Using mastering tools to create professional recordings

This is a second guest post from the very knowledgeable Nick Lewis. Nick is MD of online mastering studio Brighton Mastering.

It’s easy to hear stories about Michelle Shocked being discovered thanks to a warped dictaphone recording and Justin Bieber’s YouTube genesis and think that your music will shine through even the most woeful of renderings. However, in most cases, a professional recording is essential to being taken seriously.

In an age of self-production and self-distribution, producing a great sounding recording is arguably more important than ever. Michelle Shocked and Justin Bieber were picked up by record labels who went on to fund and facilitate better recordings, having had their talent recognised by talent scouts well-versed in the art of picking out diamonds in the technical rough. You may not be so lucky, and the general public is not so well trained.

Quality counts!

The first thing people notice when they hear your music is the quality of the recording. They may not be conscious of it. They may think they can’t tell. But a badly tracked, mixed and mastered recording will inevitably get in the way of a listener’s enjoyment. Many people don’t realise it, but they subconsciously expect certain technical benchmarks to be met.

Those with a little more knowledge will consciously recognise a poor quality recording and perhaps take the music less seriously as a result. A good recording is the hallmark of an artist/band on their way up or already there. Poor quality (unless deliberately lo-fi) is the telltale sign of an artist just starting out, or one that doesn’t take their music seriously enough to spend money on making a good sounding record.

By making sure that your recordings are up to scratch (along with everything else) you really will be judged on the same level as major label artists, purely on the quality of your music without any technical issues clouding people’s perception of you.

I wholeheartedly support anyone learning more about music technology, and learning how to produce your own music can be one of the greatest joys a person can have. However, if music is more than a hobby to you, it pays to recognise just how far along the road you are, and how capable the equipment you have is. A cracked copy of Cubase and some free plug-ins can produce mindblowing results in the right hands, but more often than not it takes a lot more to produce something that’s really up to scratch.

Learn & Improve

It’s important to be crushingly honest with yourself about the technical level of your recordings. Just because you’re not there yet doesn’t mean you won’t get there. But before you have, it might be worth investing in a trip to a dedicated studio and sending your tracks to a professional mastering engineer.

Sometimes the major labels get it wrong – I’m not particularly a fan of the recent Beatles remasters for example, but the output always meets a certain benchmark that immediately qualifies it as a professional recording. Hitting the same will put you in the same bracket, and people thinking you’re a professional is the biggest step to becoming one.

This is a guest post. Nick Lewis is a digital strategist working on behalf of Zimbalam – leaders in digital music distribution.

One of the first things everyone learns about social networking is the importance of keeping up a regular stream of content. This can be daunting for people more interested in micro-tones than micro-blogging, and this social media 101 lesson often ends one of two ways: social media diarrhoea or just plain giving up.

Obviously, neither of these outcomes is going to help you sell records.

What is going to help you sell records is putting up content that gets people interested, that gets them talking and that people link to.

Quality counts

There’s no sure fire way of doing this, but one thing is for certain: it’s quality not quantity that counts.

Think about what happens every time OK Go upload a new video to YouTube. It causes a storm. It shows up in thousands of Facebook feeds, Twitter feeds, blogs and even ‘real world’ media. Their video for ‘This Too Shall Pass’ (the Rude Goldberg Machine version) has had over 25,000,000 views and counting.

If you’re an enigmatic glitch-hop wizard, dancing with dogs is unlikely to match your tunes. It’s also worth pointing out that OK Go have had a tough time translating their YouTube success to record sales.

Arguably, OK Go’s problem stems from their real talent lying in making music videos rather than albums. I, along with the other 99.9% of people who watched ‘This Too Shall Pass’, and didn’t buy the album, find the video more entertaining than the song. Why would I want to buy the music when I can have the video for free?

Even if you manage to accumulate thousands of ‘fans’, you may not have accumulated many ‘real’ fans. If you want them to buy your record as well as follow you on Twitter, you’d better have a bloody good record; otherwise, they’ll just like you for your (hopefully) witty tweets.

Being popular is great, but it’s not the same as making a living from what you love.

Social media success for musicians

Clearly, the key to success online is stringent quality control across all aspects of your profile, starting with the music itself. If you’re going to ask people to listen to you, you’d better have something to say. Less frequent but quality updates will keep people paying attention to you, whereas constant streams of drivel will make people switch off.

The overall lesson is simple: be great at everything that you do.

What this means for social networking for musicians is picking the channels that you relate well to and putting some thought into your updates.

Regular is good because it keeps you in people’s minds, but being in their mind as ‘that annoying musician who doesn’t stop talking about toast’ is not what you’re after. In fact, if you talk about toast too much, your followers may forget you’re a musician at all.

Stay focused, talk to your fans.

Make great music, upload it, talk about it.

Don’t get carried away with stories about your Nan’s dog. You want people to follow you because they’re interested in your music.

Stray too far off topic and you risk losing those that are interested in your music, as well as attracting those that aren’t.

You know the old saying: ‘if you don’t have anything to say, put your phone away and stop tweeting.’

At the upper end of the scale, you might end up with a viral hit the likes of OK Go’s videos. At the lower end, you’ll steadily accumulate genuine fans who care about what you do and what you have to say.

If you’re lucky you might even get enough to sustain a career.

Image by aintakhart

This is a guest post. Chris Rockett is a musician and music marketing consultant from London who uses Direct-to-Fan marketing tactics to help level the playing field between DIY musicians and major label artists. Feel free to follow along on his Music Marketing Blog or Facebook Page.

A common email I get from up and coming musicians…

“Dear Chris I’ve been reading your stuff for a while, and I know that I should be using Facebook but my page is just dead, I have a lot of fans on Twitter and the blog but when it comes to Facebook nobody seems to be interested. Can you help?”

Well in this post I’m going to lay out a few of the “instant win” things you can do in the hope that we can cure this Facebook problem.

The first thing you need to know is that Facebook is very different from building a following on your blog or Twitter. Some would say that it’s a little bit more tricky because you’re dealing with real people who cannot hide behind a fake Twitter profile or anonymous blog comment.

This means that interaction on Facebook is much more real and rather than being scared of this fact you can use it to your advantage if you approach things in the right way.

Why are you on Facebook at all?

The very first step is to sit down with a pen and paper and work out what you are trying to achieve from the big daddy of social networks in the first place.

• Are you trying to build your fan mailing list?
• Is your goal to build a strong relationship with your fans?
• What do your fans get out of following you on Facebook, that they can’t get anywhere else?
• Do you have your own website or is Facebook your main presence on the web?

For most bands and musicians the aim will simply be to get more fans faster, but I would also like to suggest that there is a lot of benefit from just building a close personal relationship with your fans because they will then feel protective of your music and responsible for letting others know about what you do.

It’s good to get a clear idea of what you’re trying to achieve in the beginning so that we can steer the musical ship in the right direction. When you’re sure of your aims, get started.

1. Promote Your Fan Page

To be honest, it’s easy to let people know about your page because Facebook have made a whole bunch of widgets and like buttons available for you to use.

The point is that you want to give your fans a way to like your pages even if they are not on your website.

Watch the video below for information on how to add your Facebook page to your blog.

2. Commit to Four Posts Per Day

As you may have heard before, my golden rule for success online is “quality and consistency” and this is true of nearly every aspect of your career.

If you really want to make more of a Facebook splash, commit to producing four quality posts each day, and remember that you don’t have to always go on about what you’re doing. Most of the time you should find the coolest new stuff in your music scene and start a conversation about it.

If you use bit.ly you can keep track of which of your posts gets the most clicks and at what time of the day. That way you can see when your fans respond the best.

3. Lose the Auto Posting Tools

I love tools that make life easier and there are a lot of sites out there like ping.fm which will let you post to all your social networks in one go.

The problem with using these kinds of tools on Facebook is that your page success is all about the interaction you achieve with your fans. So if you post up something cool, get a bunch of comments and never even reply, your fans will move on.

People want something unique on Facebook and not just another version of the same message they’ve seen on Twitter, Stumble Upon and Digg.

The other problem is that auto-posting sites just post the link with no image, and if you have ever been on a band page which has automation set up you will know how crap a spammy list of links really looks.

4. Post Your Thoughts and Ask for Theirs

The main area of your fan page is the wall – this is the heart of the action and the place where you’re going to have most participation with your fans.

The secret when you’re posting is to say something like…

“Hey guys I just found this link to a great thing, have a look and let me know what you think.”

Each time that somebody makes a comment on your wall all their friends see it and it will be a like a little recommendation for your music.

5. Don’t Just Post Links

I would say that about 90% of the stuff on most Facebook pages is just people finding a link to a website and then posting it up. This can get a little bit boring after a while.

If you start to paste in YouTube videos, Flickr images and slideshow presentations, you will make your page stand out from the crowd and people will be more excited by your content.

Fans really love visuals and a lot of people aren’t using them to their best advantage.

6. Quality and Consistency

One reason that people will fan you on Facebook is because they know that you regularly post up great stuff that they can share with their friends.

It’s kind of like a time saver; they can look cool to to their friends by piggy backing on your greatness!

Never forget this…

Quality takes longer, but the benefits in the long term (and even in the short term) are so much better.

Always ask yourself if what you are giving to the fans is really going to impress them.

You want to be their secret source of fun, and not post a bunch of crap and noise just because it kind of relates to what you do.

7. Create a Cool Homepage

The truth is that Facebook kind of sucks for creating a unique design. You will always have the simple blue Facebook stuff everywhere, which we all know and love.

But the fact is that you can use this to your advantage.

You need to create a ‘landing page’ that lets the music fans know what you’re all about, and asks them to “like” what you are doing in exchange for something cool.

You could even put a welcome video on your page.

It’s likely that your fans will have never seen anything like this before, and you will stand out from the crowd.

Facebook’s latest change, by introducing iFrames for Fan pages (and letting FBML die a death), has made this more complicated, although there are lots of apps coming out to make it easier.

I know that Ian is going to do some posts on this on this blog, but for now, check out the video below from a marketing blog that has great ideas.

How to build a Facebook Landing Page using iFrames.

8. Be a Chat Monkey

The whole point of being on Facebook in the first place is conversation and friendship, not just a one way stage for your ideas.

If you can catch your fans the minute they post on your page you have the chance to build a back and forth conversation that all their friends will see, and which will give your page a big boost.

This is the underground tactic that successful Facebookers use to build a loyal following to their fan page.

The problem is that you don’t want to spend your whole life just watching the news feed in the hope that people may comment. No problem, you can use a cheeky little service to send you an email each time somebody posts.

Visit Hyper Alerts.

9. What is The Sweet Spot?

I referenced to this in another point, but it is so important I want to go over it once more.

Time matters on Facebook

If your fans all work ‘nine to five’ then there is no point posting all your content at 11am because unless they’re doing some sneaky underground social networking, nobody will be listening.

There are no rules here because each set of music fans is different. The best thing to do is to shorten your links with bit.ly and then try posting at all different times of the day.

After a week or so you will be able to see which times work best for you.

10. Check Your Stats

All the stuff I work on has a “Daily Dashboard” which is just a spreadsheet I use to track things like how many albums were sold, how many people joined the mailing lists and how many people visited the sites overall.

But remember that tracking can be like crack for music marketers and you should limit yourself to 10 minutes a day and then start to implement your findings.

From my point of view, the main goal of tracking anything is so that you can stop doing things that have very little impact. Put your time and money investment into the tasks that will get you to your outcome the fastest.

Facebook makes tracking very easy with a tool called “insights” which you can see above. You should check in there every day and see what is working for you.

Final thoughts

Well that’s my brain dump over!

This is not a comprehensive list, but just a starting point for you to begin taking real advantage of the biggest website on the web right now.

I’d love to hear what’s working for you and any secret tricks you have learnt to boost your page.

Let the comments below be your playground!

Talk soon,

- Chris

Image by Ianr

This post on songwriting tips is from Ben Cooper. Ben is a professional songwriter living in Nashville, TN. Read more at The Songbird Project.

“Keep writing.” This is how I sign off every time I post something on my blog, The Songbird Project.

Why do I do this?

Well, because I know from experience that perpetual writing is the key to developing in the craft of songwriting. Every song is a stepping-stone on the path to the next.

When creating, we learn by doing, and we improve by repeating the process.

Write 200 more songs

A publisher once told me a story about a writer who showed potential but whose songs weren’t quite the right caliber to get cut. Instead of advising this young writer to go listen to a certain song or to specifically hone in on his rhyming or melodies, the publisher simply said, “Go write 200 more songs and then come back to me and we’ll talk.”

As crazy as it sounds, I think this publisher’s advice holds water. Over the past few years (during which I’ve written those 200 songs myself), I can see immense growth in my own craft that can only be attributed to the practice of writing one song after another.

When it comes to growth in the craft of songwriting, it’s important to first focus on the writer rather than picking apart the specific songs. Think of each song from a songwriter as a piece of fruit from a tree: If the output could be improved, it’s better to look to the tree and its roots rather than to the fruit itself.

I used to think every broken song could be fixed, as if it were a car that just needed a tune-up. But sometimes it’s best to just call the song “totaled,” walk away and begin the next.

Instead of over-analyzing each and every song I write, I’ve learned to figure out what I could do better in the process. Sometimes a song deserves to be re-written, but honestly, sometimes it doesn’t, and that’s OK.

I had a good friend in college who was intent on perfecting his songs. Rather than allowing a song to be “finished” and moving on, he believed it was worth dedicating copious amounts of his creative energy to each individual song. As a result, he spent years focused entirely on the same eight tunes.

He has since admitted to me that he wished he’d just moved on and trusted that better songs would come.

For my parents, the hardest aspect of what I do is the reality that the public will never hear most of the songs I write. It’s true that this can be a difficult piece of my job because each song any writer creates has a value worth pointing to and is in some way unique.

In the same way we all have unmatched fingerprints, we each carry a unique perspective on what it means to create. If we are true to that individual creativity, those fingerprints will play melodies and write lyrics that reflect our diversity.

And while individuality is key, it’s also imperative to understand the value of community when it comes to this craft. Take the ancient proverb that says, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

We need one another as songwriters, as artists, as creators, and we all have something to offer—the ability to see the world as no one else has ever seen it before or will ever see it again.

What does it look like when a song communicates your perspective? Creating an original song that answers this question means setting out into uncharted territory.

Write what you believe in

Image by AndyRob

A large part of this process is figuring out what does and doesn’t work through trial and error. In my journey, I’ve found that I often come upon forks in the road at which I will either:

a) Write what I believe in, or,
b) Write what I think someone else expects me to write.

I’ve found that writing based on what I believe results in original art, whereas writing what I think someone else expects me to write results in replicated art.

Taking on the challenge of writing 200 songs grants freedom to take these chances without regret. This mindset also leaves ample room for mistakes to be made, which in turn spurs on growth.

Don’t ever be afraid of trial and error.

We often learn more from our supposed errors than we ever do from our successes. What may seem like a failure or a missed opportunity in the moment may be exactly what was necessary to reach the next success.

Sometimes you just have to finish one song so you can get to the next. And over time, I think you’ll be surprised to see just how far you’ve come, just as I have been in my own journey.

When it comes to this craft, there is no conventional path to becoming a professional (I know plenty of signed writers who never went to college, and plenty of unsigned writers who have a degree).

In songwriting, every writer earns his or her diploma through experience.

Keep writing,

Ben
thesongbirdproject.com

A Guest Post by Bas Grasmayer

To the readers of the Make It In Music blog, I would like to present my paper looking into some of the best practices of the online promotion of new music releases.

The paper identifies trends at play in the online practices of music promotion, looks at five different case studies and draws some observations and conclusions based on these case studies.

With the great, and some times not so great, examples set by Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, DangerMouse & Sparklehorse, Mos Def and Groove Armada, the paper aims to show very simply what works well when promoting music on the web and what does not.

Are you familiar with the phrase ‘freemium’ yet? Where you give something away for free, only to give yourself more opportunities to sell your premium content (fan packs, high quality versions, bundled packages, etc.).

Something else the paper discusses is that when you give something away, you should really give it away. So no DRM (copy protection), no sub-par quality versions (anything below 128 or 192 kbps), or other things which might actually disappoint people expecting to be delighted.

Without further ado, I present to you my paper about the online promotion of new musical content, click the link to download: Online Promotion of New Musical Content by Bas Grasmayer

This article was written by Bas Grasmayer, an International Communication Management student at INHOLLAND University Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He’s currently writing his thesis about successfully using the web for monetizing music and wrote this paper as a side-project.

As part of his studies, he’s completed an internship with the Bulgarian National Radio in Sofia with excellent results, studied new media and PR at Yeditepe University in Istanbul, Turkey for a semester and has combined two of his biggest loves, new media and music, into one research objective for his thesis, which will be finished and made public somewhere within the next few months.

Bas regularly tweets about innovation in the music industry on Twitter: http://twitter.com/spartz

Bas’ contact info can be found on his blog: http://www.basbasbas.com/

You can also find him on LinkedIn, FriendFeed and Facebook. Be sure to check out his Google Reader shared items for many more interesting articles about the music industry and web 2.0!

A Guest Post by Fraser Smith

What makes a great song? It’s a big question, and one that has been written about endlessly in an attempt to unravel the “formula” for creating a world dominating smash hit record. Sure, there are some basic rules and if you were to examine a handful of the most successful or popular songs of the last four decades, they do have certain things in common. Intro, verse, bridge, chorus, verse, bridge, chorus, middle 8, chorus, chorus etc springs to mind!

We can examine things like structure, melody and production very easily but for a greater understanding of the “smash”, we need to look at concepts. Have you ever wondered why some songs seem to “connect” with people and others don’t? When asked why people like a song, they will usually say something along the lines of “I like the tune” or “it’s got a great beat”. Very rarely will the average music consumer tell you they love a song because of the clever way it’s been written, or because the music sounds like it was really hard to play. People simply aren’t interested in that stuff. They’re interested in the elusive combination of a great melody and a lyric that they can relate to, and preferably sing along to.

Of course this isn’t true of all genres of music, but for the purposes of this piece I’m referring mainly to pop music, as this is the domain of the hit single! Yes, there are lots of brilliant, intelligent musicians and songwriters out there whose music isn’t even near the radio and probably never will be. Whilst the music industry is partly responsible for this, it doesn’t change the fact that (generally speaking) if you want to have a big song, you have to be able to connect with lots of people. And that means delivering a message that is clear, simple, catchy and easy to relate to.

This means thinking very carefully about what you’re song is actually about. It can be so easy to get wrapped up in the details of the music itself, such as which chords to use? How the melody should go?  How should the snare drum sound? Sometimes the central concept of the song can often end up as an afterthought.

As a producer and songwriter, I get to hear lot of demos from new artists, some of whom are quick to tell me very confidently which of their songs are the singles, or “radio friendly”. More often than not, the song they point out is the one they’ve laboured over the most, or the song with the lyrics about their ex girlfriend / boyfriend. Sometimes this can mean their lyrics are so personal to them that they’re in danger of not meaning anything to anyone else! So it helps a lot if you are able to step back from your work and ask yourself – if I had never heard this song, what would I think about it? Do I know what it’s about? More importantly, do I care what it’s about?

Let’s look at a couple of recent example of the smash hit song. Love him or hate him, James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful” was undeniably one of the big pop songs of 2005, launching a multi-million selling worldwide career for the artist. Cynics will point out that there was a major label and some powerful marketing behind him, which is also true, but they were marketing something that was already going to be relatively easy to sell, because of the simplicity of the concept, the music and the lyrics. I don’t think it’s too unreasonable to suggest that without this song, the level of his success wouldn’t have been as great, and it certainly wouldn’t have happened as quickly.

The sentiment behind Blunt’s song is extremely simple. Perhaps this is why people connected with it? It’s essentially a “grass is greener” song, where the main character is imagining a relationship with a stranger he’s just encountered. It’s also very memorable, even from a first listen. You may not know all the words to the verses straight away, but the chorus is instant. There is never a moment where you’re not sure what the lyrics are because “you can’t hear them properly”.

Now imagine the same music, but with cryptic, clever lyrics that only you understand. Does the song still have the same ability to connect with a large audience? Or just to you? (This can lead us into a whole other area – who are you writing music for, but that’s another topic in itself!) Now try it the other way around; take the lyrics and sing them with a new melody over some complex chords in a clever time signature – is it still a hit? it’s very unlikely!

In 2007, Rihanna’s “Umbrella” had a similar impact on the world of pop. The song is built on an infectious beat and very few chords, and again there is a strong concept behind this song. If you look at the lyrics it’s more than just another “I love you baby” type thing, but it also has a very simple main hook, which hits you the first time you get to what I call the “pay off”,  the “ella – ella – ella – eh – eh – eh” bit, an infuriatingly catchy modern pop moment!

Would the song stand up without this hook / gimmick? Yes I think it would, because the gimmick sounds like an addition to the concept, not the concept itself. In other words “Umbrella” is already strong without it, but as a pop record this hook puts into a whole other league. 

What I’m getting at here is the importance of considering exactly what it is you’re saying in your songs. It’s not usually enough just to have a great beat or a great riff, try and think of these things as the starting point!

It’s also important not to confuse “simple” ideas with “dumb” ideas.  Writing complicated pop lyrics is relatively easy compared with writing good simple pop lyrics, and great lyricists will write on several levels providing you with deeper meanings if you want to look for them. This is a skill that is harder than it sounds and can take a long time to develop.

Early Motown records are a good example of this sort of thing, where the writers provided a catchy “surface” meaning that sounded like great pop music, but underneath there was often another motivation (sometimes with social or political overtones). Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye were among those who dabbled with this sort of writing, and were responsible for creating some staple pop hits that were accessible to everyone, but often had a second “layer” of meaning.

So you don’t have to “dumb down” your masterpiece to get your message across, just try disguising it a bit, and you’ll be adding depth to your work and you’ll be in good company!

Of course the most important part in focusing on the concept of your song is having a concept to begin with. What do people want to hear about? Themes of love and loss are the most popular; anecdotes about feeding your cat will not grab people’s attention the same way. If you spend a bit of time considering what you’re actually saying, and how people will interpret your “message”, you should be able give your work a better chance of connecting with your audience.

Instead of spending three hours on the snare drum, spend three hours on making your central idea something people can relate to, as generally people don’t listen to songs because of how the drums sound! And you never know, you may even be giving yourself a greater chance at that world dominating chart-topping success in the process…..

Fraser Smith
Fraser Smith is a record producer, songwriter and musician. Currently signed to Notting Hill Music, he has written, produced and mixed records for many artists worldwide, as well as enjoying top 40 success with his previous band Shed Seven. 

A version of this article has previously appeared on IXL

A Guest Post by Juanita Appleby

I know what you’re thinking…”oh no not another social networking site”, right? But just bear with me.

LinkedIn’s appeal has widened beyond pocket-protected IT geeks to boasting over 39 million members across varying industries globally.

So how can you use this more upmarket social tool to advance your music career?

Simple.

Display a professional profile

Because LinkedIn works on a different platform of a CV-based profile you don’t have to be embarrassed to forward the link on to an industry exec.

It also allows you to display up to three links on your profile so it can be a portal to your other websites.

LinkedIn is well ranked within search engine results, which means that you will get the free organic traffic to your profile page and referrals to your other websites with minimal effort.

Network with others in the industry

This is the key benefit to getting up close and personal with LinkedIn. Once you are set up with a profile, then do a group search for “music”. Then sit back in amazement at the 25+ pages of networking groups with members from all walks of life in the music industry – management, media, publicity, marketers and other fellow musicians.

Mark Carras (in his post ‘If LinkedIn isn’t fun, why should my band care?’) touched on this subject and this is the feature on LinkedIn that will help get you out of that garage you’re practising in and closer to a money-making journey in music.

The important thing to know about LinkedIn is that you must demonstrate that you know the contact you are adding to your network in some way be it through a common group membership or say an ex-colleague.

So you may want to start with using LinkedIn’s contact import tool from your existing email address book to lay a foundation of connections.

Second to that, you can use the question and answer features of groups to enhance your reputation and raise people’s interest in connecting with you.  I touch on how the question feature can help later but don’t be afraid to answer people’s questions too. 

Networking may be uncharted territory for you so be patient, ooze intellect, swap “virtual” business cards and always keep in mind that in business a one-sided pitch will almost always fail.  Be prepared to forge relationships on LinkedIn that are beneficial for both parties.

Promote your news

You can post your own news in groups and even link those news items back to any other websites you might have. Many members have weekly or even daily updates of group activity so your news will get delivered straight into their inboxes. Can’t get better than that.

Get advice from those that know

Trying to find a recording studio in your area? Need some tips on publicity? Request for reviews of your latest demo?

Yeah, LinkedIn can help. Once you’ve joined some groups and been accepted as a member, then you can start discussions in that group and other members can comment back or contact you directly via the website’s internal mail system.

Remember, don’t spam! That’s the quickest way for you to get your account banned. Stay topical and humble and you’ll find the help you need.

Find opportunities for your music

You’ll find that people will post job listings on LinkedIn and in music industry terms those are requests for songs for licensing deals, films, TV, you name it.

So while other social networking sites may be the platform to building a fanbase and getting your music heard by a wider indie audience, LinkedIn helps you focus on gaining visibility with the business contacts and advice to actually make it in music.

Good luck and keep rocking.

Juanita Appleby
Juanita Appleby, born and bred in America, has over a decade of experience in marketing and promotions.  She is currently studying music and arts writing with the London School of Journalism.