I found this and just had to share it! What a great idea

Jack Johnson is getting you to spread the word to all your twitter followers in return for a free mp3.

I think this is a great idea and I am thinking about how I could do similar… see for yourself

http://twitter.jackjohnsonmusic.com/

Any similar ideas? Please share and leave a comment.

Analogue fans will be happy to watch this video. You can’t deny the fact that vinyl has that certain sound. Enjoy.

I watched these and found them interesting, thought I’d show you Enjoy!

For some time now, I have been an advocate of bands and artists using the power of the web for promotion and today I read an article on WIRED that inspired me to write this post. There is a link to the full article below. In  summary, it looks as if the mainstream industry is waking up to the idea of using the web to enhance album releases for paying users.

“On Tuesday, EMI announced that the next Depeche Mode album will come with all sorts of extras for iTunes music store customers — new, exclusive singles, remixes, videos and other content — all of which are piped directly into the customer’s iTunes application for a $19 flat fee. That extra content shows up for the fifteen weeks ending June 16, and fans get the album on its official April 21 release date.”

I think it is a fantastic idea that any independent band or artist can embrace and develop a following on a very low budget. It is reliant on developing a mindset and set of routines to feed your audience. Granted, you must either have an audience or fan base already or be in the process of developing one (a subject for other blog posts).

You know what your fans want: your music, your stories and probably an insight into to your world. Right? If you agree, you can give them all this and more using blog posts, podcasts, audio interviews, videos, studio diaries etc. to encourage interaction, email updates and so on. The ideas can continually develop and I don’t think any of this would be prohibitively expensive to do.

Many successful internet marketers have been using a number of techniques for years and here is an outline of one technique that you can learn from and adapt.

• Create a web page describing a product / service that is due to launch at a future date.
• Include an opt-in where visitors can enter their email address for free stuff and more info.
• Keep your subscribers updated with a regular flow of free related stuff, videos, interviews etc.
• Finally, by the time of the launch, you have created a buzz and a list of interested followers.

The above is a brief outline of a process that can cement relationships with your followers and if worked correctly, can be turned into a regular income. This can be adopted and combined with your ideas to suit your bands situation. Independent bands and artists could actually be the ones to set the bar on this and not the mainstream industry.

My brief thoughts on a plan of action for bands and artists would be: -

• Use your blog as the platform
• Set a future album release date
• Start building an email list
• Outline what free information / items you will be providing up to the release date. i.e. studio diaries, studio pics, videos, interviews, blog posts, competitions, rough track mixes etc.
• Set a special price & limited addition bonuses for people who order within 7 days of your album release.
• Follow up with further remixes, bonuses, interviews, podcasts, gig dates etc.

I am kind of brain storming a little, but hopefully you get the idea and can add some comments / ideas of your own.

Basically, the idea is to provide ‘free’ value to those who support you financially. It is becoming more than just producing and releasing an album; it is also about utilising the web to build strong relationships between you and your true fans.

Please feel free to leave your comments. Let us know your opinions, what you are doing, about your blog and include your domain.

Also, I strongly recommend reading the piece that inspired this post.
http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/02/apple-republic.html

Have an inspiring day!
Lee

Okay, let’s assume, you have decided to give blogging a go and you are convinced that WordPress is the best platform to go for. Personally, I believe it is and so do the majority of serious bloggers. If you don’t want to take my word for it I am sure a quick research session in Google will convince you.

Anyway, which is best for you and what is the difference between them?

Well, they are more or less the same in that they are both free and open source. This is great as it means that many talented programmers around the world support it and there are thousands of plugins and themes to provide additional functionality.

Essentially, the key difference is that WordPress.com is freely hosted and you can sign up and get blogging within minutes whereas WordPress.org is not hosted. For WordPress.org, you need to download the software and install it yourself on your own rented server space.

You might be wondering… Why would you want to go to the expense of renting server space when you can get if for free using WordPress.com? Basically, there are numerous limitations with WordPress.com. By downloading WordPress from WordPress.org and hosting it on your own server, you remove these limitations.

The impact of these limitations

If you have read my previous article 4 Success Habits for Promoting Independent Bands, Composers & Producers, you will know of the 4 consistent steps that will help grow your blog. The decision you make now on which WordPress platform to use may impact your blog in several ways.

File Storage

WordPress.com limits the amount of storage available to you. If you are uploading lots of content such as audio, video and photos, this may soon run out. However, by hosting your own version, you are only limited by the amount of space you have purchased from your server provider. This blog uses DreamHost, which provides unlimited storage and bandwidth from $5.95 per month.

Your Domain

If you are going to be marketing your blog, having your own personal domain is important. You can get a personal domain for both versions of WordPress, however, the route to setting it up is very different. Also, there is a small investment needed, but it should not be more than $20 per year.

If you do opt for WordPress.com, you can use their free default domain, but you will always have ‘wordpress’ in your blog url. Example www.yourblogname.wordpress.com

Personally. I recommend getting your own domain regardless of which route you take. Once you register your domain you can keep it as long as you like providing you keep up the annual payments.

Monitoring

If you going to be marketing your blog and want to monitor your web stats, WordPress.com has limited but usable information. This consists of visits, keywords, referrer etc.

However, downloading the WordPress.org version and hosting your blog on your own server means that you can install Google Analytics tracking code, which gives incredibly detailed information for free.

Making Your Decision

Now, of course, it is your decision, but to help you weigh up the options, let me tell you exactly how I came to my decision when setting up www.NewMusicAdvice.com

First off, I knew I wanted my own domain so I went to www.domainspricedright.com and added it to the list of domains I already own. I like this provider as their domains are priced very reasonably at around $6 per year and they make it easy to redirect the domain.

Also, I knew that I wanted to install my own theme, add more plugins and use Google Analytics so it was an easy decision for me to get some hosting and download the software from WordPress.org. Now, I should tell you that I am not a real techie so I always look for a straightforward installation option, which I researched using the providers that WordPress.org recommend. In the end, I opted for DreamHost with their one click install for WordPress. This cost me $95.40 (USD) for a years hosting plus a few extra bits and bobs.

I found the theme for free and edited a few sections, there are lots of free ones out there, just google free wordpress themes. If individuality is important, you can get a custom theme that is exclusively yours from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand depending on the designer you choose. For now, I have decided to leave this as my main priority is getting my blog established; a unique look can come later.

It’s simple: for a total of $ and a couple of hours set-up, I was able publish my first blog post.

I did briefly consider just buying a domain and using the free limited version from WordPress.com, which would have cost $ for the domain and $10 for WordPress’ domain mapping. However, as I  mentioned earlier, I wanted to be able to add more plugins and use Google Analytics so overall, this was not a practical solution.

I have to admit though, if you are not sure about blogging and want to try it out with less expense and set-up time, then WordPress.com might be the route you decide to take. It is possible to migrate to your own hosted blog later by using a WordPress feature that allows you to export your entire blog.

Again, it is your decision which version you use, but hopefully the information I have provided here will help.

It all comes down to this… If you are serious about blogging, I believe that the extra time and investment of hosting your own blog is worthwhile. The extra freedom of adding more plugins, themes and Google Analytics makes all the difference to the appearance and running of your blog. Just think about it: if you are looking to promote yourself as a composer, band or artist, I believe it is only a matter of time before you find limitations with WordPress.com. If you do start with WordPress.com, in my opinion, you should at least aim to migrate over to WordPress.org on your own hosted server as soon as you know for definite that blogging is going to form part of your marketing strategy.

Resources

Domains: www.domainspricedright.com | www.simplynames.com

Web Hosting: DreamHost

Themes: http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/

Plugins: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/

I have been listening to an audio seminar on direct licensing that I purchased from www.filmmusicmag.com and it inspired me to write a couple of pieces on the subject.

Through my experience in the music licensing industry, I have come to understand that although many composers, bands and artists understand what performance royalty organisations (PRO’s) do, some do not fully understand the terms of the agreement between them and the royalty collecting society. This is understandable as copyright laws are complex and all PRO terms differ.

You may be thinking that PRO’s are a good thing as they are non-profit organisations and exist to collect royalty income for music copyright holders. Don’t get me wrong, I am not anti PRO, but I do think some are better than others and there is room for improvement. In fact, some PRO’s terms actually have the potential to restrict future income of many of their members.

I believe that as an independent composer you should retain all of your copyrights in order for you to earn revenue when the opportunity arises, whether this is through: -

• Royalty cheques from TV / Radio play
• License fees via Royalty Free Music Sites
• Direct payments from your clients for use of your music

Music usage is changing and more people want to use music for internet and other related media, but a number of PRO’s still have a fundamental clause in their agreements that I think is unhelpful to say the least. The clause I am referring to is the exclusive assignment of performance rights to the PRO.

A good example of PRO’s that take a more flexible approach to this is the American societies, BMI, ASCAP & SESAC who operate on a non-exclusive basis. They are only granted non-exclusive rights to collect performance royalties on the composers behalf. This means that on the occasion you have a chance to license directly with the client or through music licensing websites you can. You just need a paper trail of permission that leads back to you. In this case, your PRO is there when or if you choose to use them, but you don’t miss out on other potential broadcast opportunities. Great

PRO’s that collect exclusively can prevent you from licensing directly or through music licensing websites. If you are registered with a PRO that has exclusive right to collect performance royalties for you, this means that you are not permitted to direct license or sell your music through other websites without potential problems down the line. If you do license directly or authorise a third party website to sell licenses of your music, your PRO can approach your clients at any time in the future and demand that they pay an additional license.

This could become a problem for you if for example, you are letting your family and friends play your music on their websites or if you have sold direct licenses for on hold or public venue use. Legally, you can not do this if you have assigned your performance rights exclusively to a PRO. Just think how damaging and embarrassing that could be for you as a composer.

Many PRO’s in the EU have this clause, including PRS in the UK.

Working in the industry, I have on numerous occasions had to turn down potential revenue opportunities due to this clause, which means that the many independent composers I represent and sell licenses for also lose out.

To enable composers to leverage every opportunity for income, I think that this exclusivity clause needs to go. I see it becoming more problematic in the future as more and more new music uses appear.

Also, members of ‘exclusive’ PRO’s can not take part in exciting new ways of exploiting their own music through Creative Commons licensing.

From Creative Commons FAQ: You need to check with your society. Currently, many of the collecting societies in Australia, Finland, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain, Taiwan and the Netherlands take an assignment of rights (or in France what is called a “mandate” of rights that nonetheless has the same effect practically as an assignment) from you in present and future works (so that they effectively become the owner of these rights) and manage them for you. So if you are already a member of a collecting society in one of these jurisdictions, you may not be entitled to license your work yourself under a Creative Commons license because the necessary rights are not held by you but by the collecting society. Please also read the FAQ on the website of the Creative Commons project team for your jurisdiction for more information about this issue in your jurisdiction.

Creative Commons is reaching out to collecting societies in those jurisdictions where this problem arises to try to find a solution that enables creators to enjoy the benefits both systems offer.

If you encounter difficulties with using Creative Commons licenses because of your membership in a collecting society in your jurisdiction that is not listed above, please let either your country’s Creative Commons project team know or email info@creativecommons.org. Also, if you wish to discuss ways to try to deal with the situation in your country please contact your country’s Creative Commons project team.

If you are already a member of one of these collecting societies, feel free to encourage your collecting society to give you the option of Creative Commons licensing.

The most ridiculous part of this is that many UK composers actually resort to using aliases and changing the names of their tracks to get around this. The fact is that currently, PRO’s need at least the name of the track and artist to check if it is in their database. If it does not show a result, they simply can not charge a license. The act of renaming tracks enables some composers to get the best of both worlds whilst there music goes undetected. Personally, this is not something I would advocate.

You may be thinking… Why join in the first place? Well, look at it like this, if you had a free lottery ticket every week would you throw it away? No, of course not! Composers join a PRO in the event that their music is used on mainstream TV, Radio or Film Release. Statistically, the odds are slim, but I suppose you have to be in it to win it. Also, the longer you do it and the longer you are putting your music catalogue out there, the more chance you have.

In most cases, the reality is that composers and end-users alike are disregarding this clause without realising. Composers want to and need to maximise their revenue potential in any way they can and although I don’t advocate it, I can see why some may bend the rules to do this as previously mentioned.

Also, I have it from a reliable source that many of the PRO’s would not necessarily pursue claims against composers direct licensing their own music. I guess it would not look good for a PRO to pursue one of its own members for making money from his / her own music.

Anyway, it is not for me to tell you whether or not to join a PRO, that is for you to decide. What I would urge you to do is to join one that allows you to sell direct licenses. I know a number of UK based composers who have joined American societies for this very reason.

The choice is yours, but all I am saying is for you to get the facts before you decide and if in doubt get a lawyer to confirm what I am telling you.

—

I look forward to your comments below. Also, feel free to Digg or bookmark this post I would particularly be interested in comments from PRO’s and composers.

Next time, I will be talking about the value of music and how PRO’s can facilitate keeping value high.

Resources

Direct Licensing – A Better Alternative to ASCAP, BMI and SESASC (Downloadable Event Audio)

http://www.gmostore.com/cart.php?m=product_detail&p=41

Creative Commons
http://creativecommons.org/

I know this is not directly related to advice for promotion, however, it does show you a little of my own marketing activity on a budget!

For the past few months, I have been thinking about creating a new music demo for Media Music Now. The original one created in 2006 was sounding a little tired and no longer gave a true reflection of the quality and diversity of tracks in our royalty free music library. The challenge was to create an audio demo that would capture the many elements of our service without making it a blatant advertisement or something boring. There is great music in our library, but just playing 10 seconds of each track was not an option for us as listeners would soon lose concentration.

The result is a slightly comical, trailer-like demo to entertain both the listener and viewer, achieved using the voice-over talent Anthony from our voice over section on Media Music Now. His ability to do a number of voice styles and character impersonations really helped articulate our demo reel.

We hope that the wacky script and character voices will entertain and amuse whilst demonstrating the high quality of our royalty free music, the talent and professionalism of our voice-overs and the effective use of our audio editing service.

What started out as a plan to renew and freshen up our audio demo has turned into a fun and enjoyable video What can you expect? A TARDIS, a Dalek impersonation, an in-joke about Lee Pritchard looking like Simon Cowell… Go watch the video to find out for yourself.
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Enjoy! And I look forward to any comments you have. Also, please feel free to share it using the submit options at the end of this post.

First off, I know that the discussion of free downloads provokes strong opinion and varied reactions so feel free to have your say in the comments box.

You may not have heard a suggestion quite like the one you are about to read so please spend a few minutes to read the post in full and understand that this suggestion is with the intention of marketing independent bands and artists.

OK, you have your music playing on your website in a flash player that looks great. Visitors can hear your music but can’t download it. Is this good promotion?… Sorry, not in my opinion

Speaking for myself, being able to play your music but not download it is going to limit the attention I give to it. That’s not to say, I won’t listen to music through web browsers, but, I won’t bookmark them to go back and listen again. Personally, a track grows on me the more I listen to it and for this reason, I need to be able to download it to my Sansa Clip so that I can listen to it whilst on the move or during my downtime away from the computer.

Sure, if I have heard a mainstream act perform on TV, seen their chat show appearances, on ‘An Audience with…’ , on adverts and in the news, I am very likely to go and buy their downloads from my preferred music store (Amazon MP3).

It is about exposure, promotion and communication and the major record labels invest huge amounts into this so that we buy their artists’ music and merchandise. Independent bands, artists and labels can not do this!

The fact is you need your visitors to support you and your music. Why not interact with them and provide them with value so that they eventually become your loyal fan base?

OK, I know that people downloading music for free is a thorny issue. It does not help that there are many who would rip your audio from their browser using software or search for the track name on P2P sites rather than purchasing it. Furthermore, they add it to their shared files and continue to share it with others.

But, why can’t free music downloads be an opportunity to promote yourself? Why not have them contain adverts?… Your adverts! It is not a new concept; commercial radio stations have been doing it for years; this is just a variation of it.

You could actively encourage sharing of your album. This free version would contain a message at the end of every track. 5-10 seconds informing the listener that they can support you and how to go about it. For example:

• Thanks for listening to the free download, support us at mysite.com
• If you like our work, we are (band name), support us at mysite.com
• Sign up to our mailing list at mysite.com
• We are an independent band, thank you for supporting us by sharing this free track. Support us further by getting our paid for downloads at mysite.com
• Buy this album at mysite.com and get a bonus podcast interview with the band

If your album is 15 tracks, create 15 messages for the end of every track. A voice-over can be hired inexpensively to create these, or you could even record them yourself if you wanted to. Getting the band members to record the messages could actually be more compelling.

“My name is ___, I hope you are enjoying your free copy of our album, you can buy it at mysite.com, thanks for your support.”

You get the idea, offer a free album download, file share it yourself, but always have a route back to the source of origin (You!). Make it known that this is your work and you want the listeners to offer their support by buying your tracks and albums. Let people’s own moral barometer decide. Let’s face it, if they like your album and respect you as an artist, it is going to be quicker to just buy it than try to edit out the adverts.

I for one would be happy to preview albums with adverts and would pay for the full version if I liked it.

What do you think?…

Songkick.com is a new service that allows music fans to organize and track their favourite bands concerts / gig dates. Artists and bands can sign up and add new concert dates on the website Www.Songkick.com

Watch this informal video interview courtesy of Andrew Dubber, NewMusicStrategies.com, worth checking out both websites.

Ian Hogarth – Songkick from Andrew Dubber on Vimeo.

Imagine what harm losing your internet connection would do to your business or the running of your household. How many of us rely on the Internet for business use, to keep in touch, to pay the bills, to check our bank balance and so on.

If this crazy ‘Guilt Upon Accusation Laws ‘Section 92A’ goes ahead, I fear other jurisdictions may follow suit.

It calls for internet disconnection based on accusations of copyright infringement without a trial and without any evidence held up to court scrutiny. This is due to come into effect on February 28th unless immediate action is taken by the National Party.

Thousands of New Zealanders are protesting against this law by blacking out their Facebook photos, websites, Myspace pages and twitter accounts in protest. This new law may come into effect on February 28, 2009.

I seriously hope that this does not happen; it is just another illustration of archaic attitudes to copyright law and the Internet. Yes, I believe that copyright needs a major update, but seriously, this has got be one of the most ridiculous proposals I have heard of in ages.

If, like me, you think this is crazy, pop over to http://creativefreedom.org.nz/blackout.html and sign the petition at the bottom. If you do have the resources to alter your websites, maybe consider joining in with the blackout.

I look forward to hearing your comments.