A step-by-step plan for marketing your music online
I have listed the following steps in order of priority.
You might already be doing some (or most) of these things, but Online Music Marketing is about doing more of the right things, more often. So as many as possible of the things listed below need to be embraced and co-ordinated with your offline marketing strategies for the best effect and long-term brand building.
Product
Marketing means nothing unless you have a product to sell.
You’ve spent your time creating and recording your music. Now you want people to buy your music and come to your gigs and watch you play.
Rhythm Music Store
Make your music available online for people to buy as downloads.
I am the Content Editor of RhythmMusicStore.com and will take care of getting your music listed on this store for the whole world to buy.
Complete the very easy digital distribution agreement at RhythmMusicStore.com.
Get your CD to me:
Post to:
Brian Currin
PO Box 399
Century City
7446
Or hand deliver / courier to:
Mabu Vinyl
Rheede Street
Gardens
Cape Town
021-423 7635
Clearly marked for my attention.
Email me a JPEG scan of the cover, and a biography in a text document.
If you don’t have a proper printed CD, don’t worry, a CD-R is fine and any good quality square image can be used as “cover art”.
I do require a physical audio CD or CD-R, though, for naming convention, quality control and creation of the 30 second samples.
If you supply me your music in MP3 format, it just takes that much longer for me to get around to processing it properly.
SAMP3 / Channel24
SAMP3.com has been the official supplier to Channel24.co.za (part of MWeb) of free downloads, since 2004.
Stephen Segerman and I started SAMP3.com in 2002, as an off-shoot of the SA Rock Digest to help promote South African music online. Downloads are royalty-free, but not copyright-free and all songs that are given away are approved and authorized by the artist, the publisher and NORM.
We provide special online edits (usually about 70-75% of the song) to Channel24. The song is accompanied by an image of the artist or album cover, a short blurb about the artist and song, and a link to buy to the artists website or a link directly to the page on the RhythmMusicStore.com where the full song (and your other songs) can be purchased and downloaded.
By providing a free download, you are engaging with your potential fans, and asking them to take a listen and give your music an opportunity to impress them. If it does this, they will want to buy your music and come to your gigs.
Examples: Jack Hammer, 7th Son
Blogging
To be effective, blogging needs to be done often with a combination of original content created by yourself, mixed with external content such as reviews and general industry press releases.
Automation allows your Blog posts to appear on your Twitter profile, your website and on Facebook.
Blogging can be as simple as sending an email. Yes, really.
There are a number of blogging platforms available, but I use WordPress.com because it works so well, and has been endorsed by Google as being very Search Engine Friendly.
Twitter provides quick news headlines about what is happening.
This is great place for keeping your followers up to speed with what you are doing. Even more importantly your Twitter feed can be embedded on your website, your blog, your MySpace profile, your Yahoo profile and Reverbnation, so that one tweet will update all your profiles automatically, including your Facebook status.
Remember Twitter is not an inbox that has to be cleared every day. Dip in and read what you can, when you can.
MySpace
Still a very valuable resource for musicians. And the search engines love MySpace.
MySpace photo galleries can be embedded as slideshows on your Website. Uploading and resizing of images is a snap.
Embedding slideshows, videos, Twitter feeds and streaming audio make MySpace a great place to be seen and heard.
Examples: Jon Buckley, Venessa Nolan
Facebook is a great community resource but limited because you can only really communicate with people who allow you to be their friends, and Google struggles to see Facebook.
Website
Your central portal under your own name.
Discography, Biography, Gig Guide, Photo Gallery and more can all be included.
Twitter and Blog feeds can be embedded.
MP3 player to play sound samples which can be sourced from the RhythmMusicStore.com database.
Google analytics can be embedded in the coding to provide accurate statistics recording your website visitors. What countries they came from, how long they spend on the site, most popular pages and a whole lot more.
Fanbridge
Keep in touch with your fans via email using Fanbridge
Embed a Fanbridge widget on your website and build up your database of email addresses. Communicate often with your fans via newsletters. Subscribing and unsubscribing is handled automatically by the Fanbridge system.
Example: 7th Son
YouTube
YouTube is the place to see and be seen.
Videos posted on YouTube can be embedded on your website, your blog and your MySpace profile.
Favourited videos can also appear on your Facebook profile.
Ongoing Process
Online music marketing is an ongoing and labour intensive process. It requires passion and perserverance.
Costs
Whatever amount you choose to spend on your online marketing, I can accommodate.
Selling your music on RhythmMusicStore.com and promoting on SAMP3.com will cost you nothing except postage to get your CD to me.
All the other profiles, platforms, resources and tools can be embraced as you require.
Sunday, 8th November 2009 at 5:56 pm |
Grat stuff Brian. There are so many good ways to get your music out there and heard. Musicians need to follow through on these ideas because it is the only way they will find success. Work your band as a business and you will see the positive results.
Wednesday, 21st October 2009 at 2:58 am |
Hello
Where can I find/buy Afrikaans 60/70 music, such as “Die Potgieter susters”, “Vos broers”, “Strydom broers”, Phoebe van Loggerenberg” etc. Tried everywhere, with no success. Thanks.
Cedric Landman