It seems like most of the news about the big music business companies lately has been nothing but doom and gloom.  By and large, it’s been the startups like TuneCore, TopSpin, BandCamp, SoundCloud, last.fm, iLike, Rdio and others that have been pushing the envelope and taking advantage of the new opportunities within the marketplace.

However, things seem to have taken a bit of a shift recently.

Facebook, which has long been admonished for not providing tools for musicians (among other things), launched Music on Facebook. With it, they provide a pretty decent step-by-step best practices guide for getting the most of out Facebook, not only for musicians, but for fans and venues.

Along with that, Billboard Pro has caught my attention. The service is $99/year, and even though you have to have a MySpace Music page to participate (more on that later), it’s by no means limited to MySpace.

The team behind this kindly provided an answer to the question that popped into my mind when I read the part about having to have a MySpace Music profile a bit later on in the FAQ section:

Why do you require that artists use Myspace Music to be on Uncharted or to join Billboard Pro?

Billboard is synonymous in the world of music with its charts, and in order to create a platform for exposing the efforts of new and developing artists, we created Uncharted. Our charts have historically been based on comprehensive sales and airplay data. To have as comprehensive a view of the online music landscape as possible, we formed a data partnership with the largest artist community on the internet, from the perspective of both the number of artists and fans participating: Myspace Music.

Billboard Pro subscribers can track fan engagement from many different sources, including YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, and more recently launched music-specific services like ReverbNation and Soundcloud. We plan to add additional relevant data sources as the digital music landscape evolves. If there’s a source that you’d like to see included, please share it with us.

I know, I’m harping on the MySpace thing quite a bit. It’s nothing personal against Billboard Pro, and I actually caught myself nodding my head after I read their reasoning for requiring the MySpace Music account. After all, we know that Facebook wasn’t really an option. Instead of forcing artists to create something new, choosing to tie in with an existing presence – one with a righ data history – is a strategically smart move.

I also really like how Billboard Pro is open to including other music services into their analytics tool, and already includes quite a few, like “YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Last.fm, iLike and Wikipedia, among others.” Their blog is also chock-full of good information – everything from industry news to how-to’s and tips and arguably a great resource for a musician, even if they’re not subscribed to the Pro service.

Final Verdict

I’m a fan of these two moves. Facebook is finally realizing that people want to connect with musicians on their site (no doubt they’ll figure out how to monetize Music on Facebook in the coming months), and Billboard is taking their industry prowess and turning their attention to the people who are fueling the growth in the industry – up-and-coming artists.

What have your experiences with Facebook been like? Have you noticed the recent changes? Have you signed up for Billboard Pro? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

This is a story about a little festival that could.

They could produce a stellar lineup. They could sell out within a week. They could promise to be one of the best festivals of the year, if not the past few combined.

This little festival that could did put together a stellar lineup, did sell out within a week, and does promise to be one of the best festivals of the year – if not the past few combined.

This not-so-little festival can also be rude, as seen above.

If you haven’t been paying attention, there’s been a lot of chatter about Coachella over the past few weeks. First, there was the excitement over the lineup (summary: “HOLY COW IT’S AMAZING!”), then there was the chatter about tickets going on sale (summary: “YAY! I HAVE MY TICKET AND I’M SO EXCITED!). Then tickets sold out, Coachella posted their “kthxbye” Tweet was posted and we saw the following:

I get being sassy. I understand that a music festival (or an artist, or a producer, or a disc jockey) may have a bit more leeway than your standard corporate account on Twitter. I even get that humor (in this case, trying to use lolcat humor) can be witty and funny.  However, in this instance, the tweet was just plain rude.

Tickets were going for $1,000+ at the point that the tweet was posted, and the festival and the 75,000 tickets offered sold out within 6 days.  6 days!  Many people were waiting on paychecks to come in, or waiting to get vacation time approved at work.  I know quite a few people myself that had booked accommodation and airfare, but were waiting on buying tickets until they got paid again (just like they did in years before).

Knowing that people are spending a lot of money to go to this festival, and knowing that tickets sold out much more quickly than in years previous, the least that @Coachella could do was show a bit of sympathy, or even thank the people who purchased tickets, when they ran out.

A few examples of tweets that would have worked better than their rude tweet:

“Overwhelming response to ticket sales! We’re sold out already!”

“Thanks to all that bought tickets for this years festival – we just sold out in record time!”

No, it wouldn’t have solved all of the complaints. But, what tweets like the one above would have done was remove the sassy and rude aspect of their current tweet, as well as show appreciation for people that bought the tickets.

Sometimes using humor goes a bit too far, and the fact that people are still talking about that tweet 2 days later shows that this time, it did indeed cross that line.

Coachella – in the future, put yourself in the shoes of the people you’re talking to and ask yourself how they would feel before you tweet. Humor doesn’t always translate well online, especially on Twitter.

At first blush, yoga and music don’t have a ton in common – aside from the fact that music is usually playing during a yoga class, of course.

I was willingly having my ass kicked by a great yoga instructor at my gym last night when the strikingly simple analogy hit me – yoga is just like practicing a musical instrument. Bear with me here…

The basics of practicing seem simple – you play a piece over and over and over until you get it right.  But look deeper, and you notice the nuances.  Are your fingers correctly placed on the violin so that your notes come out on pitch, as opposed to sharp or flat? Are you moving them at the right time for the runs? When you’re drumming, how is the tension in your arms and wrist affecting how you strike the drum? Where are you holding the tension? Where should you be relaxing?

The most simple of techniques, rudiments, fundamentals or poses can take on a completely different light when you analyze them and pay attention to the action of doing them, not just the getting through them to the next phrase or pose.

Enter – the mountain pose.  It’s literally what you see above – standing with your feet together and arms at your side, palms facing forward.  How deceptively simple! “Standing up, I do that all day!”

Right – but how often do you pay attention to how you’re standing? How often do you pay attention to if your toes are spread or together – to how your feet are grounded on the floor? How often do you think of where your hips are in relation to your shoulders, or how your neck is aligned with everything else?

You don’t. Just like you might not pay attention to how you’re striking the drum or if your fingers are placed in exactly the right place on your violin at exactly the right moment.  These little details escape us as we rush through our lives and through our practice… we often get through them just to get to the next point.

The lesson I took away from yoga last night was this – before you move onto the advanced stuff (running a Twitter contest for tickets, or developing a strategy for increasing the engagement on your Facebook Fan Page), make sure you have the basics down (like Tweeting things that people are interested in, or getting fans on your Fan Page).  Start from the beginning and apply thought and a good dose of awareness to everything you do before moving forward.

Doesn’t the saying go “Perfect practice makes perfect”? Start small, get the basics right, then move forward.

Oh – and the soundtrack to this post? The Facebook soundtrack – fitting, eh?

It’s funny.  In certain circles, weird looks cross faces when I mention speaking to people for years without ever meeting them.  In other circles, it’s completely normal. It’s been this way for about 10 years now, at least as I remember it.

Ever since my teenage years, I’ve seen the Internet as a tool to connect with people.  At first it was old friends – people that had moved or that I’d lost contact with for one way other other.  Later, I got into WGI (the link is an MP3 to the last show I played, the Overture to Candide played from finish to start, then from start to finish – in case you’re wondering).  I also joined LiveJournal around the same time and started to see things changing.  All of a sudden, the Internet became a place for me to chat with people about upcoming shows, connect with members of other drumlines before we ran into them at a competition, capture my thoughts and feelings as I had them, and ultimately meet new people.

All in all, this seemed pretty natural.  I’d be meeting these people in person a short time later – and many of them I’d already met in passing – we just didn’t have the luxury of time to talk.  In that social circle, connecting online was normal.  Mention this to people I went to school with though and I got a completely different reaction – it clearly wasn’t normal to them and in fact, was really, really strange.

Jump forward a decade and these days, I’m hard-pressed to count friends and acquaintances that I haven’t met online on two hands – part of this is work-related (I work in marketing/social media as a job), and part of this is lifestyle related, seeing as I’m into music with a really strong online presence and community (drum and bass, dubstep, WGI/DCI, etc).

I spent Thanksgiving in the UK and got to thinking about it on the plane ride back.

The friend who let me crash at their place? I met them in person, but through someone I met online.  We’ve kept in contact for 5ish years exclusively online, and kept up online by and large even when I lived in the UK.

The offices I visited when I arrived, to catch up with people I’ve previously worked with? I met them at an event in NYC, but only because I saw a Tweet that they’d be in town and arranged to meet up.  I knew them online first and have kept in contact online ever since (over a year and a half now).

The old friend I caught drinks/dinner with and my old flatmate who came into town to see me? I met one online and one through well, living together, but we’ve all kept in contact online for the past year and a half and 5+ (respectively).

These are just a few examples, but in each one, the relationship wouldn’t have happened or be maintained without the use of the Internet.  Nowadays I find it normal to keep in contact with people all over the world and feel like I actually know what’s going on in their lives – even if we haven’t seen each other in person for years.

What’s this mean for you? It means that you shouldn’t overlook the power of the Internet as a medium – not only to promote your own stuff, but to discover new people and new opportunities, as well as maintain the ones you have.

Pretty simple. huh?

I’ve been following Hypebot’s 3-part series (so far) about DJ Shadow’s marketing plan for his current tour, Shadowsphere.  If you haven’t read it, it’s a great series.

Overall, the thing that sticks with me throughout the series is the attention to detail that Shadow’s Marketing Manager (Michael – and make that “Project, Marketing and Merchandise Manager“) has used to build out their strategy and tactics for managing the tour.  Instead of trying to find one solution for all aspects of the tour promotion, Michael’s using many different tools, each designed to do one thing very well.

For event-based marketing, Michael’s lined up the following arsenal:

• Facebook (yeah, more on this in a bit)
• iPhone app (with geo-targeted push notifications!)
• Square at merchandise tables
• Street team
• Buttons (yeah really, buttons!)
• Merchandise (with multiple price points)

Now, for the more long-term aspect of marketing DJ Shadow for this tour (and after), Michael and Shadow are all over the place – in a good way!

• djshadow.com
• DJ Shadow iPhone app (including a merchandise section within the app)
• SMS text campaign for a free download
• Email marketing (with signup at the merchandise table)
• Facebook
• Twitter
• MySpace
• iLike
• Reverbnation

Seriously, they’re everywhere! Wait, did you miss that? That’s the point!

Let me explain.  A lot of people (businesses included, not just musicians!) take the approach of only marketing themselves where they feel comfortable doing so.  This means that if they’ve not used Reverbnation or iLike before, they’re not going to look at it in terms of what marketing potential it holds.  Starting from where you feel comfortable is the opposite approach that you should be taking, as it’s really not about you. It’s about your customers/fans and where they are and where they want to connect with you.

Now, getting back to Facebook! I’d like to highlight this gem:

Bottom line: Facebook works because they figured out the ultimate formula for data portability.  The fact that I can post a geo-targeted update on Facebook, and that update will post to users within a specific geographic location, who can then share it with their entire network, is marketing gold.  When I update Shadow fans about a show, I only want to update the fans in the region of where that show is.  The beauty is, those people can then go and share it with ALL of their friends, wherever they may be, who in turn may click the link, and be redirected to the Shadow Facebook, or better yet, DJShadow.com.  This takes away the problem of mass-marketing a show for a specific region, but gives it the ability to go viral on a wider level than just the region targeted.  This also creates the ability for 1 show to begin an online buzz for the entire tour.

I’ve posted about my annoyance with people that do what Michael is referring to above – the lack of geo-targeting with event invites. I LOVE the fact that they’re taking this into account and putting the power in their fans hands to promote the event for them, without over-saturating them to the point of annoyance with invitations to events they can’t attend.

For the email marketing, the merch table with multiple price points and the street team – my lesson is this.  Don’t abandon the basics.

If you have a well-kept email list, use it! People are going to want to by souvenirs from the concert, so give them options! If you have people who want to marketing for you on the streets, use them to get the word out the “old fashioned” way. Don’t throw away everything you’ve done in the past for something that seems the shiny new object – you’ll just end up seeing scattered and cause your fans to be in a perpetual state of confusion over where they can find you.

Kudos to DJ Shadow and Michael for putting together a solid marketing plan for the tour!

I’ve been a big fan of Behringer products for years.  They produce quite the extensive line of DJ, sound and other music-related products, and I’ve always had great experiences.  That being said, they were pretty much out of sight, out of mind for years. I stopped DJin’g and just didn’t have a need to keep up with what they were doing.  I’ve been paying attention to them again lately though, mainly due to their Twitter stream.

I took a look around their social presence and really like what I saw.  So much so that I decided to write an entire blog post about it – not bad, eh?

I’ll start with the website:

The clean style really showcases both the products they want to feature (rotating in the center), as well as a larger portion of their product line and their social outposts, all without being crowded or poorly-designed.

Great, but their Twitter stream is really what caught my eye.  Let’s take a look!

I LOVE the fact that they’re on top of responses.  A lot of people/companies who are just jumping into social media seem to forget the “social” aspect and just use their accounts to push our news about their company.  Behringer does post updates about their products, but they also feature weird musical instruments, ask questions and have conversations with people that respond to them. It’s a really great combination of interesting information and interaction, and I regularly go check the account just to see what I’ve missed from them. Really.

I hopped over to Facebook next and really, the only negative thing I have to say here is that I wish they had a better avatar. It is consistent with their other profiles (like Twitter above), but just a bit too long for the space.  Still – if I’m just pointing out the avatar and not the actual content, I consider that a huge win.  Make no mistake, the content is really good! Take a look for yourself.

Behringer does cross-post content from Twitter to Facebook (or vice versa, more likely), and I like that they do this.  They don’t try and shove people back and forth between the platforms, yet they make sure that if you’re on Twitter, you’ll see the much the same information as you’d see on Facebook.  They also reply to comments on Facebook which is unique! You’d be surprised how many companies post something then just leave it.  Questions go unanswered, kudos go unthanked and opportunities to, you know, be social, go unrecognized.

As if that wasn’t enough, they’re also on YouTube and Flickr – both give you a good “behind the scenes” view of what’s up at Behringer, including shows they’re at and videos they’re making (even just for fun).  The videos are fun to watch and the photos are a combination of company photos and fan submissions – I really enjoyed looking through both sites and seeing some of the faces and personalities.

So – some takeaways:

• Interaction is good. Don’t be afraid to use @ replies, DM’s or comments to respond to questions, thank people for their support or offer help.  Sometimes all people want is to be heard.
• Consistency is good. Use the tools you’ve selected to their full potential! Cross-post content and encourage people to connect with you where they feel most comfortable doing so – not where you want them to do so.  You don’t have to copy everything (and in fact, you probably shouldn’t), but posting key pieces of content on multiple sites isn’t always a bad thing!
• Design matters. It may seem completely obvious, but web design matters! I was encouraged to poke around Behringer’s site simply because it was easy to use.  Don’t be afraid to change things up or invest some serious time and resources to make your website more effective.  Websites are still important!

What other companies do you like in the social space? Share your favorites in the comments!

Before getting into this post, I’d like to repeat my disclaimer, as MySpace happens to be a client of the company I work for – and I want to be clear that the post below expresses opinions that are mine and mine alone (or… mine, all mine!).

This blog expresses my personal opinions and not the opinions of anyone else… unless they’re being interviewed or I’m summarizing something they said – then it does.  I welcome comments and discussions, though do reserve the right to remove offensive or inflammatory comments if necessary.

My blog may come across as slightly sarcastic at times. That’s because I’m slightly sarcastic at times. Again, this is me, not my employer, my family, my friends or my favorite cactus talking.

Now that the disclaimer bit is over, let me explain my thoughts about MySpace and the wider online music world.

Think back to the early 2000′s. As far as social networking goes, it was just a baby. You had Friendster and MySpace, but not much else. As a musician, it made sense to put your efforts into MySpace, as it was quickly gaining popularity and had a very large audience. It was a great place to put press photos, music, information about your band members/your band, tour information, etc.

It had the magic duo – the functionality and the audience.

Jump forward to 2010 and the situation has changed dramatically. I still have a MySpace account and still go there to look at new music and check out what the bands I like are up to, but I’d be lying if I said that I used MySpace as frequently as I used Facebook or Twitter, for example.  Some of that is due to my job, as a good part of what I do requires me to pay attention to Twitter and Facebook on a daily basis, but it’s also due to personal preferences; my friends have mainly migrated away from MySpace, so it’s usefuless has gone from a “catch up with everyone”, to a “see new music/catch up with bands”.

Now, MySpace has been taking some great steps recently to fix some of the things that their users were talking about – such as a redesigned look and feel. That’s fabulous, and as a user I really appreciate the change (hey there, MySpace – thanks!).

What does this mean for bands?

It means that your audience is no longer in one central place.  If you audience isn’t in one central place, what sense does it make for you to only exist in that “no longer central” place?

Think of it this way.

Let’s say you lived in a small town and you only had one grocery store. Suddenly there was a population boom and 3 more stores opened. If you were selling a product at that one grocery store, wouldn’t you want to get your product into the other new stores? Your former customers could start wanting to go to one of the new stores for any number of reasons, but you still want to get your product in front of them. True? Absolutely.

Diversify

No, this isn’t a post saying that MySpace is useless (it’s still quite useful), and I’m also not telling you delete your band page off of MySpace (keep it!).

This is a post telling you to look beyond the single grocery store.

• Look at places like soundcloud to post your tracks/give your fans the ability to download mixes.
• Look at Facebook to maintain a basic presence for people that use that social network as their first port of call (they do have 500 million users).
• Look at Twitter to chat with your fans and expose your music to potential new fans.
• Look at flavors.me to aggregate all of these outposts onto one central page.

All of these places provide an easy way for you to be found on a Google search, and even if you prefer going to MySpace, it doesn’t really matter if your fans/potential fans don’t.

The best part? They’re all free (like MySpace), and don’t require any knowledge of HTML to set up.

Note: flavors.me does charge $20/year if you want to make your URL bandname.com instead of flavors.me/bandname. You can set it up and keep the original URL for free though.

So – bands/musicians/producers/DJ’s – I’m curious! What do you think? Have you tried any of the above? Did they work for you? Why or why not?

In light of my post explaining how to start listening across the social web, I thought I’d run a test to see which bands already were listening.  Plus, I really needed some new music.

It all started with this tweet:

I repeated the tweet a bit later on with the hashtag of the day (#musicmonday) to see if people were following the hashtag, rather than searching for the generic terms of “band” or “new music”.

I then posted variations of the tweets above that got the most response once a day for the next 6 days.

You know what was surprising? Aside from a band @ replying me because someone else @ replied them telling them to do so, not one single band, producer, singer/songwriter, guitarist, drummer, or any other kind of musician responded to my query.

I was pointed in the direction of numerous bands my friends liked, which was great… but that wasn’t the point.

The point was to see if any musicians were using even a basic Twitter search (like, oh, #musicmonday, or “looking for new music”, or “looking for new bands”).

There, now you have 4 searches you can subscribe to (get the RSS feeds in your Google Reader). You’re welcome!

Is anyone else as flabbergasted as I am that this failed on such a spectacular level?

Photo credit: suchitra prints

I often am asked how to start monitoring the conversations happening on the web. How do you know what to look for? Where do you begin? How can you save time? How can this information be used to eventually spread the word about what you do??

Ask no more!

Before I begin, I want to state that I work for a social media monitoring company. But, I’m not here to pitch them. I’m here to provide advice for you, the musician who, in entrepreneurial terms, is “bootstrapping” it.

Define what you’re looking for

Why are you out there on the social web? Is it to get press? Keep up with industry news? Spread the word about who you are and what you play? Connect with other musicians?

The first step to successful listening is knowing WHY you’re listening. Figure that out first, and don’t be afraid to include more than one answer! Listening can have multiple purposes.

Find your Audience

Where do people go to connect? Do a basic search for some key terms that seem logical, stemming from your answers above. Perhaps search for names of your band, band members, perhaps groups you think are similar to you in sound or style. Socialmention.com is a great resource for a quick n dirty search, and it will let you search places like Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, and blogs – all at once. Take note as to where conversations seen to be happening and remember that for later.

Find your Keywords

After you know what you’re looking for and where you should be looking for it, sit down and define your keywords. What do you want to go out looking for? As mentioned above – starting with your brand, any member names, people that sound similar, perhaps your location, or a combination thereof is a good start. Run some test searches and see what results come in. Are the results what you expect? Do you need to eliminate some results? Are there key words you can use (called exclusion keywords) to eliminate groups of irrelevant results?

Try, tweak, and try some more.

Behold the RSS Feed

Learn to love the RSS feed. Don’t know what one is? Learn here.

It works like this. Say you to go Twitter and plug in those lovely keywords you figured out earlier. Look at the results page for a button that looks like sound waves, or something that says something similar to “get an RSS feed of your results”. Click on that and add it to your preferred RSS reader (the way you read these things, sort of like a digest). I use Google Reader, but lots of options exist.

Add the search results via RSS feed to the reader and voilà, the search happens automatically and sends you new results! You now just have to go into the reader and check for them on a regular basis.

You can subscribe to all sorts of things like this. Blogs, Google search results, Twitter search results, etc.

Learn, automate, and manage your time.

So?

So now you’re out there, getting automatic results in on a regular basis for things you want to keep up with. Read them, comment if you feel like it, add people to your network where it makes sense, and enjoy!

Photo credit: Bob Fornal

I love Twitter. But I didn’t always love it. In fact, for the first few months I was on, I actually thought it was completely pointless.

Story time, kiddos…

I got on Twitter in September of 2008 (late, according to most of my counterparts working in social media). I actually jumped on before a trip to NYC, and my first tweets were full of “I’m at the Guggenheim!” and other such nonsense. I didn’t really “get” it, but I figured that I should at least give it a try. To me, it was a way to shout out to the Internet at large about what I was doing… but that felt kind of pointless – I mean, who really cared??

I was shortly followed by a bunch of people in Charlotte, NC. I didn’t know any of them, but quickly found out that, in addition to being full of snark and sass, they were a really cool bunch of smart people. I happen to like smarts, sass and snark, so I started posting a bit more and responding to their posts.

Truth be told, I still didn’t “get” Twitter. It was all like a big disjointed IM conversation to me, and all of it was pointless.

So I went out to a meetup (tweetup), and actually met these people.  My impressions were correct! The local people were just as cool offline as they were online (if not more so). Now I had faces and personalities to go with internet personas and avatars. Progress!

Then I got laid off.

After calling a co-worker (to declare that we were going for margaritas) and my Mom (to tell her I was laid off), I tweeted about being laid off. I wasn’t home yet, but when I got home to change before heading out for said margaritas, guess what happened? I GOT Twitter. I understood.

In the 10 minutes between Tweeting out that I was laid off and arriving at home I had about 30 replies from people I didn’t know sending their condolences, asking for my resume, or telling me to keep my chin up. A lot of these people I didn’t even follow, but they saw my note because someone I did ReTweeted it, and they offered their help.  Seriously, COMPLETE STRANGERS.

From there, it was a bit of a snowball effect. I kept connecting with more people, shortly moved to NYC, and continued to use Twitter. I started giving back. ReTweeting things that I thought others would find valuable, sharing their stories if they needed help, and connecting with people. Not because it was benefiting me, but because I cared and I wanted to provide the help and support that had once been provided to me.

What’s important here isn’t the fact that I was laid off. The important fact is that I had the opportunity to see first hand what a community, even a loosely-knit one, can do. What sort of personal impact it can have, even for a complete stranger and someone new to the scene.

It’s not about my story. Its about viewing things in a new light, about turning something around and seeing it from all angles, and about having patience. I tweeted for a few months without really “getting it”, and then one day, I did.

You never know what sort of opportunities can lead to learning, and all too often we give up before we really “get it”.

So. What about you? When did you see something in a different light? When did things “click” for you?

Otherwise known as HOLY STATISTICS!

These summary stats were pulled from the Socialnomics site, so go there for the full statistical breakdown in written form. These are just the highlights!

1. By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers….96% of them have joined a social network
2. Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
3. 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media
4. Years to Reach 50 millions Users:  Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months…iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
5. 80% of Twitter usage is outside of Twitter…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?
6. Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé…In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen
7. The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube
8. 54% = Number of bloggers who post content or tweet daily
9. 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
10. 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
11. Only 14% trust advertisements
12. 25% of Americans in the past month said they watched a short video…on their phone
13. 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation because we no longer search for the news, the news finds us.
14. More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on Facebook…daily.

Makes you think, doesn’t it?

I know, the life of a hustler is hard.

Let me help. Here are 6 great social tools to help your hustle along and create some buzz about your music.

Note: if your noise doesn’t qualify as wonderfully crafted, start here.

1. Twitter – No, it’s not just about what you had for lunch.  The pros? Setup costs are low (it’s free) and setup time is minimal (5 minutes, tops).  The cons? A bit of reading before you jump on would probably be a good thing, and tweeting takes time. Getting in the habit of sharing little details here and there also takes a bit to get used to. Just be sure not to be “that guy” on there, please.
2. Facebook – Yes, really! You can set up a page with pretty minimal time and effort and it’s completely OK to fill your Wall with your stuff, even multiple times per week! Go look at Alicia Keys’ page if you want an example of a successful Fan Page. Warning: Facebook likes to change things and delete things without warning, so don’t depend on this tool alone to get the word out.
3. Contxts – It’s a pretty simple concept. You meet someone, you tell them to text a number with a certain message, and in response they get a text back with your contact details. It’s free for everyone involved and pretty easy to configure to your liking.  Twentysomething in the Music Biz covers a few promotional ideas here (it’s well worth the short read). I use it as my “Oops, I ran out of business cards!” backup.
4. SoundCloud – Again with the free. Setup takes about 5 minutes and you can upload all sorts of things to the system. Start with a track or two, perhaps end up with an album or a mix. It’s up to you but it’s a great (and social) way for people to wander by and discover your music.  It’s also easy to embed into places like blogs (see my post here if you want an example) and profiles.
5. Blogger – For those lacking the funds to start a self-hosted website, Blogger provides a nice alternative.  You can write about what you’re up to, put a bit up about yourself, and link to your music all from one central area.  Bonus? You can set up your other sites to direct back to your blogger.com blog, providing a central “hub” for your efforts and a flexible place where you can update your fans and foes alike about what’s going on in the world of your musical creations.
6. YouTube – Set up a channel, record yourself practicing or performing, and share.  I have my own channel to share things like trips I take or concerts I go to, and I’m always surprised to see how many people view my videos.  You can link to your YouTube videos from any number of your social sites, and it’s a great place to share your music as a lot of people use YouTube as a discovery engine, a la “plug in a random search term and see what comes up”. You can also embed your videos in your blogger.com site, share them on Facebook or Tweet about them.

What tools did I miss? The comments are yours for the sharing!

Picture this…

A guy takes a girl out on a first date.  She’s dressed up, and he’s aiming to impress. They make polite conversation over a glass of wine while waiting for their food to arrive, and each feels a spark of hope for what may come. He gets up, as if to go to the bathroom, but instead bends down on one knee, revealing a ring inside a box and asking her to marry him.

Romantic, right?

She says no. She says it’s too soon, that she barely knows him, and she runs off – scared at how quickly he moved from an innocent conversation about where he was from, to asking her to spend the rest of her days by his side.

What Happened?

He moved too fast.  Yes, it’s romantic, and yes, the thought of skipping the arduous dating process and getting straight to “the point” is tempting, but she wasn’t ready.  She wanted to discover his quirks, she wanted to discover the dynamics of their relationship without the pressure of a looming wedding, and she wanted to savor the moments they had to come.  She wanted to take her time to decide, and he rushed her.

Um, So, Music, Hello?

How does this relate to music marketing, you ask? Simple.

Musicians ask for the sale before their fans have a chance to make up their mind.

Musicians rush the relationship, doing the music marketing equivalent of proposing on the first date.

So someone follows you on Twitter, great. Reach out and say “hello” or ask them how they found out about you. Start developing your relationship with them from there. Get to know them a bit, and let them get to know you. Jumping in to ask them to buy your latest single/t-shirt/concert ticket before you’ve ever shown that you care about them just defeats the purpose. They end up feeling like just another wallet and you end up seeming like just another self-centered, out to make a quick buck, musician.

So you have a Fan Page on Facebook. Great. Use it to show your fans what you’ve been up to. Don’t just post things and walk away – participate in the conversations taking place on a regular basis.

There’s a time and a place to ask for the sale. That time and place is not every day, nor is it during your first conversation with someone who has been kind enough to show interest in your work.

Give your fans and followers time. Respect the fact that building a relationships with a fan is the same in many ways as starting to date someone new.  There are surprises, there are common interests, there are laughs, and there is a bond that grows over time.

Making money from music isn’t about getting a bunch of people to buy your first album, then finding an entirely different group of people to attend your shows, then seeking an entirely new audience to buy your swag. Relationships aren’t about a bunch of first dates!

So, musicians. Don’t treat your fans like wallets with mouths and faces. Don’t propose to them on the first date.

I was invited by Mack Collier to co-host #blogchat (on Twitter) last Monday night (the 8th) and was blown away by the quality of participants and discussions taking place during the chat.

Before I get into my thoughts, let’s take a step back. For those that don’t know what #blogchat is, it’s a weekly chat happening on Twitter (check out tweetchat.com for more information on how).  Essentially, you pull up a Twitter search for #blogchat at the appropriate time, and start Tweeting with the people already participating. The key is to use the hashtag (#blogchat) in every tweet so that the conversations can be seen by all. If you’re wondering how to find the “appropriate time” a simple Twitter search will tell you if you search for the hashtag.

The topic of the week was how musicians could use blogging and social media to help them achieve their goals – whether they be ticket sales, music sales, or just connecting with their fans.

The full chat transcript can be found here, and Mack’s review post can be found here. Happy clicking!

About an hour and a half into the chat, Curt Smith (co-founder of Tears for Fears) jumped into the fray and spent the next 30ish minutes answering questions.  Part of the value (as a fan) of following artists on Twitter is the perception of personal connection you feel with the artist, their work, and their lives. Take the following exchange as an example:

Some of the other valuable music-related nuggets Tweeted during the chat:

• Blogging and using other SM tools is a great way to build a passionate community
• Communications should be authentic – no PR/marketing people tweeting “as” the artist
• Don’t be afraid to have a personality
• Many artists don’t see themselves as brands – that mind shift is necessary
• Twitter can be a great “first step” tool to drive fans to other places (like a Facebook Fan Page or a website)
• Offering up special incentives/announcements via SM is a great way to make your community in SM feel special (Ed note: as well as start to get an idea of the effectiveness of these tools!)
• Artists and companies need to start viewing fans as long-term assets, not just short-term pockets stuffed with cash. The key? Building a relationship with them.
• If you’re going to use SM, always consider what the fans want to read/might find interesting. The focus isn’t you as a person, per se – it’s about your brand and your work. Don’t be afraid to let personality shine through, but avoid excessive inane chatter.
• Location-based software could be a no-no if you get big enough to worry about “crazy people”. Safety first!
• Most agree a blog should be the “home base” in your digital efforts
• Don’t forget the fan to fan connections – they’re key!
• Before you can ever start to think about selling anything – you need to build a community who wants to buy.

What advice would you add? Leave it in the comments!

The word “listening” gets thrown around a lot in my world.  From the musicians, there are listening parties, spiritual

image provided by e-magic

experiences from listening to a great piece of music, listening to dubplates, listening for the meaning behind the music – the list goes on.

From the marketing side, I hear about listening to the marketplace, listening to your consumers, or listening for your brand across the web.

Listening is great, and it’s absolutely necessary. The challenge though, is to separate listening from merely hearing.

Listening is hearing with purpose.

In the examples above, “hearing” can be substituted for every instance of “listening”.  The challenge, is to not get stuck in that comfort zone of “yeah, I’m listening”.

The trick is, to never be able to say “Yeah, I hear you” as a throwaway.

Do you?

Are you listening to that dubplate, or merely hearing what you think should be there?

Are you listening to the new album at that listening party, or just waiting for the tracks to finish so you can weigh in with your support and comments?

Are you really listening to what the marketplace is saying, or are you sorting out the comments by “stuff we want to hear” and “stuff we know comes through, but we’ll qualify as unimportant and ignore”?

When you hear a piece of music, are you listening to it, or letting it pass you by?

Listening is a great skill, and a skill that takes a lot of work and patience. Just like learning to pay an instrument, listening takes practice. Listening is not passive.

For you musicians wondering how to listen as marketers, here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Subscribe to blogs of bands/artists similar to you via Google Reader
• Set up Google Alerts for your name and the name of your band
• Set up Google Alerts for acts similar to you
• Search on Twitter (search.twitter.com) for your name, as well as the names of your songs or albums
• Subscribe to the RSS feed of that Twitter search, and pull it into Google Reader
• Search for your name, the names of acts similar to you, or other terms on socialmention.com
• Subscribe to that RSS feed and pull it into Google Reader

What you end up with is a Google Reader (or any RSS reader of your choice) full of information about what’s being said. That’s step 1.

The value comes from going back through that information and absorbing it. Read the blog posts. Comment if appropriate. Go see who’s talking about you on Twitter, reply or send them a Direct Message (DM) if it makes sense.

Look for feedback, look for trends, look for opportunities to connect.

Turn the data that gets fed to you into information by listening.