Live Music Blog

In light of the digital music revolution, Internet music stores are swiftly finding themselves irrelevant. Now that customers are able to conveniently purchase individual songs from I-Tunes and other sellers of digital downloads, customers need a really wonderful reason to purchase an entire CD. After all, if you only prefer one song, why pay for everything else? The following article will suggest some creative examples that Internet music stores could use to ramp up their sales.

1. provide Sample Music Clips: This seems obvious, but it is amazing how few stores actually provide this. Virtually all individuals want to try it before they buy it, so offering a 30 second sample of tunes will greatly increase sales.

2. Search by Song Title: a lot of Web music stores discover that customers frequently search by song title when they can’t remember the artist or album name they’re looking for. Adding a search by song feature (or better yet, search by lyrics) can dramatically increase the chances that your customer will find what he is looking for.

3. Visitor Reviews & Ratings: A short paragraph written by a professional music reviewer is simply not enough. Customers want to know what other “normal” people think about the CD. Let them rate and write their own reviews of a CD. This will empower your visitors and produce a sense of Web community.

4. Show Them What is New: Do not make your visitors sort through tons of pages just to find a new release. Show them what’s new from the start. Many visitors don’t know exactly what they are looking for, so a suggestion would be much appreciated. For instance, C28’s Christian Music retailer shows highlights of a compact discs of Christian Music on their home page.

5. News Section: Keeping your customers informed about what’s new and upcoming will produce a buzz around your new releases. Having a news section is a wonderful way to get your customers excited about upcoming music. like it or not, digital music is here to stay. World Wide Web music stores must find a way to evolve or they will briskly find themselves irrelevant. If properly implemented, the suggestions above will serve as a good starting point for starting this evolution and in the end, will hopefully increase sales.

The Web has revolutionized the way we do business. You may start an Internet business for less than $100.00 and start earning a decent amount of income off of it. Because of this, there has been an explosion in the ‘ Web Marketing’ world. I do not consider myself an Web marketer, but I have studied many of them and have learned some ‘out of the box’ techniques that you may simply apply towards bands. Here are just a few of the many suggestions I may give you:

• Give 1st One way to get something from other is to give to them 1st. In music, one way to build a fan base is to performance at Clubs that do not charge a cover and invite individuals to come as your guest. You definately don’t want to performance a lot of Clubs for free, so you need to somehow communicate that you are doing this for your fans in the absence of saying it outright. You can say, “Hey guys, just to show you are appreciation, Flaming Onions would like to individual ly invite you to this special concert just for you! It is totally free, so bring your companions and we will see you there!” They will come, because they believe that this is a gift from you and the won’t want to miss out!

Yet another way to give 1st is through our products. Giving away products has gotten a lot easier since the development of the Internet. Digital music is HUGE! Better yet, it costs nothing to duplicate.

Have you thought about giving away one or two songs from your new album? What do you think would happen if you did, and left your fan’s preferreds available only if they purchased it? first of all, they’re going to love the fact that you gave them part of your album for free! It is al most like a free trial that they get to keep. Because you were willing to do this for them, they will be more like ly to buy it from you. Give first, and they will give back to you!

• Cross-selling/Up-selling Have you ever gone to McDonalds, ordered a burger and received the question, “Would you prefer fries with that?” Have you ever ordered one of their worth meals and received the question “Would you prefer to Super-Size that?” What you heard, while innocent enough, was an amazing marketing idea that has been used by Web merchants all over the place !

It’s a way to increase sales to the same customer (who has bought a product) by introducing other products in your product range. If customers buy a Flaming Onions compact disc, you could ask If they want to buy a Flaming Onions t-shirt as well.

Seems simple enough, but let’s think a little more out of the box. Let’s say the Flaming Onions’ CD sells for $15 and brings in a profit of $10 per album. Let’s likewise assume that their tee shirts sell for $10 and bring in a profit of $6 per shirt.

What Assuming that the Flaming Onions Value Pack (consisting of 1 autographed CD, 1 tshirt, and the album emailed to them in MP3 format with bonus track for their iPod and a desktop background pic for their computer ) sells for $25? I am willing to bet that this approach sells more. The digital products, as I mentioned above, cost hardly anything to duplicate.

You profit would be the same, but I guarantee you would sell more!

• Email List This is probably the most important tool that’s used by Internet companies. Web Marketers swear by email lists and base many, if not all, of their systems around them. The concept is easy, you offer a list for fans to keep track of your performer and all they have to do is give you their Name and email address.

You now have a way to directly communicate to them, and better yet, they wanted it! You can encourage upcoming shows and album releases. You can create contests and drawings for those that are signed up. You can give those who are signed up a special discount on merchandise. The possibilities are endless. One thing to recall is to only send them things they would want to know. They signed up to hear more about you, so they don’t want to receive any forwards stating that If they sign up for this offer, they can receive a free laptop, blah, blah, blah! Do not abuse your list. Take care of them. This is an elite group of people who wanted to be a part of your success, so treat them that way.

In Internet music promotion, word of mouth, or more precisely, viral marketing is an extremely compelling tool. Who wouldn’t want to be one of the lucky few people to capture notoriety, just by creating something people contemplate cool?

You could furthermore create fun digital gifts for your music marketing campaign.

Whether, the materials you create go viral or not does not really matter. What matters is that your audiences have something that makes them benefit you more. The stuff you’re about to learn contains things they may make part of their everyday lives.

Let us do this.

1) Mp3s – the obvious choice – a lot of performers are exceedingly resistant to giving away songs. However, if you want your music to spread out you need to give your fans your best, all the time! Do not forget “garbage in – garbage out”.

If listeners like your tunes they will put them on their iPods and on their phones. And they will share with their companions.

Plus they will come back for more. That’s when you make your sale.

2) Ringtones – Most phones now guide mp3 ring tones. You may efficiently use the perfect parts of your tunes to make cool ring tones. Make clips about 15 to 30 seconds long and you’ve ring tones ready to go!

You might download Audacity free sound editing software from audacity.sourceforge.net/

3) Wallpapers – These can be made for both your listeners ‘ phones and their PC’s. You may make them using free software prefer Gimp. If you may afford Adobe Photoshop, that’s wonderful too.

You can likewise visit mytinyphone.com to produce and even upload your wallpaper. Who knows, it can just end up developing into a top download!

This is it for now. Watch out for the second part where I will demonstrate for you more ways to produce viral marketing gifts for your Internet music promotion.

Less than four months ago, Lee Douglas began to translate his love for the music of the 50’s and 60’s lovingly called Oldies, into a new medium, the podcast. Together with the folks at Talkshoe.com, he began his venture into the new medium.

His new show, which he called “Old Time Rock n Roll, would be different in the way it has been presented.

The usual playlists that are the venue mark of the Oldies AM radio stations were out the window. His own collection of 12,000 songs would be digitized onto his computer to lay the groundwork for the show. Instead of playing those songs which the oldies lovers had grown tired of, he opened his collection and played the songs that haven’t been heard for many years. Then he’d have a spotlight for each show, Novelties on one, doo wops on another, rockabilly on yet another. Each one with a dose of rock history and reminiscing.

He researches each singer and each song to offer background for each show. So in November he went on the air on talkshoe.com. The first week he had 8 audiences. Obviously,his friends had at least listened. By the third week he managed 80 audiences, still quite a jump. However, he has been un prepared for the next week when out of nowhere 800 individuals listened in.

Since then with advertising on a few classified website s, the show has continued to grow and grow, breaking all types of records on the Web and the website itself.

Now just 4 months later, an impressive 25,000 listeners have logged in to his show, in one month.

His gateway web site http://www.wrestlingwrap.com, which used to serve as his flagship wrestling show web site and portals to his own promotion, now is the host to Old Time Rock n Roll.

His Brooklyn bred voice could still be heard even though he has been a Floridian for many years. He actually still takes requests and dedications just like in the old days through his e mail address -Oldtimernr@hotmail.com-

Where does he go from here? His plans are to as he puts it, “take it the next level.”

He states he would like to garner an even larger fans and eventually try his hand at bringing some live oldies and doo wop shows around the country. But that is a long way off.

His focus is to make Old Time Rock n Roll n Roll even bigger and better with each passing week. With his success also means success to his pod casting network called Talkshoe.com. Douglas predicts that Talkshoe will be the biggest thing in podcasting in 2007 and beyond.

1. Create A Search Engine Friendly, easy, but Effective website. Don’t overpay or use excessive flash animation. (Flash Animation is bad for ranking in the search engines)

2. Start a MySpace! Join MySpace Music Groups and get the word out. Network and add as many companions as possible. Then do Bulletins and Messages to all your companions about shows, new songs, etc. There are even “FriendBlaster” programs you can get to add massive companions to your companions list.

3. Make your tunes, pictures, bio effortlessly available both on your MySpace and web site.

4. Upload your songs to as a lot of performer promotion web sites as possible. last.fm, ourstage.com, American idol underground, to name a few. Do a search, there are dozens of places to upload your songs for free or for a small fee.

5. Advertise on Free Classifieds such as Craigslist. Craigslist has a artists section where you may post information on upcoming shows and parties, or establish links to your MySpace or website directly from Craigslist using hyperlink HTML code or just by placing http:// in front of your website address. furthermore try UsFreeAds, and other similar services where you may get 100 % Free listings.

6. Write Expert Articles and submit them to EzineArticles.com, GoArticles, and other Article Directories. Write in the music category about something you have knowledge of, and then you get a moment to include a link to your web site at the bottom, where you may ask people to listen to your songs or visit your webpage or MySpace.

7. Network on Musicians Forums and Message Boards. Just search for music forums, and talk to others. You may generally include a tagline with your MySpace or web site address. The more traffic to your web site the better.

Don’t forget ! The idea is to get as many people interested long enough to listen to your music, and perhaps come out to a show or tell a person about the song. The way you do this On-line is by getting as many people to play an mp3, which oftentimes will be done on a promotional website that you produce a profile on, or by a person who has visited your website or MySpace as a result of your marketing effort s. Get as many people as possible to your webiste by creating as many links as possible, and by telling as many people as you can about the band, the music, etc.

You ought to additionally be familiar with the process of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) which might help bring in “organic” traffic to your website. But one of the most necessary factors to this, is links to your website, which is what we have discussed here. You might additionally utilize Pay Per Click in Google AdWords or Yahoo! Search Marketing if you have a band that’s essential a business, i.e. you performance for pay, performance at marriages etc.

Thanks to the Web, it’s easier than ever for new bands and artists to be located and to sell their music directly to fans. How do you get started and what has the optimum way to encourage your band? Here are some tips:

One of the first places you’ll want to vis it’s MySpace. By now, everyone has heard of it and millions and millions of people have their own accounts. But I bet you did not know that MySpace offers a special kind of account just for promoting a performer or artist? It is called MySpace Music and it’s completely free to sign up. With this kind of account, you may add up to 4 full tunes to your account for people to listen to while they’re reading your MySpace page. This alone makes a MySpace Music page worthwhile to session up, since getting people to listen to and discover your music is the central goal of the majority new musicians. Include a link to buy your CD from your own website, iTunes or other music store and you have got a great way to increase sales.

If an individual likes the music on your profile, they might add your band as a friend, which means they might get email notices when you add a blog or send out a bulletin. Blogging on MySpace.com is one of the best ways to communicate with your audiences (friends), when your band has a tour coming up, an appearance, is working on new music or has any news of any kind, you’ll want to post it to your blog and keep your audiences up to date. The more your communicate with audiences, the more they will feel like a part of your community.

In addition, you may take advantage of a multitude of other options, including listing your influences, adding a picture gallery, adding full videos, adding banners and a lot of other options.

Just be sure to log in ofttimes to approve new friends and to communicate with other members. There are additionally a lot of MySpace.com Groups you can join where a message board is set up for members to communicate. Joining an emerging performer type group would advocate you to network with other new artists and even to encourage each other, discuss new ways to get new listeners, find a person to tour with or even to collaborate with.

Yet another essential step to promoting your music Online is to have your own website. While MySpace is excellent, it is optimum to have as many a Clubs of promotion as possible. It can be easy, with just a bit about your performer and links to buy your album or it can be a major presence loaded with content. The more content you add and the more a number of times you update your website and your MySpace profile, the better, as people will keep coming back to see your fresh content and news. Some elements to think about adding to your band’s website include biographies of the members, history of the band, news section, tour dates and appearance schedule, photos, music videos, sample songs to download, wallpapers, icons, ringtones, links to buy your album or merchandise, discography and anything else you want to let people know about. You’ll furthermore want to link your website to your MySpace and vice versa.

Traditional radio airplay, standard brick and mortar distribution and being signed by a major record label are no longer the only means of getting your music noticed. Thanks to digital distribution and the massive appeal and easy access to the Internet, unknown musical skill now has a occasion at real success. Additionally the indie artist isn’t stuck with the expenses of making an entire compact disc. They might make a single and post it on the Internet, gaining large success from one song.

With a little know how and marketing sensibility any upstart performer or experienced musical act might now achieve success, exceptional success in fact on their own. Recently, while a guest on the Sirius Satellite Radio Show The Good Life, I spoke with the host who related me that his two teenage boys get the majority of their music off the Web and never listen to regular radio anymore.

Why? Because they might capture music from acts they wouldn’t be allowed to listen to on traditional radio. They’re tired of the same old artists and singers being played over and over again. “ Virtually all don’t have any talent ; they’re just showpieces.” This isn’t the first or the last time I’ve heard that statement from teenagers and adults a like.

For the indie musician who wants to reach a expansive er market (and you must have a wonderful product) and receive more exposure for their product on the Internet, the 1st thing you need to do is market, guerrilla market and then market some more. How do you do that? There are a lot of ways that I mention in my book, The Indie Guide to Music, Marketing and Money, but here are a few easy suggestions:

• Join music boards and start in on the discussion. At the end of each of your posts make sure to put who you’re and your web site. Add something to the conversation, don’t spam. Write stimulate ful hints and post them on the boards, etc. If the boards don’t allow tags but they do allow you to post your email address, make sure it is something with your web site at the end. Have a real email address but DON’T use your central email because it will be spammed. Something prefer mine: raeofhope@jacirae.com

• Establish networking at Local/Regional artist meetings and songwriter/ artists forums in your region. You can find them on the Internet. These meetings host artists such as yourself who gathering on a regular basis to discuss the music scene and present their latest creations. It is additionally a wonderful place to get the pulse on concert you can join in on and new marketing ideas.

• You know all that annoying spam snail mail you receive with pre-paid postage envelopes inside? Why not save the envelopes and put a little note inside that states since they were kind enough to share their information with you, you are returning the favor. also, with any bill or any correspondence you send out that’s official, include a one sheet or little card that has a blurb about you and your music (watch the weight; you don’t want to add more postage). Ensure to put your website on whatever material you have.

• Start your own podcast and post it on all the podcast web site s.

• Why not send your music to varying podcasts. Ask permission first. Send them to your web site where they may hear a sample or two; and If they’re receptive to playing your music on their podcast, send it along. If they use your music in their podcast, you may have gained new fans and sold more CD s.

The most necessary thing you could do is to play live. Go to Wal-Mart, Starbucks and other Local shops and ask if you could put on a free performance there. Anywhere and any place that will let you play, do! Ensure to have a sign up sheet where individuals could sign up for your newsletter. Then establish a newsletter and send it out once a month at the most. This is a form of “Buzz Marketing” furthermore known as “Viral Marketing.” At the end of the letter make sure you include your webpage of course. Tell your fan base they could pass it along to whoever they want.

This is a extraordinarily very tiny list of things you may do. The time for the indie musician is now. Take advantage of it!

Jaci Rae’s grit and determination have brought her from an impoverished childhood to a career as an award-winning singer, No. 1 perfect -selling author and entrepreneur who’s toured around the world. Jaci shares her down-to-earth recommenndation as the relationship advisor/expert/dating coach for igniteromance.com, savvymiss.com, lovingyou.com, loveisgreat.com and lsinglescafe.net

She is the author of The Independent Guide to Music, Marketing and Money, as well as Winning Points With The Woman In Your Life One Touchdown At A Time, Shop for a Day with Jaci Rae How to Get Almost Anything for Free (not published yet) and Collista’s Search for the True Meaning of Christmas (not published yet).

1) Screen savers – these are really cool because people vary their screensavers a lot. And they really spread fast if people like them because they’re effortlessly exposed. You might visit freesaver.com for a range of tools to make them. For Mac users you might try iScreensaver Designer. Screensaver making software doesn’t cost much ( oftentimes about $29). Definitely worth every penny.

2) MySpace layouts – Why don’t you make MySpace layouts for your listeners? This encourages you big time because everybody who visits their profile sees your band! It is as cool as someone wearing your band T-Shirt. You can not be good with CSS( that is what is used to make layouts). You can visit http://www.picgames.com/forum/myspace-layout-editor.php or make-myspace.com to create the layouts and make them downloadable from your website.

3) Phone videos – You know how individuals like watching little videos on their cell phones. You can effortlessly establish little performance videos (or your music video if you have one) and make them available to your audiences. There a lot of incredibly cheap cell phone video converters out there. Just Google the term and you’ll get a lot of choices. Possibly your phone came with a disc that has a converter.

4) Games and widgets – All right, so this one is a bit more complex. You could create a cool game using Flash (or get someone to do it). individuals could embed it on their web sites and profiles. If you upload it to a web site like newgrounds.com you could literally get thousands of visitors to your performer web site in a matter of days!

You can even be the central hero of the game. Imagine how cool that would make you!

Here are some quick suggestions to make your viral promotional materials stronger;

Sex sells

This is true but don’t overestimate it. You’re selling your music not your body.

Having said that make sure you look attractive in the pictures and videos you use. You can furthermore show off your body a little but do not over do it. It can not give you the results you want.

Be larger than life

Whatever you do, make sure it is something your audiences may look up to or aspire to be. If you present yourself as “just another individual ” that’s how you will be perceived. I am sure you may imagine many tips to make you look even cooler than you already do.

Do not forget ; in show business perception is reality.

Label your stuff!

Make sure you performer name or better still website address can be apparent ly seen on all your materials. That way, when fans prefer your promotional materials they know where they could get more.

Virtually nothing would be more annoying to you, than getting a lot of downloads and people forgetting where they got them from.

Put quest into it

Individuals make the mistake of thinking viral marketing is about doing nothing and getting a lot in return.

Your audiences must find pleasure in whatever it’s you’re giving them.

You furthermore have to make sure you create stuff that truly represents your band image. Yes, it will take some time and resolution. If you don’t believe in it don’t do it!

Be original but a bit “generic”

Your promo materials ought to stand out but in a way that fits you type of. You know optimum what kind of things your fans like. Creating images and logos that individuals naturally drift to in your type of will make your work spread faster.

You can even make screensavers or wallpapers that only contain themes your listeners like and efficiently put your name or Web URL on them!

Promoting your music Web has never been as simple as it’s now. In 2008. And for audiences and performers a like, this is incredibly exciting.

Why’s music promotion easier now for the average artist, band and songwriter? Why was it hard before?

There are two key reasons why music promotion was hard before.

first ly, music production and distribution has been largely the domain of five extensive record companies.

Between them they controlled a catalogue of some 3.5 millions songs (2004). This catalogue of songs took over seven decades to compile. And they were only rising their catalogue by a negligible 36,000 or so albums annually.

Secondly, their power has been based on controlling an offline based, bricks and mortar music business where audiences purchased expensive CD’s from record shops.

How easy do you think it was to get your songs noticed, produced blockbuster-marketed in those times?

Why’s it easier now?

Mark Vidler, of Go Home Productions in the United Kingdom (UK), summarizes the advantages of the new music environment.

“You don’t need a distributor, because your distribution is the Web. You don’t need a record label, because it is your bedroom, and you don’t need a recording studio, because that’s your PC. You do it all yourself.

In just 37 words, a artist has just told you what things have change d.

Web marketing pioneer, Mark Joyner, observes on his simple ology blog that You don’t need a label. You don’t need an agent. You don’t even need a very big budget. Some people do this on a zero-dollar ad budget.”

In just 27 words, a marketing maven has given you three success secrets for promoting your music Web.

Let us put the experts aside for a second and bring it back to you, the songwriter, the artist, looking to make music to share with fans.

In the beginning when you’re holding down a day job, scores and 100’s of audiences will make you feel famous.

When you have played to hundreds then you will want to performance to thousands of listeners. When thousands have viewed your videos or downloaded your music, then it will feel normal to shoot for millions of video views, downloads and sales.

And you know what? In the Web age, going for millions of fans is just that: normal.

Let’s look at just one specific Internet development that underlines the new normal.

MySpace.com started in February 1999. In February 2008, MySpace.com has musician profiles numbering 13.4 millions. Musicians typically register for three profiles so 13.4 million profiles actually represents around 4.45 millions musicians and bands.

That is quite a few.

Each profile offers their visitor an average three songs to listen to. Which means that on MySpace.com alone, there are about 13.4 million songs posted.

That is 13.4 million songs.

Did you notice what just happened? In nine years (less than one decade) MySpace.com has compiled more tunes faster than the record companies.

Virtually four times more songs seven times faster!

What a record company nightmare. Worse, this is only one Website that’s buried them. What about all the other music web site s?

iTunes for example, are up to a million paid music downloads. Daily.

Has the game change d or has the game change d?

Has promoting your music Web just got easier or has it just got easier?