by Theodore Odeluga
If there’s anything as ubiquitous as technology right now, it’s music. You’d think from the way music and tech are radically changing each other these days, that the two had never previously met. But the truth is that occasionally throughout their centuries of development, the two have crossed paths before with inevitably seismic results (the invention of the electric guitar, the synthesiser etc) but never has the impact of these two giants colliding together been as great as that of the last 10 years.
With the proliferation of music download sites (both legal and illegal), the accessibility of file formats such as MP3 and their companion hardware devices (technologies which everyone seems to have), music seems to be have become not so much a commodity we pay for as a resource like the air we breathe - all around and something we can’t do without.
It comes as no surprise then that the latest generation of music makers have been keen to take advantage of this new techno-cultural landscape. I’m guessing that you could be one of these people and with this article, I’d like to offer some of my knowledge in marketing and technology to help you do just that – take advantage of the opportunities represented by technology to push your musical work into the wider arena.
I must confess I’m certainly not one of the ‘cool kids’. Being 43, I think the time has passed for me to try out for membership in the latest big band or to launch myself as the next record breaking global solo act. I love music but technology is a bigger passion for me these days. It’s the interface between the two which captures my imagination and my experience in tech (web and software development) puts me in a position to pass on a few suggestions.
So let’s get started. In this article, I’ll be making a number of assumptions.
A) That you’re either in a band or you are a solo artist / songwriter b) you are young and therefore adept at using current computer and communications technology c) that some of the ideas I’ll describe to you will not be entirely new to you but others will be concepts you’d never thought of.
With regard to all the ideas presented in this article, it’s essential that with each method, you include your email address, your website address (if you have one) or social networking site address. The whole idea behind this article will be to get your identity and location in front of as many people as possible. You want to sell your music to the world so the world needs to know about you.
The first idea we’ll look at is based on web 2.0. I won’t dwell on this too long because everything that could be said about web 2.0 has been said before and chances are you’re probably already using as many of the techniques for social networking as are available. For the sake of being thorough however, social networking is worth mentioning albeit briefly.
The obvious ways of getting yourself known these days in music (or in any other field) would be to set up a descriptive account at sites such as MySpace, Facebook or Twitter. Other techniques could include writing something about yourself or your band (an article or profile) and placing it on one of the social book marking sites such as del.icio.us, Reddit, Digg and StumbleUpon.
If you had a bit of money to spend, you might even consider buying some Google Ad Words (an expensive but effective means of gaining high rankings in web searches).
Other methods of self promotion might be:
Getting your current supporters, friends and fans (those you’ve met at your favourite social networking site
perhaps) to contribute to online forums about topics related to you, your band or your music
Getting each of your supporters to start their own blogs about your music
Getting your current supporters to ‘spontaneously’ start conversations with people they meet at parties,
colleges, clubs or work places about their blogs –which are about you (and of course offering to continue any
discussion at the blog itself –complete with the web page address – incorporating the name and URL of your
website).
Getting your supporters to respond to other people’s blogs on related topics (while mentioning you)
Getting one of your band members or supporters to create electronic promotions or “lenses” at Squidoo.com (go
to the website for more details).
Another less conventional but intriguing idea may be to get fans and friends to write reviews of audio products at comparison websites and with that, tie in the relevance of your music (perhaps along the lines of your sound being the best way to test out the equipment). You could also supply information about yourself to Wikipedia. As you know, this tool contains info on just about everything – so why not you?
Next unusual idea: Get one of your band members or friends to write an e-book. I’ve never seen a band or artist do this but it’s an idea that deserves to be tried out. You could publish the product as a free download from shareware sites or at sites such as eBay. Within the book you could place links to files containing songs or song extracts and the document could be a profile of everything you’ve done up to publication. Most e-books are in PDF format and there are plenty of resources online to convert Microsoft Word documents to PDF and vice versa.
Another interesting idea might be to start a viral email campaign. One simple way to do this might be to start off by writing an article about yourself and then sending it to a number of people, inviting them to amend it or add to it in some way. Depending on what sort of publicity you wanted, you might want to manage the campaign in some way to ensure the facts of the article remained intact (or you might not mind a bit of “fiction” if it made you look good and got people interested in your music).
As the article / story developed, it would be passed around in an ever increasing circle of people, each of them changing it before passing it on. You could perhaps provide an incentive to authors to contribute to it with some kind of prize for the most interesting version. A more powerful method of this type of promotion might be to create a viral mobile phone text campaign.
There are lots of ways to exploit viral marketing techniques and the above is only one of them.
Another way you could literally get yourself in front of people unobtrusively might be to create a customised screensaver featuring images of your band (and of course all your online / electronic addresses). The screensaver could then be given away as a free download or distributed at gigs on CD. Users would gain interest from potential new fans by installing the screensaver on their PC at work. Another place to get them displayed could be at local internet cafes. Maybe a deal involving reciprocal advertising might be an incentive. Similarly, you could print customised mouse mats and give those away too.
Creating screensavers isn’t difficult. It’s something that can be done using a screensaver compiler program. One such product is Screensaver Factory. For more information, go to www.blumentals.net
One idea you may have thought of already is creating a free promotional mobile phone ringtone featuring one of your songs. This is another way of generating awareness about your music. Similarly, you could create phone wallpaper images which users could swap with each other via texting.
How about some kind of phone app? These things aren’t overly difficult to make and given the popularity of mobile phone software applications, there’s a possibility of using this medium as a promotional tool as well.
Related to this is another intriguing idea: what about a 2D web based computer game featuring your band / yourself or your music? You could either get a computer geek friend or relative to make one or you could learn how to make games yourself. This isn’t difficult – there is a plethora of books on the subject of making small games in Java, JavaScript or Flash. Many of these small applications can run on mobile devices.
One popular method of promotion is to upload a video to YouTube. If you’ve done this already, I hope you did it professionally. If you haven’t done it yet, please, please don’t just shoot something on your mobile phone and submit it.
Video has been a powerful tool in promoting music for over 20 years but the critical factor is quality. I’ve seen so many ropey pieces of work put together by so called video directors that I’m disappointed at how each amateurish attempt is a lost opportunity.
If you do this, be professional about it. Use the best equipment you can afford and the best post production software. If you can’t afford to buy it, download a trial version. Videos which are professionally made stand out by miles from the rubbish some people throw together. The slicker the material, the more it actually achieves the whole objective of promoting a featured band or artist in the first place.
Continuing with new media and audio, have you made a promotional podcast yet? If not, it’s something to consider. Again, the product could be made free to download from shareware sites or similar repositories or broadcast from an internet radio station (you could even set one up of your own and if there’s enough demand for it, maybe I’ll write a tutorial on how to do it – my email address is at ebizdynamix.com).
Well I hope one or two of the ideas listed above appeal to you in some way or that at the very least, they gave you food for thought. If you already have a blog or an account at a social networking site, read my article on some interesting ways of maintaining and perhaps improving your online writing here: http://www.ebizdynamix.com/MaintainYourBlog.html
I wish you all the best of luck in the future and hope your career blossoms. I also hope you found some of the above information useful. Take care now.
Theodore Odeluga is the webmaster of ebizdynamix.com. He is a keen web and software developer who enjoys contributing to making the fascinating and enlightening entity we call the internet an even greater sum of its parts. He lives in London, United Kingdom
Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/audio-articles/get-big-in-music-online-1373211.html
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