Root Music's nicely laid out Facebook pages recently trimmed down and adjusted automatically to the new slimmer Facebook giudelines. That wasn't their only big change they have also announced YouTube Tracks. this allows musicians to upload songs and video tracks from YouTube to the same player as their SoundCloud music and collect performance royalties from their song plays.
Yesterday when Apple announced their new iTunes powered social network, Ping, the music pundits started crying hyperbole of MySpace killer etc. While this new site does have tons of potential to be a great tool to encourage record sales and concert ticket sales, right now it in unfortunately not much more than a way to promote the top artists on iTunes and make the rich richer. With no clear way for DIY artists to sign up, under 20 Featured artists plucked from the major labels usual suspects and a partnership for concert tickets with the disgusting corporate entity Live Nation, right now Ping strictly offers a way for your friends to hear how much you love U2 or Lady GaGa. Don't get too excited Apple still needs to open the doors if they want this to be more than Friendster.
If you know anything about rock, you know that NME is one of the biggest tastemakers and a magazine that has discovered tons of bands that are now legends. They have now developed their own social network where fans and musicians sign up and you get the chance to be discovered by NME's writers. NME Breakthrough is that social network and you can go there and hope that fans and writers will discover your unknown gems.
KCRW is one of the last free form radio stations in America and one of the most influential radio stations around. The LA Times recently interviewed their librarian on how you may possibly get your music on to these airwaves which can then get you through many other doors. The interview sheds some light on some the great secrets in making your radio promotions work.
Are you one of the 20 million people who have heard "The Bed Intruder Song"? If not click on the above video and provided you are not an uptight nerd you are about to hear one of the funniest memes of the year. What is even funnier is this YouTube phenomenon has now charted on the Billboard Hot 100, but the ideas and tactics they used there are quite serious and smart. Follow me to the jump and we will dissect what got them there.
We always hold Jango high up as a promotion every artist should be taking part in. Following Grooveshark's lead Jango will now give you play credits if you get other artists to sign up for their service. Pretty cool. To learn how to do this check out their blog.
A bunch of music blogs have teamed with MOG and Scion to offer a huge battle of the bands thing where they are looking for some of the best unsigned bands in the country. If you think you are the best unsigned band around you should watch the above video and then email Rock It Out blog.
Those progressive Canadians in The Arcade Fire seem to be at the forefront of music marketing these days, and it looks like they have done it again with this amazing interactive film made by Chris Milk. Using the capabilities of HTML5, Milk has created an incredible movie that is accompanied by the Arcade Fire's new song "Used To Wait". Without giving too much away, we'll say that Milk's video makes the band's somewhat predictable song seem all the more resonant by carefully playing on the band's usual themes of childhood and family. Note that the film is best viewed in Google's Chrome browser and has "issues" in Firefox (we know, we tried). The film is called The Wilderness Down and can be found here. Truly a wonderful piece of work and a very exciting peek into what the future might hold with HTML5. Scarily enough this even happens to the smallest of groups from time to time. Some freak of nature will take your music and claim it as their own on some random MySpace. As well these days you can profit share in YouTube streams and it is important that your songs are on your channel if you want to get paid for them. Artist House Music has a fantastic blog on how to handle this situation that is a great read.
Everyone is chattering about new ways to get your fans motivated to help you to pay for your musical endeavors. Since everyone is discussing it CD Baby's always awesome DIY Musicians Podcast took up the subject for the past two episodes. You should download both of these episodes and learn how this concept can fund your music.
- Facebook Begins To Roll Out New Page Widths
- Tweet For A Track Now Does Facebook Sharing
- MagCloud Will Make Your Group A Magazine To Promote Yourself With?
- Leading With the Chorus
- Behind The Video: Those Mockingbirds "Honest, Honest"
- Mastering Engineer Greg Calbi Discusses Compression And Loudness
- Cash Music Goes 1.0 With Flower Video, Picture And Sound Player
- Installing SoundCloud On The New MySpace Layouts
- Interview With Jac Holzman, Founder Of Elektra Records
- Mastering Engineer Greg Calbi Discusses Compression And Loudness
- QR Codes Can Now Generate Facebook Likes
- MySpace Updates Music Pages, Can Now Upload 20 Songs!
- Gmail To Allow You To Make Free Domestic Calls In The Browser
- Writing Stories Around Your Music For Bigger Publicity
- Does Freemium Work For Everyone?
- Sufjan Stevens Lets His Record Loose First Through Bandcamp Then iTunes
- Lissie Makes Music Video Controlled By The Weather
- Vinyl Mastering Process Considerations
- Tutorial On Paul Stretch The Program That Makes Justin Bieber Sound Like Siguir Ros
Hit The Lights have signed with Universal Republic in a partnership with Vagrant Records
Run For Cover Records have signed Basement
As the song of an advertising creative director I have been instilled a genetic habit of reading and clicking every ad possible. Today when I was presented with an ad in my Gmail I was shown a new service that was one of those things that make you go hmmm? MagCloud is an on demand printing place that will your group it's own magazine, which they say will promote your shows? Maybe I am missing something but I don't get that part of it, but what I do get is that fans love added content and if you can offer them high quality writing and content they will take it in and value what you do more. Check out what they do and lets all make sense of it.
Those Mockingbirds "Honest? Honest." - SFW Edition from SideCho Records on Vimeo.
Those Mockingbirds are a NJ based indie-power-pop band on SideCho records who got a little crazy with the concept for their NSFW video to promote their latest EP, No Symmetry, Being a band with no budget they knew they would have to capture the eyes of viewers to get people to check out their video and what catches the eye better that naked people? Well maybe naked people without black bars over their junk. Maybe if they get enough views of this video they can be convinced to release the NC-17 version of the video? In the mean time watch their awesome video and head to the jump to read how they made it.
Soundcloud has up an excellent blog post that explains how to fix the flaw MySpace didn't fix with their latest revamping. - the music player. Their blog gives a thorough how-to on getting their player into the new layout so all the fans getting first impressions of your songs are not tortured by the horrific sound coming from MySpace's player.
Elektra Records founder Jac Holzman discusses blogs, YouTube and the new filters.
Look at that! MySpace is attempting some serious voodoo and trying to come back from the dead. They have now busted out some serious music page enhancements including the biggest one which is you can now have up to 20 songs. This means that it will no longer be the big major label bands who can do exclusive full album streams. Another wall broken down, on a pretty busted up building. They also will have:
- Cleaner, more simple look
- Dozens of new themes
- Create your own custom header
- Easier navigation with all your stuff in one place
- Your profile design on photo, video and other pages
- Plus, artists can upload more songs and feature up to 20 on your profile
Big news for those of you looking to book tours and communicate without running up your cell phone bill. Google is now allowing you to make free phone calls within Gmail using Google Voice (a service I am absolutely in love with). While you may not see it in your Gmail yet they will be rolling out the service in the next few days so keep an eye out for a great new way to communicate. More info here.
Groups always ask us how to get featured on more mainstream press. One of the things they are smart enough to realize is that just having music out and putting out a new record rarely gets an unknown band in to bigger press. Instead you need to make or find a story that is part of a narrative writers will write about.Look at the news including your state and local paper and find stories they regularly write about and find a plausible way to work your group into that story. Does your group have a van that runs on bio-diesel you can easily get your tour promotion worked into an article on that subject in the local paper by pitching it to a writer and how we can get off the dependency to horrible companies like BP. Do you regularly play in mosques? Well probably not, but we know the news can't shut up about the fake controversy right now. When you find a story you could have a connection with, get in touch with the writer at that paper and pitch the story. Use your imagination and you can probably convince a writer looking to easily fill a word count to do an article about you, just don't abuse this concept, The paper grow tired of your ploys to get in the news if you are too ridiculous, so put down the Osama Bin Laden costume and stop calling the mosques for gigs.
Chris Bracco who writes one of our favorite blogs, Tight Mix Blog, has up a fantastic guest post on Hypebot that takes on many ideas behind the Freemium model. This in depth article gets your mind racing around the ideas of this selling point and can lead you to a great reconsideration of how you work your music promotions.
Bandcamp's blog has up a wonderful interview on the release of NPR rockers Sufjan Steven's latest release. One of the more interesting points in this great interview was a strategy we touched upon in our our story on Man Overboard's recent record leak. They released the record on Bandcamp before iTunes in order to get email addresses and higher profits from Bandcamp. Check out the full interview here.
Lissie - Cuckoo (Official Video) found on Pop
Well you don't see this everyday. Lissie has been making lots of buzz lately for her great music but another way she will be making buzz is her new music video changes with the weather. You can see this video on her site(as opposed to the video above where you can hear the song) and read about the process here. (via Jesse Burton)
Making good sounding vinyl is a lot of work. The first step in the
process is to get your record professionally mastered. Once this is done your
mastering engineer then needs to send the person cutting your vinyl a
Vinyl Split master. This is a master that designates where you split the
sides. 9 times out of 10 your mastering engineer will not be the one
who also cuts your vinyl. Your mastering engineer will make a master
that translates well on CD and Digital and you will then pass it on to a
engineer who will cut a vinyl lacquer. This can often times be a
engineer who works in a specific business or one at your vinyl
manufacturer. This person is very important to your vinyl's sound and if
you value your fidelity you will make sure you get a lacquer master
(this is what your vinyl will be duplicated from). If you went to a
reputable mastering house they can often advise you on someone who will
do a great job cutting vinyl for your release that they work well with.
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