My Fans First Experiment

“I assume that there are 50,000 people on Earth that have heard of me before, 20,000 that can name one of my songs and maybe 100 people alive today who are genuine fans of mine who love what I do.  I want to spend all my time serving those 100 people” -Rob Jay

As an artist I’ve spent a sizeable amount of my time focusing on marketing myself.  I focused on making sure I was in the right blog, the right publication, followed the  right people on all of the various social networks.  I’d say at my peak of online promotion during my career I probably spent more time sending my music to blog sites than I did writing, recording, rehearsing and networking offline combined.  This was mid 2009, I was one of the first hip hop artists in Houston to embrace the idea of using blogs to introduce my music.  Back then it meant something to say that you had been featured in a nationally know hip hop blog.  Not to the people who count but to other rappers you could stick your chest out a little bit.  Fast forward 18 months or so and now there’s some free clothes, maybe some free bottles and some free beats, cool……….But guess what, there’s still only 40 people at my show.  I’m being featured in these national websites, Armed Forces Entertainment just spent $80,000 to send me overseas to perform for troops and in my home town I’m pulling 40 people on a great night.

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Why Facebook Is Not Your Marketing Hub

You spend a lot of time on Facebook. You’re spreading the word about your latest project, uploading songs and videos, networking with new friends. You’re building relationships with listeners or readers, and having great conversations you otherwise might have missed. In doing so, you’re creating a mountain of content — media, demographics, dialogue. The more you add to it, the more time you spend building and nurturing it, the more it is worth to you. And the closer to indispensable it becomes to you.

And as its value grows and grows… you control none of it.

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LinksWeaver - a service for anyone in the creative industries

A new service launches soon that brings together creative people from all backgrounds, creating partnerships and teams to help complete the great ideas and amazing projects that users come up with. Think Filmmaker needing a soundtrack or effects for his film, or someone with a great idea for an Ipad game needing skilled people to help them build it. Whatever your idea might be, LinksWeaver can help.

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When Access Feels Like Ownership

Remember the days when you used to lug your record collection from place to place that over time could fill a small bedroom? The advent of cassettes and CDs, not to mention VHS’s and DVD’s that we kept on shelves before being transferred to boxes in the garage didn’t change things much either but you were proud of your collection and investment. 

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A Brief History of The Music Industry

This blog looks at the history of the music industry, where the business of music started, how the three main parts of the industry evolved, and how we have got to the industry we know today. Hopefully, by the end of the blog you will know the differences between the live, publishing and recording industries as well as how they came to be.

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CrazyPellas.net Introduces New 'Pay As You Go' Platform to Sell Beats

CrazyPellas.net, the online music community, announces the launch of its new Pay As You Go platform to sell beats today. The CP Beats Store makes it easy to upload and sell new beats and give away free beats to new artists.

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Setting up a home studio

Setting up a home studio is an exciting and fun activity but when you are planning what equipment to get and allocating a budget it can sometimes be difficult choosing what to spend money on. Many of these questions will relate to whether you have a main instrument that you play. i.e. guitar or keyboards for example as without doubt your main focus will be around composing, playing, recording and mixing this very instrument.  

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Connecting Musicians

Here is an important initiative that you might like to join and share with friends ♪.

Musomap.com is a new website that enables musicians to plot themselves on a shared map of the world and connect. It sounds quite simple but it’s actually very effective, and it’s free!

In our first few weeks on-line 100’s of musicians have already made their mark on the map, many of whom are in search of a teacher or local ensemble.

Join us at Musomap.com to find out more about the musicians in your community.

Regards,

Kahne (Violin)

Founding Director @ Musomap.com

A musicians initiative. Developed by musicians, for musicians.

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Incubus Manager launching mentoring site for musicians

My name is Steve Rennie and I am a personal manager for a rock band called Incubus. I’m starting a new website called Renman Music and Business featuring weekly webisodes designed to help musicians and industry hopefuls get your head in the right place to do something great in the music business. Live weekly webcasts hosted by me and my cast of cronies with live call-ins from real people looking for a little help in trying to make their dreams come true. And a community site where musicians can post their works and talk about it with people who give a shit. Join Renman Music & Business for a no bull-shit look at how to navigate your way around the music biz. RENMAN MUSIC and BUSINESS (www.renmanmusicandbusiness.com) officially launches June 15th, 2012.

http://youtu.be/a0BJK4fgMgQ

Where most artists mess up when submitting to music blogs

This post actually started as a comment in response to a Music Think Tank post that questioned the value of seeking reviews from music blogs. Their rationale was mainly based on their low results after contacting relevant blogs on Hype Machine. As an independent music promoter and blogger, I’d like to make a few points, and hopefully you find them useful.

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Kickstarter versus Indiegogo

So as some of you who regularly read the blog know, I’m working up to doing some more stuff for fan funding projects.  I used Kickstarter last time & though my project was successful, I’m not sure that half the projects of my friends have been.  So I was looking around at IndieGoGo, which seems like the biggest competitor with Kickstarter for running fan funded projects.  So I wanted to let some people who might find it of interest know some of the reasons a person might want to use one over the other.

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Fans Are Like Friends – So How Do You Keep Your Friends?

One of the biggest challenges for a band or artist is to attract, engage and retain fans. When considering this challenge it appears there are clear parallels with the way we manage the relationships with our friends. So how do we maintain our circle or friends, and how can we apply these principles to attract, engage and retain fans?

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MaximalSound Evolves

Since 2010, MaximalSound.com offers an online audio optimization service. Based on a proprietary algorithm, this service allows indie productions, labels and musicians to release their tracks complying with the highest industry standard. This processing uses the same pattern as the human hearing. It supports every music genres from metal to hip-hop, from classical to country music.

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Music Powered Games Places Marketing Power of Mobile Games In Hands of Indie Artists

By Bobby Wells, CEO Music Powered Games

Music Powered Games announces Music Monsters Academy, the new mobile game app that lets artist entrepreneurs capitalize on the popularity of mobile games to sell their music and create mobile game revenues.  The app will allow thousands of indie artists to give their own custom version of the game to all their fans.  While playing the game on their iPhone or Android device, fans can buy the artist’s songs, buy the game levels for the songs, and share the artist’s game with their friends.  With one-third of people in the U.S. over 13 play mobile games monthly*, Music Monsters will give indie artists affordable access to nearly 100 million US consumers playing mobile games.

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