So next part - what I’m doing now!!! Or more . .. last week . . .
Last.fm
garageband.com + ilike
reverbnation.com
squidoo.com
RSS, feedburner etc.
Because while things were cooling off I was taking the opportunity to update my own music stuff and learn the old fashioned way from getting in there and getting my hands dirty.
I knew that as a digital music coach there’s - obviously - heaps of technical stuff I need to know - and this stuff can be intensely frustrating because of the technical aspects ot the interwebz – but totally necessary!
Podcasts for example are one of my pet hates. Cute name. It’s amazing how people rattle it of when lets be perfectly honest. To set up a podcast at the very least you need to have intermediate internet skills. You need to upload a specially generated text script to your host where the mp3 is stored and create an enclosure. If you don’t know what you’re doing it’s no walk in the park. Trust me.
That’s why it is SO important to have a grasp on what internet promotions will work. You can lose nights and nights doing this stuff, lost in the possibilites, and I look at the situation and say – here are sites and techniques that are actually offering opportunities. And that’s what this blog is about. Yknow I do a 40 hour week alone just promoting bands – and my business – on the net so I try to construct my blog around what I would do if I only had an hour or two a day to promote my music, or you’re the guy in the band who’s responsible for online stuff. The essentials.
That’s why I don’t say sign up for every site, trot out the tired line about “using every opportunity” and I’ve talked about avoiding all those sites that are just going to be a waste of time basically, because theres no one there. Use the sites that matter, that are at the critical mass. The tipping point.
So looking at the growing field of aggregators and other web 2.0 platforms and decided it was time I invested some energy into this. Myspace represents now the beginning of a new era, it was the first time people started interacting with music online in a big, populist way, actively discovering new bands and it shifted the momentum of music toward the internet. Now, as I’ve described before, more music will come to people via the internet but as social niches start to break down, and technology will allow for newer and more means for suitable content to come to you.
So lets get down to what I’ve been checking out:
last.fm boasts 15 million users so thats pretty much getting there. In fact, when I joined up last year, I was astounded to find I already HAD fans who had “scrobbled” my music - put it into the system and as an aggregator, what they’re doing is big for the future of music: they’re using all that data from the 15million people ”scrobbling” the tunes into perfectly analysed recommendations of what songs and bands you might be into based on users that have similar tastes - all by the magic of computer science. They also have a widget and are obviously keen to use all that keen data analysis fandango to help you get some interesting stats on what people are doing with your music.
Last.fm is also leading the charge to suss out royalties for artists. We are not talking about a lot here so don’t get too excited. But still.
So they’re doing some stuff. You can see they’re trying to use what they’ve got going on to create a platform for artists and already having found an astounding list of fans and weird mp3’s of mine that people had on their ipods I kinda went uhhhmmm critical mass much??? BUT I didn’t really find their “music manager” that great to use, so though I’d definately get on last.fm and keep it updated perhaps bi-monthly, I probably won’t be hanging around.
Now garageband itself wasn’t much of a big yahoo - to me it was definately always one of the so so sites, yknow based around a reward system for reviewing your fellow members which is lets be honest . . . not a skyrocket to success. BUT I will say garageband also had a cool musicians section where I checked out
http://www.fanbridge.com - which offers free mailing lists for musicians. Going full time with music probably isn’t going to happen if you’re not all over managing your mailing list. @ years ago everyone
http://www.myxer.com - offers ringtones. definately non essential unless you’re hitting the teen market but hey why not?
BUT the thing with garageband is that you’re instantly creating access to your music on the Ilike widget which provides a very similar service for itunes and is used by 21 million people!!! and y’know we’re talking active music people here! people who WANT to find and share new music through the aggregator services, and the Ilike widgets that are provided for most social sites - facebook, myspace, bebo etc.so lets go over it. person X likes madonna, prince, and micheal jackson. person Y likes madonna, prince, micheal jackson, and you. So these systems are going to suggest to person X they check out . . . you! now just times that by 21 or 15 million and you’re getting some pretty hard data.
so im stoked with reverb nation basically just because of the toys I got and it was all pretty hassle free - I hadn’t checked out fanbridge but I knew I had to suss out the options for the all important mailing list for a start so thats why I ended up on reverbnation check it out. Though I don't know the figures ALSO it gets critical mass points for having an active and acessible local section where almost 500 kiwi artist are already active. that's a good sign.
We’ll have to see how they go, but even in the last week i’ve had 150 hits off my widgets lets check them out:
FACEBOOK BUTTON - facebook dont provide urls - whats that about? heres an easy facebook button.
REVERB NATION MAILING LIST 
REVERB NATION PLAYER
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REVERB NATION TUNE WIDGET - “THE MOTHER OF ALL WIDGETS”
This thing is pretty sweet!!!
Now reverbnation also allows you to add the RSS feed from your blog to your reverbnation page and ALSO allows html in your profile just like myspace was historically the first to do . . . which as an internet guy has set me off on all sorts of cunning thoughts of search engine optimisation ohhhh juicy juicy backlinks for google . . . and you can embed your widget love!!!
which brings me too squidoo the project of my old favourite superguru seth godin - it’s a combination of a blog and a wiki, you create and update pages about . . . oh anything you like!
Seth Godin is not dumb. Add RSS feed from your blog. Add your youtube videos. Add your itunes . . . and this is where it starts getting significant. Add an amazon store, where you can sell relevant amazon stuff from your squidoo page and collect commission. eassssyyy
hullo is that the future knocking? Yes. but it’s along way to the front door, lets worry about getting out of the chair first.
BUT the whole reason I even mentioned squidoo which is kind of a new thing is that Squidoo is spectacular for google goodness. I started my page last week and already squidoo is ranking number 8 for the search term “kurb”.
As myspace found out, sometimes good things come to a spammy end. But where Google love is concerned, I’d get your arse on squidoo. This could be a long shot for blowing up too.
Yknow just like file sharing and spamming, the record industry and myspace respectively could have taken the power back by legalizing. Instead they cracked down and paid the price when they found out it was bigger than they were. Squidoo is smart by letting people make money from them. They won’t lose thier community.
OKAY
You know about my RSS feed I set up on http://www.feedburner.com - if you check out my blogging HQ @
http://kurbpromotion.wordpress.com - yes its the one with the horrible 90’s design
But in a lot of ways I’m actually surprised. In the old days i’d waste my nights signing up for sites where the big proposition was that they would HOST YOUR MP’S FOR FREE!!!!! BIG DING DONG DEAL!!!
NOW these type of guys have seen that all their bases are belong to Myspace, Facebook etc. so players entering the music 2.0 arena are getting like Seth Godin on it, they have to get down on a level and actually provide the tools that are going to make a difference to the artists who use them. I found writing this I couldn’t really go into all the services each offered because it’s getting pretty utility.
These are sites that are doing somethiing exceptional; that’s what you got to be like.
Myspace isn’t going to make you famous, and spamming myspace isn’t going to make you famous, but if you’re goint to get stuck in and hammer out that fanbase you’re going to need the tools.
JOIN THESE SITES!!!!
coming soon:
More technology??? God I think we need a digital coach!!!!
How are you going to afford that? I dunno. might have to do a 50/50 release with Kurb.
Standby.
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