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Are You Even Ready For Promotion?

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Tom Siegel — No Comments ↓

I have had a lot of musicians contact me lately looking for promotion and-or representation that are simply not ready for it. I do my free consultation and then nicely tell them that I can’t allow them to hire me. I love talking to all of you about your businesses. I love being able to help in some way and I hope that these people find what I am telling them useful and helpful. But, here’s the deal… You might feel lost and frustrated with your current status. You might be working a full time job in addition to your music career. I get it. You might want some help. I totally understand wanting someone else to take over some responsibility. I want someone else to do some of my work too. The problem is… do you know what exactly you want that person to do? I am going to lay out three guidelines for people to refer to when considering hiring someone to take over a part (or all) of their business. Please note that I just wrote the word “guidelines”. This was intended to imply that what I say may not apply to you. I don’t know your circumstance until I connect with you directly so please don’t read this as personal advice from me to you. I urge anyone who has hired help to leave a comment for those who haven’t to benefit from your successes and challenges, as your experiences are valuable.

3 Guidelines to Think About Before Hiring a Publicist

Thing One:

Do you have something to sell? Or are you making money playing live? If you have no way of making money, then how in the world do you expect to make any money by hiring someone else. This seems like you want someone to hold your hand through the entire process of song-writing or fine tuning your music, getting you into the recording studio or helping you build one of your own, navigate duplication, distribution, artwork, book your first gig for you, set up social media platforms and so on… all based on trust that you are just simply going to be awesome. There are many factors that I need to consider before I begin to work with someone. One of the biggest is “is this person (or group) going to do their part?” I can’t do everything for an artist. If you are not willing to put in some time to learn some of this stuff, there is no evidence that you will do what is necessary down the road, leaving the person that you hired with no action to take except to wait for you. This is totally unproductive and useless. I like to be successful. I don’t want to have someone throw money at me, then do a bunch of work only to watch the artist not do anything to help themselves out. If you haven’t gotten yourself ready to blast off, you don’t need me. You need to get motivated. Teach yourself the next step. If you need to call or email someone you don’t know to ask a question, do that. I will usually answer someone’s question if it is presented in a polite and friendly way. In fact, I have musicians trying to hire me and I end up giving them all kinds of advice and then tell them that they don’t need to hire me.

Thing Two:

Do you have your music marketing systems in place? Let’s say you don’t have a website. You have been using facebook as your central hub to connect with your fans and CD Baby to sell your music (of course now you can put a CD Baby store on facebook so that doesn’t need to be two different places). Let’s say you have uploaded a few videos to YouTube but you haven’t really played with YouTube all that much and the videos are just sitting there for the most part. Now you go and pay for someone to do some PR for you and your music. All of a sudden you have a burst of exposure, people are searching for you on google. Do they find you? I don’t know maybe your facebook page comes up, maybe your videos come up. If your videos come up, then what? Do they point people to your facebook page? Does your facebook page have email sign up form on it? It is possible to do that, did you do that? This doesn’t generally work all that well. It is choppy and is a huge risk. Facebook is going to change a lot. I can almost gaurantee that. If this is you, you don’t need PR. You need a system set up (by the way this is what I do. I don’t do PR. When people contact me asking me for PR, I always check to see if they have any of this in place yet if they do, I send them to Cyber PR - affiliate link). Then you need to think about PR and you might be able to grow some without PR still and that might be a better way to go for you and your music. In my experience, musicians have this idea that someone else holds the key to their success. It is my opinion that this is far from the reality of today’s music industry. Here is a picture of a system for you… You have a website, your website is optimized to be found on Google. you have a facebook page, you have an active (or even semi-active) YouTube account and you are active on twitter. You facebook page directs people to your website, There are links in your video descriptions on YouTube pointing to your website (the link needs to be the first thing in the description or else no one will see it), you have a newsletter sign up widget on your site and on facebook, your website has a storefront to sell your music and your merch and you have a store set up on facebook too just in case that is what your fans would like to do. Now you go get some PR. Where ever people look, you are ready for them. You have ways of collecting their information so that you can help them find their way back at a later date or guide them to a show, you have given them a way to purchase your music and most of all you are ready to connect with them in whatever way they are most comfortable.

Thing Three:

Are you ready to listen to somebody? All too often, I have people get in touch with me to tell me what they need. Usually it is something like they want promotion or they want me to get them reviewed on a famous music blog. When I start to look into it, they don’t have a website, facebook page, twitter account or have any content up on youtube. Or they have some of these things but aren’t really maintaining them. I tell them they need to do that first and they just plain disagree. If you already know what you need, here’s a tip… don’t hire someone who thinks their job is to give advise or strategize. Hire an assistant. A virtual assistant is not a bad thing to have. You can find virtual assistants on Elance, oDesk or at Virtual Staff Finder. At elance and odesk you can hire someone to just build you a website or just write a press release for you. Virtual staff finder is more about finding someone to do regular part time or full time work. If you are ready to manage a team, this is worth looking into. I would like to do an entire post about virtual assistants for musicians in the future. But if you know what you need, don’t go and get someone else’s advice.

What if you are ready for Promotion?

If you are set up with a marketing system for your music like I said before, I recommend checking out Cyber PR (affiliate link). I have spoken with Ariel Hyatt myself and she and her staff are extremely helpful. She handles digital PR campaigns. She doesn’t mess with traditional press and media. If you are in a position (as I described above) to take full advantage of a PR campaign, there are some additional things to know about PR. Ariel Hyatt wrote a great article outlining some of these things - 9 Critical Things You Should Know About Publicity Before You Make Your First Move. Definitely read that first.

Share Your Experiences

If you have hired a publicist in the past or go and hire one in the future, please leave a comment below to highlight some things you’ve learned with that experience. This will help a lot of musicians out there more than I can by ranting about why people shouldn’t be contacting me looking for Promotion. I thank you in advance for your comments.

Posted in music & marketing

Square One of Your Music Career

Posted on January 11, 2012 by Tom Siegel — No Comments ↓

Let’s jump in… First of all, you are not ready to work with me or anyone. You need to grow some roots first. You can’t pay someone to do something for you if you have no way of making money from that. There is no upside in it for you. Second, if you don’t have a website or any social media profiles and you don’t play out it is no wonder that you don’t have an audience yet. You have been barking up the wrong tree with the big name blogs. You don’t need that. You’re desire for feedback is great. That is what you need.

In order to get that feedback you need two things: Exposure and engagement and that is what you should be focusing your efforts on right now.

First let’s talk about engagement:

Engagement can happen in many places. At shows, online, music conferences (don’t go this route yet). I suggest you stick with the internet for now. Engagement happens, by in large, in two places on line. Your own website and Facebook. This is a little bit misleading because engagement should happen everywhere, but for now I just want to paint this picture for you. So, first step is to get your website set up. There are a couple of ways to do this. Bandzoogle is a great resource for musicians to set up a website. There are a lot of cool features and they are in the middle of an overhaul so things will be getting even better soon. Bandzoogle does offer a free plan, but I don’t recommend it because you don’t get to use your own domain name. So, if you go with Bandzoogle, get the cheapest paid plan for now. You can always upgrade if when you grow out of it. If you don’t like the templates that bandzoogle offers, I suggest using a wordpress site. I love wordpress. In order to set up a wordpress site you will need a hosting account. I use Host Gator, but many people like Blue Host a lot (and with Blue Host, you get a free domain name when you sign up). If you go with Host Gator you will need to buy a domain name. I use GoDaddy for that. Oh, and start blogging. If you have no idea what to blog about, then go buy this book. Now for Facebook, you will need to set up a fan page this is not complicated. Just google anything you don’t immediately understand. Once you have that set up, you will need to make a landing page. For this I suggest you use Bandpage by Rootmusic. There are tutorials on their site that are easy to follow. Nice! Now that that is moving let’s move on to exposure. First let me point out that I have explained how to set up engagement first before exposure. There is a reason for that. If you go get exposure and have no way to host the growing audience, you’ll lose that audience. Moving on…

Exposure:

There are two major exposure engines that are relatively easy to get going with immediately. These are: YouTube and Twitter. I think YouTube is obvious. People don’t just like to watch videos, they also like to share them. That is a win-win for you. So, you’ve got to start using YouTube. For more about using YouTube, check out these articles. Then go make videos and upload them. Twitter, if you haven’t used it at all, can be a little mystifying at first. The first thought in one’s mind when they consider using twitter is “what the hell are all of these people doing on here anyway?” Here is my advice: Make a list of 10, or so, well-known artists that are similar to you (note: these are artists who sound like you, not just artists that you like) start following them on twitter. See who is following them and follow those people too. Try to follow about 10 – 50 new people per day. You will see that people will start to follow you back. The people following you should be people who are interested in your music if you made your list accurately. Now start posting some tweets. Don’t just post things like “Hey check out my music” that’s annoying. You’ve got to post more interesting things first. See what the people you are following are posting to get some ideas. If you can’t think of anything, post quotes and links to interesting articles that the people who are following you might be interested in. Once you have a pattern going with posting non-promotional posts, then you should post something like “looking for some feedback, check out my video at wwww.____ and tell me what you think.” You may still get nobody that responds. Don’t worry about that. Just keep it up. There is a great tool that will help you manage your social media. That is Hootsuite. You have to get into using this. It will make your life a lot easier.

Extras:

Alright… that’s the meat of the idea. However, I don’t want to leave you with a gaping hole in your set up. There are certain tools that will be necessary for the next step in the set up process. This is the “just get started guide”, but I don’t think anyone should do anything without at least a minimal effort to start an email list. Even if you don’t actually email them. Now if you go with Bandzoogle for your website than this is already taken care of. I’m not going to tell you, in this post, how exactly to set this up in Bandzoogle. You will have to use their tutorials for now. If you are using a wordpress site, you will need an autoresponder service. This costs some money. The cost is generally based on the number of subscribers. I go over a list of the popular autoresponders in my post Marketing Your Music Online – Step Four, however, just to simplify it I will tell you my favorites as of this writing. I am still using Aweber and have no complaints, but I can see why people would use Mail Chimp. It is cheaper. Again this isn’t a tutorial about setting up autoresponders and name capture forms. There are great tutorials on these sites to check out.

That is plenty for right now. If this post is speaking to you, leave a comment after you have put some of these pieces in place. I would love to see your progress. Also if you have any questions or if you think I have left out any crucial pieces of the initial set up, please leave a comment below. I hope this has been helpful.

Tom Siegel

P.S. – If you haven’t signed up for my newsletter at http://indieleap.com/newsletter Then go ahead and do that. When you do, you will receive my ebook that outlines a music marketing plan with these steps (and others) laid out in more detail.

Posted in music & marketing

The Instability Of Old School Radio

Posted on October 6, 2011 by Tom Siegel — No Comments ↓

Music discovery just got a pretty big bump with some of the facebook changes that were recently rolled out at the F8 summit. This is thought of as FB’s music discovery service. Actually, as it was referred to in an interview I recently listened to on This Week In Music with Ian Rogers, it is a “music service” “discovery service”. It basically helps to direct facebook users to the various music subscription services available (a/k/a – Spotify, MOG, Rhasody, Rdio, to name a few). This is how it works. When you are using a music subscription service (and if you are not using a music subscription service, you’ve got to join the party), the music that you listen to now can be posted on facebook in the area on the top right of the screen that is referred to by FB as the timeline. I’m sure you’ve seen this by now. Next time you are reading through this ticker-tape type news feed take a closer look you may see “so & so is listening to Graceland by Paul Simon on Spotify” or something to that nature.

It Keeps Changing – Don’t Freak Out!

This is a big deal in the music world right now. The music subscription service model (Spotify, MOG, Rhapsody, Rdio, etc.) is the best answer (that I know of) so far to the current condition of terrestrial radio (this condition being that it SUCKS! in my humble opinion, of course). Once the empire of terrestrial radio has toppled, there will be even less use for the major record labels then there already is (their usefulness has been narrowed to something very specific already). The two biggest things they have right now are a budget and clout with radio and their budget is fading fast. In fact they don’t even want to take on new artists anymore unless they can be sure that it will be a huge hit. I mean HUGE hit. Otherwise they don’t make any money. They don’t even care about a gold record anymore. This means that the artist needs to get a certain distance down the road themselves before a label will care or even take notice. Once you are down that road already it is conceivable that you can do it without the label (this has been my point with Indie Leap from the beginning).

Yesterday’s Music Industry

Ok… So let’s look at this for a minute. The labels used to generally control these things:

Quality Recording
Manufacturing
Distribution
Marketing/Advertising
Promotion (Radio, Press, etc.)

Today’s Music Industry

Now let’s look at what you can do on your own as an independent musician:

Quality Recording – Toys have been coming onto the market since the late ’90′s that enable artists to create a quality recording themselves. Most of the time, one can make a quality recording in their basement with equipment that can be purchased for less than $1,000. If this is not quite enough – maybe a high end vocal mic is needed or a real piano – then there are project studios that cost in the range from $25/hour to $75/hour in someone else’s basement that have pretty decent mics and a protools set up that is perfectly adequate.
Manufacuring – I think it was the mid ’90′s when CD duplication became affordable to an independent artist (actually my first job in the “music business” was as a sales person (or the guy answering the phone) for a CD duplication company in New Hampshire – New England CD. They are still alive and kicking – Say hi to Gary for me!)
Distribution – This was a big one. It took a couple of big happenings to get to where we’re at now, but, for simplicity’s sake let’s say it was itunes & ipod combo and CD Baby that did it. itunes & ipods popularized digital music and CD Baby founded by Derek Sivers gave independent musicians a vehicle for selling their music online (again, this is a gross oversimplification of the historical facts. There were many more players and stages of this process. These were just the big ones). The current climate offers a large selection of digital distribution services to independent musicians that allows for their music to be available digitally and/or physically through online stores such as amazon.com. Note: this was a MAJOR part of the record label’s business and they are still crying about the large-scale availability.
Marketing/Advertising – This one is close to my heart as this is where I have landed in today’s music industry. As an independent artist, gaining exposure is now 100% possible on your own. You don’t need a life-sized cutout of your self or your band placed some where on the floor of Tower Records or a billboard in Time’s Square. You just need a facebook, twitter and youtube account. This is not to say that as soon as you set these things up, you will instantly gain exposure. You need to learn the best practices on how to use this stuff. But, the point is that you can learn this stuff. It’s not just social media that is available to you, either. Email services are cheap and even free in some instances. This allows everyone (not just musicians) to become direct marketers over night. And you can broadcast your thoughts and pictures for nothing (or next to nothing) on a blog (as I am here).
So that brings us to Promotion. Now, let’s separate this out. Promotion encompasses a lot of things, such as: Press, TV, News coverage, reviews in trade magazines, reviews on music blogs and yes also radio air time/rotation. I would like to point out that everything on that list, with the exception of radio, can now be done effectively by the artist themselves. Again, this does not mean that it is easy. It is far from easy to learn how to do this stuff. In fact, it is only getting more complicated. With every artist, small business, major corporation and their Grandmas clamoring for attention, the corner stones of the PR world, the content curators are being overloaded and when everyone is talking at the same time it just sounds like noise. So, don’t misunderstand me, because these things are available doesn’t guarantee success for anyone, even the most talented artist.

Now, To Look at Radio

It seems to be the last sticking point here in the inevitable major restructuring of the music industry as a whole, which has been under way for more than a decade. Overall, in order to make it HUGE as an artist (which, I would argue shouldn’t be your goal at this point, but that is a different post) a good solid radio rotation is still very effective. So, great! Let’s go shop our album to the radio station and get this thing on the air! Sounds good, but it doesn’t work that way. There are consultants, executives, analysts and robots that are testing (in effective and ineffective ways) to ensure that what they put on the radio immediately connects with the listener demographic. I read a great article posted by Rick Goetz of Musician Coaching, an interview with Tony Monte, the Founder and President of New Music Director who used to work at RCA and Capital records. The first half of the interview was about radio. I feel like the main take-away from this portion of the interview was that the metaphorical machine that controls radio content selection and rotation has no tolerance for music that does not pass their tests for appropriateness on the first try. Another point that Tony was making was that it is just getting harder and harder to get on the radio. It seems that they have the same mindset as the major labels at this point – If it is not a HUGE hit, then it is not worth their efforts.

That’s the problem… So, what’s the solution?

A New World Order

Now that all of the pillars of the record label’s positioning in the music industry have been toppled except for radio, let’s move on. The question posed by all of the blabbing above is… How are current events changing radio? The answer is… they’re not… yet. The addition of the music subscription service to the timeline of facebook is another step toward giving the audience other options for (legal) music discovery beyond traditional radio. In reality the options have been available for some time. While these subscription services have “caught on” to some degree, their user-ship is generally low as compared to the number of pairs of ears necessary for a real industry shift. Don’t quote me on these numbers, but, I understand that user-ship of music subscription services is at 6,000,000, or so. Like I said, it’s caught on, to a point. Facebook on the other hand has something like 750,000,000 users.

When you balance the current user-ship with the exposure these services are gaining via facebook, it is nothing less than very significant. I fully expect to see one or more of these services emerge as a mainstream, household name service in the coming months or years. With more people using subscription services instead of radio, radio will begin to struggle.

When radio begins to struggle the record labels will all but lose their power completely.

AND… WHEN THE MAJOR LABELS CEASE TO HAVE POWER, THE INDEPENDENT MUSICIAN WILL TRULY BE ABLE TO CONTROL THEIR OWN CAREER/INCOME/DESTINY… HA, HA, HA, HA, HA… (that was an evil laugh, but you knew that).

I don’t mean to sound anti-label like that. I am just pro-indie and I wanted to write in an evil laugh. Actually, it is my philosophy that the labels still have a use and looking at them for their specific uses is a much better approach than looking at them in the “knight in shining armor” perspective.

I will write more about these music subscription services (like which one does what and how to get your music available to them and so on) in another post.

Thanks for reading,

Tom Siegel

P.S. – For all kinds of information about DIY music marketing sign up for our newsletter and download our free ebook The 7 Essential Pieces to Marketing Your Music Online.

Posted in music & marketing, Music Business, Music Industry, New Music Industry, Radio

How Do You Sell More Merch?

Posted on September 16, 2011 by Tom Siegel — No Comments ↓

I was listening to an interview with Ken Casey of the Drop Kick Murphy’s on This Week In Music with Ian Rogers. First of all I will say that I really like Ian Rogers’ show. Very informative. Many interesting issues were discussed in the interview, but one thing in particular caught my interest. Ian Rogers asked Ken Casey what the band will be focusing on business-wise in the near and far future. Where would the band be putting their business focus? Ken’s answer was that they would keep focusing on merch as merch has always been a big part of their business. Ken started to go on having brushed over the subject of merch. Ian stopped him and pointed out that he was really being modest there. The reason that the band has had success with merch is that their fan base wanted to share in the image that they have created and that is a real accomplishment.

This got me thinking about merch and how does a band ramp up a healthy focus on merch and then see real results. I mean, why would you not want to sell more merch? There are so many benefits. Obviously, more merch sales means more money. So, when someone comes to a show they give you money at the door $$ If it ends there, you’re doing well but if you can sell them a CD and a t-shirt, you just made a little more $$. You didn’t need to attract a new fan, you didn’t need to get more radio plays, you didn’t need to get a TV placement. The marketing costs associated with the extra money had already been spent on getting that person in the door. This means more return on your marketing investment. Good deal. The benefits don’t stop there. Now that person wears your hat or t-shirt intentionally advertising your brand to everyone they directly AND indirectly come in contact with. That’s cool too. Don’t forget about or downplay the psychological benefits of merch also. Once a fan purchases some merch they have what is referred to as an ownership bias toward your music and your brand. This means that they bought it, it is part of who they are and they are more likely to stick with you. This can help you to sell future albums, get people to keep coming to your shows and refer your music to their friends. Does this sound like something you want to do?

I know some bands/artists who have had some success with merch and I have read some articles about merch, but I wanted to confirm what I know and expand my knowledge on the subject. I figured I would share the information I found.

I decided the first place to do research was on the Drop Kick Murphy’s website, as Ken was saying that the band had been successful in that area. Looking at the available merch on their website really opened up a window into a thought process surrounding merch that I don’t see from a lot of artists. The Drop Kick Murphy’s sell T-Shirts, hoodies, hats and all of the regular things you see on a merch table. They also have a key chain with a bottle opener, a ship wheel necklace and even a back to school kit with a notebook and pencils. I really like the variety of merch available from DKM. This is nothing new and the variety alone doesn’t explain their merchandising success. It is clear that the DKM have aligned their identity with other identities that are bigger than they are. The band is from Boston and they’re Irish (that makes sense). So their merch includes themes that have to do with being Irish, the Boston Redsox and the Boston Bruins. This is fundamentally brilliant, but I’m not sure it was originally some type of master plan. The Irish and Redsox identities are a part of the identities of the band and the identities of their fans. All they did was to publicize these bigger identities a part of their own. So, when someone who was already a Redsox fan buys a t-shirt or a hat they’re are getting two things that they love. All in all, a great set up. Oh, and they sell a “Deering Dropkick Murphys Tenor Banjo” for $2,699. I wonder how many of those they sell!

I took a look at some other well known artist’s websites and what they are selling. The variety of merch available is always wide on with the bigger name bands. Dave Mathews sells a snow board along with a ton of stuff beyond the traditional t-shirt. I looked into an up and coming artist Kina Grannis (who happens to be featured on This Week in Music a couple of weeks prior to the DKM interview). Kina sells all kinds of stuff too. A lot of her merch is sporting a “guitar girl” theme (she’s got a key chain too).

I think most bands/artists stick with t-shirts, hats and maybe stickers if they have anything at all. It is hard to make blanket recommendations because it really depends on who your fans are and what they already own (although it does seem like a key chain is a good idea). Dave Mathews has bandannas and women’s socks. That makes sense for him. Check out this post on researching your fan base. Just pay attention to what your fan base is already buying or what identities they are already attached to and then give them an opportunity to get what they want from you.

There is more to be said about merch, but that’s all for now. I will bring this up again. If you have had any success with merch yourself or if you have any lessons to share, please leave a comment below. We all really appreciate more information.

Tom Siegel

Posted in Branding, Merchandising, music & marketing, Music Business

The 7 Essential Pieces to Marketing Your Music Online

Posted on September 2, 2011 by Tom Siegel — No Comments ↓

This is a compilation of the Music Marketing series I recently completed The 7 Steps to Marketing Your Music Online. I put them all together in one post so you can find them more easily and in order. I hope this is helpful and I would love to hear your feedback. Please leave a comment below or within any of the posts that are part of the series.

I truly hope that you keep reading!

Online Music Marketing – Do It!

The internet is where the party is. Don’t miss out on all of the wonderful resource available to independent Musicians.

Marketing Your Music Online – Step 1

Who is your Audience? It does no good to market anything if you don’t know who you are marketing to.

Marketing Your Music Online – Step 2

Where online are you?

Marketing Your Music Online – Step 2a

How to be structure your online home base.

Marketing Your Music Online – Step 3

Move your product from here… to there…

Marketing Your Music Online – Step 4

If you do this right you will stand out.

Marketing Your Music Online – Step 5

Everybody’s doin’ it (well not everybody) but are they doin’ it right?

Marketing Your Music Online – Step 6

This completes the package

Marketing Your Music Online – Step 7

Now it is time to bring in… well… everyone!

Enjoy!

Tom Siegel

Posted in music & marketing

Marketing Your Music Online – Step Seven

Posted on August 26, 2011 by Tom Siegel — No Comments ↓

This is step seven in my online music marketing series. In the last post (step six) we discussed blogging. In step seven we’re going to get out the bull horn and stand from the highest point we can find and scream it to the world!! What are we talking about…?

Public Relations or PR

There many forms of PR available to the DIY independent musician. I say this over and over, but, I am really excited about this, so, I will say it again. The fact that all this is available to artists is nothing short of incredible. Previously these opportunities were only available to major record labels or well connected publicists.

In this post I will cover a few of the PR applications that are available to musicians. I will focus primarily on the most effective avenues. Those being Bloggers, Internet Radio and Press Releases.

Quick Note

Social Media can be considered to be a form of PR, however, I have already dedicated an entire post Marketing Your Music Online – Step Five) to this subject as I did blogging for musicians (Marketing Your Music Online – Step Six).

PR Medium #1 – Bloggers

Reaching out to music bloggers was uncovered in 2006 to 2008 as a back door into a niche community to market your music to. It is no longer the tricky marketing tactic that it was then as it has gained popularity, which in turn has weakened its affect somewhat. However, this practice is still alive and well and is considered well worth your time and effort. There are a lot of strategies to get music bloggers to blog about your music. The first step is one of the more complex parts of this process. It is the same if you are marketing anything to anybody.

You have to know who you are marketing to. You have to know bloggers in order to know how to ask them to write about your music. The easiest way to get to know a blogger is so simple and yet is often overlooked. Read their blog. I know that sounds infantile, but, bloggers get an incredible amount of anonymous solicitations that have nothing to do with the topics that they write about on their blog. I write an industry blog. I don’t review music. I have musicians regularly posting on my blog or emailing me asking me to listen to their music. When this happens, it is clear to me that this person has not read my blog at all. It wouldn’t take long to figure out that they are barking up the wrong tree. I’m not just talking about soliciting a blogger of a completely off topic blog either. Let’s say the blogger does review music. If the blogger writes about Death Metal and you play folk music, you can deduce that this blogger may not be the right fit. Reaching out to them would be a waste of everyone’s time.

That Was Easy – Now For Something A Little More Challenging

That is the simple discussion. A more complicated discussion is about developing a relationship with a blogger who would possibly be a good fit for your music.

First you have to start by attempting to understand music bloggers as a group and then as an individual. To better understand music bloggers as a group check out this post, and this post and this post. A great way to develop a relationship with a blogger (or anyone, for that matter) is to have a conversation with that person… about them… not you. If you read their blog you will have a lot of things to discuss with them and will be better able to refrain from talking about yourself, your accomplishments or even… your music. That’s right… don’t talk about your music. At least not right away. This is a strategy that has existed in marketing that is a gazllion years old. It is an underlying topic discussed in the classic book by Dale Carnegie “How to Win Friends and Influence People”. Yet it is underutilized.

The basic strategy is this… Once you’ve developed a relationship with a blogger, then, and only then, do you ask the blogger to review your music. Be grateful and accepting of criticism. Ariel Hyatt or Ariel Publicity and CyberPR has a lot to say about approaching bloggers. Check out her book Music Success in Nine Weeks. Among other things the book covers bloggers extensively.

PR Medium #2 – Internet Radio

Let’s talk about radio. Internet Radio is more and more available and some of the internet radio stations are effective and some are not. The user influenced content radio stations like Pandora, MOG and Spotify are really fascinating. When your music is played on these stations you are more likely to reach your target audience. Let me give you an example… If you play Latin style rock and someone has made a station in Pandora based on Santana. When your tune comes up, this person will be more likely to be interested in you and there is a better chance they will be interested in finding out more about you.

To get your music on Pandora check out this guide on their website. Some distribution services discussed in Marketing Your Music Online – Step Three will submit your music to Pandora for you. This is an amazing opportunity you have available to you as a musician to gain exposure. Pandora has over 60 million listeners as of this writing.

There are several other internet radio stations that are worth the effort to get some air time. Jango is also a popular internet radio station that will recommend your music to listeners of similar more well known music. Jango allows listeners to ‘like’ the songs they hear and also to become ‘fans’ where they give up their email address. Could be useful. This station provides, for musicians, a way to buy air play.

One could say this is kinda backwards. I mean the way it used to be, the radio played your music because they thought it was good and the musician got paid through ASCAP or BMI (of course this is excluding the discussion about payola). I say this type of radio play is akin to a plumber paying for advertising time on a local radio station. Your music career is a business and businesses have to advertise to get the word out. In the good old days when the radio paid musicians I would say that a plumber had better of odds of succeeding than a musician. Now I would say that gap is closing.

Last.fm is an internet radio station that merges radio listening with social media. Users can share music they like and the service will suggest music that other users with similar tastes are sharing. There is a paid version of this service that allows you to target and promote a specific campaign but the basic uploading of your music is free. So I would check this out.

PR Medium #3 – Press Releases

So the last form of PR that I will cover in this post is Press Releases. Press Releases don’t accomplish what they used to. The way it used to work was a Press Release was piped out in the news media and the message reached X number of eyeballs or ear drums. It still works this way to some extent but the Press Release format is so readily available to anyone, that the general public has begun to regard this format as noise. The number of brains connected to those eyeballs or ear drums that will actually retain your message is significantly fewer than it used to be.

So, why bother, you might ask. The major benefit of Press Releases is really related to Search Engine Optimization (SEO). If your press release gets picked up by a news site with a lot of page authority then searches for related keyword phrases will turn up your Press Release and your message will be heard.

There are several companies that provide a press release service. One of the largest companies and most referred to is PR Web. PR Web is generally considered to be reliable and will likely reach as many corners of the internet as possible. Another service out there is Market Wire. I don’t know as much about these guys. However, I have heard that they do a good job with the local media outlets. But, that’s just rumor.

Don’t know how to write a press release? Well, I am not going to tell you… Here is a comprehensive guide on how to write a Press Release. It’s not rocket science, but, like anything else there is a finesse to it. I recommend looking over the guide and jumping in. The best way to learn this type of thing is to do it.

So that’s my take on PR. PR is so powerful that there are whole companies whose only function is to handle PR for artists.

I have sent you here before and I am going to keep sending you, because few other companies understand independent musicians and have musician’s best interest in mind. Ariel Publicity / Cyber PR does a great job.

This concludes my online Music Marketing Series. I had a great time putting this together and I hope it is of some use to you. Please leave your comments below. Feel free to share your personal experiences. I would love to hear how you are doing.

Tom Siegel

P.S. – For more information about how to put together an online music marketing strategy sign up for my newsletter atwww.indieleap.com.

Posted in music & marketing

Marketing Your Music Online – Step Six

Posted on April 2, 2011 by Tom Siegel — 1 Comment ↓

This is step six in my online music marketing series. In the last post (step five) we went over the moving target of social networking. In step six we’re going to go over an area of marketing your music on the Internet that is often not considered as it does not necessarily resemble a marketing tactic at first glance. I will explain both the why’s and the how’s in this post. What are we talking about…?

Keep 'em coming back. Photo by Svilen Milev

Blogging

The first thing that we are going to talk about briefly is how to set up a blog.

There are a number of blogging (or content management platforms) that work quite well. To some extent which one you choose is a matter of preference. The platform I have the most experience with is WordPress. This is one of the most widely used platforms out there right now. WordPress offers a lot of flexibility and is relatively easy to use.

A few other popular blogging platforms include Blogger, Tumblr, SquareSpace and Posterous. With the exception of SquareSpace these blogging platforms are free (including WordPress). For more information, check out this very nice overview of these different platforms. I use WordPress as I like the flexibility of being able to add plugins and gagets to customize my reader’s experience. There is always a trade off. WordPress.org is a little more complicated to set up, but offers the flexibility I am interested in. WordPress.com on the other hand is just as simple as the others. Blogger is great and easy to use but has some limitations in the customizable department. I would say that it’s a personal decision, but I would add that learning the WordPress system has been worth it for me (and it wasn’t that hard). WordPress is so flexible many people use it as their main website.

There are a couple of things I recommend to include in your blog. First, I recommend whatever theme you choose (or design) have a prominent RSS button. Along the same lines I suggest you put a sign up form for your newsletter in the sidebar. This is easy to do in WordPress. Simply take your code snipit from your autoresponder (covered in Marketing Your Music Online – Step 4) and paste it into a text widget and drag and drop it into the sidepad organizer (many of the autoresponders have a wordpress plugin to offer as well, making this even easier to do. I know Aweber does). This is also where you would add adsense code if you are interested in including this (not necessarily recommended for musicians). You can also embed your music player widget of choice. If you are using Nimbit, Banbox or another service that gives you a widget you can embed it on your blog and sell your music from your blog. Great idea. I am in favor of this. Other things that you may want to have on your blog include: your blog roll (a list of your previous posts, organized by date), links to favorable press or anything else that supports your online or offline presence, links to your home page, links to all of your social media platforms (put a Facebook ‘like’ and a Twitter ‘follow me’ button on your blog) and link to your commerce area and your contact information.

Why Bother?

For Your Fans

Before we go any further, I want to talk about why blogs are important for musicians. It is slightly different than blogging for a business or even a professional blogger. Here’s why: Your audience, your fans, fantasize about your life. The 9-5 office worker with two kids at home, a mortgage, two car payments and all of the rest of the baggage that goes along with all of that idealizes your lifestyle as a musician. Now, I fully realize that the above description of the 9-5 office worker may not be that far from your own life or the grueling everyday grind of being an independent musician doesn’t always feel glamorous or sexy. Before you curse me out through fiber optic cables, understand that your fans don’t know that and they tend to think that a musician’s life (especially in the rock genre) resembles one big party. So, as a musician, your blog is kind of a glimpse to the backstage area of your life.

Hold It… It sounds a little like I am saying that you should fit your ‘musician image’ into the cliché rockstar image box. I don’t mean to be conveying that. Just to clarify, I am suggesting you offer the pieces of information about your life that contribute to making you an artist. I’ll explain that further, keep reading.

For You

That is why your fans might like your blog, now why do you want to give your fans such an incredible gift? Well, a couple of reasons stand out. First, people tend to get hooked on stories. Imagine your blog posts are telling a story about your tour, the making of your next album, your song writing process or whatever subject that might merit a “next installment”. Your fans might find themselves waiting in anticipation for what is going to happen next. Think Soap Oprah meets Indie Musician. The more your fans are on your site or in contact with you and your music, the more they are likely to know about your upcoming shows, new merchandise and new releases. The more they know about these things the more likely they are to buy things from you and/or go to your shows. One way that blogging platforms facilitate this is called an RSS feed. Your readers (and mine for that matter, that means you if you are wondering) can subscribe to your blog and get email notifications every time you post. That is one reason it is a good idea to post often. Your readers will see your post in their inbox and hence be less likely to forget about you all together. We DON’T want our fans to forget about us.

Content

Now to get into the meat of this topic… Content. Blogging doesn’t have to be complicated or take a lot of time (disclaimer: I should take my own advice here). As a musician, there are a few main things to keep in mind that will help you to simplify the process. Let’s talk about the type of information that will be the most effective to hold your audience’s attention.

What To Blog About

So what type of content is the best type of content to include in your blog posts? This is not that complicated. One good way to captivate your audience is with some type of series, in your case this will be in the form of a story. I would suggest tracking whatever project you are working on. Think studio sessions, tour, songwriting, looking for a new guitar, bass, keyboard, drum set, etc. or whatever you are doing that is expressly a musician type thing to do.

A point of clarification… Your blog post is not a status update a la Facebook. And while, Twitter is supposed to be micro blogging, it is also not the same thing. More about what not to post below, but for now, just know your blog should be more an in-depth look at your experiences as a musician, band or artist. At the risk of being overly repetitive, I am going to say it again, you’re painting a picture of your lifestyle as a musician. This is not where you tell people that you are going to get a cup of coffee. However, an interesting story about what happened at the coffee shop or that you saw a woman wearing a really cool blue hat and a song was coming to mind because of it… That’s a blog post.

One thing that illustrates my earlier point about music fans and their fantasy of living the life of a musician is the eternally coveted backstage pass. How can we offer a tour of backstage for our fans? A photo says a lot. Somewhere around 1,000 words, I suppose. That’s right I am suggesting that you post a photo… that’s it. Add a caption for explanation and SEO purposes and move on to the next thing. A photo or a series of photos even can tell a story about backstage just before the show or just after. You can also use a photo to include your fans when you are in the studio or changing a flat tire while you are on tour. Change up the feeling of your photo posts. Post some landscapes that you find mesmerizing (this is cool because when you post a picture of something like the Grand Canyon or some other landmark, it will entice comments about how your fans have been to the same place. This will make them feel like their life isn’t as far from the musician lifestyle they fantasize about.), a comical event or just a shot of your dressing room or studio set up. Remember whether you intend to tell a story or not, your audience will make whatever you post into one. You might as well work with it. Give pieces, not so little that nobody has a clue what is going on, but not so much as to leave no mystery. If you haven’t already figured this out, you need a flickr account. You can link Flickr to your blog. For some great tips and tricks I will always point you to Ariel Hyatt.

If a picture is worth 1,000 words, what is video worth? Yeah video (youtube widget embedded in a post) is a great way to easily post on your blog and connect with your audience. Again, just post a caption that lets your readers know what the video is about. This will help you in terms of clarity and SEO.

What Not to Blog about

Before I end this post, I want to cover a little about what not to post.

I already mentioned the distinction between your social networking status updates and your blog posts. Keep that in mind. Some more things to keep in mind: If you are not a full time musician, I don’t necessarily suggest chronicling your effort to quit your day job. That is the same old struggle that Joe Shmoe and Plain Jane are facing day in and day out. Don’t post about going grocery shopping or anything else particularly mundane. This doesn’t mean that you need to be exceptionally exciting all the time. It just means that your fans already know what is like to be an ordinary person. We know that musicians aren’t as extraordinary as other’s would like them to be, but they don’t, so, keep the fantasy alive. The trick here is to paint your musician self and hint at ordinary person stuff. Think… changing a flat tire (something everyone has to deal with once in a while) while on tour (something the majority of your fans know nothing about).

That’s it folks. Blogging for musicians. It’s a really great way to connect with your fan base and keep them engaged in your process. I strongly urge you to try it. I want to stress simplicity, because your complex, in-depth blog posts won’t have nearly as much impact as regular posting will. .

Thanks for reading. Stay tuned for the final step in the Online Music Marketing series – Step 7. I hope you are all putting together your online music marketing plan and beginning to take action.

Tom Siegel

P.S. – For more information about how to put together an online music marketing strategy sign up for my newsletter at www.indieleap.com.

Posted in music & marketing