The Prescription

Should you put your music on Spotify?

Prescription PR — Fri, 18 May 2012 16:14:57 +0000

I don’t buy CDs any more. And the reason why is simple: Spotify. Since deciding to part with £10 every month for the extraordinary privilege to be able to listen to vast chunks of rock history, or indeed new releases that tickle my fancy, the idea of hauling myself off the sofa to go down to a record store and spend moolah on a rotund lump of plastic just doesn’t really cut it for me anymore. It’s kind of sad, because I was the sort of kid who’d save up several weeks of pocket money just to buy one LP which I had ordered specifically, ten years in advance, from the local (and now-gone-bust) record shop. And besides which, I’m a musician – I’m meant to love limited-edition vinyl gatefold double albums made of gold bought from a hipster with a beard, man. In fact, I'm meant to be a hipster with a beard.

Anyway, from talking to my fellow music-lovers, it would appear that I’m not alone in my abandonment of the physical product. Just as the invention of the kettle seems to have done away with the quaint practice of boiling water on a stove, or the invention of Fox News did away with the truth, Spotify has made it just too easy to ‘consume’ music without actually buying a physical product, and the recent announcement of a streaming chart only confirms that the record industry’s journey from wax cylinder to a file that sits on a server in a cloud computing centre somewhere is nearly complete.

But where does this leave musicians, particularly independent musicians? It leaves them with a dilemma, that’s what. On the one hand, putting your music on Spotify makes your music instantly available to listeners all over the US and most of Europe; but it means that you won’t get much in the way of dosh any time somebody actually listens to your record – as far as I can tell from various internet perusals, artists get around 0.02p per play, meaning you’ll need something like 50 plays of a track to make a penny. On the other hand, deciding to avoid Spotify altogether and exclusively sell CDs and downloads means that you may generate revenue, but massively limit the number of potential listeners.

So which path should you choose? Well, my answer is probably ‘both’ – it’s a good idea to have some music on Spotify, but think very carefully before putting your brand new album on it the day it comes out. Here’s why: say you have 500 fans. If they can be persuaded to buy your new album from you for a tenner during the week of release, you’ll generate £5k. However, if these 500 fans can all access the record on Spotify, and consequently choose to stream it rather than buy it, here’s how the revenue will break down, if we assume (very generously) that 500 people stream your 10-track album 3 times a day, every day, during the week of release:

£0.0002 per play x 10 tracks x 3 plays of the album per day x 500 fans x 7 days = £21

I hope I’ve done my maths right there; but regardless, it’s £5000 versus a pittance. You’d need your fanbase to be playing the album an incredible number of times before you got anywhere close to squeezing £5000 from Spotify. You'd have to an artist that wore very little in the way of clothing but excelled in autotuned squealing and good sex faces.

So the key thing to remember (particularly given the above rather unfortunate equation) is that for the independent musician, Spotify is absolutely not a revenue-raising tool; however, given its huge and increasing userbase, it is a powerful promotional tool – and that’s why you should have some of your music on there. Consider putting a sampler from your new album up: 3 or 4 tracks, and a podcast featuring new material. You could also use it to showcase any back catalogue – albums you put out a while ago that don’t sell any more but which still might be of interest to new or existing fans. If you really want your latest opus to be up on Spotify in its entirety, the best way to go about this is probably to do a ‘staggered release’ where you go with a conventional (i.e., physical, non-streaming) release initially and then gradually release the album onto Spotify, in chunks perhaps (via EP releases) and then finally, a few months or a year after the release date, in its entirety.

Finally, a very important point to remember is that regardless of to-stream-or-not-to-stream dilemmas, the physical aspect of your release should be very special – as highlighted above, streaming services have made people far more reluctant to bother with physical incarnations of music, so whatever you put out physically needs to extremely desirable for fans - don't just rely on a boring, bog-standard CD but get creative with your packaging (you might like to read our article on 'getting physical' for tips).

The irony is, of course, that whatever about Spoitfy, the digital revolution has brought us to a situation in which the only way to make money from selling music is to issue your latest album on signed, limited-edition wax cylinder...

The Prescription is written by independent musician and Head of Digital Communications at Prescription PR, Chris Singleton.

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Using Twitter: top tips for musicians and bands

Prescription PR — Tue, 01 May 2012 15:16:55 +0000

Although Twitter’s been around for quite a while now (since 2006, if my memory serves me correctly), it’s still not fully understood – or used to maximum effect – by a lot of bands and musicians. But many do seem to have a sense of its importance, and “can you get me a bigger Twitter following?” is one of the most common questions posed by bands to Prescription PR, making us feel as though we are the musical equivalent of plastic surgeons. “For a price,” is a common answer, as we reach for some strange-looking implements. But today, dear reader, we’re giving you some free advice on using the medium – and as you’ll find out, size isn’t everything. Here’s our survival guide…

1. Pick the right username

A very obvious point this, but if your little four-piece is called, say, “The Beatles”, then don’t try to be all clever about things and call your Twitter profile “@YokoOno”. Pick a username that is as close as possible to your band’s, because the people who want to follow you on Twitter after seeing you play that gig at the Cavern in Liverpool are as just as likely to whack “www.twitter.com/thebeatles” into an address bar of a browser as they are to search for “The Beatles Twitter” in Google. Or at least that would have been the case had Twitter been around in 1961. It wasn't, which is why the Beatles didn't 'make it' on Twitter. They actually played a few gigs and wrote decent songs - worth doing that too, by the way.

2. You’ve got a biography: use it

Alright, a biography comprising a mere 160 characters is not nearly enough to describe the incredible things you’ve been through as an artist and to impart your views on the price of cabbage – but it is what will come up in Google when somebody searches for your band’s Twitter page (see example below).

So get to the point – put decent, concise content in your bio that enables people to spot your profile easily in search results, and distinguishes you from the American sports hero who happens to share your name.

3. Look professional

Twitter gives you the option to brand your profile nicely – you can upload a dinky profile picture and a background of your choice. Use these tools to make your Twitter profile appear consistent with your band’s general online presence. In short, don’t rely on one of Twitter’s default backgrounds and a blank profile pic – be professional about things. Otherwise you will look like the Twitter novice that you are. Pay particular attention to the profile pic, because this is what pops up in other users’ news feed when you post your latest inanity about a gig down in the Dog and Duck.

4. Follow the right people

Don’t be tempted to use automated ‘adders’ or dodgy sites to grow a Twitter following. The 10,000 followers you get from such services may a) not exactly be real people and b) simply won’t be interested in your latest double album. They will however, be interested in regularly offering you an oil inheritance from Nigeria or shoving a pair of fake breasts in your face (sadly these offers rarely translate into reality, believe me). Instead, try to follow bloggers, journalists, writers and musicians that you respect and that are relevant to you – for example, bloggers that write really interesting stuff about the nu-metal-cum-chillwave-shoegazing scene that your band is trying to break into. A proportion of these hip bloggers and journalists will follow you back, meaning (as we’ll see below) that Twitter will inform other similarly hip bloggers and journalists that you are an interesting person worth following, generating more hip followers for you.

5. Take Twitter’s advice

When you log into Twitter, you’ll see a ‘Who to follow’ panel on the left, with suggestions from Twitter's algorithms regarding people that you might find interesting. These recommendations are based on who you are already following on the network (and who's following you), and assuming you’ve taken my words of wisdom above on board, Twitter will be suggesting interesting, relevant and (shock!) “useful” people to follow. (If not, it’ll be prompting you to follow more oil barons and big-but-pretend-bosomed ladies. Nice and all as they are, these individuals might not be all that much use to your music career). So take a careful look at the suggestions, check out each profile suggested, and if you think the algorithm has sussed you out correctly, start taking Twitter’s advice on who to follow.

6. Follow back – where appropriate

When somebody follows you, take a look at what they do / write about, and if they seem like a "fit" for your band, then by all means follow back. I’d suggest not following everybody back – otherwise it makes it harder for Twitter to make accurate recommendations about who you should be following and who should follow you. As with points 4 and 5 above, the “quality” or relevance of follower / following is everything here.

7. Remember: content is king…

…but not necessarily your content. By all means post links to your band's new videos and MP3s from time to time, but do not get too fond of doing so; otherwise you’ll just look like a jerk. Believe me, when it comes to overcommunicating about my own music projects, I’ve been there, done that and bought the t-shirt…and despite waxing endlessly about the importance of musicians keeping schtum for five minutes, I still see artists (who should know better) bore their friends, family and remaining fan to tears with hourly Facebook updates about their latest creative endeavours. Nobody cares after a while (if they ever did in the first place –geddit?). Instead, post links to great content from other sources – whack links up on Twitter to scintillating articles which don’t happen to be about your music (and rest assured, there are a lot of them). Or make witty observations about cheese and/or the credit crunch. In short, get a reputation for being an interesting dude, not a self-obsessed bore. If you post a lot of fantastic content on Twitter, guess what? It’ll get retweeted, meaning your lovely face will potentially pop up in thousands of Twitter feeds. Meaning you’ll get more followers, which you can then eventually bore with stuff about your band (which, after all, is why you’re reading this post in the first place).

8. Interact

Although it’s great for broadcasting news to millions of people, starting revolutions in dodgy regimes and so on, Twitter isn’t a one-way medium and by using the ‘reply’ or “@username” options provided you can interact with people and engage your followers (whatever the hell that means; writing the words ‘engage your followers’ is obligatory in any article about Twitter, so I had to include it somewhere). In a nutshell, if you take the time to respond to enquiries from fans or comment on tweets from the hip bloggers you follow, you will build up a rapport with both groups; this can lead to goodwill for you being generated amongst your two key audiences – fans and tastemakers – resulting, hopefully, in more sales and coverage for your band.

9. Ask for retweets – but only when it’s REALLY important

You can ask your followers to “retweet” stuff – for example, share posts about your latest video, or a big showcase gig. However, don’t prefix absolutely every tweet with “Please RT!” – only do so for posts that are really important. Otherwise you will become the boy who cried “retweet!” and so jaded will your followers be with this carry-on that nobody will ever retweet anything you post. So there.

10. Be regular

Don’t set up a profile on Twitter and then forget all about it. Doing this will a) guarantee that you don’t have much of a following or b) make you look like you don’t give a monkeys about social media or c) don’t know how to use it. None of these inconvenient truths will impress those skinny-jean wearing A&R guys from Shoreditch who are all queuing up to view your Twitter profile right now.

11. Be visible

Remember to promote your Twitter address outside of Twitter. Put it on your album art, your website, your posters, your drumkit, your head – anywhere people can see it. This will help increase your following.

12. Use hashtags to increase the visibility of your tweets

If you're tweeting about something topical - for example, Louise Mensch - use a hash ('#') followed by a relevant tag - i.e., '#louisemensch'. This increases the visibility of your tweet, because people often search for popular hashtags on Twitter to see what the latest news on a subject is, or simply to steal a funny tweet and pass it off as their own. So with the example given, people who are searching for '#louisemensch' (and there are a lot of them) may encounter your witty, and quite possibly rude, tweet about her. This may result in more people, particularly those of a non-Louise-Mensch bent (and there are a lot of them) retweeting your witticism or following you (or both).

13. But size isn’t everything…

Finally, another reminder that like your girlfriend said, SIZE IS NOT EVERYTHING. Having thousands of dodgy followers you never communicate with is less important than having a smaller group of influential followers who hang on and retweet your every regular, interesting 140-character utterance. Think about it: if 200 tastemakers with audiences of 10,000 each are following you, and 50 of them dig you to the extent that they retweet your post about your latest video, you’ve just hit 50 x 10,000 people…that’s your video broadcast to a potential audience of 500,000 (many of whom may retweet it again). And crucially, those 500,000 Twitter users you’ve been exposed to are more likely to take you seriously, because they heard about you from a credible source, not the oil baron with the big boobies.

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Getting your fans to fund your album

Prescription PR — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 15:10:00 +0000

This man is actually withdrawing his own money to spend on manufacturing his CDs...how quaint.

Quite a few musician chums of mine are currently using the ‘fan funding’ model to finance their next albums, and I’ve been watching their efforts with interest – partly so that I can write a blog post about it and partly because I may opt for a similar approach to financing my next record, whenever that eventually manifests itself (so busy am I fathering children and writing posts about how to promote music that my own music has taken something of a back seat recently. Anyway, enough about me).

So what is the ‘fan funding’ approach? Well, it basically boils down to using sites like www.pledgemusic.com (or, for my Irish cousins, www.fundit.ie) to encourage fans to pledge an amount towards the cost of making your album (I say fans, but really I mean your mum and dad and the dwindling number of friends you have who still put up with your annoying self-promotional efforts).

Typically, you set a fundraising target and ask everybody to help you meet it by pledging to give a few bob (or lots of bobs) in exchange for ‘rewards’. The greater the amount contributed, the greater the reward gained. So, for example, your humble fan pledges £5 and gets a digital download of the album; your Lord Ashcroft-type fan pledges £500 and gets a copy made of gold, a credit on the liner notes as executive producer of the album and, crucially, the opportunity to sleep with the band and dictate musical direction (yes, this is just like how politics works in the UK).

The whole thing is sort of like buying things in reverse: you pay now, get later. This is technically quite a bum deal, but I suppose that fans are not only getting a record (eventually) but a feelgood factor too; that quasi-religious warm glow that only arrives when you support a starving, independent artist (okay, a narcissistic, middle-class child / cousin / friend who happens to be putting a record out, and yes, I include myself in that category).

There’s usually a catch though: if you don’t meet your fundraising target by an appointed deadline, you don’t get any money; this being the case it’s a good idea to either have a rich uncle on standby to make up the shortfall, or have a few quid set aside yourself that you can donate anonymously and save face when not enough of your mates cough up.

Anyway, I've seen quite a lot of musicians use this model of funding quite successfully recently, which is why I thought it would make a good article for The Prescription...but I’ve spotted a few pitfalls too. So, in my ever-generous way, I thought I’d share some sage pointers with you about how to go about financing a record using this method.

1. Set your fundraising target very carefully

If you set your fundraising target too high, you might not get enough contributors to meet it - and this generally means zilch for you. This is crap on a number of levels:

It makes it look as though nobody really likes your music (quite possibly a sad, harsh reality but you don’t really want other people noticing this too much).
You’ll only annoy all your fans – and particularly your friends – if you have to reapproach them, tail-between-your-legs, with a new target.
It may mean you have to dip into your own pocket (more on that below).

So before you start trying to finance a record using the generosity of your fans/mates, work out the number of REAL pledges you’re likely to get, and the average amount of each pledge - and base your fundraising target on that. Be conservative.

2. Be prepared to plug a cash gap

Hopefully all will go swimmingly well and your mum will give you lots of money towards your nice little music project. However, it might not; you may fall several hundred or even thousands of pounds short of your target. In which case, you’ll need to take a financial hit if you want to receive any dosh. So, when setting your target, work out what you can really afford to contribute yourself, and stuff some cash under a mattress in case you need it later (note: depending on how your chosen fundraising site operates, you may not actually be able to donate money to yourself, so you might need to slip a couple of sympathetic friends some money so that they can do it surreptitiously on your behalf).

3. Know your market

When offering ‘rewards’ in exchange for pledges, remember the market you are operating in: a music industry where content from big names – i.e., not you, sorry! – is now dirt cheap, or free. So don’t charge £12 for an ‘exclusive digital download’ when Madonna’s latest album can be bought on iTunes for a fiver or streamed on Spotify for free. You’ll just annoy people at best, and put people off pledging anything at worst.

4. Offer decent rewards

Make sure that the rewards you are offering are not all just opportunities for you to be self-indulgent. Although your signature on a CD might appeal to a genuine fan, it’s not going to impress your friends and family much; and no, they aren’t going to be that bothered by you offering to sing them a cover of their choice in their house for £600 either. So consider offering rewards that might seriously appeal to your ‘friend-base’ as well as your fanbase. Think outside the musical box: for example, consider bundling cool items of clothing with your CD that make use subtle use of your artwork without being too promotional (some musican mates of mine bundled a really nice tote bag with a CD they put out a few years ago - even I, as an arch-cynic, was convinced enough to part with cash for one). In essence, don’t make all the rewards too much about you; accompany your CD with items that are genuinely appealing in their own right (you might like to read our suggestions on physical items that your music fans might enjoy for some ideas).

5. Get the intervals between reward prices right

A very obvious point this, but people have different levels of disposable income – however, I’ve seen musicians overlook this when setting their rewards pricing structure, for example by offering rewards that jump straight from £5 for a digital download to £35 for a signed CD copy of the album. Since the fan-funding model in reality invariably relies heavily on people you know giving you cash, an approach like this means you are effectively forcing many friends and family members to choose between appearing a tad mean (by plumping for the £5 option), or generous but at a price they can’t afford (£35 – a lot of money for an independently released album, even if it comes with your name scrawled all over it). The more sensible – and fair – thing to do is to also offer a progressive range of rewards: for example, a digital download for £6, a CD for £10, a signed CD for £16, a vinyl copy for £25, a signed CD and vinyl copy for £30 and so on.

6. Remember that you are NOT a charity

When using the fan-funding model, it’s easy to view yourself as a very worthy cause...and forget that you’re not actually raising money for charity. You’re raising money for yourself, probably at the behest of an oversized ego (there’s nothing wrong with my ego incidentally – it’s better than yours). People do all manner of wonderful things in exchange for cash – climb mountains, trek across India, run marathons, eat vast quantities of mackerel and so on – but the key difference is these things are generally quite challenging and all the money raised is donated to improve people’s lives. But in your case, you had fun making your album and the fundraising you’re doing is going to improve your life (by saving you the bother of spending your own money on manufacturing your CDs). So when asking people to contribute, tone down the rhetoric and don’t come across like you are the musical equivalent of Mother Teresa and that those who are giving you dosh are somehow helping to save the planet. It’s easy to get wrapped up in your own creative projects and I’ve been guilty of the hard sell myself in the past; but it’s extremely important to show that you understand, when asking your friends for money towards your project (or indeed when flogging them CDs in a more conventional way) that this is actually quite a big ask.

7. Consider whether you really want to ask your friends for donations at all

If you are in the lucky position whereby you have a genuine fanbase – a mailing list, for example, comprising several hundred loyal fans who actually buy your music – think long and hard about whether you want to bother your friends for pledges at all. It may be that you have more than enough genuine fans to fund your project, and although your friends may be a source of additional cash, there may ultimately be more disadvantages to badgering them for money than not. Firstly, you may irritate people you care about and, from a more selfish perspective, there are musical contexts when you might REALLY need to enlist your mates' help (for example, they may be more useful as bums on seats at an important showcase gig or album launch). Perhaps a balanced approach is to ask your fans to contribute first, and, if it transpires that you're not meeting your target, to ask friends to step in and help at that point.

8. Limit your communications

Don’t post demands for money on Facebook every five minutes (tempting and easy as it is to do so), or email people once a day asking for cash so you can master your album at Abbey Road. You’ll only annoy people and trash your online reputation.

9. Thank people personally

Finally, when somebody donates to your project, don’t take them for granted by relying on round robins or automated thank-you emails from your chosen funding website. If at all possible, send those who pledge money an individual email to thank them, or better still, drop them a text or a call saying how much you appreciate it. Not only is this a nice thing to do, but it will make people feel far more inclined to support you in future.

So, on that note, I’m off to offer my granny the opportunity to sing on my next record for £1000. Cheers gran.

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The new Facebook Timeline: what it means for bands and musicians, and how to use it properly

Prescription PR — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 14:19:59 +0000

In case you haven’t noticed yet, big changes to Facebook pages are around the corner. That Facebook page that you lovingly filled with crap – sorry, interesting content – about your band is shortly going to become a ‘timeline’ rather than a good old-fashioned virtual wall.

That’s nice, I hear you say – and I suppose, yes, it will make your page look a lot prettier and there are a couple of nice new features. However, there is one fairly significant downside for bands: the new format page won’t let you set a default landing tab, which spells the end of that nifty little trick whereby bands (or indeed brands) could set up their page so that users visiting it were automatically presented with ‘locked content’ – i.e., content you get in exchange for liking the page. From 30 March, if a Facebook user visits your page, they see the timeline, period. That said, it’s still possible to use Facebook ads and other links to take users to an app on your page containing locked content; it’s just that the switch does reduce the scope a bit for artists to increase likes by default, and it’s annoying for anyone who paid a developer to build a nice locked content landing tab.

But we are where we are, and regardless of how irritating you find the changes to your Facebook page, it is still for the foreseeable future going to be an important communications tool for you. So, in this post, we thought we’d give you, in our ever-generous way, our top tips for making the most of the new page format.

1. Upload a great cover picture and profile picture

The cover picture is a new banner that goes across the top of your page and it provides you with a good opportunity to make a visual statement about your band. Ok, a pretty basic suggestion this, but important nonetheless: use a really good picture of your act. You should use an image that 1) works well when cropped to 851 x 315 pixels and 2) screams ‘I’m serious about my music’ to any A&Rs, journalists, promoters or indeed any industry bods in tight pants who casually peruse your page. Don’t use a really small pic of your dog that looks rubbish when scaled up. The same sort of advice applies to your profile pic, which is the smaller image that appears in your fans’ news feeds whenever you post some boring information about said dog. A note of caution: Facebook aren’t too keen on letting you use your cover pic as an advertisement, so be careful about whacking big ‘buy now’ text all over that picture of your dog. Or you’ll get a spanking from Mark Zuckerburg. Ooh.

2. Choose your ‘featured apps’ wisely

Just underneath your profile pic you’ll see 4 rectangular ‘app’ boxes – these are effectively the old ‘tabs’ from your facebook page. You can feature up to 12 apps on your page, the rest of which users can access via a little drop-down arrow. It’s important to choose which ones to feature in the top 4, because people don’t hang about long on Facebook pages and you want to make the key stuff very obvious. My advice would be to put your ‘free download’ app fairly prominently at the top, along with any other useful apps that you’ve got – videos and a music player generally being the priorities. I have to say that even after all these years, and with a new timeline to boot, adding apps in Facebook actually remains a really cumbersome process which I don’t have time to go into, so good luck with that (some googling of ‘how do I ad a new Facebook app’ should help…a bit).

On the plus side, apps on Facebook pages are now fairly unmissable – compared to the old tab icons, they are huge. And however difficult it is to add apps, they do come in handy once they're there.

3. Set a ‘founded date’

A 'founded date' marks the start of your musical odyssey and the point from which you can start filling in your band’s back story on Facebook. If you’ve been around for a while, your band may predate the existence of Facebook, so you’ll definitely need to enter a founded date if you want to add information about your musical activities pre-2007. I can’t quite remember how I entered my founded date on my Facebook page, but I think it involved scrolling right down to the bottom of the page and clicking some sort of a pencil icon. As ever with Facebook pages, it’s not madly intuitive.

4. Add milestones

Adding milestones is a good bit more straightforward – just click the ‘milestone’ link which is located at the top left-hand side of the page, underneath your cover photo. Use this option to add significant dates and events in your band’s career, like when you released a record that nobody bought, or did a gig for an audience comprising your mum. On a more serious note, it’s worth taking a bit of time on this, as it does give your band an opportunity to provide something that is of real interest to your fans. Or at least the ones wearing anoraks.

5. Pin and star stuff

You can now give a particular post, link, video etc. greater prominence on your Facebook page by pinning it to the top. Simply hit the little pencil icon beside any post, and hit the ‘pin to top’ link. It will then hang around at the top of your page like a bad smell for a week. This is useful for flagging up particularly important content, like that time you saw Boy George walk into the local corner shop.

Starring stuff is another way to make a post more prominent on your page – if you click the star icon beside a post, it will be expanded to a full-size article.

6. Use messaging

One of the more significant new features of Facebook pages is that fans can message you directly and privately – i.e., not just write embarrassing stuff on your wall. Great if you’ve got a bunch of record companies or hot groupies keen to contact you; not so great if you’ve got a raincoat-wearing brigade wanting to get in touch. On balance though, I’d leave the messaging option switched on; it’s a form of fan engagement and you can always ignore the weirdos if you have to. Of the new features being discussed here, I think the that the messaging option is potentially the most significant, because it allows potentially very helpful people to establish a connection / dialogue with you about your music.

7. Use the ‘build audience’ features

By clicking the ‘build audience’ button at the top of your page, you’ll be presented with various tools that you can use to spread the word about your page (including a handy option to use your mailing list to invite people to follow you). Although these tools are not all strictly speaking new, they are presented in a simple and comprehensive way and you should definitely take a look at them.

But remember…

Regardless of the above new features, it’s really important to note that that most of your fans won't actually look at your Facebook page that often (if at all!); rather, they'll see content that you post on it pop up in their news feed. This is why, for all the nice new features, it’s still more important to think about what you actually post on your page than how well the page itself is presented. The better and richer the quality of the content you post, the more you will engage people and define a good online reputation. On that note, I’d actually suggest that you take a look at our recent post on managing your online reputation – it's got a lot of pointers on that score.

Right, I'm off to put a lot of interesting and perhaps not-entirely-true milestones on my own Facebook page. Like the time I was number 1 in Belgium.

The Prescription is written by independent musician and Head of Digital Communications at Prescription PR, Chris Singleton.

Find out how Prescription PR can get your band noticed - contact us today.

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The key things you MUST do when releasing an album independently

Prescription PR — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 15:36:45 +0000

This man just released an album independently without reading our tips first and such is his disappointment, he is now about to throw his guitar off a cliff.

Strange things do happen. Not very often. But sometimes they do – and on those rare occasions, when weird stuff with ley lines is going on and there’s a full moon up and a bunch of hippies are doing some sort of summer solstice dance around Stonehenge, a record that has been released independently can end up capturing a national radio DJ’s ears, and then some of his DJ mates’ ears, and ultimately the ears of the great unwashed...and before you know it, you have a hit of sorts on your hands. I say ‘hit of sorts’ because at this point, you’ve got good airplay, but in my book a hit still constitutes a piece of music that generates cash as well as awareness (you can get the latter easily enough by taking off your clothes and running around a cricket pitch, but you probably won’t get paid for it unless somehow your naked antics involve a spot of match-fixing; good luck to you with this endeavour).

The trick to turning airplay for an independently-released track into a real hit – or cold, hard cash – is to have built a very strong infrastructure that supports this independent release. You may end up surprising yourself (and me) by getting a truckload of spins on Radio 2, but if you are unprepared for this eventuality, then you are shooting yourself, your release, and quite probably any hope of a career in music, in the foot (I’m not sure the latter two entities have feet but the metaphor generally works I think. Or is it an idiom? Anyway, I digress).

In my view there are several important things that you simply have to do when releasing an album independently; these tasks ensure that you receive as much money as possible for airplay and sales. If I had a pound for the number of bands I’ve encountered that neglect these boring but essential tasks I would be covered in suntan lotion quaffing Chateau Neuf de Pape (or perhaps something slightly more refreshing, but you get the gist) in San Tropez. Now, since bands are not likely to give me a pound every time they ignore my sage music promotion advice, I might as well provide a litany of these vital but yawn-inducing tasks that should be ticked off a yawn-inducing ‘to-do’ list before any independent release goes anywhere near a radio station (or more likely, your mum).

So, here goes.

Join PRS for Music and register your tracks with them. The PRS is now an amalgamation of two societies, the PRS (Performing Rights Society) and the MCPS (the Mechanical Copyright Protection Society). For a full explanation of what PRS for Music do, I’d suggest you read their benefits of membership information, but in a nutshell they sort songwriters and publishers out with royalties any time their music is played or performed (Irish peeps: google IMRO instead).
Join PPL (Phonographic Performance Ltd) and register your songs with them too. It’s a similar sort of organisation to PRS for Music, but it collects and distributes royalties for record companies and performers rather than songwriters and publishers. Now, as you are releasing your album independently, the chances are that you are both a performer on the album and the record company releasing it, so make sure that the PPL know about your music and are giving you due reward for it when Jeff Smith's golden ears finally decide that you are worth exposing to 7 million Radio 2 listeners’ sensitive ears.
Encode ISRC (International Standard Recording Codes) on your CDs. ISRC codes ensure that when your music is played on the radio, PRS for Music and PPL know about it and are able to pay you accordingly. In an era of diminishing music sales, revenue from airplay is more important than ever, and without ISRC codes on your single or promo CD, even if you have a huge radio hit on your hands, you may get a fraction of the revenue owed to you. One spin on national radio in the UK can be worth around £60 - not to be sniffed at.
This sounds incredibly obvious, but ensure that your music is available to buy online on major sites (iTunes, Amazon etc.) before approaching anyone at radio. Ideally, you should have an album's worth of material up on iTunes before you release a single. Why deny people the oportunity to take a punt on a whole album (or a few tracks) rather than just spending 79p on one song?
Consider some physical distribution options at the outset of the project. Despite all the new-fangled digital stuff that's currently dominating all thought in the industry at the moment, most album sales are actually still CD shaped, so if you end up with a massive radio hit on your hands, physical distribution starts to make a lot of sense. So it's a good idea to have a physical distribution plan in place at the start of the project – talk to distributors early on and ideally have a partner ready to step in should you need to get your CDs into record shops.
Make sure you are generally easy to find online, so that when Whistling Bob Harris' listeners go looking for you on the interweb, they end up in the right place. Create a good website, and have strong, up-to-date presences on social media.
Ensure that you have a decent data capture system set up on your website. If you do get a huge amount of airplay for one of your songs – something that might only happen once in your entire career – you may end up with a huge number of people visiting your website. You can future-proof your career a bit by ensuring that your site is optimised to capture as many of these visitors’ email addresses as possible (this is usually done by incentivising your data capture – offering a free download for an email address). A large database means that you can potentially generate a decent amount of income from selling music and gig tickets direct to fans in future, even if you never get played by Whistling Bob ever again.
Ensure your song is on Youtube – even if you don't really have a video for it. Regardless of the increasing popularity of Spotify, Youtube is still effectively the world's de facto music database and if you have a radio hit, people will be looking for your song on there (you can find out more about the importance of having your music on Youtube here).
Create a mailing list of influential music industry movers and shapers that you can get in touch with in the unlikely event that your music starts to become popular. This is always a handy thing to have lying about anyway, but if you suddently get a serious amount of airplay on a national radio station, you ideally want to be in a position where you can quickly and easily email a large bunch of A&Rs, managers and publishers, notifying them of your overnight success and telling them why they should sign your sorry ass.

I could go on, but I've got other things to do and you, dear reader, are not paying me enough. However, I think the above suggestions should act as a decent checklist for bands who are embarking on that most precarious of adventures, the independent album release. In fact, even if you don't have a monster hit on your hands, the above tips should help you maximise the income you do receive from any independent album release. At the very least, they should allow the PPL to procure 5p from your local radio station on your behalf and let your mum find your album on iTunes.

The Prescription is written by independent musician and Head of Digital Communications at Prescription PR, Chris Singleton.

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Don't forget the er, music

Prescription PR — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 17:24:10 +0000

Megan Fox relaxes at home with a guitar. This sentence alone means millions of people will read this blog post.

Reading back over 2011’s Prescription articles - and very good they are too - it seems as though I spent a lot of my time telling you young whippersnappers to ‘forget about the music’ and concentrate on adding loads of funky content to your site or Facebook page. There’s a lot to be said for that; if you keep going on about your band ad nauseum, people will switch off and think you’re a dreadful bore (believe me; I know). Whereas if you write an interesting blog post about – oh, I don’t know, Megan Fox in nice underwear or something – you’ll get a shedload of visitors to your band’s website, and of course they’ll simply love your music. They might all be pervs, but yes, of course they’ll buy your records. And that’s all that counts in life obviously.

I’m going to start the year anyway with a slightly different, and I suppose contradictory, thought: remember the music. Because as important as blogging, social media, data capture, SEO, analytics, online business models and all the rest of it are to the independent musician…these new-fangled entities have one huge drawback, and the start of a new year seems like a good moment to face up to it: they take up LOADS of your time. Time that you could be spending on what you as a musician are meant to be doing in the first place: writing and recording music.

Think about it: how many times have you been writing a song, only to put down your guitar to go over to a computer and check the number of Facebook fans you’ve acquired that day? And then got sidetracked by some funny post your witty mate has posted on your wall? And then thought how now would be a good time to check your site’s Google Analytics, followed by a couple of hours tweaking the tags on the Youtube video for your latest single? And after that it only seems only right surely to spend the evening emailing some MP3s to some taste-maker blogger types…

It’s easy to see where I’m going with this: all these online gizmos and services are great (and in general I’m a big fan) BUT they are also involve a huge time commitment – either in terms of the hours you spend on putting a decent online promo campaign together, or frankly, the amount of hours you waste religiously checking web stats, friend counts, song plays and so on (not to mention getting distracted by those wits on Facebook).

And the irony is this: really good music arguably doesn’t need half as much of an online push as you think it does. Because aside from making you spend every living hour reading inane Facebook status updates, one thing the internet does really well is help good stuff travel. If a song is truly a great one, it will get shared online. All those little ‘share’ buttons, dodgy torrent sites and perhaps even some humans will happily see to that. Yes, there are ways to maximise a track’s visibility online, and these are worth putting time into, but only after you have made your song as ‘shareworthy’ as possible. And this, translated, means only after you have made your song as good as you possibly can. And you are not going to make your song as good as possible by looking at your Google Analytics account every hour.

So, here’s a new year’s resolution for you: turn off your wireless router for a week, lock yourself in a room with a guitar and spend every hour the Lord of Rock gave you making some art worthy of the name. Write yourself a nice tune, pen some tasteful lyrics and embellish it all with a production that even Alexis Petridis would find hip. When – and only when – you are convinced you’ve got something great to share with the world, switch the internet back on and start spreading the news. Failing that, there are always those Megan Fox fans.

The Prescription is written by independent musician and digital consultant to Prescription PR, Chris Singleton.

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What does 2012 bring for the music biz?

Prescription PR — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 20:15:20 +0000

This Santa, despite wielding a guitar, and irrespective of how naughty or nice you've been, probably won't be bringing you a record deal this year. Sorry.

Well, it's that time of year again. Chrimbo. Right now you are probably listening to a bunch of 1980s celebrities sing about there not being any snow in Africa this Christmastime in an alarmingly cheerful manner whilst hanging up a stocking (yes, you're doing the stocking-hanging, not the celebrities). No doubt you are also hoping that Santa will whack a big fat record deal (complete with huge advance) in said sock. However, without wishing to be too Bah Humbug about it, it's questionable as to whether either Santa or that kind of record deal actually exists. So, in the absence of a bearded mythological figure or a recording contract, we give you Prescription's list of things to watch out for in 2012 in the music biz.

The ongoing death of the download

Not everybody has twigged this yet, but the digital download is slowly (or not so slowly) joining the record, CD and tape in the 'extinct music format' club. It's certainly on the endangered species list. As more and more people consume music via the likes of Spotify and WE7, storing gigabytes of music locally on a hard drive seems more and more quaint (and pointless). Although headlines were made recently by rumours of record companies deciding not to sell new music on CDs after 2012, the real story is that selling MP3s is going to become more and more difficult in 2012. Indeed, even giving them away is going to get harder – that old trick of 'download this amazing MP3 free in exchange for your email address' that musicians have been employing for a while now is not going to work for much longer. Firstly, every band under the sun sussed that particular tactic out back in the mid-naughties, meaning the free MP3 'market' has been completely saturated; but more importantly, why would music fans bother storing an MP3 somewhere when they can stream as much music as they like, with relative ease, online?

The upshot of the death of the download is that bands are going to have to become far more inventive when it comes to getting people to listening to their music. Creative angles and interesting content (blog posts, animations, games, viral videos, downright lies and so on) are going to be more important than ever in 2012 in catching people’s attention (and hopefully, ears); on this note, you may find our article about using strong content to drive visits to your band’s website interesting.

The longer tail

There has always been a 'long tail' of music out there – a few huge-selling artists, and truckloads of non-selling ones. In recent years however, this tail has got longer, as modern computing enabled anyone with a half-decent laptop and an audio card to produce music in their bedroom. In 2012, we reckon this tail will get longer still, due to the explosion of mobile device / smartphone use. When you can buy an app for three quid or so from the Apple store – Garage Band – which effectively allows you to produce release-quality music on a pocket-sized device, it's inevitable that you will end up with more wannabes (sorry, serious musicians) uploading their pathetic (sorry, heartfelt) efforts onto the web. All this means that your band's fish size has just been reduced; where as once you were a humble cod swimming in a very big quantity of water, you have now been downgraded to a mere goldfish swimming in a vast ocean.

The end of record companies?

If CDs do become a redundant format by the end of the year, and as discussed above, MP3s roll over and die in the near future too, then the question has to be asked – without any recordings to sell, what is the point of a traditional record company? 2012 will see lots of record companies go bust, there’s no question about that, as revenues from sales dry up.

The companies that survive (mainly major labels with large cash reserves) will simply become management companies, signing or developing celebrities and taking a percentage of everything they sell, from T-shirts to perfume to gig tickets…but not necessarily recorded music. This sort of carry-on has been around for a few years now of course – with ‘360 degree deals’ and so on - but if 2012 is the last year of the CD, it may be the year that this 'I'll have a finger in every pie' approach becomes the de facto way that record companies do business.

The rise and rise of Spotify – and what will Apple do?

With both its recent arrival in the US and its link-up with Facebook, Spotify now has an even bigger market to tap into. And people seem to be using it in ever larger numbers.

What will be very interesting to see is what Apple do in response to the increasing popularity of Spotify. For many music listeners, Spotify has replaced iTunes as the go-to music library; however, iTunes still has a huge userbase, and Apple could simply decide (once legal and licensing issues are resolved) to turn it into a music streaming service (and presumably one that you could use to listen to several artists that are not on Spotify – the Beatles, Pink Floyd etc.).

However, my gut feeling is that Apple are going to hold off doing this until absolutely necessary; the download market may be shrinking, but as far as Apple's concerned, it's still a huge one and the umbilical link between all those iDevices and iTunes makes it incredibly easy for Apple iDevice owners to buy new music or Apple to flog it to them. But the trend is definitely away from download stores and towards streaming services; so regardless of what Apple do, it makes sense for musicians to get very clued up on how to get their music on Spotify and promote it on there – as such, we’d recommend taking a look at this Make it in Music article about this very issue.

The rollout of 4G

2012 will see several countries roll out 4G – the superfast successor to 3G mobile broadband (I'm reliably informed by Wikipedia that two thirds of US cities will have 4G coverage by mid-2012). This will make streaming music on mobile devices much faster and easier than it is now (and will bring greater monthly data allowances, thereby facilitating even more streaming). As with much else in the world, the UK is somewhat behind the curve when it comes to 4G, but its general onward march (combined with ever larger numbers of people using smartphones) is inevitably going to speed up the death of downloading we talked about earlier (and may provide that tipping point for Apple to convert iTunes from a download service to a streaming one). This represents another development which should make you think twice about manufacturing 10,000 physical copies of your latest opus; maybe 500 would do…

Recession!

It's looking more and more likely that despite politicians' best efforts (or worst, depending on your political viewpoint), 2012 will bring a double-dip recession to the UK and Europe. This will inevitably impact on the entertainment industry just as much as anything else. It's hard to guess what the exact outcome will be; but alas I fear the prognosis for bands is pretty grim – people are buying less music due to technological developments anyway, and a crap economy probably just means people will buy even less of it.

It's perhaps in the live scene though that the impact will be felt most; even going to see an unsigned band is an expensive pursuit these days, and when people have less money in their pockets, your mates will view going to see your band (let's be honest, you don't have any real fans, do you?) as very low on the 'how shall I spend my shrinking disposable income?' list.

That’s all very depressing

I fear that in the above observations, I've brought you famine, war, pestilence and various other harbingers of a music-industry apocalypse. However, there is a bright side to all this: thanks to this digital revolution which is proving so distruptive, more people – perhaps including you, dear reader - are making music than ever before. And more people are probably listening to it than ever before. Music remains incredibly popular (and is more accessible than ever), and regardless of how things pan out in 2012, this is going to remain the case. Good music can get an airing, but the key thing to remember is this: if you want your music to be heard these days, you've got to – to coin an alarmingly Steve Jobs-esque phrase – think different. You may need to think smaller; in a more business-like way; but – and I appreciate the contradictions – more creatively.

In fact, I think that's generally been the theme of our articles in 2011: looking back over them they seem to prescribe a mix of not forgetting the basics with thinking of ways to be clever about how you promote yourself. And, as a parting Christmas gift, I thought it might be worth highlighting our ‘greatest hits’ of Prescription articles – the posts containing the tips which we think could make the most difference to your forays into music promotion next year.

These are:

Leather pants, rock gods, groupies and er, project planning? – how simple planning can make the difference between an independently released hit or flop
Rock success, the Ryanair way – how thinking like Michael O’Leary could (alarmingly) help your music career
Why you need to be on Youtube, even if you don’t have a video
DIY music promotion - avoiding the pitfalls

Anyway! Enough musical talk. We're off to the Prescription PR Christmas party, dressed all smart-casual, like.

We wish you well in your endeavours and hope you have a great Christmas and a successful 2012.

The Prescription is written by independent musician and digital consultant to Prescription PR, Chris Singleton.

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The death of email?

Prescription PR — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 14:56:34 +0000

This is either the ghost of a dead email, a man dressed in a sheet, or a member of the Klan.

Mark Zuckerburg is in the news again; and this time it’s for pronouncing the email dead. This official pronouncement of death conveniently went hand in hand with the launch of Facebook’s new messaging system, but we’ll leave cynicism about what makes a good headline to one side (you are reading this on a PR company’s website, after all) and take a look at his bold claim and what the implications are for musicians. Should you shred your virtual mailing lists and start spamming potential fans using yet another Zuckerburg invention?

We don’t think so. There are several good reasons to hold onto your mailing list and your beautifully crafted HTML email templates. The first is that er, email isn’t dead. In fact, as one Very Important Email Boffin, Nathaniel Borenstein, told the BBC recently, its use is actually growing. And, although teenagers may currently be eschewing it, they are effectively forced upon entering the world of work to start using email; most businesses do not encourage their staff to spend all day on Facebook (they encourage them to CC everybody on pointless round robin emails instead). If you saw Prescription PR’s inboxes, you would know that the email is, perhaps sadly, rather too alive and well.

Having established that email isn’t actually dead, the second reason for continuing to communicate with your fans via email rather than relying solely on whatever Facebook offers you is that – as hard as it may be to believe now – Facebook could just be a fad. You may think that with its 500 million plus users I’m mad making a statement like that. However, the pace of change in web technology is frenetic and in the space of just five years we have already seen the rise and fall of another huge social network, Myspace. The point is that if you invest all your time, energy and money exclusively in Facebook communications – whether that’s spending money on advertising to increase ‘likes’ of your page, or trying to work out how best to use Facebook Messenger to give your ten fans the impression that you are huge in Japan – you are screwed if things in Facebook land go tits up and everybody who liked you on that network has upped sticks and is now hanging out somewhere else. That’s precisely what happened with Myspace – just remember all those bands who got RSI from clicking ‘add friend’ on Myspace only to have all those very dear pals bugger off to an entirely new network altogether. Harlots.

The third reason you should value the humble email address is the degree of control it offers you. When you post a message up on your Facebook page, not everybody reads it or even sees it (you can find out why here). Admittedly, the same can be true of email – particularly if you write very boring messages to people all the time – but you know that when you send an email to a fan, it will generally go into their inbox (unless you are flogging saucily-titled albums that spam filters don’t like; how very dare you). Additionally, you can format the email how you like – add branding, photos, links and so on. And, depending on how clever you are, you can use a tool like Getresponse or Campaign Monitor to run A-B subject header tests; schedule a broadcast time; measure open rates and clickthroughs; even see where your fans live (yes, seriously). Facebook messages or status updates do not offer anything like this level of control over communications.

Finally, regardless of what happens in the future, and whichever social network is king in 2050, the email address is probably going to be involved in some shape or form, and the more of them you have the better. For all Zuckerburg’s hyperbole about the death of the email, you still need an email address to er, sign up to Facebook. Or Twitter. Or Myspace. And all of those networks encourage you to ‘find your friends’ or invite people to become fans of your band (poor sods) using your email address book or by importing your mailing list. So in effect, email addresses are turnkeys to every social network out there – both in terms of joining them or, more importantly from the musician’s point of view, locating existing fans who use them.

So given all the above, the official Prescription line is to hold onto that mailing list, and continue to grow it if you can. We’ll leave you with a parting thought though: if you are reading this article in email form, it’s further proof that the email address is still alive, unless this article is an email ghostie haunting your spooky Hotmail account.

The Prescription is written by independent musician and digital consultant to Prescription PR, Chris Singleton.

If you like this article, we’d really appreciate you sharing it on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere. Just use the ‘Share article’ link below.

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Managing your online reputation

Prescription PR — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 17:32:45 +0000

Oh no! It's Frankie Cocozza. He's got 331,000 followers on Twitter - but can he manage his online reputation?

If you read The Prescription religiously – and there are worse things to read religiously incidentally; try a Jilly Cooper novel; a Melanie Phillips column; or that bit in the Old Testament where Lot’s wife turns into a pillar of salt – then you’ve probably picked up on the fact that a hell of a lot of my advice to you young musical upstarts involves the internet. And this, quite simply, is because the internet is now the fulcrum point around which the music industry is turning; the current rumours that the major labels are to abandon the CD in 2012 in favour of selling files only underline this point.

The net gives most independent musicians something that they otherwise really would not have had – the opportunity to have their music heard by a large number of strangers (this was previously largely the preserve of signed acts). But it does something else too: it allows musicians to communicate directly with these strangers in rather sophisticated ways, through all manner of powerful tools: social networks, live video streaming services, email, the good old-fashioned website...the list goes on. This means that not only can strangers judge your music, they can judge you and form an opinion on how hip / sexy / annoying you are (delete as appropriate). And sadly, with the music industry being what it is, it’s often (perhaps usually!) the latter judgment that is of most importance to your career prospects. So getting your online reputation right is really important. Besides which, your online reputation is probably the only reputation you have. Sorry to be a bit downbeat about things, but the chances are that if you are reading this article, rather than sunning yourself in Barbados, then you are part of that non-exclusive club of musicians who are getting no press or airplay whatsoever and have turned to the internet in a desperate bid to compensate for the lack of general attention from the media. Understandable enough – but too often, musicians use the only tool available to them to come across as complete idiots.

Now, I have an admission to make: I’ve been a bit rubbish at managing my online reputation in the past. There are several traps that I’ve fallen into, possibly with the result that the music world thinks I’m an irritating Irish man who posts status updates way too often, and usually about his cat. I’m sure that as a result of my poor use of social media and email, there is a large section of the population that finds me more objectionable than Frankie Cocozza (who, incidentally, now has 331,000 people following him on Twitter; how did that happen?). Anyway, as it seems to be my role in life right now to let other musicians learn from my mistakes, in this article I thought I’d share some do’s and don’ts about managing your reputation online, so that you can avoid ending up as unhip as me.

1. Think about who you want to be online

Before you go near a computer, think about who you want to be online. Are you Jarvis Cocker or Cheryl Cole? Or the bastard lovechild of both? It’s very easy to set up a Wordpress site, a Facebook page or a Twitter feed, but whatever online tools you use to create your online presence, it should absolutely embody the kind of artist you want to present yourself as. Too many musicians just set up an online presence because they can, but really, you should only put anything up online once you have a very clear idea of who you want to present yourself as, and how you want to communicate. Just as you would not create a CD cover without thinking of the kind of music that’s on your album, you should not create a Twitter page only to use one of their default backgrounds and their standard egg-like profile picture. Your choice of photography, design elements and your tone of voice online are going to define your reputation on the web; get these wrong and you’re off to a really crap start.

2. Don’t overcommunicate

Social media makes it hideously easy to share your thoughts. In ‘real’ life I generally try to avoid articulating every thought I have, as they’d probably get me arrested or at the very least lead to some very embarrassing moments, but Facebook and Twitter seem to scream ‘Go on! Say it! Share it with the world!’. And a hell of a lot of bands seem to take Facebook and Twitter up on this offer, posting boring inanity after inanity (or in my case, lots of fairly non-rock-and-roll trivia about my cat Millie, who is a rather extraordinary black and white creature with a big tail…hang on, I’m doing it again). Anyway, what I’m getting at is most people aren’t interested in reading the drummer’s innermost thoughts on cheese every five minutes, so be careful not to overdo it in the tweeting and status update stakes. The same goes for email – do not send an e-newsletter every day to your hard-earned mailing list informing them what you’ve had for breakfast, unless you particularly enjoy seeing your unsubscribe rate treble.

3. Don’t undercommunicate

Just as it’s easy to overdo it, it’s easy to underdo it – some musicians are loathe to use social media at all. Sometimes it’s because they are too ‘old school’; sometimes it’s because they don’t understand its relevance or importance; sometimes it’s because they think their music is so good that a big, fat record deal will come along without any online effort on their part whatsoever. Whatever an artist’s reason for not taking online communications seriously, it’s a big mistake. You absolutely need to keep any social media profile, blog or site you run up-to-date with interesting content: for A&Rs, journalists, DJs and even those boring, normal people who may be inclined to check you out, these are generally the first port of call – and if it looks as though your online presence consists of an out-of-date Facebook profile with 10 fans (11 counting your mum), they’ll quickly draw the conclusion that you generally don’t give a shit. And consequently, neither will they.

4. Don’t spread yourself too thin

There are so many free online music services available to bands that it’s tempting to feel that your band has to have a profile on absolutely every single one of them. Or that if your band does, it will somehow become more successful. But it’s much better to focus on a few key areas rather than setting up 20 different profiles which you never update. Pick 2 or three profiles, and use them well; ensure they are well-promoted and always packed full of interesting content. Personally, these days I’m mainly concerned about Facebook, Twitter and Soundcloud, but whatever tools you use, use them wisely, give them love, and keep the content fresh.

5. Don’t go on about your band all the time

Yes, you are primarily setting up social media profiles, websites and so on with a view to promoting your band’s music; and yes, the people who follow you will in theory like the racket you make. But even if your devoted fans think you’re the greatest artist since Daniel Bedingfield [we need a word - Editor], the chances are that your music is only going to form a small part of their lives (unless you’re dealing with the weird stalker type – I’ve had a few American fans which I’ve filed under that category, and I’ll fess up to being slightly proud about that). In short, your followers will not want to only ever receive updates about your latest album; they’re real human beings with interests outside of your music and will find you more engaging if you talk about stuff that relates to aspects of their lives. That could be topics like other artists’ music; politics (although be careful there); art; leather pants – whatever. But nobody likes a self-promoting bore – and as somebody who considers himself something of a self-promoting bore, I can tell you that for nothing. You will lose friends and alienate people if you only ever talk about your own music.

6. Remember your production values

The digital revolution hasn’t just made it easy for people to set up a Facebook page; it’s made it infinitely easier than it was even 5 years ago to create astonishingly professional-looking videos and photos, and fantastically well-produced music. Consequently, there is now a very high level of expectation from music fans regarding the kind of production values they encounter from an unsigned or indie band. OK, so you may want to be deliberately lo-fi, which is fine when done well. But in general, don’t post tracks that sound like they were recorded in a toilet, videos that were recorded on a phone, and photos that were shot by your Aunty Mavis on a family holiday in Torquay (unless she’s a hot rock photographer). They just make you look crap.

Right, having imparted those words of wisdom to you, I’m off to go and look cool on the internet.

The Prescription is written by independent musician and digital consultant to Prescription PR, Chris Singleton.

If you like this article, we’d really appreciate you sharing it on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere. Just use the ‘Share article’ link below.

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Simple SEO tips for bands and musicians

Prescription PR — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 15:56:16 +0000

This lady cannot find your band on Google, so has resorted to a Sherlock Holmes outfit and a magnifying glass.

Search engine optimisation (or, for you acronym-loving hipsters, SEO) is a hot topic for any business; appearing in the top 3 results for a particular search query can mean the difference between loads of clients and none. But is it any use to bands and musicians? Well, yes. For two reasons:

Firstly, you need people who like your music to be able to find your website when they search for you (and quite possibly, you want it to appear ahead of any Myspace pages, Facebook pages etc.)
Secondly, you want people who might like the kind of music you make (for example, Nu-metal-Dubstep-Shoegaze-Emo-Chillwave or whatever the latest racket that's popular in Shoreditch is) to come across you when they search for your band.

So, in this week’s article we’re going to take you through some of the basics of optimising your band website for search engines. Are you sitting comfortably? Then let's begin.

Site title

The first thing you need to look at is the title of your site. It simply has to include your band name. The site title is the text you see at the top of your browser window; but it’s also text that Google considers as crucial in determining what your site is about (and will display first in search results). If you use page titles such as ‘Home’ or ‘News’ that contain no reference to the band, then chances are that in search results - as with the charts - you are going to struggle to be seen. Always, always, always whack your band name in the title.

However, this is not necessarily going to win you any new fans or visits from people who aren’t your mum. Unless your band is called 'Porn', only people who are already into your music are likely to be entering the name of your act into Google. However, a lot of people will be entering specific genre names or indeed the names of other artists into search engines. In other words, you might get somebody searching for ‘folk’ or ‘Bob Dylan’, but probably not your catchily named ‘Folky Sexy Cucumbers’ combo that plays down the local Slug and Lettuce every Tuesday.

So, instead of just having a site title of ‘The Folky Sexy Cucumbers’, you should really try something like ‘Folky Sexy Cucumbers – a folk trio influenced by the music of Bob Dylan circa 1966’. That way you could conceivably end up with traffic for searches such as ‘Bob Dylan 1966’ or ‘Bob Dylan folk 1966’ – and believe me, there will be far more people searching for Bob Dylan than sexy cucumbers. Actually, that may not strictly be the case, but you get the general gist.

Meta data

Next, you need to move onto your meta data. Your meta data is text that is not visible on your site, but rather stored within the HTML code. There are two important bits: the ‘description’ attribute and the ‘keywords’. Of the two, the former is by far the most important. You need to ask your web dude (or ask yourself, if you’re the web dude in the band) to edit the description so that it contains a couple of lines of text about you and your music. For example, it should read something like ‘The Folky Sexy Cucumbers – a band from Leeds influenced by 1966-era Bob Dylan, in particular his Highway 61 revisted album’. Although humans won’t see this description, Google’s algorithms will, and they will use it to decide whether or not to show your site to unsuspecting Bob Dylan fans in search results.

As for the ‘keywords’ attribute, it’s debatable how useful this is any more – a lot of search engines gave up on it due to constant abuse by spammers who would use it to pack their HTML full of random, non-relevant keywords in an attempt to get people who were innocently searching for train times to arrive at a page about willy enlargement. That said, a few search engines do still seem to use it a bit – notably Yahoo – so, it doesn’t hurt to use it to insert keywords that describe your music into your site. So, to return to The Sexy Folky Cucumbers, we’d be looking at a keyword list like ‘The Sexy Folky Cucumbers, Leeds, Folk music, Acoustic, Americana, Bob Dylan, 1966, 1960s folk’…and so on.

Textual chemistry: headers and body copy

A lot of people who design music sites like to forgo text for flash-based sites or sites based around fancy images. This is generally because bands want their sites to look er, flash - but it’s also a mistake. It’s better to design a text-rich site than one which is completely based on flash or images, because most search engines much prefer the former to the latter (without getting too technical, Google can index text content within Flash, but it needs to be set up in a certain way…go ask your web designer!). Anyway, without getting bogged down in technicalities, there’s a general point: use text when you can if you want your site to appear in search results.

Within your site there are two main types of text that you need to worry about: headings and body copy. Headings are the most important, as search engines effectively treat them as 'tags' for categorising site content. So, where possible, ensure that they accurately describe what people might be searching for: instead of a heading of ‘Gigs’, try ‘The Folky Sexy Cumbers – Gigs’. (There are various types of heading tags – H1, H2, H3 and so on. H1 is effectively what the page is chiefly about, with H2s being a sub-header, and H3 being a notch below that again. Focus most attention on H1s and H2s.)

As for body copy, like all the other components discussed above, it should be keyword-rich. If you are influenced by Bob Dylan, mention it in the body copy of your site; get your genre names in effectively and so on.

Meaningful URLs and internal links

So that Google can categorise your site properly, and tell the difference between your gigs page and your store page (the latter being that unloved page on the site where you have optimistically listed your albums in the vain hope that somebody will actually buy them), it’s a good idea to use keywords in your site URLs. So, instead of an inpenatrable URL for your gigs page that reads ‘www.thefolkysexycucumbers.com/1252sdjgasd.htm’, create a URL such as ‘www.thefolkysexycucumbers.com/gigs-live-performances.htm’. Google will treat the dash as a space and tag your page with ‘gigs’, ‘live’ and ‘performances’, further bolstering the chances of the correct info being returned when your hapless fan (yes that's right, you only have one) is looking for your gig dates on Google.

When creating links within your site to other pages, avoid using vague phrases like ‘click here’; instead insert keywords into the link title, i.e., ‘Read more about Sexy Folky Cucumber live performances’. Again, Google picks up on the keywords and this helps your pages appear in relevant search results.

External links

A crucial part of how your site performs in search actually hasn’t got much to do with how you optimise it; it’s about how many other sites link to it. As such, it’s really important to get links to your site on as many other sites as possible. Google counts links to your sites as ‘votes’ – the more the merrier therefore when it comes to ensuring your site appears at the top of the results. However – and to misquote Morrissey – like some girls’ mothers, some links are better than others. Sites that have a lot of external links pointing to them effectively cast a greater vote for any links from them. For example, if your band is featured on the Sky News website (which has a lot of links pointing to it), Google will take note and is likely to bump you up its search results far more enthusiastically than if you are featured on the Mull of Kintyre News website (which may or may not exist, but if it does I bet there is only one other site linking to it, from a Paul McCartney fan site). There's no justice in this world.

Ultimately search engine optimisation is a very simple process; it’s about choosing the right keywords, putting them in the right places, and ensuring your site is well linked to. There are a few other secrets to it, but we don’t have time to divulge them – at this point, may we suggest a consultancy fee or er, a Google search.

The Prescription is written by independent musician and digital consultant to Prescription PR, Chris Singleton.

If you like this article, we’d really appreciate you sharing it on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere. Just use the ‘Share article’ link below.

Don't miss great free music promotion advice from Prescription PR

Find out how Prescription PR can get your band noticed - contact us today.
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The Prescription

Should you put your music on Spotify?

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Using Twitter: top tips for musicians and bands

1. Pick the right username

2. You’ve got a biography: use it

3. Look professional

4. Follow the right people

5. Take Twitter’s advice

6. Follow back – where appropriate

7. Remember: content is king…

8. Interact

9. Ask for retweets – but only when it’s REALLY important

10. Be regular

11. Be visible

12. Use hashtags to increase the visibility of your tweets

13. But size isn’t everything…

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Getting your fans to fund your album

1. Set your fundraising target very carefully

2. Be prepared to plug a cash gap

3. Know your market

4. Offer decent rewards

5. Get the intervals between reward prices right

6. Remember that you are NOT a charity

7. Consider whether you really want to ask your friends for donations at all

8. Limit your communications

9. Thank people personally

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The new Facebook Timeline: what it means for bands and musicians, and how to use it properly

1. Upload a great cover picture and profile picture

2. Choose your ‘featured apps’ wisely

3. Set a ‘founded date’

4. Add milestones

5. Pin and star stuff

6. Use messaging

7. Use the ‘build audience’ features

But remember…

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The key things you MUST do when releasing an album independently

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Don't forget the er, music

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What does 2012 bring for the music biz?

The ongoing death of the download

The longer tail

The end of record companies?

The rise and rise of Spotify – and what will Apple do?

The rollout of 4G

Recession!

That’s all very depressing

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The death of email?

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Managing your online reputation

1. Think about who you want to be online

2. Don’t overcommunicate

3. Don’t undercommunicate

4. Don’t spread yourself too thin

5. Don’t go on about your band all the time

6. Remember your production values

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Simple SEO tips for bands and musicians

Site title

Meta data

Textual chemistry: headers and body copy

Meaningful URLs and internal links

External links

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