BTTV BLOG

Are things getting a little crowded online these days? It’s getting a bit tough to stand out. MTT has some ideas and hips a few services…two you already know about and how the industry uses them to keep tabs on you.

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Social networks provide far reaching opportunities for musicians, the only trouble is they don’t work for the overwhelming majority of bands and aspiring artists. Critical mass and huge opportunity creates overcrowding.

What always struck me as strange was how musicians on myspace.com actually thought that having a million friends was a good thing (despite the fact those friends were all musicians who only ‘friended’ so that they can get more ‘friends’ for themselves).

Can people spot the problem here? It’s a fake market, a bit like the sub-prime mortgages that bought the banks down.

A large proportion of musicians use social networks to build a fan base and launch their own careers. However, without adequate finances and marketing expertise it is very tough for a band to break through to reach public awareness. It is possible, but tough!

Read more @ Music Think Tank

Out of ideas on how to juice your bands profile in the greater world wide web? This might be a place to start.

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Author David Meerman Scott made a honest and realistic quote, “if you want 20,000 fans you must do 2000 different things that each generate 10 fans.” This wasmy favorite quote from 2010 and I am going to take this on as a challenge for 2011 for an ambitious project to give you 2000 different things you can do to generate 20,000 fans.

Some of these items will apply better for larger acts, some items will work for any act. Some may work for you, some may not… not yet. Some these can be done with little effort, some will take some web development, some might even require some significant development. Some of these have successfully worked for me over the years. The point is to create a list of items that would cover a wide range of acts and abilities.

1. Reply to every Tweet that mentions you.
2. Let your fans lead you – What did you get for KISSmas.
3. Ask your fans to submit photos of their tattoos.
4. Select a fan of the week.
5. Share what is on your iPod.

Read more @ Micheal Brandvold

Is your city “important”. Take a look from at this from DMN.

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Where does the music industry live today, anyway? The simple response is ‘everywhere,’ because creation, innovation, and promotion can happen anywhere, anytime. But ultimately that answer is too simple, too digitally utopian.  After all, great music demands great marketing, and careers require access to media outlets, contacts, communities, tours, and connections to scenes.

Turns out that location still matters after all, but which locations matter the most?  That’s a tough question, but when it comes to the music industry, we looked internally to find the densest industry populations.  Accordingly, we tracked unique IP addresses on Google Analytics (anoymously) for the past one million uniques, and found that incredibly dense hubs still exist in New York, Los Angeles, London, San Francisco (& Oakland), Nashville, and Boston, among others.

1. New York (12.23 % of the past 1MM uniques)

2. Los Angeles (10.43%)

3. London (3.55%)

4. San Francisco (and Oakland) (3.24%)

5. Nashville (1.55%)

Read more @ Digital Music News

We’ve partnered with Bands In Town to make it easier for you to pull in your tour dates. So instead of BTTV being another place to enter in show info, Bands In Town is doing it for us and you.

How It Works
When you set up a band profile, we’ll automatically pull in your tour dates from Bands In Town. You DON’T have to do anything on Bands In Town since they automatically collect tour dates from everywhere.

Daily / Weekly Show Notifications
This means that you can receive daily or weekly email notifications of bands touring near you. We’ve turned off the daily notifications for now BUT you can turn those back on by going into your profile, go to “Edit Profile” and turn them on/off under “System Notification Settings”.

Stay tuned. We’re making some tweeks to how SoundCloud works with BTTV as well as some other big ideas…maybe a Tour Planner feature?

Whether you’re an established band or one trying to make your way to the top, remember these tips for every show you play. Even pros can make rookie mistakes sometimes.

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Never-ending Sets
Just like playing in smaller venues, playing shorter sets is a good thing. It piques people’s interest in your music and leaves them wanting more. Playing a lengthy set does the exact opposite. It doesn’t matter if you took an extra ten minutes to set up, or if your friends came out to see you.

The Loudness Wars
If there’s one thing that all inexperienced bands have in common, it’s their desire to play loud. Really loud. They pay zero attention to the size of the room, turn the amps up to 10, and worst of all, drown each other out. It’s a common mistake to have the instruments overpowering the vocals at this kind of show.

Stage Presence
Professionals are always be mindful of their space. No matter the size of the stage, a veteran band avoids unanticipated collisions and the bad notes they cause. The next time you attend a high energy punk show, take a look at how the musicians careen around the stage without crashing into each other.

Playing Too Often
There is nothing a promoter hates more than booking a band, then finding out the same act is already playing at the venue down the street one week earlier. Behavior like this will quickly earn you a bad reputation among promoters. It will also wear out your fan-base.

Read more @ We All Make Music

Managing your band’s expenses may eventually become an annoying chore, if it hasn’t already. Don’t let it get in the way of you reaching your full potential. Check out Skyclerk and breathe easy knowing there’s a better way of keeping track of all that merch money. Who knew accounting could be so simple?

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Accounting for bands can be tough. One persons is at home taking care of expenses, while the group is out on the road getting receipts and racking up money and debt. Skyclerk is a great web based accounting tool. With plans that include both Free and $9 a month you are able to keep track of your accounting from anywhere in a clean and easy to use interface.

via MusFormation

Maybe it’s worth your time to work on telling the story of your band than trying to sling your songs. Perhaps?

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In 2009, Rob Walker and Joshua Glenn tried out a little experiment. They spent $128.74 on a bunch of yard sale junk and hired professional writers to draw up interesting stories about each item. Then they put everything up on eBay with the stories that they created to see what happened.

They spent $128.74 on junk and turned that into…$3,612.51!

How does that work?

Sounds like a good question that’s worth exploring, doesn’t it?  You might find some insight from the story of a flannel ball that they sold.  A pretty worthless object, right?  Not much practical value there.  Accordingly, they originally paid $1.50 for it.  You might be surprised to know that they ended up selling the ball of flannel for $51!

How? Well it all started by imagining it as something with a story.  Something beyond just the utility value.  Check out the first paragraph of the story that was written for it by Luc Sante:

After my friend Claude had his accident I went to visit him in the hospital. When I saw him I had to cough to divert a laugh. He looked like a guy in a cartoon, his entire body wrapped in bandages. He had broken everything that could be broken, from his skull to his toes. Somehow he was conscious and could speak, although to hear him I had to put my ear right up to his mouth-hole. I thought he said “door,” so I shut it, but he was still agitated. Eventually I got it: “drawer.” The one in his bedside stand contained a single object, a ball of wrapped flannel that looked like his head, only more colorful. I went to pick it up with my fingertips, but then had to readjust. Astonishingly, the thing weighed at least five pounds. I gaped at it, but Claude was making noises. I finally understood: “Don’t unwrap it.”

Read more @ DIY Musician

First in a series of stories from bands who’ve done well and not so well.

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In the years before we started our band, I watched several friends venture out into the deep, mysterious waters of the music world only to be sucked in and spat out the other side a couple of years later. Penniless, they’d return home from tour for the last time, finally admitting grim defeat. In the idle months that followed, their grief would turn to anger, as the gallons of bile they’d been repressing finally spurted out of their mouths, directed at the “industry” they’d once so highly praised.

Then came the stories, all the odd moments they’d tried to ignore at the time, because they so desperately wanted everything to work out. A hilarious anecdote for their memoir rather than the second everything went wrong. One friend told me how at the height of his band’s hype a desperate A&R had led them into his plush office, and presented them with “The Rule Book” – a copy of the Yellow Pages adapted for the purpose – which he attempted to rip up. Sadly, the significance of the gesture was marred by the fact that phone books are practically indestructible. As my friend’s sniggers grew, so did the A&R’s pink-faced embarrassment.

Read more @ The Guardian