Attention Musicians: Please Stop Using Myspace!

 Musicians and independent record labels:  As a music reviewer and internet radio station operator, I have a heartfelt plea.  Please, please stop sending links in your press kits to your Myspace page.  As a reviewer, I often receive  dozens of submissions every day.  That means I have a lot of artists to choose from, since I only publish a few reviews every week.  With all that selection, do you really think I am going to try to listen to your music on a website where I am constantly bombarded with music players that don’t play, assaulted with pop up ads, and tortured with pages that take forever to load?  Quite honestly, I am going to simply skip over the press kit with the Myspace link, and review somebody that provides links to one of the numerous quality websites designed especially for musicians, such as ReverbNation, Bandcamp, or Soundcloud.  Myspace seems to be run by 5 year olds, and greedy, incompetent five year olds at that.  To any musician that wants to convey a sense of professionalism, I would recommend that the only thing one should post on their Myspace page is a link to an actual functioning website where fans and reviewers can have an enjoyable and simple listening experience.

Matt Hundley is a musician and creative director of www.IndieReviewer.com

Do You Really Need A Music Review?

Should you really go through the trouble of setting up a press kit, finding good music blogs, and submitting your music for a (Possibly negative) review?  The answer is a big, giant … maybe.  It all depends on the kind of music promotion you’re seeking.  So many artists will spend untold hours blindly sending EPKs out to hundreds of music blogs thinking that the resulting publicity will cause their popularity and career to skyrocket.  It’s a bit naive. (Some might call it stupid)  The reality is that the vast majority of music reviewing websites have a dedicated, but extremely small readership.  Most of the traffic to these sites comes from other musicians looking to promote their own music, and other music industry professionals. Simply sending all your music out will not by itself do much to benefit you, even if you are reviewed by several blogs.

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Get new fans on Google Plus

So you’ve got a great Google Plus profile set up, you have videos and links to your music posted, and you’re connecting with as many music industry professionals as possible. (If you don’t have a profile, you should). The next logical step is start converting other Google Plus users into rabid online fans of your music. There are two ways to go about this.

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Why you need to be on Google Plus now

The music blogs lately have been wallowing in pessimism about the new social network from Google. The general line of thought seems to be that Google + is yet another added burden along with Twitter, Facebook, that old website called Myspace, etc. However, Google Plus has several features that no other website or social network offers.

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