If you haven’t tried it, try it…it’s pretty cool.  The site lets you choose a music genre, then teleports you from music blog to music blog, playing songs within that genre, and acting as a pretty cool music discovery engine.  But at the same time, it’s also benefiting new bands, as well as the music blogs themselves, by giving page view exposure to new potential fans.  Awesome stuff, and a bit addicting…

Remember when blogs were something story-worthy in the media? Or when recording music at home DIY-style made an artist seem like Mad Max in Beyond Thunderdome? Or when giving away free mp3s of songs was a revolutionary, Creative-Commons-flag-waving statement of independence and foresight?

Now, all to often, I’ll see an artist puttering around in something like Twitter, diligently tweeting into a fan-less void.

Making a splash in the music industry requires a lot of hype, and a lot of artistry.  Hype (or the “story”) drives awareness.  Great music creates fans.

Ignoring artistry  (Brian Hazard of Color Theory wrote a great “creating hit songs” post, if you’re looking for one), let’s take a quick glance at hype and story, and over-generalize for kicks:

• If you can leverage a brand new tool or technology before any one else, you have a chance of becoming a “case study” or “poster child” for it.  (If you’re a new band that just joined Twitter, or has a SellaBand.com account, or a podcast, no one will care.)
• If you can think of a creative song, video, or other publicity stunt that is amazingly unique, funny, or simply impressive, you may have a viral story on your hand.  (Note the word “unique”.  If it’s been done, forget it.)
• Cover songs are popular for a reason — familiarity attracts fans of the original work, and can breed new fans.  If you can produce a creative spin or meme from an existing popular concept or creative work, you may attract attention and fans.  (Think of the “Double Rainbow” spin off tracks that topped iTunes charts, or the artists that were discovered via cover song renditions in YouTube.)

New tech tools, music promotion websites, and discovery engines seem to launch weekly, AND they’re accessible to pretty much everyone.  Simply USING new technology is not nearly as cool as it used to be…  But HYPE is as powerful as it ever was.  If you’re an artist, find your unique, impossible-to-ignore story — a hard thing to do — and launch it.

Mashable totally hit paydirt with all the above, by gathering a collection of crowdsourced music videos.  Awesome, awesome, awesome.   Check out this video, which is still being produced, to which 19,000+ fans have already contributed photos:

I’ve been using MyBand for GarageSpin’s Facebook Page for some time.  Many of the newer ones, such as BandPage, however, looked sleeker and ran better, to the point where I loosely considered switching.  Until recently — ReverbNation launched a series of upgrades which are quite slick.

Check out the full MyBand App feature details on ReverbNation’s blog.  Or, skim the summary below, which I’m pasting from Jed’s announcement email:

1.  More attractive layout and design (still with unlimited songs, videos, and photos)

2.  Free custom header banner (Artists upload banner and link)

3.  Fan-exclusive downloads (Artists can exchange a free download for the fan’s email address inside of facebook, integrated with our FanReach product)

4.  Tour map, show schedule with details, ticket links, sharing

5.  Enhanced sharing mechanisms.  Fans can share a song, show, video, photos, etc with friends on facebook.  All facebook sharing uses our awesome sharing widget: http://tinyurl.com/28bbu3y

6.  Links to retailers like iTunes and Amazon

7.  Integrated Direct to Fan store (Reverb Store)

8.  Integrated Facebook comments

9.  Aggregated fan count stats (pulling in MySpace, Facebook, Reverb, Mailing list)

10.  Song lyrics

Basically, he paid for plays, focusing on a demographic and music taste profile that fits his own style, looked for top performers, and made his selections.  The live market research enabled him to select the album leader, which is critical in retaining listeners visiting an artist’s music for the first time.

Great, great, great mix of marketing science and music production common sense with an efficient spend.

If you haven’t followed Brian in the past, he also crowdsourced the actual creative process by soliciting feedback from fans regarding song ideas, lyric ideas, song title ideas, etc.  Color Theory makes a great case study for modern day DIY music production.  Check him out.

Happy July 4th!  My best bud and I freestyled a bit this weekend to celebrate (kudos, JibJab).  Check it:

Any band should therefore ask, “How do I get my music on Pandora?”  Here’s how to get your music on the site…but be warned, it’s not easy:

Submitting Music to Pandora: What You’ll Need

1) A physical CD of your music

2) A unique UPC code for that CD.  (If you don’t have one, you can get one at NationWideBarcode.com, or at many other music services including CDBaby.com, ReverbNation.com, and TuneCore.com.)

3) Your PHYSICAL CD must be available for sale on Amazon (not just as MP3s)

4) You must own your music, or you must have secured the rights to any music that isn’t yours.

5) A Pandora account

6) Two MP3 files for two of the songs from your CD

7) Once you have all of these items ready to go, you can submit your music to Pandora for consideration here: http://submitmusic.pandora.com/.

Getting Music on Pandora: After I Submit

The Pandora team will decide whether your music’s quality meets their standards, demands, needs, and audience tastes.  You can see the status of your submission here:  http://submitmusic.pandora.com/submit/status.

How Hard or Easy is it to Get Your Music on Pandora?

Sit down, and take a deep breath.  Hear it from Pandora itself:  “In genres such as rock, pop, or jazz, where we have a large collection to draw upon– and where we already have a great deal of music by independent, unsigned artists– a submission from an independent artist must be uniquely compelling to be accepted.”

Who knows what that means, exactly.  If you have a story to tell, or a fan base already in place, I’d imagine it’d only play in your favor.  Keep working on those PR briefs, people.

Most importantly, GOOD LUCK!!

This video was kinda unique, since no actual instruments were involved…just tools.  Kudos to Craftsman for creating something that’s actually…more “cool”, and less “tool”:

Being a dad now, I understand the challenges of parenthood.  *Phew*  My absence from my own blog is somewhat testament to that.  On a positive note, I’m closer to having finished writing a new song called “In 9 Months”.  It’s kind of  a lullabye of promises to a baby-to-be.  I think it’s pretty sweet, but I’m horribly biased.  I’d love your thoughts on the song, but that might have to wait, as I’ve got two others lined up for recording next.

So, I say here and now, be sure to mark your calendars for next year’s Mother’s Day for the new song release.  (Google Calendar may haveto suffice, since 2011 calendars haven’t hit store shelves yet…)

There’s only a month now for dads everywhere to have their revenge on Father’s Day, for the breakfast ‘n’ bed ‘n’ such…  Our time will come, oh yes, it will come.

So, happy DIY producing and promoting, all.  We’re still on the air.  And as soon as I’m moved and settled in to my new living space, I may even get back to producing a my own music again…some…day…  *sigh*

On a completely different note, I just completed a proposal for a “crawl-walk-run” strategy to launch a social media optimized, integrated marketing campaign event.  It’s kind of fascinating to be thinking so heavily about social media, its implications and opportunities, from both a DIY perspective (as a musician) and a corporate branding perspective (for my day job).  The main difference?  Budget.

I genuinely consider myself a lucky guy.  I’d only be luckier if I were paid as much for my songs as for my power point presentations.  :)