2 Internet Music Promotion Tips

Here are a couple of quick tips from my special report 50 Ways to Promote & Sell Your Music on the Internet (which actually features a total of 65 ways to market music online).

Plug Your Web Site During Media Interviews

Web sites shouldn't operate in a vacuum. Combine traditional print and broadcast interviews with your online presence. But be cool and clever about it. Anyone can say, "If you want to find out more about the band, visit our web site at ..." Yawn.

Instead, create some special valuable resource that's easy to describe on the air or during an interview for a feature story. And make it available from your web site. A free download of one of your songs probably won't cut it. Give it more widespread appeal and have it tie in directly with your musical identity.

Example: "I'd like to offer your listeners a free report called The Top 10 Best Jazz CDs of All Time. You can download it right from our web site at ..."

Or "Your viewers can help themselves to a free report called Ten Ways to Use Music to Relax and De-Stress Your Life. It's available at ..."

See how valuable this would be in attracting new fans?

Consider Amazon's New CDs on Demand Program

Amazon has hooked up with a service called CustomFlix. According to the site, "CustomFlix now offers disc-on-demand services for audio CDs. Forget mass production of CDs: CustomFlix offers independent musicians, artists, labels, and other music content owners an inventory-free way to reach a worldwide audience and make their audio CDs available to millions of Amazon.com customers."

Sounds interesting. Visit www.CustomFlix.com to learn more.

Again, you'll find a lot more of these tips in the 50 Ways to Promote & Sell Your Music on the Internet report.

-Bob

Blog Tag: 7 Songs I Like

Ah yes. Blog tag. I remember when I was a child and all the neighborhood kids would hop on their wireless laptops and IM each other and then play a rollicking game of blog tag.


Okay, I'm lying. Maybe this will be a childhood memory for a new generation. But I digress ...

I have been tagged by blogger Jay Moonah to list "7 Songs I Like." This is similar to the 5 Things You Didn't Know About Me meme I participated in a few months ago.

Well, you know me, I just can't play by the rules. So I'm putting my own spin on things. I'll give you seven songs from some of my favorite indie artists, then my top seven from more established artists.

So here goes:

• "Hardline" - Jill Barber
• "Bye Is Such a Lonely Word" - Gilli Moon
• "Fickle Mind" - Heidi McCurdy
• "Elusive Butterfly" - Geoff Byrd
• "Now" - Kiff Gallagher
• "No Distractions" - Ralph Covert & The Bad Examples
• "Dixieland Dirt Bovine" - Ian Sherwood

Check out these artists. They're awesome. And now for songs you're more likely to recognize:

• "Accidents Will Happen" - Elvis Costello
• "Tempted" - Squeeze
• "Don't Dream It's Over" - Crowded House
• "New Sensation" - INXS
• "Are You Gonna Be My Girl" - Jet
• "Behind a Wall of Sleep" - The Smithereens
• "Come Together" - The Beatles

Geez, my tastes are obviously stuck mostly in the '80s. This was really hard. On another week, I probably would have picked seven different songs.

Instead of tagging more bloggers, I will issue a general public challenge. Feel free to list the top 7 Songs You Like, then come back here and add a link to your list in the comments below.

Cheers!

-Bob

Signed, Sealed ... See Ya!

Ever since Nelly broke onto the national scene, my hometown of St. Louis, Missouri, has been a hotbed of hip-hop activity. No artist has come close to Nelly's numbers (but who does these days?), although acts such as Murphy Lee and Chingy have made a dent.



But that hasn't stopped a new army of St. Louis rap and hip-hop talent from taking a stab at it. And in recent years, a number of major labels have tried to get in on the action by signing several St. Louis artists who have great potential.

But, according to an article in The Riverfront Times, the big alternative weekly here in town, getting signed does not equate to getting anywhere in the music business.

The article's subhead reads, "Local rappers ink major-label contracts, only to be left wondering: Deal or no deal?" It chronicles several hip-hop acts that are bound to contracts with production companies and labels -- who have waited months and years with no album release and no career development.

Here's a quote from artist Ruka Puff, who learned a valuable lesson from record label stagnation:

"This is really the era for the independent hustler. Back in the day, the record labels used to do a lot of this stuff for you, but in this day and age the mindset is more entrepreneur. That's the mindset of most of the artists that are winning: They're super entrepreneurs.

"A lot of the artists coming out don't have backbone," he continues. "They don't have no kind of fan base, they don't have the streets. So you might find your little ditty pop that the record label built from top to bottom, but most of the people that are winning is the entrepreneur cats that were able to get it on their own -- without the record companies."

But you knew that already. I just wanted to remind you :-)

-Bob

Black Lab Bum-Rushes the iTunes Charts

Authors have been doing this for years. They ask everyone on their mailing list (and the mailing lists of other authors conspiring with them) to all buy their book on Amazon on the same day. This concentrated surge of sales pushes the book to the top of the Amazon sales charts, where even more people will see it and buy it.



The band Black Lab is doing the same thing with iTunes today. Here's part of their story from the Bum Rush the Charts blog:

On March 22, we are going to take an indie podsafe music artist to number one on the iTunes singles charts as a demonstration of our reach ... The track we've chosen is "Mine Again" by the band Black Lab. A band that was dropped from not just one, but two major record labels (Geffen and Sony/Epic) and in the process forced them to fight to get their own music back. We picked them because making them number one, even for just one day, will remind the RIAA record labels of what they turned their backs on -- and who they ignore at their peril.

I'm not sure how much peril this will cause, but it's a cool idea -- if for no other reason than because they are one of the first bands to use this creative tactic to chart on iTunes.

Another smart thing Black Lab is doing is donating a chunk of their profits to a number of college scholarships.

Interested in making a 99 cent statement? Visit http://bumrushthecharts.blogspot.com/ today.

-Bob

The James Brown/Don Knotts Publicity Factor

Here's a great idea from Bill Stoller's Publicity Insider eZine:

In 1993, the citizens of Steamboat Springs, Colorado, held a vote and officially renamed a local bridge "The James Brown Soul Center of the Universe Bridge." [The Godfather] himself showed up at the naming ceremony and a good time -- and lots of media coverage -- was enjoyed by all.

Try something similar. Run a campaign to name a local street or hill or park after a celebrity, a local notable, or even a fictional character.

Start a petition to rename something that will never really be renamed (the state capitol, Google, a major league ballpark) after, let's say, Don Knotts. I guarantee, if you can get 25,000 web visitors to sign a petition renaming Shea Stadium to Don Knotts Field, you'll get a news story out of it!

Hmm ... What about the Borat Museum of Modern Art?

-Bob

Do You Have a Book Inside You?

I've been writing about music marketing and self-empowerment for a good 15 years now. First, it was through monthly columns I used to write for the local music magazine I published in the early 1990s. Later, those tips moved onto the Web through articles I distributed online and the ezine I've been publishing for more than 12 years now.



By acting on my passion, chipping away at success, and making smart use of the Internet, I've reached a point where I now make a nice living as a self-published author (or indie book publisher, as I also like to call it).

While I'm best known for "indie music marketing" (in fact, I come up #1 on Google for that search phrase), I find myself dishing out a lot of advice lately to aspiring authors. I'm serving my third term as president of the St. Louis Publishers Association and am speaking and writing more frequently on this topic.

If you feel you have a potential book inside of you too, I invite you to check out my new FullTimeAuthor.com web site. Everyone has a story to tell or a personal message they need to share with the world. You can do that through songs and music CDs. But you can also do it through your own book.

And you won't be surprised to learn that I embrace the same DIY attitude with publishing books as I do with pursuing a music career.

Again, if this interests you, pay a visit to FullTimeAuthor.com.

-Bob

The Secret Music Life of Kat

Would you like to be more productive with all the things on your music career to-do list? Then check out The Organized Musician post over at The Secret Music Life of Kat blog.



She writes ...

As an independent artist, you wear many different hats. Those hats can be divided into two main arenas: the creative arena and the business arena.

The creative arena, of course, includes roles such as musician, singer, entertainer, songwriter and producer. Kat breaks down the much longer business arena into three subcategories: strictly business, promotion and management roles.

Then she encourages artists to divide and conquer these areas:

While you need to be the bottom line decision maker and aware of everything that affects your career, many of these roles can and should be delegated to others [such as other band members, family members, friends and fans].

The key is to outline all the responsibilities you are delegating as well as the results that you expect. If you treat your career professionally, so will others.

It's good advice and a helpful way to tackle all that needs to be done to build your music buzz.

A Word of Caution ...

When it comes to marketing, don't lock yourself into the "business" aspect of it too tightly. Too many musicians make the mistake of thinking of promotion and sales as drudgery work. It shouldn't be that at all!

Derek Sivers (of CD Baby) said it best during his recent talks at the ECMA conference in Nova Scotia: Marketing should be a natural extension of the creative music-making process.

You're excited about the music you make (or at least you should be). Hopefully, you also realize how your music positively affects your fans. Sharing it, talking about it, and spreading the word should come easily.

Stop thinking about marketing as something that big business does, and start looking at it as something that people do: talking about and sharing cool new music.

It's not a crime to list marketing as an activity separate from writing and recording songs. But it would be a big mistake to categorize marketing as something that's not every bit as "creative."

-Bob