accident.

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SoundOut, TuneCore Track Smarts, ReverbNation Crowd Review, AudioKite, and Music Xray Compared

This is the story of a mediocre song. An objectively mediocre song. My song. Curse you, data!

If you’re looking for unbiased feedback on your latest track, you’ve got five options. Well, five-ish.

There’s SoundOut, which I wrote about way back in 2010.

Then there’s ReverbNation Crowd Review and TuneCore Track Smarts, both of which are powered by SoundOut.

Are all three SoundOut services the same? We’ll find out.

I reviewed AudioKite earlier this year, gushingly. A new and improved version launched just this month.

Finally, Music Xray offers a diagnostics feature, which presents your track to 5 music professionals and 20 potential fans.

Which is right for you?

Time for a good old-fashioned market research shootout!

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The Cyber PR Guide to Creating an Effective Music Marketing Plan (Part 3 of 3)

In creating an effective music marketing plan, so far we have discussed building a solid and complete online foundation and outlined strategies for a successful new release launch. Now it is time to kick back and relax for a little while before starting to write material for the next album that you’ll release a year or two down the road right…..Couldn’t be further from the truth!

To build off of all the progress you’ve been making up to this point, while you are working on that next record, you will have to keep supplying content on a consistent basis to strengthen your relationship and stay relevant with your current fans, and at the same time this content will also help to increase your fanbase.

Additional merchandise is one content idea, you can make vinyl for the last album or announce a new T-shirt design. Continue to release music videos for songs off the last album is another, for example take footage from the album release tour and edit to create an easy and fun music video to upload to your YouTube channel.

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What Artists Should Know About Next Big Sound

Perhaps you don’t sell too many albums on iTunes, or have that many SoundCloud plays or YouTube views. But maybe, just maybe, your music is really popular in some far off corner of the digital universe you never even knew about, and all that “exposure” you’ve racked up over the years is paying off behind the scenes.

Next Big Sound provides detailed online music analytics to measure the growth of bands on streaming services and social networks. It doesn’t cover everything, but it casts a wide enough net to shatter an artist’s dreams with cold, hard data. I know it did mine! <sniff> Cidney at NBS agreed to give me an artist credit for one month so that I could write this article, way back in April. Hopefully she’ll forget to downgrade my account.

Features

The screenshot above shows a dozen “key metrics” of my choosing. It’s an easy way to focus on what’s important to me, and not get bogged down in all those numbers. So for example, I could replace Rdio plays with Vine loops, Last.fm shouts, or unique pageviews of my website.

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Why Email Newsletters Are Still a Vital Marketing Tool for Musicians

This post originally appeared on the Bandzoogle blog. Dave Cool is the Director of Artist Relations for musician website & marketing platform Bandzoogle. Twitter: @Bandzoogle | @dave_cool

“Email newsletters, an old-school artifact of the web that was supposed to die along with dial-up connections, are not only still around, but very much on the march.”

That quote is from a recent New York Times article “For Email Newsletters, a Death Greatly Exaggerated”. We thought it was a good time to reiterate why we think email newsletters are still one of the most effective promotional tools for musicians today, which is also why Bandzoogle continues to offer a mailing list tool with all of our plans:

5 Solid Reasons to Use Email Newsletters

1) You own the list

For bands that have been around since MySpace was still a thing, remember all those fans you had? Well, MySpace owned their data, not you. If you didn’t get them signed-up to your mailing list, chances are you lost contact with many of them when you had to start over on Facebook.

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What Artists Should Know About AudioKite

Has this ever happened to you? You think you’ve written your best song yet, but an offhand remark from a friend plunges you into self-doubt. Wouldn’t it help to have feedback from music fans of your genre who have no incentive to sugar-coat their opinions?

Sure, you say! I’ll just use SoundOut, or ReverbNation Crowd Review (also powered by SoundOut). Unfortunately, my experience with SoundOut, and those of most of the commenters, left a lot to be desired. I’ve also received a mostly useless - but free - focus group from Music Xray, and even repurposed Jango aka Radio Airplay to create my own focus group.

AudioKite has built a better mousetrap. Here’s why:

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Self Publishing on YouTube

Everyone knows how important the YouTube platform is for indie musicians. It’s a great way to get your music out to fans, grow your fanbase, and provide your fans with great content from music videos to vlogs. There are plenty of musicians out there who have become successful mainly because of their YouTube channel, with Karmin and Pomplamoose being two of the most successful examples. They grew their audience by targeting young teens with covers of popular songs. Other musicians, like Alex Day, have based their career entirely on recorded music sales and a YouTube channel featuring music videos and hilarious vlogs.

However, there is another aspect of YouTube that is vastly underutilized by the musician community on the platform - publishing. You don’t need a publisher to get your music placed in YouTube videos. You just need to be proactive with social media and reach out to YouTubers you think would be interested in using your music with their creative content.

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How to Get a Wikipedia Page for Your Music

This post originally appeared on the Bandzoogle blog. Dave Cool is the Director of Artist Relations for musician website & marketing platform Bandzoogle. Twitter: @Bandzoogle | @dave_cool

Bandzoogle just implemented Google’s new Knowledge Graph format that allows our members to get their upcoming shows listed on the main search page when a fan does a Google search for them.

Though we provide the information to Google, we’re not in control of who they add to the listing. In their documentation, Google suggests that having a Wikipedia page will increase the chances of being listed.

Now, getting a page on Wikipedia isn’t a straightforward process, and there’s no guarantee of being able to get one. But if you follow their guidelines, you’ll give yourself a very good chance.

Here are the most important things to keep in mind when trying to setup a page for your band or music on Wikipedia:

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What Artists Should Know About ArtistLink

ArtistLink started as an extension of the Topspin Media platform, so that non-Topspin users could add content to the MTV Artists site. It’s well on its way to becoming the control panel for the music industry.

I encourage any artist with a release on Spotify to sign up for ArtistLink. All essential functionality is free. As of this writing, ArtistLink is basically four services rolled up into one. I’ll go over each, starting with the coolest.

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MusicThinkTank.com Weekly Recap: 4 Amazing Mobile Apps for Musicians and Composers

• Mackenzie Carlin | 4 Amazing Mobile Apps for Musicians and Composers

• Larry Butler | How to Get All The Cred of Playing at SXSW Without The Time and Expense

MusicThinkTank.com Weekly Recap: 4 Amazing Mobile Apps for Musicians and Composers

Seven Ways to Get a Little Bit Closer to Your Fans

This isn’t new information: People will like you if you make them feel special. INTIMACY, therefore, is one of the key ingredients in creating loyal followers and Superfans. How do you do this if you can’t give each one a gift or a hug? There are so many ways to get closer to your fans.

Here are some of the best ways to establish that warm connection:

SHARE PERSONAL STORIES

The usual blogs of musicians are mostly informative. They simply talk about their gigs and about their latest album. That’s okay since that’s necessary but blogging about those stuff alone won’t help you build any connection to your followers.  You have to share a bit of yourself to your followers even (especially!) the most shallow details of your everyday life.  Check out Amanda Palmer’s blog. The girl is an expert on this.

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