Online Music Marketing and Artist Promotion

I recently discovered a great resource that I wanted to let you know about. It had been a long day and as a break I began to meander around the Internet for new information . I found something cool that I wanted to let you know about. Actually I found a handful of cool things. I am really excited to be able to share this stuff with you. First I stumbled on a website called musicmarketing.com. This is a very interesting and informative blog written by a guy named David Hooper. From here I discovered Hooper’s weekly radio show Music Business Radio. I immediately opened itunes and subscribed to the podcast and began to listen to some archived shows. There was some really great stuff on there. I suggest you check it out. Also I learned that David Hooper has a couple of books out. I took a look at them and they seem like great resources. The books that I found were 14 Qualities of Successful Musicians, Songwriters, and Music Business Professionals, How I Make $100,000/year in the Music Business (Without a Record Label, Manager, or Booking Agent), and Music Business Goal Planner (52 Weeks to the Record Deal, Publishing Contract, and Income You Want). I’m not an expert on David Hooper but he has been involved in the Nashville music business scene for a long time. I haven’t had a chance to read his books but I am planning on it. It seemed to me that he  had some real insight to offer to independent musicians. I highly recommend you all check out his stuff.

One of the interviews that I heard on Music Business Radio was with a Nashville based artist Geoff Smith. This guy has worked his tail off to carve out a stable career as an independent musician. He hasn’t accomplished his goals by elbow grease alone. Smith as come up with some really innovative projects along the way. I thought I would share o a couple of them in this post. I think sharing these concepts could really benefit a lot of musicians. So here’s one of the ideas smith came up with: Dynamic ALbum Titled Ones and O’s. This is the album that keeps on giving. When you buy the album you not only get your 12 track mp3 download, you also get bonus material sent to you every 2 weeks for a year. To check it out follow the link above and click on the Dynamic Album. The bonus material includes: high quality music videos, live appearances, karaoke versions, videos, access to exclusive USTREAM shows, exclusive tracks, ringtones etc. Here is the other thing that Geoff Smith created that is exceptionally cool: iPhone ringtones. The ringtone feeder is a service that one can sign up for at a cost of $1.98 per month or $19.98 per year. Smith’s website describes the ringtone feeder this way: “RingtoneFeeder is a weekly delivery of original iPhone ringtones via iTunes produced to put a smile on your face and to sound great on the iPhone.” and that pretty much sums it up. In any case he’s got thousands of subscribers signed up to get ringtones from him weekly and they are all paying him on a regular basis. Granted the man writes jingles as well so I would imagine that writing music specifically for ringtones utilized his existing skill set pretty well. However, this concept is brilliant and is the kind of innovation that independent musicians need to create a stable career in music these days. I found myself excited to learn about these concepts that Smith has come up with.

Go and check out the Ringtone Feeder and the Dynamic Album and if you like it then buy it. Support this guy for coming up with something cool.

Tom Siegel

P.S - Sign up for free reviews of products and services available online for independent musicians @ http://www.onlineartistpromotion.com. Sign up for my FREE reviews and get a FREE BONUS REPORT full of great helpful tips for independent musicians.

I was hanging out on a forum for musicians that I like Harmony Central. I found a post from one of the users that was filled with excitement. I could feel the excitement in the first sentence of the post. You know how that is when you answer the phone and the person on the other end of the line says “Hey!”, in such a way that you can tell right away that they are excited. A friend of mine in high school used to always do that. He would call and from the first word out of his mouth I could tell he was all amped about something. What would follow was some crazy idea about our next rehearsal with the band. But you could feel the excitement over the phone in seconds. Every time he would call with that excited energy something interesting would happen at our next rehearsal for sure.

So this was the sense I got when I started to read this post. This guy had developed an idea for a website. He happened to know some PHP and was able to slap the site together quickly. No frills but, man, does it serve a purpose. You’ve got to check out this website. It’s totally free and will be incredibly useful to you. Are you scheduling a tour or thinking of scheduling a tour in the future. If so I think this will be a great resource for you. If you are not sceduling a tour then check it out anyway.

The website is http://www.rateavenue.com

This is a place for musicians to log on and rate venues where they have performed. Think about how many dive clubs or shady club managers that don’t pay, you could avoid by checking this out. You can check out venues that other folks have posted or post a venue where you have performed and rate it. When I cecked it out there were mostly posts on venues that were not good. But I think it would be just as valuable to share with people about venues that were great places to play.

Go check it out!

Tom Siegel

P.S - Sign up for free reviews of products and services available online for independent musicians @ http://www.onlineartistpromotion.com. Sign up for my FREE reviews and get a FREE BONUS REPORT full of great helpful tips for independent musicians.