Sean G of http://www.learntodjfast.com/ had a great post about the differences between Kunaki, LuLu, and Vervante. In his example he was shipping for a full color DVD printing, DVD case, full color 1 panel insert, full cover case, cellophane wrapping, upc barcode (for Amazon), 24 hour turnaround from order to manufacturing.

And the results are…

——————————

Vervante:

$6.56 USD not including shipping.

Lulu:

$5.50 not including shipping

Kunaki:

$1.75 USD not including shipping.

————————————–

Shipping is $4 USD per DVD to anywhere in the world.
So for the same price as printing a disc @ Lulu & less than Vervante, I can print and ship my DVD.

I was leaning towards Vervante because of its great customer service, but with this large of a price gap, kunaki is the answer for me until I do enough volume to warrant going with Disk.com.

With regards to their poor customer service, Kunkaki isn’t trying to hide it:

“Kunaki is not for everyone.

Kunaki operates more like a machine than a business and does not offer a personalized service. We don’t engage in active marketing, sales, or public relations. We never offer discounts or special deals. We don’t offer affiliate or partner programs. The Kunaki machine is operated and managed by software rather than a management team.

Our service is designed for 21st-century, intelligent, independent publishers who prefer to deal with a cold, efficient, and reliable machine that is available 24 hours per day, 7 days per week.

Because Kunaki is highly automated and focused on quality, low price, and fast production, we offer a minimal range of options.”

Even though this might cause headaches in the future I understand where they are coming from.

Sponsors

Save on renewals and new domains at www.godaddy.com using the coupon code cooler7

Budget Rental car - www.budget.com/musician Get 30% off a weekly rental or $10 off any rental at Budget Rental Car

This show originates from www.musicianscooler.com

Tales From the Road - Stage Thud

Special tales from the road courtesy of Big Al and Mike at www.projectstudionetwork.com

Strategies for Listing Your Band  at Music Sites

There are so many sites that want you to list your music. They will give you music players, email, etc to just list your music on their site (and of course you’ll get “discovered”). Well here are some things to look into.

1. Are the “bonus” features a true bonus?

At www.gigleader.com they say you can use their classified website (www.bandmix.com which you can use for free), or their other service that helps you build your site (for $20 a month) which is completely over priced (check out www.marketingmusician.com for a site that shows you how to build your own site).

2. Who is it your dealing with?

At bandstock.com there  no “About Us,”  or contact information, and everything you do you needed to enter your e-mail address first.  Also if there is a forum, go check it out. Often disgruntled customers will go in and launch flaming posts warning potential customers not to join (and if this site leaves them there, you know they are not manning their forums). IF there is contact information, contact them and see what kind of response you get.

3. Get a Spam Email Address

I talk about this in my book, but you should have an email that you put on your business cards (that typically ends in your band’s websites).  Then you can get a free email from places like gmail, yahoo, or hotmail (I like gmail).  This should be your band’s name “@ blah blah blah” so if your band was the free toys you should get freetoys@gmail.com. Use this email for any website that you feel may potentially spam you. You still need to check this email (as you may occasionally get a gig from a stie).  Only give out the email from your website to a person. This way if something comes into that email you know its from someone you have personally met.

4. Can You Link Back To Your Website?

Look at the other band’s pages and see if you can link back to your band’s website.

5. Does the Technology Work?

Click on one of their players and make sure that the technology they are promoting actually works.

6. Can I export the email list?

Some websites will allow you to use a tool to build a mailing list . This is ok (I guess), but as your list is your most important tool, I would make sure you can export these contacts into your mater list (which should be hosted at your site).

7. Are there tons of Google Ads?

Many times these sites are not about discovering your music. Its about you getting your fans to come to the website so they website can earn cash on their advertising.

Music Promotion Websites

Our Stage
A few websites I have heard good things about is Our Stage which is a promotional site and a contest at the same time (and you will see where they have contact information at the bottom of the page).

Song Catalog

http://www.songcatalog.com/ is a place where you can list your music if it inTV shows, Movies, etc.

Stories Sell More Music

Jun 8th, 2009 | By David Jackson | Category: Podcast | Edit

Today’s music marketing lesson comes from the band Casting Crowns. I went to their concert (not knowing who they were), and ended up buying their latest (third) cd. I also received a free book written by the lead singer. Well its been a year, and today I cracked the book.

It has insanely personal stories about the singer’s life and how and where these songs came from. After reading story number one, I went to the CD to hear the song. The problem is the song isn’t on their latest CD, it’s on their first. “Brilliant,” I thought to myself as I fired up the Internet to purchase the CD from the Amazon MP3 store.

The stories were intimate, and fueled my NEED to hear the song. Then once I did hear the song, they moved me that much more knowing the behind the scenes look at the song.

Your band can do the same and release the “book” as an ebook, or use them as blog posts. At any rate, when done properly, stories can truly help sell more CDs.

Sponsors

Save on renewals and new domains at www.godaddy.com using the coupon code cooler7

Budget Rental car - www.budget.com/musician Get 30% off a weekly rental or $10 off any rental at Budget Rental Car

It has insanely personal stories about the singer’s life and how and where these songs came from. After reading story number one, I went to the CD to hear the song. The problem is the song isn’t on their latest CD, it’s on their first. “Brilliant,” I thought to myself as I fired up the Internet to purchase the CD from the Amazon MP3 store.

The stories were intimate, and fueled my NEED to hear the song. Then once I did hear the song, they moved me that much more knowing the behind the scenes look at the song.

Your band can do the same and release the “book” as an ebook, or use them as blog posts. At any rate, when done properly, stories can truly help sell more CDs.

Sponsors

Save on renewals and new domains at www.godaddy.com using the coupon code cooler7

Budget Rental car - www.budget.com/musician Get 30% off a weekly rental or $10 off any rental at Budget Rental Car

Dave’s Book can be found at www.musicianlibrary.com

I’ve known about paypal micropayments for a while, but when I first heard about it, I didn’t think you could switch from an “old” paypal account to a new micropayment. Now you can. What’s the difference?

Standard Paypal Fees

PayPal charged a minimum transaction fee of 30 cents plus 2.9%.

Paypal Micropayment Fees

The Mircopayment option raises the percentage to 5% but lowers the fee to just 5 cents . That changes the net profit on a  $.99 cent direct sale to $.89 cents vs. $.66 under the old PayPal option.  Sell  just one hundred two or three song bundles and the total PayPal transaction costs drop from $36 to $15.

To find out more about Paypal micro payments go to https://micropayments.paypal-labs.com/

This is show #238 originating from www.musicianscooler.com

Amazon.ccom One Off CD’s with Create Space

It costs you $4.95 for one CD, but if you only need a few CDs this beats ordering hundreds and turning them into coasters. If you sell your music via download they charge 15% and if you sell the Cd at amazon.com they take 45% (ouch). As some people completely trust amazon.com they may purchase off of amazon.com when they may not off a lesser known website. For more information go to www.createspace.com

Sponsors

Save on renewals and new domains at www.godaddy.com using the coupon code cooler7

Budget Rental car - www.budget.com/musician Get 30% off a weekly rental or $10 off any rental at Budget Rental Car

One way to communicate with your fans is by creating a fan page. This is near the bottom of the page with advertisements. Fan pages you can communicate with an unlimited number of fans. If you make a group there is a limit (so pages is better than groups).

Promoting Your Promotion

If you are playing a club, or appearing on TV, Podcast, Radio, Newspaper, you should be sure to show the person who interviewed you that you are promoting your promotion on their show. Do NOT subscribe them to your newsletter.

Keep in mind they may have signed up for your newsletter (so never bad mouth a club as the owner may have subscribed to your newsletter).

Sponsors

Save on renewals and new domains at www.godaddy.com using the coupon code cooler7

Budget Rental car - www.budget.com/musician Get 30% off a weekly rental or $10 off any rental at Budget Rental Car

What Does Dave Look Like?

After receiving some constructive criticism about his book cover, one of the listeners points out there should be a picture of me on the website. So before I put a picture of me on the website, I wanted to see what you think I look like. Leave a comment here or call in your thoughts 888-563-3228

Tales From The Road - Make a Checklist

We hear a great “Tales from the Road” from Matthew Ebel who talks about getting a gig only to get to the gig and realize he forgot many items. He ended up playing relaxing piano music all night. The solution? Make a checklist. Matthew had one that was covered in plastic and attached via velcro to the lid of his trunk with a diagram showing where to put things. This way if someone asks, “Do you want some help?” you can say, “Sure” and tell them to follow the diagram.

Generator Stages

Scott Walton spoke about how you can take your typical portable generator and bring some amps and make a stage on the fly. This is good for those areas that have a large crowd (say a 4th of July festival). I’m not sure how legal this is, but if you get locked up, use it for publicity (in other words, you shold check with a lawyer).

If you’ve ever done anything like this (and have any input on a good generator) please let us know.

Sponsors

Save on renewals and new domains at www.godaddy.com using the coupon code cooler7

Budget Rental car - www.budget.com/musician Get 30% off a weekly rental or $10 off any rental at Budget Rental Car

He has multiple packages set up from everything from a new live concert every month to attending a party at his house (in the same philosophy of Willie Nelson). The point is - it’s working. While not paying all of Matthew’s bills, it is paying his rent (not to shabby).

Matthew talks about how many people to expect to sign up when you fist launch a membership site. The statistics are not exactly encouraging. He also gives his opinion on Amember which is the software he is using to manage the membership functionality of his website. You can see the membership site at www.matthewebel.net

For the record, I use Amember at the School of Podcasting and I didn’t have that much problem with it (I also don’t get quite as fancy with it either). If you are looking for other membership script check out the membership software section at Weekly Web Tools.

Music

“Lost on Block Island” by Matthew Ebel from the Podsafe Music Network. For more of Matthews Music check out www.matthewebel.com or putchase the CDs and downloads from CDBaby.com

Other Sites Mentioned

CDBaby Podcast at www.cdbabypodcast.com

Sponsors

www.godaddy.com Get your domain name (or renew old domains ) and use the coupon cooler7 to get your .com domain for $7.49

www.budget.com/musician Get 30% off a weekly rental or $10 off any rental at Budget Rental Car.

Dave’s Book

Get Your Band Out of the Basement and Keep them Out of the Asylum at www.musicianlibrary.com

We find out that while “secular” bands may lead with their music, a Christian band may fine more benefit in leading with their message. A pastor may be asking them to the church to inspire the congregation. Likewise their website should emphasize their message which should in turn get them booked, which should allow them to sell their CDs.

There are places to find Christian Gigs, like Churches, Coffee houses, and even clubs (as long as you bring in a crowd).

While there may not be room on the radio for an indie band, you can definitely get some “podplay” on podcasts. You need to be using the Internet, You Tube (check out www.animimoto.com to make a video from pictures).

iStock Photo is now selling audio. I listened to a track that was two minutes. If this sold, you would make 7 dollars (or $14 if you are exclusive to istockphoto). While I realize that there are all sorts of talented musicians, not everybody can be in a band. This a way to be creative and make some money.

Free Play Along Track for Drummers

I found out about this from www.brianstephens.com there is a cool free “Drum along” track available at http://www.hudsonmusic.com/site/features/the-woodshed/66-woodshed/151-messin-wid-da-bull

Free Book from the “Indie Guide”

The indie guide has links to all sorts of musicians specific tools (much like out links section - which is having technical issues) . There is a free indie survival guide, as well as a free ebook about reverb nation, and eventfull. Check it out at www.indieguide.com

Personalized Marketing

I was listening to a podcast where an online card company made customized cards of bloggers they wanted to talk about their product. When the bloggers saw the effort hat was put into impressing them, they blogged about the product and them some.

One idea I talk about in my book “Get Your Band Out of the Basement (and keep them out of the asylum)” is when making a demo CD record a personalized greeeting for the club owner. Likewise write down the name of the satff at the club and keep it in a book. Then when you go back to the club, you can look like you “remember” their name.

Websites For Promoting Your Music

Spotify.com Music Discovery Service

Pump Audio is a service to help you get your music into TV, radio, advertising, websites.

mufin.com is a music discovery search engine

Sponsors

Get your own .com domain name at www.godaddy.com using the godaddy coupon cooler7 on both new domains and renewals

Budget Rent A Car Promotion at www.budget.com/musician save $30 off a weekly rental or 10% off other time periods