Promoting Your Music or Yourself

A producer friend sent this to me, and I thought I would share. This producer is also the partner of a large music house in Nashville and an educator at a major university, and I think the amount of research and experience they took into putting this together is amazing. Please take the time to read if you're serious about your career in the music business.


PROMOTING YOUR MUSIC OR YOURSELF

A summary of what I’ve learned about promoting and selling music online, which I am documenting for my beloved students!

BEFORE YOU READ THROUGH THIS AND FEEL OVER WHELMED, REMEMBER THIS IS NOT SOMETHING THAT WILL HAPPEN IN A FEW MONTHS. REALISTICALLY, GIVE YOURSELF 3 TO 5 YEARS TO GET THINGS ESTABLISHED. JUST STAY FOCUSED, MAKE A TASK LIST, AND KEEP CHECKING THINGS OFF.
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YOUR OWN CD

Clearly your songs need to be very strong and your music must sound great. If you can afford to hire a professional producer, you should definitely do so. Trying to make a record without a producer is like trying to shoot a movie without a director. You might end up with a finished product, but having that objective person looking at the big picture and bringing it all together is extremely valuable. You want your songs to sound cohesive so they all belong together on the same record. You also want a producer who will make sure that YOUR VOCAL sounds fantastic. Don’t settle for someone who gives you hot guitar tracks and then just leaves you on your own in front of the mic when it comes time to cut the vocal.

When it comes to music production, there are three factors: FAST. CHEAP. GOOD. You can only have two of those, but you can’t have all three.

If you’re not sure about a producer, just offer to hire them for one song to start with and see if you like working with them. You want a person that you feel comfortable with who will bring out your best in the studio. Depending on the genre of music, you could easily spend at least a couple thousand dollars per song, but that should include paying the musicians, and you should strive to have full ownership of the masters. If a producer gives you a lower rate up front in exchange for partial ownership of the master, that’s also another option. The scenario of a producer “developing an artist” and not charging them for their services is what many people often expect, but producers need to pay the bills too. Plus if you’re on their no-money work roster, you’re going to come last, after their money work. You could find yourself still waiting for them to finish your project two years after you started. And it may not always be easy to find a producer who believes in you enough to work with you for free. So if you want to get something done in a timely manner, just pay them for their services, and walk away owning what you did.

Having a GREAT MIX and MASTERING are of utmost importance. A crappy mix is a huge indicator of amateur work. Your songs must compete sonically with what the major labels are releasing. You cannot forego mastering.

When you meet a person for the first time, what do you notice more, what their face looks like, or how their voice sounds? When you are putting together your CD packaging, do not underestimate the vital importance of having a GREAT CD COVER. Good artwork is essential. Spend some time in the record stores looking at the CD covers of other musicians in your genre, and get some really good references for whomever is designing your cover for you. Something like this, though always subjective, is AS important as having good production and mastering on your tracks.

If you’ve done any cover tunes on your CD, you will need to pay out the mechanical licenses before you can get your CDs duplicated. Hopefully, all of these royalties are processed through the Harry Fox Agency, and if you’re getting less than 2,500 CDs printed, you can pay online at songfile.com. Otherwise, you’ll need to find out from the song’s publisher who processes their mechanicals. Please learn from my mistake and get several hundred ‘FOR PROMOTIONAL USE ONLY’ copies printed up if you have several cover tunes on your CD. We didn’t do that, we got 2,000 CDs pressed with really nice expensive digipak packaging, had to pay mechanicals on all of them, [which really adds up for 8 covers per CD], and then ended up giving away 600 of those CDs. Soooo... we paid hundreds of dollars in mechanicals that we will never get back. We should have gotten 500 CDs in a cardboard sleeve printed for promos. Live and learn.

If it’s looking like your full record might take a few years to complete, [which is entirely possible because life happens] you might want to consider getting the first 5 or 6 songs mixed and mastered, and then print up 100 copies of a “partial release”. This will allow you to at least start getting it out there and get some momentum on it. We did this with our first 6 songs, and shipped the prerelease out to record labels and some radio stations that played our genre of music. [Good thing we did, since we had no idea it would still be TWO YEARS before we’d be finished.] From that we got 10 song licenses for various compilations, we got one song on the Banana Republic playlist, we got airplay on a nationally syndicated radio show, and we made some extremely valuable contacts which later paid off with CD orders when we had our full release finished. I am SO GLAD we did this!!! It’s the best decision we made. It might also give you just a little bit of satisfaction so that you’ll take your time and do the whole record right and not rush just to get it finished. Another option would be to call it an EP. But later after you’ve recorded more, put it ALL together because you can sell a full length CD for more.
PHOTOS

Make sure you’re thinking big picture [meaning of your entire musical presence... not a really large photo...] when you get artists photos taken. [And for the love, please do not stand by a tree trunk and smile at the camera.] You need to make sure everything about the entire package all fits into whatever image you’re going for. It’s good to ask yourself the question: who is my demographic? [Demographic is a fancy word for the group of people who like a certain thing.] Are you appealing to the Clay Aiken, Celine Dion crowd? Or the Snoop Dogg crowd? Make sure you LOOK and DRESS like you SOUND. Then make sure your pictures have that vibe. Don’t dress like a hard core punk rocker if you’re singing adult contemporary love ballads. Your CD is a product, a commodity, which needs to be marketed. And if you’re not well defined and streamlined in your identity as an artist, you will have a hard time finding an audience to which you will stick. And you want to be very sticky! [And heck, if you’ve got money to hire professional hair, makeup, wardrobe, art direction, etc. go for it.]

No one else cares about your music or your career as much as you do. Don’t wait for someone else to come along and do things for you that you think you’re not good at. Just work at getting better and do them for yourself.


DATABASE [It’s all about who you know.]

One of my weakest areas is taking the time to really organize my contacts. Relationships and contacts are vital. Absolutely vital. As you get more of them, you need to keep track of who falls into which category, and when you’ve communicated and what was said. Take the time to enter people’s info into your database, and come up with casual and friendly reasons to get in touch so that you stay on their radar. If you are not on people’s radar, you might as well be invisible. Walk the careful line of staying in touch without being annoying. DO NOT ONLY EMAIL PEOPLE WITH THE ‘Hey got any work for me?’ MESSAGE! That is not only annoying, but makes you look needy and desperate. Perhaps when you have something cool you’re working on, just send out a little email blast letting people know that you were honored to be a part of such and such, and they can check out the project at whatever website. And then, of course you can include all of your contact info in each email, or even attach your vCard, or whatever your address book program calls it. Reaching out like this is totally acceptable, and anyone in the business understands that you’ve GOT to promote yourself.


LOGO

You’ve probably not considered having your own logo, but the reality is that you are in BUSINESS, and businesses have logos. Having a well designed logo that fits your sound and personality can go a long long way. It can tie all of the elements together in how you present yourself. To have a great logo on your website, myspace page, CD, business card, letterhead, etc. makes you seem much more established and professional. Logos are tricky though, so be prepared to spend a long time developing what you want, and don’t settle for the “name swoosh”. [your name with something similar to the Nike swoosh] We spent about 5 months, going through 3 graphic designers and about $5,000 when all was said and done. But for that $5K, we got a professionally designed logo, business cards, address labels, and letterhead. YOU DO NOT NEED TO SPEND THAT MUCH. Give yourself time, but keep this on your to do list. It makes a DIFFERENCE!


DOMAIN NAME & DEDICATED EMAIL ADDRESS

With all of the other options now available, having your own website is becoming less and less necessary. However, if you have not already done so, I would highly recommend reserving your domain name. The cheapest place I’ve found to do this is GoDaddy.com where you can reserve a .com for about $9 a year. Then you can forward that domain name to any site you want, so you could forward yourname.com to your MySpace profile if that’s all you’ve got. Also, get an email address that is whatever@yourname.com, that will be much better when you send a business email than some gmail account. That also gives another subtle indication that you’re here to stay. I believe there are some mail services [like aol?] that offer to give you whatever you want as the last half of your email address if it’s available.

But if you do want to go ahead and set up your own website, then you should also be able to use your domain name as the back half of your email address. YOU SHOULD DEFINITELY DO THIS. Imagine someone at a record label gets a package from someone. They’ve got a home printed CD label, a letter on plain white paper, and the person’s email address is “luv2sing87@gmail.com”, and it all came in a plain white envelope. That says amateur. Then contrast that to a professionally duplicated CD mailed with a professionally printed address label, a letter on matching letterhead, and the contact email is something@yourname.com. That will be taken much more seriously. That says you’re taking this seriously.

If you’ve looked into getting yourname.com and it’s not available, it’s quite common to have yournamemusic.com or yournamerocks.com. Or some other variation that still shows you’ve got it going on. I’d go for .com over .net. If and when you do set up your own website, you want to make it as easy as possible for people to order your CD, and make the link to purchase very clear on every single page. Get an account with paypal.com and go to the “merchant tools” section. In there you can generate a “buy now” button with all of the parameters you set for people to buy your CD and pay through paypal. Then once you do make a sale, be sure to ship it in a timely manner, and be sure to thank them for their purchase. ADD THESE PEOPLE TO YOUR DATABASE.


BUSINESS CARDS

If you don’t already have business cards, you should get some immediately. This too makes you seem more established, and it’s great to just pull one out quickly if you meet someone, and have them take it with them. It’s best to get a cellphone number and keep it forever. Put a cell phone number, email address, and website where they can hear your tracks on it. Don’t put your land line or street address unless you’re in a location you’ll be staying for a very long time. And don’t change your cell phone number if you can help it. There’ve been several times I’ve needed to track a singer down ASAP for a session the next morning, and the phone number I have for them is no longer current. I end up calling someone else because I need to get it booked.


LETTERHEAD

In this age of digital communication, you won’t be sending out snail mail all of the time. But when you do, putting your correspondence on your own letterhead makes you seem much more established and professional. Sending your press kit out with your logo on the address label, your letterhead, and your CD will give a much better impression than plain white printer paper and a plain white envelope.


DON’T FORGET TO BRUSH... I MEAN BLOG.

It seems that keeping an interesting and regular blog is now a requirement for anyone who’s trying to build a fanbase. Fans now expect to be able to stay posted on events, and even comment back, and yes, even get a response from the artist at times. You’ve got to win people over with your story, your personality, your life. If you’re in the studio, document that process, and even post in the studio video. If you’re doing studio work, tell about your latest session, giving interesting little anecdotes. Or even just give a great cookie recipe or tips on where to get a free meal on your birthday. Anything that might be interesting. So you can write your little blog post, and then copy it from one of your profiles to the next, or do the rss thing which I still haven’t totally gotten down. Put this on your to do list. Just keep in mind that it’s open to the public, so don’t start slamming people openly unless you want to potentially burn that bridge.


ONE SHEET

This is not one sheet. It’s A one sheet. A one sheet is something you’ll need if you want to pitch your CD to any retail store. I’ll print out one of my one sheets and include it in this packet, so you can see how I did it. I learned about this just by reading articles online. It basically includes the following information: a photo of your CD, the title, the track list, the playing time, a paragraph or two about your project, airplay or performances in the area that might drive people to buy it, press quotes, UPC code, wholesale price, suggested retail price. When you approach a store’s buyer about carrying your CD, if you don’t know what a one sheet is, you’ll look like you don’t know what you’re doing. If you’ve got a decent one sheet, they will want it to help make their decision. ADD THESE PEOPLE TO YOUR DATABASE.

CDs are quickly becoming more scarce in the retail market, and it’s predicted that this Christmas will be the last Christmas that CDs are sold. I personally don’t believe that. It seems like there are still boutiques that are image oriented that carry music if it fits their image. We got our CDs into a very upscale men’s clothing store in Belgium simply because the owner contacted us on MySpace just to say he liked our tracks. I noticed he had a posh clothing store and responded by asking if he’d like to carry our CD. He decided to order 10 copies and see how they moved. It’s the only title they carry. You just never know!


INVOICES

If a store decides to carry your CD, or if you do session work for someone, you should give them an invoice. [This is a good place for your logo.] A store will expect an invoice. Someone who hires you for a session won’t mind if you give them one. After you’ve done your work, just say “How much should I invoice you for?” This shows that you’re organized, professional, and keeping track. DO NOT get paranoid if someone takes a while to pay. Do not let your first communication with them be tainted by a tone of voice that shows that you think they’re trying to purposely scam you. Showing that you’re suspicious or paranoid about getting scammed makes you seem amateur. If it’s been 60 days and you’re still waiting for the money, either send them an email or a quick call and simply ask when you should be expecting payment. Chances are they’re still waiting for money to come in or maybe they’ve lost track of time. Eventually you will figure out if a client is habitually late or bad about paying. Then you can either refuse to do business with them, or just stay on top of it. But an invoice is tangible documentation. KEEP TRACK OF WHEN YOU’VE BEEN PAID, just so you don’t make the mistake of calling about a check when you actually already received it.


AMAZON.COM/ADVANTAGE

You can sell your CD through Amazon.com through their Amazon Advantage program. You simply create and account, YOU MUST HAVE A UPC CODE ON YOUR CD for this, and then they will order one or two copies of your CD for their warehouse. [BTW - If you ever need a UPC code number, I will gladly give you one for free. I have an account with 10K numbers and I’ll never use them all.] They pay you after your CD sells.

You will want to be on Amazon.com for more reasons than just selling your CD. [See what I wrote for Pandora and Live365.] The down side is they keep over half of the money, and deduct the $35 annual fee from your sales, but the up side is, you’re on Amazon.com which puts you through to all of the other websites that are “powered by Amazon.com”. PLUS you can then create your own Amazon Marketplace account and sell your CD directly through their site. But you can’t do the Marketplace thing if there is no preexisting listing, which is why you need the Amazon Advantage account first. So, Amazon Advantage means THEY fulfill the order, and keep more money. Amazon Marketplace means YOU fulfill the order and get more money.


SOUNDSCAN.COM

If you’ve got a barcode on your CD, you should register it with Soundscan.com so it can be tracked. Who knows? Your project might be a hot seller and it would be a shame if no one was counting. Just because a site like Amazon.com may report your sales to Soundscan doesn’t mean Soundscan is keeping track. If they don’t know what project belongs to that number, they’ll discard the stats. So YOU need to give them the UPC code number and the title of the project. You can either print out your registration and fax it in, or register it via email. And like I said, I’d be glad to give you a UPC code, if you’ll use it. A&R people at record labels sometimes look at the Soundscan reports, and if they see a new artist getting lots of sales, it gets their attention. You just never know.


ALLRECORDLABELS.COM

This website has an enormous list of record labels, grouped by genre, and by city or country. When we got our 100 copies of our partial release printed up, we went through the list of labels in our genre, CREATED A DATABASE, and one by one checked out their websites. Many of them were out of business, but several were still going strong. For the labels that seemed right for us, we emailed them and asked permission to submit our project. In that email we gave them a short description of our record, and a link to where they could listen if they wanted to take the time. For the ones that responded, we then wrote a cover letter, mentioning how we’d communicated in email, and then again gave them a brief description of our project, and depending on what we’d accomplished at that point, we mentioned some of that. Then we mailed them a CD WITHOUT THE SHRINK WRAP. [ALWAYS take off the shrink wrap when you’re giving your CD to someone in the industry, it’s a courtesy to save them time.] For the people who didn’t respond the first time, we emailed them again. If they didn’t respond after that, we left them alone. This is how we got 10 song licenses for various compilations before our CD was even finished. Having that to promote our full release was hugely valuable.


MYSPACE.COM [How to use it effectively]

Duh, everyone knows about MySpace, and hopefully you already have a MySpace music profile set up. What you may not know is how important it is for you to promote this and get your number of friends and plays up. I’ve been told on three different occasions by people at record labels and other companies that they will be checking out my MySpace page to see how many plays and friends I’ve gotten, to gauge how popular my music is. When I heard this, I realized that I needed to devote regular time to promoting my profile.

Here is my advice: Go ahead and buy one of those software programs that help with friend adding, comments, and messages. [If you’re on a Mac computer, you can get Spyder.] These not only save you time, but they help you organize and keep track of your friends and who you’ve already commented etc. As long as you limit your friend requests etc. to about 200 a day, it doesn’t get you into trouble. This system will save you time, but it’s still not hands off. You must sit and enter in captcha codes, so it takes a little while. Do not just randomly add friends. Find people who are friends with bands or artists that are musically similar to you, and also find RADIO STATIONS, RECORD LABELS, AND DJS. [But skip people who are in Russia, the worst music pirating websites are in Russia, and there’s no recourse for them.] DJs are easy to find because they pretty much all put “DJ” [or occasionally deejay] in their name. Add them as friends and leave them comments. [Add me as a friend too! myspace.com/wwgroovecorp ] You don’t need to make spammy comments like “Hey, check out my CD!”, but you can simply say hello and wish them a nice week or whatever. Just something to make them possibly notice you and maybe go to your page and check out your music. And of COURSE from your profile, you will have links to where people can purchase your music, as well as any other relevent link.

HERE’S THE GOOD PART: Create some type of file sharing page, either through a .mac account, or through a site like rapidshare.com, and upload all of the songs you’d be willing to give to DJs or internet radio stations. Then contact the DJs and radio stations that you’ve friended on MySpace, and invite them to check out your tracks*. Tell them that if they like what they hear, they can send you a message requesting the download url, and you’ll give them your music. I’ve done this, and have had 50+ DJs around the world ask me for the url so far, and I’ve only been doing this for a few months. So it’s cool because now they are out playing our tracks on their gigs for people to hear. Of course, we ask them to not share the download url with anyone. This is a FREE way to promote your music, with only the investment of time. And it’s also a good indicator that if no one is asking you to download your tracks, then you might need to step up the production quality of your recordings. [Or maybe your music just isn’t the genre they’re into.] [*This would be a good reason to consider having someone do a dance remix of one of your originals, to appeal to a different audience.]

Another thing you can do with your friend list on MySpace is to get in touch with all of your friends in a certain region and ask them to suggest a venue where your music might fit, to book a potential gig. Then follow through and do a show there. Then come up with some incentive for people to show up, and broadcast it by leaving comments on their pages. Think of what it would take to motivate you to rally your friends for someone else’s show, and see if you can do that for the people who might come to your show.


REVERBNATION.COM - Widgets!! Widgets!! Widgets!!

This site is great because you upload your tracks and they generate lovely little music playing widgets which can be placed on any website that takes html. These widgets not only play music, but they can also show your performance schedule, and allow people to sign up for your mailing list. And anyone who likes your music can place the widget on their site if they want, thus giving you more exposure, while allowing you the power to change the widget if you want. Since my record has cover tunes which are against the MySpace policy, I can’t put them on my MySpace player. To get around this, I have a Reverb Nation widget on my MySpace page so people can listen to my whole record. I also have a widget on my main website, since it’s so much easier than creating a player myself for my site. I also sometimes paste in a widget when I post a bulletin on MySpace, so people can hear the music, or on a blog post. This is a truly great resource, and it’s totally FREE.


GOOGLE.COM/ALERTS

Google lets you set up a google alert for any word or phrase you want. You can set one up for your name and another for the name of your record, and you will be notified when the google robot indexes any new sites with your name. It helps if you’ve got a word you’ve invented as part of your CD name, because then you know it’s definitely about you if it shows up. [I invented the word “chillodesiac” as part of our record name.] THIS IS HOW I FIND PEOPLE WHO’VE UPLOADED MY MUSIC FOR FREE ILLEGAL DOWNLOADS. You will want to be able to stop pirating of your music in its tracks, so be sure to set a google alert up, and it will come right to your email box.


INDIE MUSIC REVIEWS

Do a google search for websites and magazines that are willing to review music by indie artists, and see what their protocol is for sending in your music. For the ones that accept submissions, make sure your music is the right genre for them, and then put together a nice cover letter which gives them a brief description of your project, and TELL THEM WHY YOUR MUSIC IS RIGHT FOR THEIR SITE OR MAGAZINE. ADD THESE PEOPLE TO YOUR DATABASE. This is how we got a review in Electronic Musician Magazine. If you can get some legit reviews either of a live show or a recorded project, that’s material for your press kit, and worthy of a blog post and bulletin. Any good review should be broadcast to your contact list, because it’s all about perception. If your contacts perceive that you’ve got stuff going on, that’ll give you more credibility. But if they never hear from you or about you, they won’t think of you at all. You want people to think about you.


GARAGEBAND.COM - Not affiliated with the Garage Band software.

One appeal of GarageBand.com is that you can create your profile and then enter your songs in their “song contests” to be reviewed and ranked by other members and hopefully climb their charts. [You either need to pay for the song entry or review about 40 songs to earn an entry.] I have found this process to be painfully slow and unrewarding to be totally honest. However, one benefit of being listed on this site is that it automatically puts you through to the iLike.com network. And that means that people on Facebook.com can add your songs to their facebook profiles. So that’s a good thing. Plus having a profile on Garage Band expands your web presence which makes you seem more established.

ILIKE.COM

As a music listener, you can create your profile on iLike.com, and add the iLike sidebar to your iTunes program. Like Last.fm, it will give you the opportunity to be “friends” with people who have similar musical taste as you. But more importantly, it’s a good idea to create your own artist page on iLike.com. This will allow you to have people add themselves as your fans, and for you to send out notes to everyone etc. Your iLike page will also link to your main website, your facebook music profile, your garage band page, and your CD Baby page. And it will allow you to post to your MySpace blog from your iLike page. Nice! Plus you can manage your songs that are available for people to add to their Facebook page, and you can get updates on how many profile adds and dedications have been made on each of your songs. I confess that I personally have barely made use of the Worldwide Groove Corporation profile on iLike, but it’s there for me when I’ve got the time to work it.


FACEBOOK.COM

I’m sure everyone knows about Facebook. It’s always good to just keep your name in people’s heads to stay on their radar, and it’s all about connections, which is what Facebook is for, right? And if you’re on here, and we’re not already friends, look me up as Ellen Tift. You can add your Reverb Nation widget to your Facebook page, and also your iLike songs. AND you can also create a music profile for yourself on Facebook where people can sign up as fans. If you do that, you should broadcast it to your MySpace friends. In some ways this can be risky because if you have only 3 fans, and they all have the same last name as you do, you seem kind of pitiful. But on the other hand, it’s cool when people sign on as fans and you have no idea who they are or how they found you. And even cooler when they post comments to you!


NASHVILLEMUSICPROS.COM - FREE

This is a relatively new site, of the same concept as MySpace, but strictly for Nashville musicians. In fact, you must first get your profile approved by the site administrator to make sure there are only professional musicians on there. So it’s a smaller web of people, and more manageable than MySpace, and so far is spam free. Look me up on here too and be my friend, Ellen Tift.

THESIXTYONE.COM

This site describes itself as a “game” technically, but it’s a platform to get your music heard. Basically, you upload your songs, and the people who have listener accounts “bump” your songs if they like them. If your song gets enough bumps, then it gets posted on the home page. It costs the listener points to bump your song, but then they get points back as other people bump it. The earlier they are in bumping a song, the more points they might earn from it later. You can set whether or not your song can be downloadable, but if your song is available for digital sale on Amazon, the site automatically links to it so people can buy it. BEFORE YOU SET UP YOUR ARTIST ACCOUNT, I’d recommend setting up a listener account and accruing points for a few days until you get up to level 5 at least. [You do that by listening to songs on “the rack”.] Then once you have some points as a listener, create another account [with a different email address] as an artist. The reason you want to do this is that artists cannot bump anything. Then once you upload a song in your artist account, IMMEDIATELY log out, and log back in under your listener account, and be the very first one to bump your song. That way you can earn the most points from it as it gets bumped. I created an account in July 2008, and uploaded our entire record plus some remixes we’ve done. By mid-September, we got an email from a record producer who wanted us to do a remix of a band he’s working with, paying work. Plus we’ve had many people contact us as listeners who said they would buy our record on iTunes from that exposure. So it’s a good site.


LINKEDIN.COM & PLAXO.COM

These are other networking sites, which are more about professional relationships, unlike Facebook which is much more social. It’s good to get profiles on these because you just never know who is on what site, and the more connections you have, the better. This CAN help you connect to friends of your friends who might be of assistance in your career, but another benefit is to simply get your name into people’s heads over and over. So if you’re connecting with someone on Facebook, then on Linkedin, then on Plaxo, and then on MySpace... you’re be more present in their thoughts. And if it’s someone you don’t KNOW personally, but you’d like to know OF you, then this is a good way to get your name to be more familiar to them. And people like what’s familiar. Look me up on these too, Ellen Tift.


Mi2N.COM

This site has some newsletters, two of which are: i2N, INDIE NET NEWS - The Largest, FREE Source of Musician News and B2N, BUSINESS NET NEWS - The Largest Music Business & Technology News Resource. Now if reading that just made your brain shut down, wake back up. This is one great place that YOU can submit YOUR NEWS. You must have a well written press release, but if you submit it and it’s good, they will add it to the newsletter.

I actually got the headline of the newsletter once from a press release I wrote and submitted. There are some good books and articles about how to write an interesting press release. You must do more than say so and so recorded an album and you can buy it now. You can either tie in some random weird connection between one of your songs and something in the news, or have an event that benefits charity at which you will be performing, or something else that makes it interesting. You can CREATE a fund raiser if you want. Get the permission of a charity to use their name in promoting the event, get some of your other friends to perform at it too, and then write a press release about it and submit it to this and your local community calendars and newspapers. [Like if they bring a can of food for the local food bank, they get $5 off your CD purchase, etc.]


CDBABY.COM - Physical and Digital Distribution

Many people know about CD Baby, and from what I’ve experienced, it’s a great and reliable company. You can sell physical CDs for a one time $35 registration fee. They fulfill the orders and ship worldwide, and will even provide you with a credit card swiper for free to sell CDs and merch at your gigs. They keep $4 of each CD sale which seems reasonable, all things considered. They will give you the contact info for the people who purchase your CD. ADD THESE PEOPLE TO YOUR DATABASE.

What’s even better than their physical distribution is their digital distribution. It’s a free opt-in service, and it puts you through so many digital websites [including iTunes], you haven’t even heard of them all. The down side is that you do not have any control over the speed at which your music is submitted to these digital outlets, nor of how long it takes for your music to actually show up. The up side is they only take 9% of your digital sales, and they pay every week. So you only pay out if you’re actually selling music, and you’re not paying ongoing fees if your music isn’t selling. I would highly encourage you to avoid anything that will charge you a monthly fee for selling your music, as you can lose money very easily that way.


TUNECORE.COM - Digital Distribution

Tunecore.com is another option for digital distribution, and it works a little differently than CD Baby in that they charge an annual fee [maybe $10?] and then give you 100% of your digital sales proceeds. The up side is, that you actually have a little more control over who your tracks are submitted to, and you only pay for those channels. [Like if you choose iTunes U.S. and Europe, but not iTunes Japan, you only pay accordingly.] Plus you get all of the money from your sales. The down side is you pay an annual fee whether you’re selling music downloads or not, and if you do the math, you might need to sell at least a couple hundred downloads before you’d break even with what CD Baby would take from your sales. So it’s just whatever you feel comfortable with. I’ve not personally used TuneCore.com because you can have ONLY ONE digital distributor, but I’ve never heard anything bad about them.


LIVE365.COM

This site is a hub of hundreds of independent internet radio stations. A long time ago, I contacted several of the DJs of radio stations on this site that played the type of music I make, and offered the file sharing url of my record for them to download. [I found them by searching for which stations played music by specific artists like me.] I had many of them write back and tell me they would be adding our tracks to their playlists. ADD THESE PEOPLE TO YOUR DATABASE. The great thing about this is, when your song gets played on a Live365 radio station, the interface has link buttons so the listener can automatically get connected to your music either on iTunes or Amazon.com for purchase. And any time someone is encouraged to PAY YOU for your music, that’s a good thing. Many DJs enjoy finding new talent, so if you’ve got a good project, you should get some good response. And if you don’t hear back from someone the first time, contact them again. There are hundreds of reasons someone might not get back to you, and most of these reasons have nothing to do with YOU. So be persistent and stay on their radar.


LAST.FM

If anyone who is a Last.fm member has ever listened to one of your tracks on iTunes, or on their ipod, it has been scrobbled [which on their site means “counted” or “tracked”], and you already have a profile on Last.fm. It’s weird to go to this site and find a page about your music that you didn’t know existed, along with fans posting comments etc. And it’s on the wiki principle, so anyone can update the info on the page.

So here’s what you do, you create an account as a label on Last.fm, and claim yourself as an artist. Then you may upload your original tracks to their system for airplay in their radio stations. This site actually creates radio stations according to an artist reference you give them, and they derive who is similar to whom with some type of analysis I have not taken the time to figure out. But it’s cool because you download the Last.fm software which can function either as a stand alone player, for you to listen to music that they send to you based on your “seed” for the station. OR it can work in conjunction with iTunes and scrobble what you’re listening to. So if you have uploaded your music to their playlists, then hopefully when someone starts a radio station of a similar artist, your songs will be played on that custom radio station. So if you connect this to your iTunes, be sure to play your tracks a lot in your iTunes so you get more scrobbled songs, and your count will go up. And you want your count to be up because everyone who goes to your last.fm page can see how many plays you’ve gotten.


PANDORA.COM

This is another site sort of like Last.fm but even cooler!! Pandora.com has a system of analyzing songs based on hundreds of “genomes”, which an actual human being will attribute to your music. You must send them a physical CD, and if they like it, they will analyze it and add it to their playlist. I sent them a CD, and after about a month, when I would type in “Worldwide Groove Corporation” into their interface to start a radio station, they had analyzed our music and knew what style to play. [They gave it characteristics like “latin influences”, “electronica roots”, “slow moving bassline”, “downtempo influences”, and “laid back female vocal”.] Then after about another month, they would actually put our songs in the playlist with the other stuff similar to ours. There’s no guarantee you’ll get added, but if you do, then when other people listen for artists similar to you, they might hear YOUR music, and it’s always accompanied by links to iTunes and Amazon so people can BUY your music.


ALLMUSIC.COM

This site is, among other things, a huge database of who’s in the credits of all label released albums, as well as a number of indie projects. [Except they NEVER list the string arranger! :-( ] Anyway, you need to send them a physical CD, and then hopefully they will catalogue it and you’ll be a part of their database. The practical benefit of this is that Pandora only gets their summary info about artists from allmusic.com. So IF allmusic.com should decide to have a staff member write a review of your CD, and IF Pandora should add you to their playlist, then Pandora will actually have some info about your project for anyone who’s interested. Plus being on allmusic.com makes you seem more legit.


TAXI.COM

If you’re a songwriter and have the money to join Taxi [about $300 a year], you will get semimonthly classified listings of which publishing company or record label is looking for what type of song. If you’ve got a song that you believe would be right for a particular listing, then you pay a $5 fee for each song you submit, they review it, and decide whether or not to forward your song to the company that placed the ad. Then they will send you what the reviewer said about your song, which can be extremely helpful, even if your song didn’t get forwarded. I was fortunate enough to win a year membership to TAXI in a song contest, and I found it to be very educational, as I saw which songs of mine got forwarded the most, and also got the opinions of several different people. In my experience, this is a good and honest organization.

HOWEVER THIS SITE ISN’T ONLY GOOD FOR THAT. They also have several great articles and interviews posted, and Q&A sessions they’ve had with numerous industry professionals about lots of topics. You do NOT need to be a member to access these articles, and I would highly recommend spending some time on this site, I’m sure you’ll learn something.


CAFEPRESS.COM - Merch!

If you have a cool band logo or a snappy slogan that someone might want to have on a T-shirt, mug, mouse pad, magnet, notebook, tote bag, or frisbee, you can design your own merchandise and sell it through this site. There is no start up cost, and they only manufacture the item when someone orders it. The downside is that they charge so much for each item, that even though you can price it however you want over the base price, you don’t dare mark it up too much, so you make very very little off of any sale. The up side is that if people order your merchandise, then it’s free advertising for you. Plus it makes you seem more established to have your own merchandise set up, and you can link to it from all of your profile pages if you want. They have about 50+ different items. [Nice use for your LOGO.]


VIRB.COM

Virb.com is sort of like MySpace, only not as popular. If you’ve got the time, you can copy/paste the info from your MySpace profile and link up to people on this site. It’s free and can’t hurt, and anything that expands your web presence in a positive way is good.





IMEEM.COM

Imeem.com is a site where people can upload music for others to discover. You can copy/paste the code of the player of individual songs and put it on whatever site you want. But I also think you can download it. So I’m not really sure how I feel about this site, and honestly haven’t spent much time on it. I did discover that one person had uploaded my entire record up there, and that hundreds of people had already downloaded it. That, I didn’t like, since I didn’t make any money from this. So I wrote to the person and told them they needed to remove my music from the site, and I also reported them to imeem. Fortunately this person wrote back in very broken English, and said he was a big fan, and that he would take the music down. So, I don’t know what I think about this. If you know more about imeem.com and have an opinion either way, please let me know.


SNOCAP.COM

Snocap.com basically allows you to SELL digital downloads of your music from any website on which you place the code for the store’s interface. For a brief time, everyone on CD Baby was given an account with Snocap, and the store interface automatically showed up on our MySpace profiles. During this time, I repeatedly attempted to communicate with customer service at Snocap because my Snocap store didn’t work, and never heard back from anyone. They had ONLY email contacts on their website [which to me is a red flag. If I am going to PAY for a membership, I want to be able to CALL these people if necessary.] So they totally ignored all my attempts to contact them. It wasn’t long before CD Baby broke ties with Snocap, and removed their clients from Snocap’s roster, saying we could create our Snocap account independently if we wanted. Bottom line, I’m not impressed, but I don’t know of another company which offers what they do. Maybe they’ve gotten their crap together by now, but I’m not signing up any time soon. If you know of another company that does what they do, please let me know. [See the end of this about iSound.com]


MP3.COM

This is yet another type of site like MySpace. From what I’ve experienced, they really don’t offer anything that makes them indispensable, but as I said with Virb.com, if you’ve got the time to copy/paste your info from your MySpace profile, go ahead. It’s free and it will expand your web presence.

CDSTREET.COM - AVOID!

A few years ago, I was selling CDs on this site instead of CD Baby. They sold dozens of my CDs and never paid me anything. The voice mail for customer service was full, and the emails bounced back. After several months, and me reporting them to the Better Business Bureau, they finally responded to ME [but they NEVER responded to the BBB] with an explanation as to WHY they did not and would not pay me. Their reason, they failed to “capture payment” from the customer. So basically they gave away my CDs for free and weren’t going to make good on what they did. If I was going to cancel my account with them, they’d have charged me to ship the remaining inventory to me, so I’d have to PAY to end my ties with them. I basically marked my CD up to $999 on their site, and posted a big note on my page there telling people that CD Street doesn’t pay their artists, and to please order my CD from CD Baby. If you’ve had a good experience with them, please let me know.


THE ORCHARD - AVOID!

This is yet another lesson in always checking a company out BEFORE you pay them lots of money to join. Because of The Orchard and CD Street, I now am SURE to always check with the local Better Business Bureau in their area to see if anyone has filed any complaints against a company, and if so, what the results were. You figure for all of the people who’ve had a bad experience, so few will actually file a formal complaint with the BBB, that there have to be hundreds more bad experiences out there.

This company offers both physical and digital distribution of your music for a $100 fee. They claim they can do lots of great things for you. But when I signed up with them, it was over a year before I got one penny from them, the share of what they paid me was totally crappy, and they kept asking me to ship more and more CDs to them, even though they weren’t giving me any money for them. So I naively shipped them about 200 CDs before I had a clue.

Ultimately I decided to get out of my contract [which is nearly impossible, there’s only once a year you can do it, and it’s tricky.] It took them about 6 months to ship me back my remaining inventory and HALF of it was damaged. I swear the warehouse employees must have played floor hockey with my CDs before they shipped them back. The cases of some were completely destroyed and some of them were even missing the artwork inserts! So I reported them to the BBB, and found out they’d had dozens of complaints already filed against them. They made no reparations for what they did. Stay away!
SONICBIDS.COM

I personally have never had an artist profile on this site, but their purpose is to provide an easy interface for artists to create an EPK [Electronic Press Kit] to which they can refer interested parties. There is a fee, ranging from $5.95 monthly to $49.95 annually for this service. From what I’ve observed, you can do much of this [bio, music layer, photos videos, link to your site where you’ll have contact info etc.] with your MySpace profile which is free. They do offer “exclusive” opportunities, like song contests, to their members. But from what I’ve heard, people who are members feel like sonic bids just costs a lot of money and they don’t really love it. If you’ve had any experience with them either way, please let me know.


DISCMAKERS.COM - CD DUPLICATING

Three strikes and you’re out. Disc Makers is out in my book. I’ve had nothing but bad experiences with this company. They’ve shipped me damaged product, haven’t adequately replaced it, and the artwork looked very different from the files my graphic designer gave them. [The colors were way off.] I will NEVER use them again. Even though in the end I got most of my money back, they took a month out of my time and thus delayed me having my CDs. I know many people have had fine experiences with them, but I have not.


CRT - CD DUPLICATING

This company is here in TN, and if you order your CDs there, you can go pick them up yourself and avoid paying hundreds of dollars in shipping. I have used them twice and though I don’t love love love them, I have yet to find a better alternative.


EXTREMETRACKING.COM

This isn’t the fanciest website, but they offer a free tracking code to put on your site so you can see: how many visitors come to your site, where they’re from, the keywords they searched for, etc. You can pay a little bit to make it invisible on your page, or do the free version which puts a little graphic on your page. Fair warning, though, anyone can click on that graphic and see the stats for your site, if you do the free version. But if you put it waaaaaaay down after the last bit of text on your site, few will ever find it, much less click on it. I’m sure there are other sites out there that offer this same type of thing, and if you know of something better, please let me know. But I’ve used this site for years with no complaints.


Other sites I have not really taken the time to explore:

PUREVOLUME.COM

MUSICCITYUNSIGNED.COM

INDIEHEAVEN.COM - For Christian music by independent artists

USA4REAL.COM

FANBRIDGE.COM

LIVEKITE.COM

MUSICDISH.NET - Affiliated with Mi2N.com

ISOUND.COM - I just recently found this site, here’s what they’re about.
# Artists:Sign up for FREE as an artist to get your music heard by 1,000's of site visitors.
# Instantly create your own professional band/artist web site.
# Upload your mp3s, videos and photos.
# Put your music anywhere on the internet with our portable player.
# Sell your music downloads and keep 100% of the net profits. [This service is $9.99 every 6 months with a Loud Artist™ account or $19.99 every 6 months without.]
# Instantly sell your mp3s as ringtones.
# Get exposure to record labels.

ZOOMINFO.COM

FRIENDSTER.COM

PIPL.COM

MULTIPLY.COM