The folks at DIY Musician have a nice little ditty up about music promo and telling your story across multiple platforms/mediums. This is also called a “transmedia” approach. Read some action below and if you’re game, click through to DIY for more in-depth action.
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So How Does Geekdom Apply to My Music?
YOU are a story! Your story is your life, your hopes, your bio, your friends, your enemies, your rivalries, your collaborations, the creation/recording/promotion of your music, touring adventures, setbacks, successes, superpowers, and Achilles’ heels. And how do you tell it? In pieces. A blog-post here, an email there, a facebook event, a YouTube video, a twitpic, a live-performance, etc. You see, you’re already like DC and Marvel Comics: you’ve got many modes for delivering the story of YOU.
But not every one of your fans will be following your story across every medium. When I was a kid, I subscribed to Detective Comics, but only purchased Batman or Legends of the Dark Knight when the cover art really enticed me or I knew it was the only way to read the complete, epic story I was already invested in.
So here is my suggestion: Tell your story to all your fans across all media, one bite at a time.
Well this is pretty sweet. Cool little cards that look like tapes have songs embedded on them (think magnetic strips). Once they touch the surface of the record player looking thing the songs play. Watch the video. Be amazed.
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After re-imagining the book, design innovation powerhouse IDEO is after the music player. c60 is an RFID-based interface that reintroduces physicality to music, something lost with digitization and the move to the cloud. The idea here was to find a physical representation of the elements of modern musical life that we’ve come to love such as playlists and shuffle, but not give up on the retro mixtape, twelve-inch vinyl player physicality.
All those hours of free music we’ve been enjoying haven’t really been free. Like all services, they come at a cost. Word is that Pandora (and other apps) have been tracking/collecting tons of data on their users and shipping that info off to 3rd party marketers. No surprise here really, it’s been done with our credit card statements for years…but this gets a little more detailed than knowing you just bought a pack of strings at Willie’s Guitars.
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Is Pandora crossing the line with your personal data? That’s the accusation of a recent lawsuit against Apple, Pandora, and a number of other top apps, and there’s more to this than you might expect. The suit, which currently seeks class action status, alleges that various iPhone and iPad apps are slyly collecting and selling a range of stats and personal data to ad networks.
At first blush, this looks like another privacy alarm, though judge for yourself. The filing points to a nefarious role by the Unique Device Identifier UDID on iPhones and iPads, essentially a “supercookie” that can track all sorts of activity on a smartphone. In turn, a lot of that activity is being shuttled to third-party advertising networks – that is, according to the lawsuit.
Mergers and conglomerations! Not really but this is handy. Now Songkick syncs up with your Bandcamp page so you’re not pulling double duty entering in those tour dates. Though, when we get new version of Better Than The Van up (look for it January 15th) you’ll have to get all manual on those show dates again. Uggggh. We know!
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Rather than create yet another place that artists have to post their live performance listings, music sales and marketing platform Bandcamp has partnered with Songkick.
Songkick already collects shows data from ticket vendors and venues globally, and provides that data to Bandcamp as well as YouTube, HypeMachine, Yahoo, and others. and they appear automatially on the artist’s Bandcamp profile page. If a show is missin you can add it via Songkick.
Most have heard of Spotify and while we await its landing on our shores this is a nice write up from Wired about it’s story and why it’s taking so dang long to get to the US. Good stuff for a post-holiday I’m stuck at work read.
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A soft-spoken, balding 27-year-old Swede, Ek took the stage to enthusiastic applause, all but outshining the Microsoft chief. “It’s great to be here, back in Sweden!” he said, sounding every bit the returning rock star. He then made the day’s big announcement: Spotify, the music service he created, would now be available through a new app for Windows phones in Europe.
If you’ve never heard of Ek or his company, you can’t be blamed. Spotify is perhaps the biggest, coolest, greatest piece of software you’re not allowed to use. It’s a stand-alone application that lets users listen to and share any song by any artist instantly and for free. And it’s entirely legal. The service supports itself (and pays for music rights) with advertising and monthly subscriptions that unlock premium features such as the ability to store songs on an iPod, mobile phone, or tablet.
Does anyone really send out press packs? I don’t know. I’m not sure that’s what their called anymore. Maybe they are. I’d just call it DIY PR. BUT there are some good pointers here from doing spell check, sending it to the RIGHT person, what exactly to send, how to get creative with it and so on.
It’s worth a read if you’re going to be doing press for your record or even for an upcoming tour/show.
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So your kick-ass single is recorded, artwork is done and photographs are good to go. You’ve thrown them all in a jiffy bag and about to send it out to anyone and everyone… Just hold on a minute!
The press get hundreds of releases on their desk and in their inboxes every day. Many of them will be sent through PR companies or pluggers that are well respected. This can leave your press pack lying at the bottom of a very a large pile. Here’s what you need to make sure your press pack stands out from the rest and makes an impression.
So the single is back or has been back for a while. Though I’d disagree in a lot of ways with this, because I am an “album” guy who likes to listen to a record front to back. As old school as I am, and many of my friends the same it appears that many think that in our quick digestion culture the single is now the delivery option. Here’s a few reasons why MTT thinks the album is dead. For more details on each, click through to MTT.
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I think it’s safe to say that we’re at the end of the “album age,” and although the format will hold on for a while, it’s clearly waning in popularity. I’ve given this a lot of thought and have come up with what I think are the reasons, but be aware, they’re not all exactly what the popular wisdom assumes. So let’s begin with the 6 reasons why the album format has, for all intents and purposes, died.
Now that the Reverbnation and my___ are in bed together it’s time to figure out just how to use some of the features. Not that we condone such acts, but it’s probably good to no. Yes, yes…there are my___ haters and such, but for those still sifting through the ever lengthy load times of band and fan profiles here are some tips.
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The most valuable fans you have are the fans on your mailing list. You can talk to them, tell them about your new albums, upcoming shows and generally keep them up to date on your music. One great way to increase the size of your mailing list is to convert your Myspace friends into mailing list fans. Fortunately our recent integration with Myspace has made this super easy for ReverbNation users. Here’s how to increase your mailing list in 4 easy steps:
