I came across this brilliant pdf report by Virgine Berger about a month ago that sets out a blueprint for your online music marketing and asked her if we could pass it on to you for free.

She was happy to let our readers have it, but we didn’t get round to posting it until now as we are still busy redesigning the site and preparing more great stuff that we will be adding when we have the makeover – we’re hoping that will be at some point in September. Thanks for putting up with our delays. Oh, and I am on holiday a lot with my kids too!

So, when I read the pdf, I was very impressed. It covers all the things that you should be doing for music promotion online – why MySpace still counts, how to use Twitter, what Facebook can and can’t do for you etc. More importantly, it ties together all the strands that you need to be providing to your fans.

You can get your copy of Virginie’s report here -  ‘What is a good digital music Strategy’ pdf.

Why should you listen to Virginie?

Well, she is the former head of marketing for MySpace France. Now she works as a music marketer and with more than ten years in the entertainment industry (television channels, radio broadcast industry and digital music industry), she knows her stuff backwards.

You can find out more about her at these links below:

Email: virberg@gmail.com
Web: www.digitalmusic.tumblr.com (in French)
Twitter: www.twitter.com/virberg

I wanted to stick up a very quick post to bring hope to aspiring artists, yet also hammer home once again our core argument.

Maybe we’re finally getting to the time where a few artists really can break ‘big time’ without the record company machine, thanks to their own online efforts. Maybe.

Adam Young – he is Owl City – is an inspiration to the DIY musician using MySpace (still….) as their primary marketing tool. The story goes that Adam started recording in his basement and posting material to his MySpace profile with no real plan to speak of. (I’d heard the buzz and then Bob Lefsetz mentioned him today – and I got to thinking!)

Soon enough, people began to take notice and word spread – in the viral and natural way that online music discovery has long promised and only occasionally delivered. Two self-released albums and mammoth MySpace attention led to the moment of truth, and Adam, understandably, went for the old-school record deal with Universal.

Did he need to?

I think we’re still at the point in time that an international Major record company can push an artist with a groundswell of support far more successfully than they can on their own. Whilst the internet was fundamental to his early success and awareness, the world remains a big place in which to ship physical stock (and more than half the people still want CD’s!) and to drive radio and TV exposure. Sure, a lot of kids find new music on the web, but many don’t and all sorts of people still rely on the mainstream media to push things at them rather than discovering for themselves. Add to that, ‘offline buzz’ and personal recommendation, both of which can be amplified by the cash injection and expertise offered by those dinosaur record companies.

My view – they still have a lot to offer.

On the other hand, what he was doing to get noticed by those companies is exactly the same stuff that needs to be done to build the online buzz about your band and build a real fanbase – so do it anyway.

What can we learn from his experience?

1. He’s very talented and his material is great – you know we bang on about this a lot, but all the web promotion and Social Networking in the world is pointless if your material is crap. Study your craft, hone your skills and then present to the world.

2. He’s very prolific – Owl City was the third or fourth project that he had worked on. And he didn’t just sit there and do it half-heartedly. He finished songs, finished recordings, put them on the web. All the time perfecting his art and learning skills to promote himself – through experience.

3. He engaged with the feedback that he got – honestly and openly. If you’re seeking to build a following these days, you need to be available to your fans in a way that old school stars never were. It’s a mutually beneficial journey now – not you and the fan divided by awe. Look at how Imogen Heap talks to her artists and revels in their intense feedback.

4. Now that he is signed to Universal, they have amplified his web-presence with a light but skilled touch. Have a good look around his official site and see what they now offer – loads of information, his personal blog, streamed music, buy links, radio request telephone numbers, links to all his Social Networks, Street Team sign-up, mailing list, a forum, wallpapers and banners…… The site is a lesson in how to do it right. Not too flash, just nicely designed and stuffed with content that shouts out his appreciation of his fans. The only thing I’d add is a dedicated YouTube channel and Flickr page.

So, look & learn – be great at your art, push it out there, communicate and climb higher. If you do and the Major record label A&R guy comes calling, it might be the right thing to do, or, maybe, just maybe, you’ll decide to keep going it alone – and soon that really will be an option.

Read about Adam Young and Owl City below:

Owl City Official Site

Owl City Wiki

Star Tribune – article on Owl City success

Lately we’ve had a lot of people become friends with us on MySpace. We love this and we always check out profiles of our new friends, so we’ve noticed something that we’d just like to let you know about.

It’s not that you’re doing it all wrong, but failing to use the way MySpace works to your best advantage is

Don't be a monkey - let them see and hear what they're looking for!

Ultimately you’re on MySpace to get your music heard and make fans. Bearing this in mind, a lot of artists are not using their ‘influences’ and ‘sounds like’ sections to their best advantage. This is something that we stress quite heavily in our MySpace book, but the basic premise is that you need to be as open and honest about your influences, and what you actually sound like as possible. You can try and be clever and say you sound like ‘a bad weekend’ or ‘ice cream on a hot day’ but that doesn’t let people know what to expect, and this is after all what they’ve come to your page to find out!

So here is how we think you can make the most out of these sections…

 Genre:

Genre is one of the first things you choose when you sign up for a MySpace, and you can change it by going into your account setting. This lets people know the style of music you make and allows users to search for your band through that genre section in the music directory listings. You need to make sure that you choose the correct genre for your music in order to make sure that you are available to the right fans. Putting a comedy genre down may seem funny but will not do you any favours as no one who likes your style of music will be able to find you.

As I write this I can almost hear some you shouting ‘But my music doesn’t fit into any genre’. If your music genuinely doesn’t fit into anything at all in the options available, then congratulations, you are unique, and I’d love to hear what you’ve done! However, the chances are that you’re not. Take a step back and look at your music objectively, or play it to friends and see how they’d categorise it. A lot of people who think they can’t be categorised are just too close to their music and need a little reality check.

The genre selection you choose will also be displayed in your profile, and everyone will see it so make the right choice, or risk losing potential fans.

Influences:

Here you need to put down as many bands, artists and songs that have inspired and influenced you as possible. Rather than being pointless this is hugely helpful to anyone who visits your profile and can initiate conversation between you and your potential fans. For example, if you like guitar music and are given the choice of two bands to listen to, one inspired by Oasis and the other inspired by Girls Aloud then you have a pretty good idea of how their music is likely to sound and therefore which one you’re going to prefer.

Remember, you’re not trying to show how cool and obscure you are, you’re trying to gain fans. Users can search for new bands to discover based just on this, so don’t waste it. Provide as much information as possible and be honest!

Sounds like:

What does your music resemble most? Make as accurate a comparison as possible here because, as above, people will search out new acts based on what they sound like. Don’t lie about your sound or pretend to be something that you’re not as you will quickly be found out. If you can then compare yourselves to other bands and artists who sound like you, and make friends with these artists. Their fans will be more open-minded to you and your music than anyone else.

This is the one that people are most likely to fill in with an amusing quip as we said at the start – sounds like ‘a ten day hangover’ or something like that. Since people are searching for bands who sound like other bands, why would you shut that chance off?

This may sound simple, or just plain common sense, but the number of profiles we’ve come across that don’t follow this is amazing, and you’ll be surprised at the difference it actually makes!

So, once you’ve amended your profile to let the whole world know who influenced you, what you like and sound like, here’s a quick traffic tipfor you. Comment on the MySpace pages of any of the artists you’ve mentioned. It doesn’t have to be a huge comment, just a quick note along the lines of ‘you’ve inspired us’ or ‘we aspire to be like you’ or just tell them how much you love them. The fans of that band will then be able to click through to your profile and check you out, providing you with a whole new pool of potential fans. Lovely.

Our eBook ‘Make It On MySpace’ covers many more issues like this in detail. It’s not a guide on how to just put a MySpace profile up, it’s aim is to show how that profile can be and needs to be at the centre of your relationship building with your fans. People who find you on MySpace can become lifelong active fans, not just meaningless friend numbers. ‘Make It On MySpace’shows you how.

I think these might become a bit of a feature on the blog – little quick posts that point out a neat little tool that can help you in your mission to market your music.

We covered ArtistData the other day, which amongst other things gives you greater control over listing tour dates. Well I’m not sure if the application covered in this post will read the feed from ArtistData or not – I’m not that techy, but I assume it will. Let me know if I’m wrong!

So, what is it?

It’s a MySpace application from the lovely people at iLike. Great site that you should and probably do know about – it’s not in my top 5 of places that you should be using, but it’s not far behind. The Universal Artist Dashboard is good if you are an artist, and although it’s not as comprehensive as ArtistData looks like it will be for posting to all your profiles at once, it’s a pretty serious tool. It remains an awesome route to fans for larger artists.

But that’s not what this post is about!

They have just released an App for MySpace that replaces your MySpace calendar for listing your dates. As you’ll know the MySpace calendar isn’t very attractive and doesn’t allow any of the features that this brings to your profile. As well as being update-able from your iLike UAD, if you have one, so that MySpace updates with facebook etc, the App also has the ability to host buy links for tickets. There’s more – a whole load of info is dragged into the event page automatically – which friends are attending, venue map and details of pre-gig bars nearby. All  sounds pretty good and gives that little bit more engagement with your fans.

Add to that that it is customizable to fit in with the look of your page and it seems like a worthwhile MySpace page upgrade. Check it out here – Concerts powered by iLike

Note to self – make sure we put this in the next edition of Make It On MySpace!

One of the problems involved with effective social networking and online promotion as a musician is the amount of time it takes. If you have a profile on all the relevant sites, and update your shows and news on relevant listings sites then you’ll slowly find yourself spending more and more time online and less time doing what you love; writing songs and developing your music like you should be. 

So what’s the answer? 

Well in most cases you’ll find that the general advice to you would be to employ someone to take care of your online sites, or get one of your fans to help you out in a ‘street team’ capacity. However, chances are, if you’re just starting out in the music industry you’re not going to have the cash available to pay anyone as every spare penny you have will be used on your music, and you may not have a fan you can trust with your online presence. 

So what happens then? Well, you can either carry on regardless and split your online work between yourselves or you can have a look at www.artistdata.com. By the way – it’s free! 

The people at ArtistData are working tirelessly to build solutions to automate as much as possible of the monotonous tasks of updating your social network profiles as well as your artist website and local and national concert databases. The idea being that you input all of your information once, and they update all of your sites in one go, therefore taking the hard work away from you and giving you more time to be creative. 

Below are some examples of things that ArtistData allows you to do through their site. Have a look and see how much time this could save you: 

They can automatically update your MySpace calendar with new shows and when you post news, blogs, or shows, links to these updates will appear on Twitter and Facebook. They also post a reminder each day-of-show about where you’re playing that night. 

The ArtistData Concert Syndication tool allows you to automatically promote your shows to fans everywhere using an ever-growing list of concert databases. And when you announce a date in a new town they can automatically notify local publications of the show, and provide them with your show and contact information. 

They provide simple solutions that help you keep information up-to-date on your official artist websites, so you don’t need to worry about learning HTML, or forgetting to update your site, and they can give you your own RSS feed to give to fans, supplying bite size pieces of news, blog and show information. In addition to this they can help you create effective eBlasts to enable you to email your fans directly with important news, shows and information, by applying your ArtistData content to your existing mailing system. They’ll even remind you to do it. 

If you’re about to embark on a tour, or find touring hard, then their tour management tools allow you to organise your dates quickly and easily making sure that you’re completely organised on the road. They also generate a formatted list of pertinent information for each day to print out and hand to band and crew, making sure no one misses sound check…or the van. 

Unfortunately this isn’t a perfect solution yet as there are some sites that they are unable to work with at the moment. However, in these cases they will endeavour to help you keep these sites updated through the use of custom formatted CSV files.  They are also working on a more thorough solution for Facebook which they promise will work seamlessly to integrate your profile and artist page, so that any info you input to ArtistData will be published directly into Facebook. 

ArtistData has been in beta testing for a while but has just rolled out a brand new dashboard and is linking with more sites daily. It could revolutionise the way that artists promote themselves on the internet so is definitely worth a look if you haven’t done so already. 

We’ve started using it with our clients and they love it. We can’t recommend this highly enough and think this may well become a de facto tool for all musicians. And, seeing as it’s free, how can it not be worth a shot.

Is MySpace still as effective and as essential for musicians as it was a few years back?

My honest answer is ‘yes’. I think it has passed its most dominant moment, but I actually do think it’s now more important than ever in the part that it plays in your career and promotion of that career. How can that be if its moment has passed?

Well, that’s because MySpace is no longer the hot new thing but has become the establishment. Odd, because it has happened so fast. But now, you absolutely have to have a MySpace page, as it is the first place that every day folk and the music industry guys go to find out about a new band. A few years ago a MySpace page was an option and made you look cutting edge. Now, if you haven’t got one, you aren’t going to get found. But, this is probably preaching to the converted! If you are web savvy enough to be looking up our Blog, you’re going to know that MySpace is your first calling card in the online presence stakes.

There are a multitude of social networking sites currently available to you and chances are, if you’re reading this, that you will have heard of, or have a profile on, several more of these. However, despite this, if you are a musician, people will always ask you if you have a MySpace. Why is MySpace so important to the aspiring musician?

MySpace has undergone a lot of changes within the past few years, changes that are continually making the site more beneficial to those currently in the music industry, or wanting to get into the music industry. With the launch of MySpace Music at the end of last year we are now definitely seeing a shift from ‘MySpace: a place for friends’, to ‘MySpace: a place for music’.

One of the main reasons that MySpace is so important is that, when used properly, it basically acts as a one-stop shop. You can direct people to your profile page to listen to your songs, look at pictures and read a brief bio of you, before sending them on to your website for more detailed information if they are interested in you. In this way MySpace is acting as a kind of electronic press kit for you, taking away the need to make demos CDs and print out endless press packs to send to record companies in today’s beleaguered industry.

Having a MySpace page also makes it easier to be a DIY musician. The ability to make contacts on MySpace is obviously amazing and the possibilities are practically endless. Anyone and everyone you could ever need to help you record and release your music are literally just a click away!

By making sure that your site is optimised, user friendly, eye catching and informative and the songs you have available are as good as they can possibly be, then you are pretty much guaranteeing that the next time someone stumbles across you page, whether they’re looking for a new act to sign, or just looking for a new band to be a fan of, they’re going to stick around and see what you’re like.

If you are prepared to use it properly then MySpace is a quick and easy way to get yourself into the public consciousness, but it is by no means a guaranteed way to turn yourself into a multi-million selling artist, especially in today’s market. For you to do that will take a lot of hard work, both on and off MySpace. However, there are things you can be doing with your MySpace profile to make sure that, out of the millions of artists and musicians who currently use MySpace worldwide, you are among the handful that people sit up and take notice of. We’ll look at what those things are as often as we can on this Blog.

As we move forward it’s clear that you’ll need to control a presence on many sites (Twitter and Facebook in particular) and on your own site, as well as your MySpace page and that will be just one place that fans can connect with you. However, we aren’t there yet and for now your profile on this most important of Web 2.0 sites is key to your success.

Don’t listen to anyone who says it’s over. They haven’t got a clue.

We, as a management company check out bands every day on MySpace and you can bet everybody else in the game does that too. It’s a default setting!

Make it a cool, interesting and ever changing destination for your fans and it will pay massive dividends.

You can learn more about why MySpace is so important to your music career in our book – Make It On MySpace.