Today´s post will look at the lessons to be learned from the story of Making April, a band who are one of the major DIY promotion success stories. They managed on their own steam i.e. without a marketing department, to sell over 1000 singles a week on iTunes. So how on earth did they do it? Well, put simply: hard work, dedication and a plan. By approaching their task in a serious manner, setting goals and spreading their work load, the members were able to achieve what they thought they never could. To do it they exploited fully one thing the internet is superb for, reaching out to fans, and oh how they reached!

In an interview with Ariel Hyatt of Ariel Publicity, they spilled the beans and filled us in how they managed this impressive feat. You can read the full details on Ariel Publicity, but here are some of the key factors which contributed to their online promotion success.

Planning and setting goals: Every morning three band members would meet up in what they called the “War Room” to plan their daily efforts and set targets for what they wanted to accomplish. This planning and coordination was key to their success.

A solid Social Networking Strategy: Making April used MySpace to engage with and develop potential listeners and fans. The way they did this was to scope out similar sounding bands to who already had large friends list, and then contact their friends and encourage them to check their own matterial and leave a comment on their profile.

Getting personal: To develop the relationship with their myspace contacts, Makin April contacted all those who left a comment on their MySpace profile and thanked them personally. Importantly, they left their instant messenger details in their signature. Their IM contacts grew exponentially. They would sit, literally all day long, chatting away to fans and giving them information about the band. At this point they would send their fans free samples of their music, which they could share with their friends, giving even more people the chance to check out their tunes.

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Continuing on our series of promotion articles, we would like to talk about writing a musician/band bio. Having a well written and professional musicians bio is vital. It is often the first contact that media have with your band, and it does a lot to form their impression about you. If you have an unstructured, badly written and unexciting band biography then this will significantly decrease your chances of being considered by blogs/magazines, fans, booking agents, radio, podcasts etc. Having an engaging, inspiring and well written bio which draws upon the unique “selling point” of your band will do the opposite.

The best bio´s are those which engage the reader quickly and make them genuinely curious about you. Don´t bore them down with a long introductory paragraph, keep it short, snappy and to the point. And yes, your band is unique, everyone is unique, but don’t make the mistake of saying that you don’t sound like ANY OTHER band, or that you can´t be defined by ANY genre set. This will leave the reader lost and may annoy rather the provoke curiosity. Better to grit your teeth and put in a few references so that the reader can place your music (more…)

We have received feedback recently from artists who would like us to post more articles about how to promote and market music as an independent/DIY musician. Not ones to ignore such feedback, we will put on our promotion hats and post a new promotion related article every Monday. Here is the first of the series!

The Mailing List

The importance of a well managed mailing list cannot be understated. Having a strong database of email addresses to fans is very important, and if you are not putting some effort into developing your mailing list it is fair to say you really should be.

A mailing list is your number one way to communicate with your fans about new releases, new videos, upcoming concerts and tours and other news. If used correctly, a mailing list can also help you nurture and solidify new relationships with fans. Asking for feedback on new songs, videos and photos, holding competitions, giveaways and generally engaging fans and making them feel more involved will do alot to strengthen your their ties do you.

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There are many great places you can turn if you want advice and tips on how to promote your music on the Internet. In today’s post we thought we would list a few and tell you a little about them.

Know the music biz
An online community and resource centre for independent artists and musicians. The goal of this website is to make available the information for artists need to build a sustainable career in a changing music industry. It has a wealth of articles written by individuals who really know their stuff. Highly recommended.

Ariel Publicity
Description: The “sound advice” area of Ariel Publicity provides some great advice articles to help motivate and guide your online promotion strategy. Ariel Publicity is a “Cyber PR” company who really have their finger on the pulse. We highly recommend signing up to the bi-weekly “sound advice” bulletin.

Buzz Factor
Description:The buzz factor offers music marketing and promotion tips for songwriters, musicians and bands. Bob Baker, acclaimed author of the “Guerrilla Music Marketing Handbook” among other titles, writes it.

Today we post an  article we recently submitted to Music Nomad, a great directory of resources for independent and unsigned artists. It concerns how to submit your music to Podcasts!

Podcasts are yet another example of the great new online channels available to musicians to promote their music and develop their fan base. For those living under a rock, a Podcast is an internet audio show delivered to listeners, who can listen online or download it to their PC, mobile phone or MP3 player. Listeners can also subscribe to particular shows and receive new shows as they are made available. One can consider Podcasts the internet’s answer to traditional radio, except better in many ways. Better because they are more accessible to independents, far less costly, they are global, exist for every genre and always after new music! To get your music played on podcasts, you will first need to make your tracks available for podcasters to find, and then contact them and let them know you are interested in getting your music played on their show. This mini-guide should hopefully give you some idea of how to do this.

First things first, get your tracks ready for listing!
Almost all podcasts require music to be submitted in MP3 format, so convert your music files to MP3 if necessary. Most podcasts will not use a bit rate in excess of 128kbps, so you can be comfortable using this bit rate. Recording quality is important, so make sure you submit the best recording that you can get your hands on.
Then a good idea would be to add ID3 tags. These are little bits of information (or metadata) about a track that you can attach to an MP3 file. This is not compulsory, but enables you to package your MP3 in a more attractive way. There are numerous ways which you can add ID3 tags, but the easiest way is to edit them in Widows Media Player or iTunes. Right click on the name of your track, and chose the “advanced tag editor” (“Get Info” in iTunes). You will now be able to add information to your MP3, such as the track name, artist name, cover art etc. In the “notes” field you also have the chance of added your MySpace, email address etc.

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Have you been using Deezer´s embeddable widget? If not, you should really check it out. For those who dont know about Deezer, they are one of the largest streaming services in the world, with over 9 million registered users. Record Union are proud to have them among our many distribution partners.

The Deezer widget enables you to embed a music player containing a selection of tracks on your homepage, myspace, blog or other online location where you can add HTML script. People viewing the site can then stream the tracks contained in the player while the artist recieves royalties from Deezer. But, even better, the player links directly to the iTunes store so that people can purchase the album. Pretty neat huh? A great adition to your homepage as it enables listeners to both listen to full song samples, and if they really like it, to quickly head over to iTunes to purchase it.

To embed the widget onto your website, you must first register a free profile with Deezer so that you can take advantage of their playlist function. Once you have created a playlist from their catalogue (say, of a selection of your own tracks, or an album) look for a button near the top right of the screen called “embed”. See below:

You will the be faced with a few options, such as language, autoplay, size etc. Once you have customized the player to how you would like it, its just a matter of copying the HTML code provided and pasting it into your website, blog etc. If you are using a Wordpress blog, the widget can be embedded in the post by pasting it into your post when you are in HTML view, else in your sidebar by adding the “text widget” and pasting the code there.

When added it should look something like this!

Any aspiring independent artist should be looking to fine tune their online promotion strategy, and the Sound Advice area of Ariel Publicity enables you to do exactly this.

Ariel Publicity, specialising in “Cyber PR”, is a digital firm which connects artists to blogs, podcasts, Internet radio stations and social media sites. But on the “Sound advice” section of the Cyber PR website you will find a wealth of free resources which any self promoting independent artist or manager will find really useful.

Featuring articles such as “How to sell 1000 singles a week on itunes“, “Musician´s Twitter roadmap“ and “The new Facebook - A Musician´s guide“ it  provides great down to earth professional advice on how to make use of the new marketing channels the Internet provides. You can also sign up for the bi-weekly ezine, which will bring you new articles and links to your inbox. You can also view to the Ariel Publicity YouTube channel, where you will also find interviews and videos surrounding online promotion and marketing.

All in all, a highly reccomended resource for independent and unsigned artists.

We dont want you to start thinking we worship Stebe Albini, no no. But browsing a few of the clips of him on You Tube we found this one, and we thought it was well worth posting. In it, he advises artists and bands to handle and manage as much to do with their band as possible, as this leaves you in control to make the decisions which will have a large effect on how you develop your music. The “system”, by which he means the industry built up around providing services to bands (booking agents, tour managers, publicity people) is designed largely to support itself. A provocative clip, to be sure, and a somewhat prophetic one. 5 years ago maintaining control over your music through “DIY” management would be a harder feat that it is today. With all the new services popping daily to help artists and bands with not only managing their band (Bandize), but marketing it (social networking sites, music sharing platforms, reverbnation) and distributing their music, the tools and support for artists who which to “go it alone” have never been more available.

It is easy to forget that even before an artists music has been able to describe itself, people must hear about it. This is Derek Sivers (founder of CD baby) talking about the importance of artists being able to talk about their music. Before your music is able to do the talking, you have to use words in order to invoke curisostiy about your art - and these words better be invocative, titilating and  well thought out. Bear this in mind when you are asked: “so, what kind of music do YOU do?”.

Today we would like to write about a new service which has got the Record Union team quite excited.  Introducing Bandize!  Managing a band can be notoriously difficult, and what Bandize aims to do is bring clarity and calm to such a complex and often time consuming venture by making the whole endeavour more organised, efficient and focused.  When they launch to the public, Bandize will boast a set of well thought out tools which will make most aspects of managing a band much easier and more transparent.

So what do Bandize offer? Well, a lot. You will be able to manage everything surrounding upcoming shows and tours online, including dates, locations, hotels and contact persons. Badize´s digital ledger will make the accounting side of things more transparent by helping you keep track of all your transactions, who is owed what and who needs paying.  On top of this you will be able to keep track of your inventory, synchronise your social networks, manage that ever expanding “to do” list and keep a tab on how album releases are fairing. For a more detailed explanation of their set of tools we recommend checking their website. One gets the feeling that Bandize could be one of those services that once you begin to use it, you will wonder how you ever coped without it.

We like Bandize because it is yet another example of how Internet based services can and are empowering artists and bands. Though Bandize will surely appeal to professional tour managers and high profile management agencies, it will most likely be bands and artists without large management teams who will profit the most from this service. Either way, it has the potential to become an essential weapon in the independent musician’s arsenal. This is a service to keep an eye on.