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If you’re a musician, and you want people to listen to your music online, what do you do? Here are five tips to get some quality attention.
How To Get People To Listen To Your Music
Ask yourself, “Am I confident in the quality of my music to share it?” There are no excuses for bad products. If it stinks, don’t share it. If your music is good (and other people say it is) then you may proceed with this tutorial.
Conduct a friend test. It costs nothing and you will know if you are ready to share.
1. Nobody Takes MySpace Seriously. Get Posterous.
Are you still using MySpace? Really? Go over to Posterous.com, right now. Now you can email your .mp3 file to a special posterous email address and have your song easily played on the web and in iTunes.
Total Setup: 5 Minutes. Price? $0
2. Get A Domain Name
Buy a domain through GoDaddy.com, it will cost you $10 for one year, but you should get the two year registration. Search engines like that. This will cost you $20 instead of $10.
Follow the Posterous directions to point your domain name to your new website.
And while you’re at it, follow the directions to install Google Analytics.
Total setup time: 15 Minutes. Price? $20 (every two years)
3. Use One Twitter Profile
Too many musicians have multiple profiles for the same group. You know who else does that? Spammers. And we know how to handle Spammers on Twitter.
Get one profile. Use your Posterous website in the URL field. Fill out your bio (without using your capslock), and use a picture of yourself.
Go with a picture of yourself, not your album cover. Be human.
Don’t tweet about your band all the time. Use the 3 to 1 rule: For every tweet about yourself, send three about other people and items. Keep in mind: Posterous can automaticly update Twitter for you when you post, so there’s your one.
Oh, and one more thing: You don’t need to be everywhere. Just having a big presence on one social network or social publishing tool is enough.
Total set up time: 15 Minutes. Price: $0
Bonus Domain Activity:
Go to Google.com/A and learn how to set up your domain name to send and receive email. So instead of me@gmail.com you will have me@myband.com.
Design is everything, so you want your band or production company’s name everywhere. (This will take a half hour or so to figure out if you’re new to doing this, but it’s worth it.)
Total Set Up Time: 45 Minutes. Cost? $0 But $50 if you want the additional storage space in your email, which I recommend because you will be sending emails with . mp3s to Posterous.
4. Blog
All set on Posterous? Give us daily updates. Even if it’s just a photo from your latest show, or a short post from the road. Update frequently and find a way to make the content compelling to non-fans.
Example: “A Behind The Scene’s Look At Concert Booking”. The entertainment business is interesting to everyone, so try to find a unique spin that opens your band’s story to people and illuminates the exciting parts of the business.
Total set up time: 3 Months to credibility, 6 months to turn a profit, two-years to live off of that profit. Price? $0 (If you stick with Posterous.)
5. Find Music Outlets That Match Your Genre Or Cover All Music
Don’t pitch them. Instead, read the blog posts, leave comments, participate in the community. Let people get to know you for a while. Submit tips about other bands, shows, or if you have useful information.
After a year of doing this, you can talk about your band. But if you did this right, you won’t need to. People will know about you, visit your blog, and download your music on iTunes.
Total set up time: One year. Sorry. If you want to succeed. You have to put the time in. Price? $0
Decision Time
Remember Google Analytics? What is it telling you? Are people sticking around to listen? Are you getting more gigs and downloads because of the blog?
Decide how you are going to measure success and improvement over time and measure every few months.
If you followed these tips, worked hard, and have a good product, people will listen to your music.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Thanks for all the tips, very helpful :-)