We are always happy to pass on helpful lists about getting your online marketing efforts started.
This list is from Gen-Y Rock Stars.
http://www.genyrockstars.com/2009/09/music-marketing-where-do-i-start.html

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OnStartups is a new favorite blog of mine. Their article on Startup Marketing Tips offers some extremely helpful, direct and practical advice. This article is also a nice continuation of Dan’s most recent article about the similarities of tech startups and bands.

To me the tips discussed here not only validate the advice most of us are reading from all indie music business blogs, but they also motivates me to do more. After all, why not? If this is your chosen path you should be putting all you got into it.

Some tips in the OnStartups article that could be tweaked for musicians:

- For a band name, luckily we all also have the option of adding “music” for a domain, BandNameMusic.com or for myspace has certainly saved many musicians!

- You should add MySpace when Facebook is mentioned. Yes, MySpaceMusic is here to stay.

- You should be using Google Alerts too. It is easy to gets started and it will motivate you try and do my more to get your band named more online.

-LinkedIn references may or may not be applicable, but you call also substitute or add what you know to be the local online tribes, networks or blogs where the musicians you know and/or fans you want congregate.

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We wanted to give some link love to the folks at New Rock Star Philosophy.
The “left brain” section of one of their recent articles provides a good starting point for marketing and production ideas that will use your limited time and $ resources wisely.

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Iran has had its election. A dubious result at best, turnouts exceeded 100% in over 30 towns. While the Iranian government has tried to shutdown blogs and other social networks, Twitter has become the Medium of the Movement.

What can work for political movements can also work for the music industry. To put it another way, Twitter: it is an easy, simple, and effective way to mass distribute information.

Some of you, and I know personal know many of you and have heard others say “Twitter: It’s a FAD?” A mere annoyance, the thing that people who don’t have lives use and it will go away. Sorry to say, your wrong. Twitter is here to stay.

Twitter is a service that is one to many. You post and your followers listen. Its easy to follow, you don’t need to be a friend or invite someone, they can find you. This seems works great for people to follow celebrities and bands, anyone people want to know more about. And compared to the average nine to fivers life, musicians lives are interesting. While your doing shit, the rest of us just watch, and live our lives.

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With free downloads, pay-what-you-want CD marketing plans, and the high costs of touring, the major issue faced by independent musicians is how to remain financially viable, as well as pocket some extra cash. With little doubt, the best opportunity to scale your music is to find a licensing partner.

From a business perspective, scaling involves creating a process that is repeatable and can generate money with little or no additional effort, once the initial process is set up.

However, getting yourself hooked up with a licensing partner is by no means an easy task, and many hurdles must be overcome to get there.

First, you’ll need to have final cuts of your songs, and preferably a completed CD or two.

Second, you’ll need to create a second CD that includes only those songs that you think are most marketable for film, TV or games. Right now gaming is an area that is growing, which means many opportunities for licensing new music.

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If anything, the Internet provides the ability to locate many things you may not have been expecting to find. This means that in order to reach your market (in this case, your music) you may need to find creative ways to get yourself noticed by those potential fans that may actually be searching for something else.

The previous V11 post quoted “The Fall of Communization and the Rise of the Music Fan.” Once again a quote from that post is relevant here, as it pertains to the perspective of the music listener/music purchaser:

As music fans we are now walking in a crowded room where everyone wants our attention and what happens naturally is that we’ve tuned out the frequency of noise in our lives. The permeability of the walls we put up around ourselves now only lets certain messages through. You now have to be smarter about what you do, because it’s no longer as easy to buy your way into our headphones.

Because of this, we need to find different, more organic ways to get over those walls so that people hear can your message.

Creative Marketing is required. Think of it as a combination of web surfing mixed with the long tail business approach.

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I am still somewhat surprised how so many bands, even in tech savvy San Francisco, still are not doing all the basic things that are needed to establish a platform best suited to efficiently take advantage of the Internet.

Here are the very basic items I still see bands/musicians not doing:

1. Website. You need a website to be the hub of an information related to your band. Just having a myspace page will not cut it. Or just using facebook. These tools will change constantly, but your website will be your center, always.

2. Email addresses. Use the band’s website for your email address. Drop yahoo, gmail or whatever strange domain name you may now be using. Matt(at)VolumeEleven.net is what I use here, even though I have other person emails. Same concept.

3. Web chatting. You need to be engaged with fans on certain chat rooms related to your genre or musical interests. This is one of the major advantages the Internet has to offer – connecting people over dispersed geographical areas. To not fully take advantage of this opportunity is …

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We all know self-promotion is neither fun nor easy, but in this day and age you need to do what you can. This post has some good examples to motivate musicians to try even harder at self-promotion during their gigs.

Good luck!

http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2009/04/topspin.html

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One of the bands I manage was recently doing a radio interview. The interview was in the band’s local area. However, newly impressed fans were writing in from around the country with praise. Ah, the benefits of streaming over the web.

It really made me think, though. The band plays so many shows in its local area, and does not have the funds nor the ability to tour nationally. The band has even won some awards on popular web sites.

But the live experience needs to be translated in order for people to truly connect with the music. This live show/interview did a great job with establishing a very real connection with the listeners.

I recommend any band or musician to pay more attention to finding these streaming radio interview spots where they can talk and play live for an extended period of time. It should be just as an important part of your growth strategy as playing live gigs.

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Not surprisingly, many executives in the TV and film industry are interested in working with independent musicians, for a few reasons: (1) it is easier striking deals with indie musicians because there are less management and label hurdles, (2) their music can be licensed for less money than signed acts, and (3) there is a [...]

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