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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We are pleased to announce that Meteli.net have now made the relevent modifications to their website and our promotion partnership with them will soon be in full force. A week or two ago we announced that we would be working with Meteli.net (on of the leading Finnish download stores) to support independent artists in Finland and around the world, and this is the first step towards it. Among other promotion opportunities, the Meteli.net website will contain a feed of all the new music making its way onto their store from Record Union, introducing it to the thousands of listeners which frequent their store everyday. You can see how the feed looks here.

This is one of many partnerships we are working on to ensure that listeners discover the fantastic independent and unsigned music being released on Record Union. Stay tuned for more!

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!

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?”.

Greetings ladies, gentlemen, comrades and fellow humans. Just a quick post today to say that there is now a new “page” on the Record Union blog. This page is entitled “online promotion directory” and features a list of services which we think are useful for aspiring independent and unsigned artists which are looking to use the online environment to their advantage. We hope that this will help artists find out about new services which can help them expand their fan base and generate exposure for their music. It contains links to blogging services, podcasting services, tools to make your life easier, online marketing tools and links to online promotion advice. The directory will be updated whenever we find new service to add, and if you would like to recommend services to add to this directory, or think we have missed something out, please contact the Blog Team at dogblog@recordunion.com. We will also be writing more articles dealing with online promotion advice here on the Dog Blog, which you can find by clicking on the “promotion advice” categories section (on the right of your screen). Happy time!

Music bloggers are the opinion formers of the digital age. They are individuals passionate about music who dedicate some of their time to writing reviews and articles about artists they like in order to reccomend them to their readership. Some, called MP3 boggers, focus on posting music for download and free circulation, while others are more journalistic. They are one of the great promotion channels available to aspiring indie musicians, as they are open to recieving music from anywhere. A good article written by a respected blogger has the potential to generate great exposure for you, and it has been proven that blog articles written about an album release can significantly increase the amount it is downloaded.This post should help you to understand how you can contact bloggers and hopfully to get an article posted about you.

Firstly: more on bloggers
•    Bloggers generally group around specific genres and sometimes affiliate themselves with certain scenes. So do your research! Take time to get to know which bloggers are keen on the kind of music you play.
•    Many blogs may want to post free samples of your music. So prepare a few promo tracks in MP3 format which you are happy to give away for free.

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If the online music industry had a holy book, Andrew Dubber´s free eBook “20 things you must know about music online” would be it – it is the absolute must read for any artist who wants to make headway in the sometimes treacherous and often bedazzling online music business. Actually, it is a holy book; it expounds 20 undying and immutable truths which should guide your online music strategy; though shall not, on pain of eternal damnation, question 20 things! Ok, perhaps this is going a tad to far . The truths are not immutable, because like reality the music industry is everchanging, but it does provide some pretty sound  guidelines. Containing sound insights crammed with useful tips and strategies it is a great resource to get potent advice and information about how to best utilize the possibilities now available to aspiring musicians in the advent of the web 2.0 (or 3.0?) era.

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Organisations like the “Montreal Indie Music Network” are the lifeblood of independent music.  They are a concert Promotions Company actively involved in spreading valuable information about gigs going on in their area. Not only involved in promoting concerts, they regularly post information about up and coming artists on their facebook group as well. Like most people dedicated to indie music, they appreciate that some of the best music out there comes from unknown indie bands, as opposed to the “heavily-hyped and advertised major-label megabands”.  As we all know, Independent music does not have the same capital for huge marketing, advertising and promotion schemes as the major record labels, which makes networks like these all the more important. Where would the independent scene be without them?

Beginning as a face book group the network is in the process of creating a website called “Indie Montreal”. We spoke to the creator of the network, Jon Weisz, about the role of his network in today’s music environment. He observes that “95% of pop music fans are too complacent: they listen to whatever Television tells them to listen to without questioning the music’s quality or relevance”. Indeed. Jon understands more than anyone that labels simply don´t have the resources to market most of the great music out there, and that questions of risk often force them invest resources in artists appealing to the “lowest common denominator” (for more on this, see this article). Imagination, that crucial artistic ingredient “doesn’t make money for these companies, who often put millions of dollars into promoting a single artist”. With this in mind, his network

“provides a resource for people who fall within the 5%, who understand that music’s appeal is not cultural and dictated, it’s personal and discovered. Although a lot of popular music is good, I find that the best music is almost always found in indie niches that are not heavily marketed or publicized”.

We at Record Union couldnt agree more! Keep up the good work guys!