Internet and Alternative Marketing for Songwriters By Bev Bradley NSAI asked me to give a presentation on Internet marketing strategies for songwriters. In this presentation I will focus on free or low-cost basics for getting started and provide resources for growing your Internet presence in the future. If you need further assistance, Nashville State Technical Community College offers a course titled “The Internet for Musicians” (MST 1310) on campus and online. MTSU offers a course also titled “Internet for the Music Business” (RIM 4620). I have a MySpace page where I post materials and tutorials as I discover them. Feel free to visit the page or to become a friend so you can share your discoveries with us. http://www.myspace.com/mst1310. There are three areas important to marketing on the Internet: Computer-related knowledge & skills, research skills, and marketing strategies I.
Computer-related knowledge and skills • It is best to have your own computer so you can access your site regularly and at the times you really need it. It is advisable to log in once a day in case someone is trying to contact you. A quick response from you to business contacts, friends, and fans lets them know that your site is active. • It is fine to use a PC or a Mac. You do not need an extremely powerful computer if you are just starting out. If you have a ProTools rig or some other computer that records music, you can use that one. Select the computer according to the most demanding task you plan to accomplish. For example, if you decide to learn the PhotoShop image editing program, you will need a fairly powerful computer. If you have no special goals but wish to purchase a computer that will grow with you, usually the midrange offering with expanded memory is a good choice. • You need high-speed Internet access. • Store all your materials on a portable hard drive so you can take your materials to another location. Also, if your computer dies, you still have the materials. It is best to have at least 2 back-up copies of everything on separate devices. • The basic computer skills you need are how to: o turn on a computer and use the keyboard, mouse, USB drives, and other hardware components o create, name, save, and move files and folders o install software o surf the Internet o use the ‘help’ feature on software that you are learning o understand ‘safe’ practices on the Internet o set up accounts, such as email and web 2.0 applications o use email o interact with others using proper Internet etiquette
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Learn the basic code for making a web page (HTML) even if you are going to use a WYSIWYG program (a program that generates web page code for you) or you are going to purchase layouts. This will allow you to more easily solve problems or make changes. If you develop an actual web site (more than one web page), eventually learn to use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) which allows you to easily ‘brand’ each page of your site with the same look and logo. FYI, a web 2.0 application is one that is available on the Internet and materials are uploaded to the site for processing. The result is then downloaded to or made available to you. The user does not need to download and install software on their own computer. This is rather unnerving to old-timers like me. I do not like giving up control of my music, pictures, etc. by uploading them to the site of a stranger. But this is the way computing is going. Just think that not too long ago, we were careful not to offer any identifying information on personal web pages. When I signed up for MySpace, I did not reveal my name but signed up so that others would only see my ‘handle’ of ‘doomedtogeekdom.’ In just the few years since then, it is commonplace to use one’s real name, especially if the application is used for business purposes. On Facebook, I use my real name, which would have been unthinkable not that long ago.
If you do not know how to use the computer you should take a course. Some communities offer free courses for the local residents. Check with your local senior citizens center, churches, and other organizations to see if they offer free courses. Community colleges are an excellent resource for learning the computer. They not only offer regular college classes that run about 14 weeks, but sometimes offer continuing education courses that vary in length. Once you get started, you may find that, instead of using the simple programs I’m going to recommend, you want to use more professional programs such as ProTools or PhotoShop. Usually community colleges also offer semester-long courses in such software programs. Courses can be audited for free at the state community colleges in TN for persons who are disabled or who are age 65 or older. Students who are disabled or those age 65 or older may take courses for credit for $70 (as of March 2009) at TN state community colleges. Also, there are many tutorials on software packages on the web, including videos on UTube. II.
Research The Internet is expanding and changing rapidly and it is important that you keep up with theses changes so you can change your marketing tools or strategies. Sign up for newsletters (that are sent to your email on a regular basis) that share the latest news on software, hardware, marketing, musicrelated sites, and web 2.0 tools. Sign up as a fan with artists who appeal to your fan base and who are successfully marketing on the Internet. This will allow you to experience their marketing efforts from a fan perspective to help
you better market yourself. Keep a list of web sites that provide information you need and visit them at least monthly. There are many web sites on the Internet that discuss music marketing and you can discover them by using a search engine such as Google and typing in the words ‘music marketing.’ You can use a news aggregator to form what is basically a web newspaper. The news pulled in to the web page is from sources you designate yourself. If you find sites that report on new software or marketing trends, and they offer RSS feeds (really simple syndication), you can have their new information displayed on your customized web newspaper. Be sure you do not post any pictures, music, videos, articles, etc. that you do not own. Even if you are part owner, you must be certain you have permission from all parties concerned. If you are going to use media from other sources, you must have permission. If there is information on another web site that you want to share, put a link to that information. It is proper to ask the owner of that website before doing so. Do not ‘borrow’ content, no matter how tempting it is. You want a professional presence and including media for which you do not have permission is unprofessional. Be sure your music and performances are protected by copyright. You can submit more than one song or performance per form for one fee and registration is now available on the Internet. Also, if you put music on your web page, submit it immediately to the appropriate performance rights organization (BMI, ASCAP, or SESAC). Recently representatives from all three spoke to my class. The representatives from BMI and ASCAP agreed that even if your music is only posted on MySpace, the music should be registered with your PRO. The representative from SESAC did not agree. However, one of them told the story of a member who had posted a demo on MySpace and, unknown to him, the song was discovered and performed by someone in a national broadcast. Because the song was registered, the performance was recognized and the writer was paid. If you have a question, discuss it with your contact at your PRO. You want to have a personal email account that you give to friends and family. Then you probably want a different email account for fans. I have a third email account that I use only to register with internet-related services, such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Bebo, Animoto, etc. Any time I sign up for anything that requires a user name and password, I use this third account as the email address for that application. If I need to look up information about an application, I know I will find it in that account. Also, some of your applications (such as MySpace and Facebook) will send you an email when there is activity on your page. On busy days I log in to this account to
determine whether I even need to log in individually to other accounts. If I do not have an email generated by Facebook, for example, I know there is nothing major going on there. If MySpace sent an email indicating I have a friend request, I log in to MySpace to respond. I monitor more accounts than just mine and I have the emails from the other accounts forwarded to this one account also. It is a big time saver to be able to go to just one spot to determine what application needs my attention. Some web sites offer information and sell books. Some are listed below: Websites with books • http://www.bob-baker.com/ book: Guerrilla Music Marketing Handbook book: Branding Yourself Online • http://www.musicbizacademy.com/ book: How to Promote Your Music Successfully on the Internet • http://www.tomhutchison.com/ and www.myspace.com/hutchtom book: Web Marketing for the Internet • www.myspace.com/myspaceformusicians book: MySpace for Musicians • http://www.copyrightguru.com/ book: Moser on Music Copyright Other web sites • http://www.apple.com/au/itunes/musicmarketing/ • http://www.myspace.com/mst1310 This is a link to my class, MST 1310 where I will be posting information on all areas as I discover it. Please go to this link to see many other helpful links. • www.cnet.com This is a site that offers lots of comparative information on everything about computers. If you are going to buy a computer, go here and read the latest evaluations. If you are looking for an inexpensive image editor, look here for reviews. If I find a software program available on the Internet in which I’m interested, I go to CNET to determine if the software has been evaluated by them. Not only is it useful to read the evaluations, but if CNET provides a link to the software, there is less of a chance that the software download will contain harmful code. At the bottom of the home page is a link for newsletters. I subscribe to several of them. • Some sites with helpful software are: www.animoto.com (create videos from pictures and music with effects based on the tempo and rhythm of the music – good to use if you do not have a video) www.paint.net (photo editing software) www.audacity.com (audio editing software) III.
Marketing Strategies
Marketing strategies will change as the Internet changes. Read the updated books and web sites on the topics. A web site can be updated in an hour. A new version of a book may take a year or more and it may be outdated by the time it is printed and distributed. I do suggest you purchase at least one book, but keep up-to-date by viewing web pages. If you do not have computer experience, starting your web presence can be quite overwhelming; it feels that way even to experienced users. If this is new for you and you are just developing your computer skills, start small. It is better to have a well-executed small presence instead of a ‘mess’ thrown out there with no experience or plan. Keep in mind that while you will customize your presence to your audience, you also want to adhere to sound marketing principles and professionalism. If you are starting small, try setting up a Myspace musician page. It will allow you to place your music on the Internet, post your shows, communicate with fans, etc. Otherwise, the best strategy is to purchase a URL and develop a web site. Sign up for all the web 2.0 technologies that are currently popular and put a picture and a little text, but direct the visitors to the main web site. If you have a lot of content on Facebook, MySpace, ReverbNation, and your web site, it can prove difficult to keep them all up-to-date. Your time should mainly be spent updating your web site. There is something called a widget. When you look at a web page and there is a box a few inches wide and tall with information in it, that is a widget. That widget can be created in one application, and then displayed within another application. For example, you can upload your music to ReverbNation and put the widget from ReverbNation on your web page; the music can then be played on your web page. The coordination of this can take some planning, but planning is a critical piece to getting started and growing your presence. Here are some more specific items to consider: •
URL – You need to brand your web presence. Your URL must reflect that. You want to select one that is not difficult for your fans to remember. A good example is www.johnsmith.com or www.johnsmithmusic.com. As soon as you know what your URL should be, you want to purchase it. Many URLs are already taken. Sometimes the person who has purchased the URL is willing to sell it or give it up.
My father is a musician and has never been interested in having a web presence until recently. His URL should be www.haroldbradley.com. If you type that in, you will get the web page of an insurance agent in TX. The agent also purchased www.haroldbradley.net. We really screwed up in not purchasing that name a long time ago. The agent is willing to give it up only if we make a financial offer he cannot refuse, which we are not willing to do at this point. Instead the URL for my dad is www.haroldraybradley.com which nobody is going to remember. One place to purchase a URL is www.godaddy.com. It is not the only one and there are more on the MST1310 Myspace page. Some of my students use www.weebly.com to create and host their web pages as it is free. If I create a page there and indicate I want it to be for a band named doomedtogeekdom, the address for the home page will be generated as www.weebly.com/doomedtogeekdom. However, I can purchase a URL of www.doomedtogeekdom.com and direct it to go to the home page on Weebly when the fan types it in. •
Branding – You need to brand your web page and all associated web items as much as possible. Your web site is the place where you have total control on branding. One place to start is to select the primary picture for the home page. Select colors from that picture and use those colors on the site. All the pages on your site should have the same structure as far as the menu, logo, and banner. The colors should be the same. The feel should continue through the site. As much as possible, carry that theme to Myspace and any other applications that allow you flexibility in design.
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Follow standard web design principles. o Don’t make the pages visually confusing; make it easy for the user to navigate the site and locate what they want. o Don’t use color and images in a way that makes it difficult to read the text. Locate other web sites or magazine pages, etc., that have looks that you like and design your page with one of those examples in mind. Having a simple page is not a bad thing. o Go to www.csszengarden.com to see some nice web pages. o Go to www.webpagesthatsuck.com to see examples of many bad web pages with detailed explanations as to why they are bad. o Avoid large media files that make your page load slowly. This includes images, videos, audio, and flash files. o A good resource for web usability is a book titled “Don’t Make Me Think” which can be purchased at http://www.sensible.com/. o There are many design books at the bookstore and the library.
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Determine which features are best for you. Consider whether to include images, videos, audio clips, streaming songs, availability of songs for
purchase, show/tour dates, updates on activities. Do you want a way to monitor the activity on your site? Do you have need to send newsletters, text messages, emails, etc. to fans? This will help you decide which web hosting and web 2.0 tools to use. •
Determine, for your fan base, how often your fans want you to contact them and under what circumstances and using what method. In some instances sending an email/newsletter once a quarter is sufficient. If you are touring, some fans like receiving daily text messages as you are heading to their area to play.
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Don’t put everything up on your site at once. You should update your site at least once a month so that fans will come back to see what is new. A site that never changes is a bad thing. You put new pictures, stories, etc. Or you may offer a free download of a different song every month. Maybe you offer a free CD or t-shirt to one person each month.
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There are choices now regarding which service to use to sell your music. There are some that will push your music out to the major retail sites such as iTunes. The cost varies. Credit card handling is often built in so you do not have to invest a lot of money to set this up.
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In the past, if one had a product to market, the web site would be designed to meet the seller’s need to sell the product. Now the site needs to be set up to meet the needs of your fans. For your fans to return to your site regularly, it will have to meet their needs. Allow them to upload photos or videos to the site. They will return to see when their contribution is shown. Anything you can add that will appeal to the fans will help return traffic.
In Conclusion Building a web presence can start simple and grow as you learn. Take it a step at a time. The reason it is so complicated is because it involves computer skills, hardware, software, video editing, image editing, audio editing, creating web pages, discovering and utilizing web 2.0 technologies, understanding web design, identifying and understanding your audience, keeping current with changing technology, identifying which techniques will keep fans returning to your page…Balance is the key. You need time to write the songs. You need to not let this consume your life. Keep it at a level you can manage successfully.