Live Music Blog

Even if you are currently sleeping on your buddy’s couch, you may encourage your performer with little or no money. ( You will need a computer and Web access)

Free music marketing (as the name suggests) doesn’t fee money, but it will take some time, creative and determination. Ready?

1. Get an Email Account. Free email accounts are available from Gmail, Hotmail or many other web-based email companies. Simply go to their homepage and sign up for an account, and you’ll be up and going in minutes.

2. Get a MySpace.com Page. You can get the performer a MySpace.com web site for free. There you can also load up some of your songs, photos, etc. Once you have your web site up email all your friends and listeners to come check it out and add them to your friend list. You can then contact them all at once to announce future gigs, song releases, etc.

3. Get Something to Sell. You can’t make any money if you don’t have anything to sell. When you are playing performances, even free ones can make you money by selling stuff to the audiences. Make sure you have copies of your music on compact disc or a flash drive to sell. You can additionally sell merchandise with your band’s name and logo on it. You can do this Internet for free by session ting up a virtual storefront at CaféPress.com. They’ll give you a little retailer front web site and show how your logo looks on multiple items you select. Once a person buys the stuff, they handle all the billing and shipping and send you a check.

4. Get a Sponsor. No, not an AA sponsor! I mean a business sponsor who will give your band resources to encourage their company. Establish off by looking for “Angel” sponsors. These might be parents, grandparents or companions of the family who have a little extra resources to invest in your career. Then look to businesses who would benefit from advertising to the fans you will be playing to. Auto dealers, clothing stores, soft drink or beer distributors, are additionally a nice prospects. Show them that their resources will be going directly into the creation of the marketing materials, and not the band beer fund! For instance, you put their logo with yours on T-shirts, flyers, posters, banners, etc., in ex differ for them paying for the cost of creating those pieces.

5. Alert The Media. Contact Regional radio and TV station and offer to performance any on or off air events or events they are having. You may or may not get paid this time, but having your name on the minds and lips of the Regional movers and shakers may only endorse your career. With a little work you may market your music for free and keep all the rewards yourself. people are doing this right now, and so may you. You just need to choose up several marketing tips, tricks and techniques prefer the pros use.

A year ago, I wrote a passionate article on the merits of charging $15 when you sell your compact disc s. Some of my reasonings included: It’s tough for indie artists and you have a nice music, so don’t short- change yourself; you could always discount the compact disc for special reasons (2-for-1 special); and, the “high” sales prices furthermore includes your many costs. I made several addendums, but that is the gist of it.

But now, if you head over to http://mp3.com/thebards and check out the Brobdingnagian Bards page at MP3.com, you’ll notice something kinda hypocritical…none of our compact discs are priced at $15! What gives??

Well 1st let me say, yes, I do still believe in a $15.00 sales price for many artists. Certainly, it works optimum for folk artists, and singer/songwriter types. But my reason is not hypocrisy it is a dramatic differ in our marketing plan.

You see, when all of us started out, I knew that the only “real” income available to indie artists comes from CD sales and merchandising since royalties from ASCAP and BMI are a joke. So our plan was to record every six months or less and put out new material. By then end of final summer the indie process was leaving us drained, and all of us were thinking all of us overextended. Then along comes MP3.com.

One of the things I have been raving about for the past few months is that MP3.com provides a new marketing model by provide ing “royalties” for listens to your music. And if you’re getting paid from people listening to your music. Then it needs to be quickly available right?

Well, we have followed the footsteps of many of the top MP3.com musicians and have about 40-50 tracks available on our web site and more are coming every week. In doing so, all of us make a solid $20 a day from our web site.

Now with each listen, the songs are tracked on MP3.com on their music charts. You sell a CD, the songs on that CD will rocket up the charts. So you want the CDs to sell, because higher charting equals higher payback. As a result, our low price on MP3.com.

Now think for a second. If you’ve 40 songs on your web site like the Hillbilly Hellcats, you are the majority like ly going to make your 15 unique listens because your songs are located all over the charts. There are plenty of songs to pick from. Accordingly the new marketing model no longer relies on CD sales of $15.00, but listens. When you realize that you open yourself up to a whole slew of, in my opinion, simple marketing tactics that will make you more money from listens than selling CDs from your web site.

I know this all seems simplistic, but the vast reality is most performers on MP3.com are still running their performer with an older marketing model that does not yield the highest payback. So think about that for a bit, and next week, I have a guest writer who will give you an interesting promotional idea that might send your listens over the top. Then the week following that, I am going to betray my secret that has my song “Tolkien” at #35 on all MP3.com…

Stay tuned. Same bard time. Same bard channel!

Music marketing is by and large c hall enging for the majority musicians, that’s something all of us need to realise. Marketing yourself, being confident to allow people to listen to your tracks and the majority important ly, handling criticism takes a bit of time to get used to. In the majority of cases though, marketing plans do fail. you might have a wonderful sounding track, but if it is not marketed properly then it will just be white noise.

Nonetheless all is not lost.

The primary reasons why music marketing fails is that

1) there is always some resources involved, and

2) we market our music.

They all sound a bit strange. That I understand, but my plan is for you to get over these hurdles and to get your music out there without any hassle. I will take each of the above points in turn, but remember they are interlinked:

1) Money marketing. This is bad. The economics of this is so: you’ve to sell slot of tracks to get back the amount you spent on marketing, then you need to sell a few more to make any profit. The problems is, why are all of us spend ing so much money on music marketing, or, why are all of us spend ing any money on marketing at all?! The Web has greatly decrease d the fee of marketing by 100 percent. Yep, marketing ought to be free, then any tracks that you do sell is pure profit. There are so a lot of music marketing strategies, some of which are simple ideas that are not being utilised.

Here are some fantastic free marketing strategies are not being used, at all. How about leaflet distribution, flyers, making a mailing list then advertising your new tracks on that (they already like your tracks because they have signed upto your mailing list). Applying to competitions will always bring in some much necessitated traffic as competitions generate 1) leads and interest from the host website, 2) your tracks will get viral marketed just if it has become in the top 3. Viral marketing is just another way of spreading interest, all the individuals who voted for your tracks will recommend the wonderful track that they heard, and you name spreads. 3) You might always advertise the fact that you got in first, second or third in X competition (always state how many other competitors were there as well- coming third out of four entries is nothing to encourage really).

Doubtlessly the ultimate advertising strategy is…give away your MP3s for FREE! A easy technique that promotes your tracks. people then trust you, they love quality items, they assume then, “hmm, if this is free, and it’s wonderful, what would his selling tracks be like?” Free stuff sells pay wonderful s, fact. Give away alot of free stuff…MP3s being the main one, and then be patient.

Once you have finished your free marketing, start again. Just keep on promoting yourself by free processes. It gets your name banded around, people will see your Webpage link and click on it growing your traffic. It might not too successful in the first few months or might be even a year, but stick with it, gaining visitor confidence will best ly prevail.

2) The above is great, but why would anybody at all buy any track from you in the first place? To most surfers you’re faceless, they don’t see you on the music videos, so why should they buy anything from you?

Harsh words I understand, I am sorry, but it is true. That is the real reason why there are thousands of wonderful groups and performers out there in Web land marketing away, invest ing cash and showing hardly anything for it. They marketed first, wanting cash, and their visitors are literally saying “I do not think so”. You then become the banner ad- looks really wonderful, but never gets the click.

What you need to do is create content within your web site. easy as that. without content you are just another web site that the visitor has no real reason to come back to. Content likewise boosts the opportunitys of you being select ed up by the search engines. Please note:Google, and the other big search engines have stated that their thousands of calculations per web site includes content search. This is a fundamental statement, even if you are a music web site giving away your MP3s.

If you’ve ever looked for MP3s within the search engines, there are about six million websites dedicated to the term MP3. Next, your one website has to be found by a visitor, the chances are profoundly low. However, if your website has content focused keywords, such as ” wonderful guitar riffs”, “how to gig” etc, then you will be pick ed up much effortlessly than a easy MP3 search. Within the various pages that you’ve created you put, “download free guitar MP3s” or something that suits your music, and you then advertise your MP3s through the “back door”. Content will furthermore bring back the visitors, they love a website that they’re interested in, they sign up to your news-letter, and then you email them with new updates, your new MP3s etc. Then you start to produce your own little buzz, you produce individuals willing to listen to your tracks.

A sideline to content is always relevant, up-to-date content. provide ing tapes with your tracks on is music marketing suicide. I have seen these actually being provide ed on some website s. provide ing a tape states that 1. You are not up-to-date hence your sounds will not be, 2. You are provide ing poor quality, hence your tracks will not shine, and 3. You have to pay out for the tape (postage and packaging etc). people on the Web want things now, not tomorrow, provide ing MP3s, even short WAV files is giving the visitor what they want- immediate access to your tracks.

Relevant content is just as necessary as current content. If you have a rock website stick to rock related Internet pages. If I has been into hip-hop I wouldn’t go onto your rock website and look at hip-hop related articles. I know that this seems obvious, but scarily this has been done. It additionally has another effect. The search engines see topic specific websites as just that, topic specific. If you stray away from your chosen topic it will not look good for you with the engines. They’ll see that your relevance has lower d and so to will your page ranking.

Content isn’t that simple to accomplish. It comes with time, you need to tweak, track whether that has done any nice to your traffic or click throughs. You may likewise just be writing alot of drivel. Content needs to be “Search Engine Focused”, you need to honestly persuade individuals to buy from you, you need to have a one to one style ( prefer you’re talking to a friend), and definitely not be boring. Nearly forgot, you need to assess who your fans is. Are they young, middle aged, technophobic? You writing style should cater for your fans. For example, a young fans will prefer more colour, more tech information, a friendly banter, and up-to-date chart acts. Generally if you write as you would talk to a friend then you’ll be on safe lines.

Even if you’re currently sleeping on your buddy’s couch, you can encourage your performer with little or no money. ( You’ll need a computer and Web access)

Free music marketing (as the name suggests) does not cost money, but it will take some time, creative and determination. Ready?

1. Get an Email Account. Free email accounts are available from Gmail, Hotmail or a lot of other web-based email businesses. Simply go to their homepage and sign up for an account, and you’ll be up and going in minutes.

2. Get a MySpace.com Page. You could get the band a MySpace.com website for free. There you could furthermore load up some of your tunes, photos, etc. Once you’ve your website up email all your friends and fans to come check it out and add them to your friend list. You could then contact them all at once to announce future shows, song releases, etc.

3. Get Something to Sell. You can’t make any money if you don’t have anything to sell. When you’re playing gigs, even free ones could make you money by selling stuff to the listeners. Ensure you’ve copies of your music on compact disc or a flash drive to sell. You could additionally sell merchandise with your band’s name and logo on it. You could do this Internet for free by session ting up a virtual storefront at CaféPress.com. They’ll give you a little store front website and show how your logo looks on multiple items you select. Once someone buys the stuff, they handle all the billing and shipping and send you a check.

4. Get a Sponsor. No, not an AA sponsor! I mean a business sponsor who will give your performer money to encourage their company. Start off by looking for “Angel” sponsors. These might be parents, grandparents or friends of the family who have a little extra money to invest in your career. Then look to companies who would value from advertising to the audiences you’ll be playing to. Auto dealers, clothing stores, soft drink or beer distributors, are also a wonderful prospects. Show them that their money will be going directly into the creation of the marketing materials, and not the performer beer fund! By way of example, you put their logo with yours on T-shirts, flyers, posters, banners, etc., in ex change for them paying for the fee of creating those pieces.

5. Alert The Media. Contact Local/Regional radio and television station and provide to play any on or off air parties or parties they’re having. You could or could not get paid this time, but having your name on the minds and lips of the Local/Regional movers and shakers could only advocate your career. With a little work you could market your music for free and keep all the rewards yourself. individuals are doing this right now, and so could you. You just need to pick up a few marketing tips, tricks and techniques prefer the pros use.

Now testimonials have got a wonderful reputation, generally…well see for yourself, this is one persons view of this actual article:

Wow, I didn’t realise how easy it can be to implement this music marketing technique! R.G, Chicago.

What is the problem with this? Well for one, it’s made up. I just done it. And two…who on earth is R.G?

Now this is what I automatically contemplate when I go through any website, be it musical or not. The problem comes in the fact that most testimonials are just too distant.

Sure people could put a Internet address down and even a picture. It does actually help a huge amount. It makes you less distant, and now more reliable. Nonetheless, all of us are now in the 21st Century and our selling techniques ought to really keep up with the technology on offer.

The technology? That’s Flash. Now I’ve said in the past that a Website shouldn’t be made out of Flash…with the central reason being the search engines won’t pick it up. But Flash is such a easy tool that it must be integrated into our Websites for us to stand a slightest chance of selling anything.

So what do we need to do?

1st up is to actually embed Flash into our web sites so that it’s easy to work, like ably free, looks nice, easy to session up and more than anything…fool proof for the user.

Now I have searched high and low for a flash player that meets those demands (I couldn’t tell you how many I have downloaded), and I have found one. Now I think that it is a traversty that this software hasn’t been shouted about.

You need a player- MP3 or Video (which may be found at this address: www.jeroenwijering.com. All you need to do is download either a movie player, or an MP3 player, upload the many players components to your web site, upload an MP3 or Flash movie file (FLV), then tell the wizard (which may be found at this address: http://www.jeroenwijering.com/extras/wizard.html) where everything is stored. It’ll automatically give you the code. You copy and then paste it in to the source section of your HTML where you want the player…and thats it.

Simple.

As a side note: You see all of us ought to do everything ourselves so that all of us are not reliant on any other service. Youtube has a habit of stopping videos overnight, their quality is poor and it looks prefer all of us are cheap. Sure use YouTube for traffic generation and generating leads, but I wouldn’t use it to sell on my web site – it is not professional only if you are selling DVDs or software. Doubts will go into customers minds about your products quality…and the sale will walk away. There are likewise dedicated movie web sites that charge per month…but all of us want to lower our money output. So what do all of us do?

So the perfect way is to be clever at the start and buy a Web hosting package that is cheap yet plentiful. Just be careful about your monthly bandwidth. Most hosting businesses now provide incredible bandwidth solutions/ month so you should not worry about that. I am with Superb World Wide Web Hosting who give me bandwidth of 750GB/ month…which is more than ample and at a normal hosting price. I don’t need specific video hosting, poor quality free hosting and I don’t need to pay anymore cash…bargain!

Anyway what do we actually do with our Flash players?

Ahh, I’m glad that you asked. Now this is what your competition are not doing. You see you could record customers reactions to your music (especially at a concert ) and place these as testimonials.

Promote gigs by recording previous performance s/ shows. Then question some of the goers before and after to see what they think? Promise them a free ticket, T-Shirt, compact disc  etc for their trouble. If you get some bad reviews (which may happen), edit them out.

If you’re friendly with your testimonial makers, why not get them to do a short piece on your stuff? Only a handful (literally) of websites have done this. Completely novel- they have interviewed buyers of the product to see what they think. Now that “nobody testimonial” has become a someone. It does not matter now who they are. How persuasive is that style of testimonial? It generates thousands of sales weekly for some website s.

You should be using the Flash players to play your music (please no lower d quality or 1 minute play versions). Now I have expanded my sales by well over 100  percent by doing this technique. Throughout my texts I have placed an MP3. So instead of having a bulk amount of MP3s in one place – where they can freely be forgotten, I have placed them throughout and leveraged the same  set of MP3s to a better advantage.

The Flash players ought to be used to interview your group or yourself. Because the Web is so faceless, adding a “face” to your website stimulates your credibility ten-fold. If you are the head of the company/ website, have you on your sales pages stating what you are actually selling- pointing out rewards to the customer, backing up your text.

If you don’t like what you look like, the Flash players ought to be used to play your voice to advocate and direct people into making the proper decision.

Got a video or DVD? Flash player it at a reasonable size and quality to demonstrate what you have. Sales will increase with a demo of what you have.

Always recall though, that some individuals do not want to sit down and listen to you stating what you can be done. They want to see what can be done… that is the difference. If you play the guitar…Flash player yourself playing a certain specific style on one page and another style on another page. Therefore if I want to know how to make Flamenco music I do not want to see loads of other styles before you get to mine. Do not speak the specific style, just play it (and make it sound cool, vibrant and listenable).

So as you might see, there are a very big amount of scope for Flash players and they should be right up there with your top music marketing strategies.

We have all heard the stories of performers “making it on MySpace”. Well, while there are a few genuine success stories out there, I am here to tell you that music marketing on the Web is in no way as easy as simply throwing up a MySpace.com page, adding a bunch of friends and calling it a career.

While MySpace has a lot of rewards for performers I would actually go as far as to say that MySpace doesn’t really matter. If you already have a wonderful MySpace campaign going then great, keep doing what works. Nonetheless, if you’re about to release an album or you’ve recently released one only to see disappointing solutions, then I’m going to suggest that you completely rethink your music marketing strategy.

In a nut shell, I have found these to be the components of a successful music marketing campaign.

1. The Mailing List: Focus on building your mailing list. Establish a mailing list on every piece of Internet real estate that you have.

2. Traffic: Do whatever it takes to send as much traffic as possible to that mailing list sign up form. Use MySpace, Fac electronic book, post in forums, flyers, stickers, emails, pay if you have to, just do what ever it takes. The more traffic, the more sign ups, the more albums sold.

3. Communicate with your audiences Don’t sell to your audiences, communicate with them. Let them get to know you by sending out fun and valuable emails. Do this as a lot of the time as you could without being too annoying. Once they trust you it is ok to  encourage  your album but do so with respect for their time and intelligence.

Music marketing is an art form in its own right. These are just several simple tips to developing a successful music marketing campaign. With a little bit of know how effort on your part you ought to start to see an increase in album sales in no time.

A year ago, I wrote a passionate article on the merits of charging $15 when you sell your CD s. Some of my reasonings included: It’s tough for independent artists and you have a nice music, so don’t short- change yourself; you can always discount the CD  for special reasons (2-for-1 special); and, the “high” sales prices additionally includes your numerous expenses. I made a few addendums, but that’s the gist of it.
But now, if you head over to http://mp3.com/thebards and check out the Brobdingnagian Bards page at MP3.com, you’ll notice something kinda hypocritical…none of our CDs are priced at $15! What gives??
Well first let me say, yes, I do still believe in a $15.00 sales price for many artist s. Certainly, it works perfect for folk artist s, and singer/songwriter types. But my reason is not hypocrisy it is a dramatic change in our marketing plan.
You see, when  we  started out, I knew that the only “real” income available to independent artists comes from CD  sales and merchandising since royalties from ASCAP and BMI are a joke. So our plan has been to record every 6 months or less and put out new material. By then end of last summer the independent process has been leaving us drained, and  we  were thinking  we  overextended. Then along comes MP3.com.
One of the things I’ve been raving about for the past few months is that MP3.com provides a new marketing model by provide ing “royalties” for listens to your music. And if you’re getting paid from people listening to your music. Then it needs to be simply available right?
Well, we’ve followed the footsteps of many of the top MP3.com artists and have about 40-50 tracks available on our web site and more are coming every week. In doing so,  we  make a solid $20 a day from our web site.
Now with each listen, the songs are tracked on MP3.com on their music charts. You sell a CD, the songs on that CD  will rocket up the charts. So you want the CDs to sell, because higher charting equals higher payback. Thus, our low price on MP3.com.
Now think for a second. If you have 40 songs on your web site prefer the Hillbilly Hellcats, you’re the majority prefer ly going to make your 15 unique listens because your songs are located all over the charts. There are plenty of songs to choose from. Thus the new marketing model no longer relies on CD  sales of $15.00, but listens. When you realize that you open yourself up to a whole slew of, in my opinion, simple marketing tactics that will make you more money from listens than selling CDs from your web site.
I understand this all seems simplistic, but the vast reality is the majority artists on MP3.com are still running their band with an older marketing model that doesn’t yield the highest payback. So contemplate that for a bit, and next week, I’ve a guest writer who will give you an inspiring promotional idea that can send your listens over the top. Then the week following that, I’m going to betray my secret that has my song “Tolkien” at #35 on all MP3.com…
Stay tuned. Same bard time. Same bard channel!

Over a period of time and on  numerous  divergent projects I’ve tried all manner of promotional devices for music on the Internet. By far the the majority consistent method I’ve found to bring audiences to music is blogging.
There are a number of reasons for this:
1. Because you’re generating a number of new pages with each new post you’re constant ly making new content for search engines.
2. Apart from having more pages, all of the major search engine algorithms are aware of the nature of blogs and the constant ly updated material. Once your blog has been indexed and identified as such it will cause the search engine robots to pay more attention and visit more frequently.
3. Pinging is a process where you notify the major search engines and blog directories of any updates to your blog. This may be  set up so that it happens automatically every time you make a new posting. The real trick here is  set ting up your ping list so that it notifies all the necessary services. (The list is pretty long).
4. Tagging is additionally a decidedly necessary part of the blogging process. This standard ally means that you “tag” your individual posts with relevant keywords which allow them to be categorized more simply by search engines, blog directories and social bookmarking web site s.
5. World Wide Web 2.0 has been a buzz term on the Internet for little while now. Basically, it revolves around web sites where you can search for and identify relevant information in a decidedly similar fashion to the traditional search engines. The major difference is that the determinations are based on human ratings of the material rather than search engine robot algorithms. Social bookmarking web sites are at the core of this movement. This is decidedly relevant to how you go about promoting your blog as well.
What I’ve outlined above is a decidedly standard outline of some of the reasons why blogging may be such an effective method to bring new visitors to your music. prefer anything, blogging involves a  set of skills and just throwing up a page on blogger or using the provide d service with a MySpace.com profile won’t bring you that many new visitors in isolation.
On the other hand, a properly optimized blog and correct use of pinging, tagging, social bookmarking, relevant commenting and a few other devices will bring 100’s if not thousands of new audiences to your music.
As I said, of all the divergent available Internet promotion pointers I’ve found this to be the single the majority effective technique. I hope you have found this article useful and if you really want to grow your fan base start blogging!

For a few years now I’ve embraced the changes and the new social media tools that the Internet has provide d to elevate music marketing techniques. Not withstanding the obvious prefer MySpace, YouTube, Imeem, Revver, FaceBook and so on, one of the the majority necessary forms of marketing I teach is the Internet live performance.
For me, it started with Stickam.com. This is a web site where you can open an account and stream live video feeds right from your PC and laptop. Just plus in a Web cam and have DSL or better connection to the Internet and you’re nice to go.
But something I did a few years ago has become a staple in my music marketing teachings. I did a test back in 2004 and just opened a profile on Stickam and started to just randomly play guitar and sing covers. Within a few weeks, I had around 200 friends and audiences. And just to think, I has been not even serious about it.
Funny thing is that even though I’ve been preaching this, many are slow to get on it. I’m thinking because there can be a fear factor that some don’t sound as nice live as they do recorded. Or perhaps they just can be a solo performer and not have tracks to sing to. Either way, it is a HUGE mistake if you’re an performer and don’t do live streaming events.
Another amazing thing about the streaming live portals prefer Stickam, Ustream, BlogTV (all dot coms) is that you have the ability to embed the live streaming video player on your own web site ; even other social web sites prefer MySpace.com and the others.
And even as a random act of opportunity a profile and starting to play, while you’re streaming live, people click in and out of your show to see what you’re all about. This is better than playing at a coffee house or patio Club. Plus, it is in the comfort of your space.
Yet another decidedly cool factor about live streaming shows is that you get to interact with your fan base live in a chat room. I’ve guide ed many though this process and all have been blown away at the fact that they can chat with their audiences between singing songs.
This is additionally an extremely cool way to get new kinds of music exposed to the public. can you imagine that you play upright bass, your friend plays the kazoo and your other friend plays a mandolin? Just by the shear uniqueness, people will stop by and listen. Hopefully you don’t suck. It’s an open forum of opportunity so take it!
To me that’s the the majority necessary thing about blowing up and marinating your fan base. Today’s marketing had jumped into hyper relationship building. That fact that you can chat with your audiences means that you get to reach out.
At the end of the day it is sociology before technology. In this case, technology is help ing access sociology. Oh yea, it is all for free too!

Music marketing is by and large c hall enging for the majority artist s, that’s something  we  need to realise. Marketing yourself, being confident to allow people to listen to your tracks and the majority necessary ly, handling criticism takes a bit of time to get used to. In the majority of cases though, marketing plans do fail. you can have a amazing sounding track, but if it is not marketed properly then it will just be white noise.
Still all is not lost.
The central reasons why music marketing fails is that
1) there is always some money involved, and
2)  we  market our music.
They all sound a bit strange.  That I understand, but my plan is for you to get over these hurdles and to get your music out there in the absence of any hassle. I will take each of the above points in turn, but remember they are interlinked:
1) Money marketing. This is bad. The economics of this is so: you have to sell slot of tracks to get back the amount you spent on marketing, then you need to sell a few more to make any profit. The problems is, why are  we  spend ing so much money on music marketing, or, why are  we  spend ing any money on marketing at all?! The Internet has greatly decrease d the fee of marketing by 100 %. Yep, marketing ought to be free, then any tracks that you do sell is pure profit. There are so many music marketing strategies, some of which are simple pointers that are not being utilised.
Here are some fantastic free marketing strategies are not being used, at all. How about leaflet distribution, flyers, making a mailing list then advertising your new tracks on that (they already prefer your tracks because they have signed upto your mailing list). Applying to competitions will always bring in some much needed traffic as competitions generate 1) leads and interest from the host web site, 2) your tracks will get viral marketed especially if it has become in the top 3. Viral marketing is just another way of spreading interest, all the people who voted for your tracks will recommend the amazing track that they heard, and you name spreads. 3) You can always advertise the fact that you got in first, second or third in X competition (always state how many other competitors were there as well- coming third out of four entries is nothing to  promote  really).
Surely the highest quality advertising strategy is…give away your MP3s for FREE! A simple technique that encourages your tracks. people then trust you, they love quality items, they assume then, “hmm, if this is free, and it is nice, what would his selling tracks be prefer?” Free stuff sells pay nice s, fact. Give away alot of free stuff…MP3s being the central one, and then be patient.
Once you have finished your free marketing, start again. Just keep on promoting yourself by free processes. It gets your name banded around, people will see your Webpage link and click on it increasing your traffic. It can not too successful in the first few months or can be even a year, but stick with it, gaining visitor confidence will highest quality ly prevail.
2) The above is great, but why would everyone buy any track from you in the first place? To the majority surfers you’re faceless, they don’t see you on the music videos, so why ought to they buy anything from you?
Harsh words I understand, I’m sorry, but it is true. That is the real reason why there are thousands of nice groups and artists out there in Internet land marketing away, spend ing cash and showing nothing for it. They marketed first, wanting cash, and their visitors are literally saying “I don’t think so”. You then become the banner ad- looks really nice, but never gets the click.
What you need to do is establish content within your web site. simple as that. in the absence of content you’re just another web site that the visitor has no real reason to come back to. Content additionally increases the opportunitys of you being choose ed up by the search engines. Please note:Google, and the other big search engines have stated that their thousands of calculations per web site includes content search. This is a fundamental statement, even if you’re a music web site giving away your MP3s.
If you have ever looked for MP3s within the search engines, there are about 6 million web sites dedicated to the term MP3. Now, your one web site has to be found by a visitor, the opportunitys are decidedly low. Still, if your web site has content focused keywords, such as ” nice guitar riffs”, “how to gig” etc, then you’ll be choose ed up much simply than a simple MP3 search. Within the numerous pages that you have created you put, “download free guitar MP3s” or something that suits your music, and you then advertise your MP3s through the “back door”. Content will additionally bring back the visitors, they love a web site that they are interested in, they sign up to your news-letter, and then you email them with new updates, your new MP3s etc. Then you start to establish your own little buzz, you establish people willing to listen to your tracks.
A sideline to content is always relevant, up-to-date content. provide ing tapes with your tracks on is music marketing suicide. I’ve seen these actually being provide ed on some web site s. provide ing a tape states that 1. You’re not up-to-date hence your sounds won’t be, 2. You’re provide ing poor quality, hence your tracks won’t shine, and 3. You have to pay out for the tape (postage and packaging etc). people on the Internet want things now, not tomorrow, provide ing MP3s, even short WAV files is giving the visitor what they want- immediate access to your tracks.
Relevant content is just as necessary as current content. If you have a rock web site stick to rock related Web pages. If I has been into hip-hop I would not go onto your rock web site and look at hip-hop related articles. I understand that this seems obvious, but scarily this has been done. It additionally has another effect. The search engines see topic specific web sites as just that, topic specific. If you stray away from your chosen topic it won’t look nice for you with the engines. They will see that your relevance has decrease d and so to will your page ranking.
Content is not that simple to accomplish. It comes with time, you need to tweak, track whether that has done any nice to your traffic or click throughs. You can additionally just be writing alot of drivel. Content needs to be “Search Engine Focused”, you need to honestly lead people to buy from you, you need to have a one to one style ( prefer you’re talking to a friend), and definitely not be boring. Virtually forgot, you need to assess who your audiences is. Are they young, middle aged, technophobic? You writing style ought to cater for your audiences. For instance, a younger audiences will prefer more colour, more tech information, a friendly banter, and up-to-date chart acts. Generally if you write as you would talk to a friend then you’ll be on safe lines.