Our friends are throw a pretty great music fest right before SXSW. So you should double up and go to both! Here’s what it’s all about right from their maw.
For one incredible weekend, some of modern music’s most eclectic and electrifying bands will be drowning out the mainstream in Savannah, GA. Immerse yourself in the sound served up from over 70 bands that are changing the sonic landscape of the indie scene. Get close to the stage and take all the phone pics you can, because this will definitely be the last time you can say you saw them first.
Radical.fm is part Pandora, partturntable.com. When it launches later this year, this personalized streaming music service includes the ability to “RadCast” streams in real time. A related service,Radical Indie will offer a free, worldwide internet radio service for musicians and fans of unsigned artists. A DJ feature allows musicians to host their own programs and speak directly to fans.
How Indie Artists Can Get Involved Now:
Prior to launch, Radical.fm is encouraging indie artists to upload music and other assets to Radical Indie now.. Uniquely, uploaders control a buy button which can be direct almost anywhere for purchase, including the artist’s own web site.“We want to give independent musicians a creative and promotional platform, and are thrilled that we can offer a powerful tool on a world-wide basis for free,” said Radical Founder and CEO, Thomas McAlevey. “Radical Indie will be similar to our conventional service, Radical.FM, but with no music label imposed restrictions on territory or functionality.”
Got videos of your band? Want to make a little passive cash. Slap some ads on that hoss. Here’s how.
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I was at a digital music event earlier this year, and was shocked to find out how many people had not heard how easy it is to monetize your YouTube channel through Ads. YouTube will pay you for doing what you already do! Take your money!
Here’s how it works…..
YouTube offers revenue sharing for their ‘Partners’ through advertising that they show on your videos and pages. You are eligible (in fact, they want artists!) to become a partner by filling out the Partner Application.
Please note that you cannot become a Partner if you cover songs on your channel! You need the global rights to all video, images, and audio used on your channel. Just don’t use anyone else copyrighted content and you will be good!
The main benefits of being a YouTube partner:
Gain advertising revenue
Advanced channel branding and design (Customize Top Banner and Side Box - See Example)
Access to YouTube’s Content ID, which lets you track, monetize, or block any uploaded videos using your songs
Ever wish you could sneak a peak at real major label record contract? You can, thanks to Benjamin Burnley, frontman of hard rockers Breaking Benjamin. He’s fired the band guitarist and bassist, Aaron Fincke and Mark Klepaski, and filed launched a lawsuit against them. Burnley claims they have making decisions on behalf of the band, like releasing a greatest hits and remixing some tracks, without his authorization. They’ve countersued, but the real winners are the musicians who get to look at this major label contract between the band an Disney’s Hollywood Records.
The entire court filing is available thanks to Tunelab. The actual record contract starts on page 25.
If the external PDF isn’t loading correctly into the viewer below, you can view a version hosted directly by Google Docs.
These Breaking Benjamin court documents are public record. These are the court documents in full, with the exception of sensitive personal information being redacted.
Artists and music marketers have been using Facebook heavily for some time now, often working with external startups like RootMusic to ensure their pages are working effectively. Now Facebook has published a document called the Musician’s Playbook, which aims to “help you begin or refine some ideas and best practices for how to integrate social experiences into your direct to fan strategy to drive results”. The document – published on Scribd but soon to be hosted on Facebook itself – is divided into two main sections: one focusing on advice for using Facebook pages, and one on integrating Facebook Connect into the artist’s own site. Facebook has been sending the link out to labels, and plans to keep the Playbook updated in the coming months and years as new features are rolled out.
You would be hard pressed to NOT have heard of Google+, the newest social networking and sharing tool from Google which after one month of existence boasts around 18 million users. Artists are already bombarded with a plethora of tools to help them connect with their fans, but Google+ truly adds some unique features which have great potential for integration into a musician’s marketing arsenal.
Overview:
Google+ consists of a content stream, photos, sparks, hangouts, and chat. While these features are nothing groundbreaking, the feature pulling all of the others together is Circles. Circles allow you to put contacts into different, self-defined groups, which control what content you see and share. Since there are a number of good articles explaining the basics of the platform, let’s get into how each feature may be utilized by an artist.
Note: Currently only personal accounts exist and Google has suggested that businesses (artists) postpone creating accounts until special business accounts currently under development are made available.
Plug and play people. Sign up, jack all your other feeds, sites and social data into this and you’ve got yourself a website. For the truly lazy amongst us all.
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Onesheet aims to solve that quandary by providing musicians with a way to tie together all of their online outlets in one place: from music to videos to concert dates to online stores to social sites, etc.
The service was founded by Brenden Mulligan, who has been involved in the music industry for five years, doing everything from working at a major label to living on a bus as a band’s road manager. Mulligan is also the founder of ArtistData, which allowed bands to distribute info across all of their web presences at once (that service was acquired by Sonicbids).
“I think a band having their own branded web presence outside of social networks is incredibly important,” Mulligan says. “Bands are told they need their own website, but setting one up and keeping it maintained is sometimes too much effort. So they either need people to help them, or their website becomes stagnant quickly.”
