MySpace360Wizard is a new tool designed to help bands brand and optimize their MySpace pages. Find out below how to win one of 5 FREE access codes.

Every band has a MySpace page. Unfortunately, 99% of those pages suck.

When it comes to out-of-the-box usability, MySpace ranks far, far below its more attractive cousins, Facebook and Twitter. The template is cluttered and counter-intuitive. The page is filled mostly with noise, and it takes large amounts of time and money to customize and brand an artist profile effectively. Even many well-funded bands have MySpace pages that would make an unfamiliar listener believe it was posted by a high schooler.

Yet, every band still has to have a MySpace page. Why? Can’t we just put our music on Bandcamp and call it a day? Put your music on Bandcamp – it’s an excellent service. But the fact is that many, many potential listeners stop at a band’s MySpace page first – before even their homepage – to check them out.

That’s why your page really can’t suck. Like it or not, it’s going to be making your first impression on many eyes and ears out there.

Inexpensive, user-friendly MySpace optimization

MySpace360Wizard, created by David Sherbow and Cara Peckens One Fan Consulting, aims to provide an accessible solution to the MySpace problem. It clears up the clutter, and offers a straightforward guide to help artists customize and brand their profiles.

More importantly, it helps artists optimize their profiles for conversions. When the pros set up a website they do so with specific goals in mind – the sale of a product, mailing list sign-ups, etc. What are your goals? In other words, what are you trying to get the people who visit your page to do?

In most cases you want visitors to do 4 things: listen to your music, buy your stuff,  show up to your gigs, and sign up for your mailing list.

MySpace360Wizard is integrated with all of the major direct to fan services – music players, online stores, and email marketing programs like FanBridge and MailChimp. It’s layout and navigation are designed to drive visitors to these services without having to sift through all the MySpace noise. The player is front and center, the store is above the fold, and right next to it is the touring calender.

It takes about an hour from start to finish to redesign or create a profile from scratch using the wizard. The wizard makes it pretty easy, taking the user through the process step by step. You can preview the profile at any time to make sure it’s looking the way you want it to look. It costs $99 bucks to publish the custom profile. You can check out a completed example here.

Win a FREE custom MySpace page by tweeting good advice

I’ve got 5 free access codes to give away, plus 1 grand prize  Here’s how this is going to work:

1. Tweet the best advice you have for independent bands and artists in 140 characters or less.

2. Include this link: http://bit.ly/bRWMlS (It links back to this post.)

3. Tag it #CD140

I will personally pick the best five entries to receive the free codes. Good luck!

The service is still in beta, but what do you think of the ‘New MySpace’ that this tool offers?

Related posts:

1. And the Winners of the Free MySpace Redesign Give-Away Are…

Where is music technology headed in 2010

Another year has passed and we can only hope – and more importantly work – towards making the new year and new decade in the music business less tumultuous and one where the the disruptive forces of change are embraced for the sake of the artists and fans. Because it’s about the music, isn’t?

Now more than ever we need to keep the focus on two important groups: artists and fans.  It’s about creative innovation, not exploitation. We still have a way to go but signs are pointing up as more people focus their energy on solutions-based thinking and building.

Before we look too far ahead to 2010 and usual set of predictions, let’s take some time to reflect on what transpired not just in 2009 but over the past ten years. Has anything been learned? Are we headed in the right direction? Will we be spinning the same wheels bare?

Did anyone imagine that in just a few short years the industry would face such swift, radical change leaving some still spinning?  Disruption for one group is innovation and opportunity for another and the battle will continue to rage between these two camps.

A review of 2009 on back…

CMU has put together their review for 2009 covering the media and the internet, the music business and artists and the music.

The A to Z of digital music startups in 2009 is an impressive list of digital music startups.

11 Interesting Moments For The Music Industry In 2009- Twitter, Social Media, Music Games, drop in concert attendance.

Bruce Houghton: 3 Trends, 13 Companies & 1 Wild Card To Watch In 2009 and How Did I Do With My 2009 Predictions?

The decade in music: Sales slide, pirates, digital rise – “Nothing defines pop’s past decade as much as the Internet and its evolving powers to alter the way music is created, marketed, shared and consumed. And, some would say, devalued and plundered.”

All the Rules of the Music Business Have Been Remade – From creation, distribution, consumption, it is utterly amazing how technology has flipped the business on it’s head and blown the gates right off.

What has the digital decade meant for music? – “The way in which we consume music has been revolutionised, but rumours of the death of major labels have been greatly exaggerated.”

2010 Music Predictions, Wishes and Guesses

Here’s a recap of some predictions written about for 2010. It’s a fun, year-end exercise and it might be a better idea for those making them to review them monthly, or at least quarterly. And better yet turning these predictions into actionable goals.

All the predictions in the world won’t matter unless the music fan is looked at like a valuable consumer and not some menacing threat.

Bruce Houghton has one prediction for 2010 and honestly, it’s less a prediction but good old common business sense: Those that serve the fan will thrive. Those that do not will whither.

Here are a few that are worth bookmarking and revisiting over the next couple of months:

• Five Music Predictions for 2010 (and Five Reasons Why 2009 was a Flop)
• 8 Key Trends for the Next 5 Years
• Bob Lefsetz’s Predictions
• The Year in Digital Music and Predictions for 2010
• Bobby Owsinski’s 7 Music Business Predictions For 2010
• 2010: 5 Music Business Predictions (And A Football One)
• 10 music-tech trends that will shape the next decade

And as for my thoughts for 2010 and beyond?

Service Agnostic Playlists:
I believe that in 2010 we will start seeing more service agnostic, portable and shareable playlists. You just enter the name of a band or song, and a new service like Playdar (hooked in with the XSPF format) will help you find the song either on your local drive or any music service(s) you might subscribe to. Playlistnow.fm, Stereomood.com and Playlist are examples of the shift from MP3s to playlists, and as an end user you aren’t as concerned about where the music is located.

Music in the Cloud Goes Mainstream:
Sure, anyone with the time and inclination can use Simplify Media, Subsonic, Tunesbag, MP3Tunes to create their own streaming music service but only the biggest, most meticulous music geeks are doing so. 2010 we will see, directly or indirectly, Apple, Google, Amazon making moves towards cloud based music service offerings.

Apple and Others Finally Get Social Music:
For most of us, music has always been a social activity and we are already enjoying the social nature of music online using sites like Twitter, Blip.FM and other third-party, independent services. Apple, Google and other big players will finally start taking it seriously and will build social networking functionality into their core service offerings.

Music Tech Investments
Duncan Freeman of Band Metrics has just posted his list of music tech investments and M&As for 2009. There was certainly quite a bit of activity and will we see more investment activity in 2010? GigaOM recently posted a piece: After Weak Exits In Digital Music, VCs Start Smaller offering some additional perspective. Investors may be stepping back a bit but are not stepping away completely from investing in the digital music sector. Investment returns in music streaming services haven’t been as hoped for but there are other (not as sexy as Spotify) digital music opportunities that don’t face the same, out of the gate, licensing hurdles. With $154 billion of venture money still sitting on the sidelines, that money will have to be invested somewhere, right?
December funding news:

• App Store Champ Smule Raises Another $8 Million
• Podcasting company Lexy raises $458k in debt financing
• ZumoDrive Raises $1.5 Million For Cloud-Based Mobile Music, Media Access

Music Services and Mobile Apps

New iPhone apps like Flypt (music remixer), PRS Jam App (for guitarists), Muppets Animal Drummer (music rhythm game), Beaterator (music mixer) being released are becoming much more interactive. Instead of just being passive listeners, music lovers can now try their hand at being creators, producers and remixers.

Soundtrkr is another interesting app I played around with this month. It’s a geo-tagging music app that lets you connect with other music fans in your area. It’s like Foursquare for music. It will probably be just a matter of time before Pandora or LastFM add this functionality which I think would be brilliant move. Myxer launches MobileStage, a mobile marketing platform for artists and brands/advertisers.

Nowplaying.FM – With so much music/bands being discussed on Twitter, there isn’t always a link provided to the music. With Nowplaying.fm, they are a music search-and-play service in the style of GrooveShark which searches various services and finds the song you want to hear. As I already noted, this is where Playdar can really shine as a music content resolver.

PlaylistnowFM – Similar to Stereomood, you can listen to preselected playlists based on mood/what you are doing. Clean interface (combines elements of Blip.FM and Twitter) and a decent selection of tunes.

Playdar – I’m going to keep an eye on this one in 2010. It’s a bit of “geeky” but very promising tool. Some smart developers will create amazing apps/services that will make it even easier for the music fan’s to discover and listen to music. For early adopters getting their heads around it and Playdar powered services like Playgrub and Playlick, the focus will be building playlists and less on where the music is located. I really hope to see Playdar underpin a lot of future music services which ties well into my thoughts about service agnostic playlists. Read this write-up for a really good description of how Playdar works.

Amazon Adds Audio and Video Streaming to CloudFront – This announcement slipped through quietly. For no additional cost, Amazon will let developers/companies stream delivery of audio and video content. Keep an eye out for new and upcoming service launches now that this type of technology is easily accessible and affordable.

Best of 2009: 10 iPhone/iPod Touch Music/Sound Apps – Suzanne Lainson has recently posted a very thorough article detailing the potential iPhone music revolution where many free and/or cheap tools are allowing music fans with little or no musical talent to create music. It may not be all that good but at the very least, fans will garner a better appreciation of the time and effort that goes into the creative process.

Opinions, Insights and Analysis

In 2009, the hot talk was about Spotify (will they or won’t they launch in the US?) and in 2010 music in the cloud will be on everyone’s lips. There is still a way to go before we see commercial offerings and mainstream adoption but a lot of the hurdles are being knocked down including: technological, costs and cultural.

Music in the Cloud: Heavenly or Pipe Dream? – There are enough open-source tools and software that lets you share and stream music from your computer anyway, so streaming music from your “personal cloud” is already here. It’s just that many people can’t be bothered with setting up, maintaining and backing up their libraries. Once Apple flips the switch, it’s game on. See next article.

How Apple’s New Music Strategy Reflects a Paradigm Shift – This is a great piece with two key points: 1) the transition toward streaming rather than owning is slow, but real. and 2) Apple is still betting on owning music in a new way, rather than subscribing to it.

In the legal download world, someone has to pay for the music, so will 2010 be the year that “brandvertising” finally proves that ad-supported music downloads work? Free for All and Guevara are going to try hard to prove so. And with so much activity on the mobile front, it will be interesting to see if 2010 “will be the year mobile begins to realize its potential for marketers.”

Here is a great article that describes the The Problem With Free. It is summed up best: “When you pay for something, you appreciate it more than when you get it for free.”

APIs Can Set You Free — “Music — or any kind of information, for that matter — no longer emanates from a centralized source. Instead, it reaches listeners’ ears through a plethora of tweets, blogs, widgets, apps, social nets, search services, recommendation engines and the personal messages from the artists themselves.”

Formula That Can ID Music Industry Payola Developed — “A University at Buffalo researcher has invented a statistical method that can detect payola-like corruption in the music industry, a system that gives law enforcement an inexpensive statistical guide to identify potential music corruption and to better target more traditional and much more costly hands-on evidence-gathering.”

4 Ways One Big Database Would Help Music Fans, Industry — Great idea but very challenging to implement and maintain. We already have MusicBrainz and FreeDB plus other proprietary music industry databases. Trying to reconciliation and bridge commercial and open source interests won’t be easy. And I hate saying it but it will be impossible to reach any consensus or standards to satisfy all parties.

What was once thought will be a music business saviour, music video games sales peaked in 2009 and sales forecasts missed . Are consumers bored? Will 2010 be any better?

—-

And that caps another year in the business! Where do you think we are headed in 2010? What do you hope to see happen? What are you working on that you feel will make a long-term difference?

Gabriel Nijmeh is a software business analyst, passionate music lover and guitar player. He currently advises a couple of music startups, including Mediazoic, a real-time social DJ platform and co-founded the Toronto edition of OpenMusicMedia which brings people together to openly discuss the intersection of digital music, media and culture.

Related posts:

1. Music and Tech Recap – March 2010 Edition
2. Music and Tech Recap – May 2010 Edition

100 Resources for DIY Musicians

Greg Rollett of Gen-Y Rock Stars and Label 2.0 sent me an email this morning letting me know that he had just published a new report called 100 Resources for DIY Musicians, and that he had been kind enough to include Creative Deconstruction as one of those resources.

The report is a follow-up to last year’s much downloaded ‘100 Social Media Resources for Musicians.’ Greg has expanded the focus a bit to include the full range of platforms, services and information sources that an independent band can utilize to build their careers.

I spent some time with the report this afternoon and from what I’ve gotten through so far it looks to be a pretty complete list. The resources Greg has included range from the obvious (hopefully, anyway) – MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, CDBaby etc. – to the more advanced such as tools for email marketing, online collaboration, building online communities and mobile apps. I found services that I hadn’t come across before, like WishList which allows you to turn your Wordpress site into a membership community.

New artists or bands that have yet to fully explore the range of online options that are available to them will benefit from spending some time with ‘100 Resources.’ It can take a lot of time to research the tools your band should be using – time better spent actually writing, performing and promoting your music. Greg has done the hard work of sifting through the multitude of different sites and services and narrowed it down to a few solid options in about 16 categories.

My Picks

I’ve selected a few notable resources from the report that I strongly suggest you check out:

1. Indaba Music – Very cool site that allows musicians to collaborate and make music, remix it and showcase the finished product. This has the potential to open up great possibilities for producing music with other artists at a distance.

2. TubeMogul – It’s sort of like a beefed up ArtistData or Ping.fm, but for videos. When you upload your videos TubeMogul will aggregate them to all the important places, like YouTube, Myspace, Facebook, etc.

3. Mobile Roadie – Allows bands to create custom iPhone with social and mulit-media content.

4. Live Music Machine - This service gives bands a widget that can be placed just about anywhere online that allows fans and venues to book them with a single click. Also includes a full tour schedule, availability calender and a map of the different stops on the band’s tour. I’ve been working with Live Music Machine for a few months now and I can tell you that this tool has the potential to change the way bands are booked.

5. Plugo.la – Run by a fellow Chicagoan named Erik Peterson, Plugo.la is a music community and marketplace with a cool twist. It allows fans to ‘plug’ their favorite tracks and earn affiliate fees when those tracks are sold.

You can download the full report here. You have to sign up, but it’s free. If you do, you can find the blurb on Creative Deconstruction on page 15.

What do you think of the report? Is it helpful to you, or do you feel like you knew all this stuff already? Let me know in the comments.

Back when press releases actually worked.

“How do I get blog coverage for my band?”

I get this question a lot from both artists and artist managers. I have traditionally avoided answering it. This is partly due to the fact that I really don’t cover individual artists very often here at Creative Deconstruction, so I’m probably not the best blogger to ask. But the question keeps coming.

Fortunately, there are plenty of articles on the subject. Don’t send generic mass emails. Don’t submit rap music to a heavy metal blog, or gutter punk to a site focused exclusively on the bluegrass community. Do not for any reason send a formal press release. All good advice.

Despite my reluctance to chime in, I have noticed an important omission from most of the articles on the subject of music blog coverage. Very few seem to highlight what I consider to be the most effective tool of them all – relationship.

Taking the time to develop a rapport with bloggers is the only way to ensure that they will open your emails.

And it does take time. Often lots of time. But keep in mind that you don’t have to reach out to every single blogger – bloggers often find their content on other blogs. Get your story up on one and it’s likely to spread to others.

That kind of viral multiplication still requires a compelling story if you want coverage on the high-traffic sites. Some blogs will cover just about anything to keep their stream of content flowing. Others are more careful about what they publish. Getting your story up on the latter will likely bring whatever you’re promoting much more attention than the former.

Building Relationships With Bloggers

I may not be an authority on music reviews or band interviews, but networking is a different story. Relationships are at the heart of everything I do. I spend a great deal of time and energy interacting with artists and other members of the music industry, as well as fellow bloggers and media people.

Relationships have been instrumental in getting readership at Creative Deconstruction to where it is today. Relationships introduced me to the good folks at Live Music Machine I’ve been working with lately. And relationships that I am cultivating now will soon play an important role in taking this blog to the next level.

1. Targeting Social Bloggers

Admittedly, not all bloggers put this kind of value on relationships. There is still a mentality among some – particularly among those who have been at it since the early days of blogging – that blogging somehow elevates you above the rest of the online community. This is of course ridiculous when just about every member of that online community is a blogger themselves.

It should be pretty obvious which bloggers get it and which do not. Take a peak at their Twitter profile page. How much of their Twitter activity is preceded by an ‘@’ symbol? If you find a blogger who is spending a lot of their time replying to other users they are probably a good networking candidate.

Another great sign can be found right in the blogger’s comments section. How often does the blogger reply directly to comments left on their posts? The more they interact with their readers the more likely they will be willing to interact with you.

2. Making the Connection

When you are trying to get onto a bloggers radar, the best place to start is with their content. Comment on their posts. If they respond to your post (and they should if you’ve targeted a social blogger) you’ve just made your first connection. Pretty simple.

Social media is a wonderful place to make connections. Twitter is a great access point because it is an open network (as opposed to permission-based networks such as Facebook or LinkedIN.) You can follow anybody. Retweet the blogger’s headlines. This adds value to them, and requires no relationship whatsoever to do. It may even lead them to check out your profile. Whenever I see a new user Retweeting one of my updates I’ll click through to their profile to see who it is that’s paying attention to what I’m saying. I’m looking for connections too, you know.

Does the blog have a Facebook page? Consider becoming a fan. Facebook pages are designed to facilitate communities. Make yourself a part of that community by engaging with their posts and jumping into discussions.

No matter how busy the blogger may be, and no matter how many other people are vying for their attention (usually fewer than you might think!) they will eventually notice you when they see that you are consistently engaged.

3. Writing a Compelling Story

We live in an attention society. Eyeballs are currency. 10,000 people viewing your Twitter profile will still translate into 0 fruitful connections if you have nothing compelling there for them to find. Is your bio filled out? Do you have any interesting information to purvey in your updates? Better yet, do you have a blog of your own to link to?

It’s not just about the platforms, though. It doesn’t matter how many words you dump into the bottomless information pit that is the world wide web if you don’t actually have anything interesting to say. (I’ve dumped 880 words so far in this post alone!)

Why should anybody write about you? Some artists may craft an EP so life-changing that the bloggers can’t help but review it, but everybody else needs to find a way to present their story effectively or it will be ignored. Is yours a rags to riches tale? Did you meet your bassist when he tried to steal your car? Do you contribute five percent of all your earnings to a particular charity?

Everyone has a story. The PR industry has traditionally been responsible for figuring out what that story is and how to tell it. But PR people can’t build relationships for you. You’d be better off spending the time to figure if out for yourself. Not only will you end up with a more authentic perspective, you will also be able to communicate it more effectively to those you network with. If you need help send me an email and I’d be happy get you started.

What have your experiences been? (Whether you are an artist, a blogger, or anywhere in between.) Have you found success with this or another approach?

You can’t really go anywhere in the music industry today without hearing the phrase ‘fan-engagement.’  While most bands have (hopefully) always made an effort to connect with their listeners and fans in a way that goes beyond the music itself, social media has thrust the practice into the spotlight in a big way. Services like Twitter and Facebook have provided a platform to maintain contact with fans across the world in ways no one could have imagined ten years ago. Many artists are seizing the opportunity and seeing impressive results.

Of course, when any concept begins to saturate an entire industry the way fan-engagement recently has there is bound to be some backlash. Backlash is good – even the most promising ideas need to be tested and critiqued. I came across a couple of interesting pieces last week that provide a good counterpoint to the fan-engagement buzz, and I thought they were worth discussing further.

Farewell to the Casual Fan

The first piece is a great article by Jeremy from Finger Tips Music entitled Farewell to the Casual Fan. Jeremy argues that new models that put too much emphasis on fan-engagement may actually drive casual fans away.

“Today’s fan engagement schemes, however, deny the existence of casual fans by leaving them out of the picture entirely.

Because what entices a super-fan will almost, by definition, be of no interest to a casual fan. Just because you happen to like a song or two, or even an album or two, doesn’t mean you require a musician’s real-time biographical details, doesn’t mean you crave endless streams of recording flotsam and jetsam (b-sides, live takes, remixes, etc.), doesn’t mean you’ll want to purchase objects lit by physical association with the musician (self-designed t-shirts, hand-addressed postcards, and the like) or watch repeated video presentations.”

“Most important of all, a casual fan will not spend upwards of $100 a year purchasing music and other accessory items from one band or musician.

In his original “1,000 True Fans” post, Kelly asserted that the processes artists develop to feed their diehard fans will also nurture what he calls “Lesser Fans.” I see no evidence beyond wishful thinking to support this idea.

I believe, on the contrary, that the more the music scene focuses on these kinds of super-fan activities, the more likely it will be that casual fans more or less disappear.”

While I disagree with some of Jeremy’s conclusions, I appreciate that he is serving up a dose of reality to artists who fail to understand that the artist-fan relationship isn’t black and white. Some fans may sit down at their computer each day hoping to find a new communication from their favorite artist – whether a song, a video, a simple email or DM. Others might view that kind of constant contact as spam. The reality is that artists need to learn to navigate both types of relationships. The goal is to engage fans, not annoy them.

Yet I don’t believe that a rash of over-extended artists will cause these casual fans to disappear. Casual fans don’t stop listen to music when they’re turned off by an artist, they simply stop paying for it. And they’ve already stopped paying for it. The recent focus on fan-engagement is not causing this – it’s responding to it.

One commenter, Ben Denison, offered an interesting counterpoint that I thought was worthy of including here:

On the contrary, it is my concern that over “engagement” by a band will drive away the super fan. Do you already tire of going to a band site and being asked to engage in some sort of merry fan/band dance, when all you want to do is listen to the music?

He goes on:

As far as I can see there is already evidence that over engagement has already generated a niche as super fans are seeking bands such as Islet that don’t even have a website/myspace/bandcamp for the exclusivity and mystique factor.

The 80’s on Social Media

October 29, 2009 marked the 40 year anniversary of the first message sent over the internet. To mark the occasion, Duran Duran bassist John Taylor delivered a speech at UCLA on the effects of technology on music. Specifically, Taylor spoke about the way that constant fan-engagement may harm the relationship between artist and fan. Here’s an excerpt via the BBC (which you might also recognize from Hypebot):

When artists today are asked to Twitter their every thought, their every action, to record on video their every breath, their every performance, I believe they’re diluting their creative powers, their creative potency and the durability of their work.

And in the long run I believe they’re also diluting the magical power and the magnetic attraction that they can or will ever have over their audience.

John Taylor of Duran Duran

He’s saying two things here – the first is that social media communications, however simple and mundane, actually use up an artist’s creative reserves the same way songwriting might.

I happen to think that he’s fundamentally right, although this statement again assumes that artists are incapable of any nuanced understanding of fan interaction. Yes, if an artist wastes three hours in front of the computer screen he or she is unlikely to have much energy left for creative endeavors. No one is actually asking you to do this. To suggest that modern fan-engagement models require artists to “twitter their every thought, their every action” is a dramatic exaggeration.

How much time does it take to update your Twitter status? 30 seconds maybe, and only if you’re really straining to think up something clever to say. So even if you push 20 updates per day that still only consumes 10 minutes. That’s less than 1% of your day. Of course this is an oversimplification of what is involved in an artist’s social media activities, but the point is that you shouldn’t by into the “every thought” hyperbole.

In his second statement, Taylor claims that using social media to step out from behind the curtain and connect with fans in an authentic way is detrimental because it dilutes the rock star mystique. Well, if it does fans seem to be doing ok without it. I love the way Matisyahu put it in an article a few months back (I haven’t been able to find the source to link to it – I’ll update when I do.) He pointed out that when he was growing up he never would have imagined getting the chance to connect with his heroes the way his fans are able to connect with him through social media. The memory of that desire is what drives his own forays into consistent fan-engagement. These activities have only served to further endear his fans to him as an artist and to his music.

Use every weapon

The bottom line is that the tools are there to connect with fans, and they’re free to use. To ignore them is to ignore an important weapon in every artist’s fight against obscurity – and poverty. Artists need to learn how to use these tools responsibly and effectively to build their fan base, while understanding that different types of fans require a unique approach.

This piece originally appeared as a guest post at Audiolife.com.

Social media has brought us into an age where consumers, not companies, determine the market’s perception of brands. This can be frightening for those who are accustomed to doing business at arm’s length with the masses. But there are huge opportunities for those of us who don’t know any better.

Consumer driven marketing is one of the most powerful tools out there today, whether you’re a billion dollar corporation or a five-piece band. Each artist has multiple fans (hopefully.) It’s only logical that your fans would be capable of spreading the word about your music much farther than you can by yourself. Social media provides the tools to harness that word-of-mouth promotion.

The key is to stay involved by managing fan experiences. The old way was to try and shape consumer perception of brands through large-scale marketing. In other words, trying to attack entire demographics at a time. That takes money, and a whole lot of it. Most independent bands have to scrape up the cash to fill the gas tank of their tour van, let alone spend thousands of dollars on a marketing campaign.

Mass perception is expensive to effect, but every band can work to make sure that each fan they touch has a memorable experience. These experiences are what fuel fan-driven marketing – enough positive experiences and you have the chance to go viral. Too many negative experiences (or a single high-profile one) and you might find your band name on the Twitter trending topics list – and not in a good way.

Managing Fan Experiences

There are two simple ways to begin creating positive, memorable fan experiences. The first is to learn how to listen. Pay attention to what people are saying about you or your band – both to you directly and when you aren’t around. Set up Google Alerts and TweetBeeps for your band name and read each one. Watch for patterns. If you notice a significant number of people remarking about how rude you come across at your shows it may be time take a hard look at how you’re acting on and off stage.

That’s number two – learn to respond and adapt. Criticism is never fun, but it is a valuable resource. It exposes weak spots and gives you the opportunity to work them out. If you come across a fan who has had a negative experience, reach out. Let them know that they’re a valuable part of your community and turn it into an authentic interaction. Chances are the fan will walk away from that experience with a much higher level of respect for you as an artist and as a person.

If you can learn to harness the power of fan-driven marketing your band will be much better equipped to generate lasting buzz and build your fan base through word of mouth and social media referrals. Use the tools at your disposal to ensure that your fans are getting everything they need to become effective ambassadors for your music.

...or maybe you just need to guess the talent buyer's favorite color.

Most new bands approach the first part of their careers like this: We need to find an audience, but in order to find an audience we have to play shows. If we want to play shows we have to get a talent buyer to book us, but talent buyers are going to want to know we can draw an audience before they’ll ever consider letting us play. It’s a frustrating catch-22.

Thankfully, it’s also not the only (or even the best) route to finding your first audience or building your initial fan base. It just means that you’re going to have to go around the gatekeepers and find fans somewhere else.

I’ve put together a list of three somewhat unorthodox suggestions to help you break free of the catch-22 and think outside the venue. Each of these three activities is designed to help you find an audience when no talent buyer in town will let you play.

1. Play to the line.

This first idea comes from Martin Atkins. You may not be welcome to play inside, but they can’t stop you from playing outside, can they? Keep track of when big acts come into town. Make sure you’re there and bring something to play. Perform for the line outside the door.

Think about it – they’ve come for music and here they are just waiting outside with nothing to do. So, give them something to listen to! Put up a sign with your band name and pass out demos for free. Give away bottled water if it’s hot, or hot chocolate or cider if it’s cold. Bring someone along to walk around with a clipboard to take down names and email addresses in exchange for buttons or even the demos.

2. Host a living room show.

Leverage the resources and connections that you already have. You have friends, right? Well, invite them all over to your flat and tell them each to bring a friend of their own. Put on an awesome show and hang out afterward to connect and find out who enjoyed your music.

Take down names and email address and network to see if anyone might have an in with a more established band or even a venue. At the very least you’ve built a solid list of people you can count on when you approach that talent buyer next time.

3. Target local listeners online.

I talked about the various online tools available to bands for uncovering potential fans in a recent post. If you are really starting from scratch I would suggest using these online tools first to drill down into your local scene. The line outside the show of an established band in your genre is all but guaranteed to contain people likely to enjoy your own music. In the same way, targeting an established band’s fans online will greatly increase your chances of finding new listeners.

Once you figure out where to find potential listeners you need to initiate a conversation. Notice that I didn’t say that you need to send them messages that say “Check out my MySpace page!” or “Listen to our new album for free!” Those messages are completely unnatural and you’d be better off trying to sell them a vacuum cleaner. A real conversation starts with a simple introduction. You both live in the same city or region (because that’s who you’re targeting right now.) So right away you have something in common. Sending someone a free track will be much more meaningful after it has been established that you are a human being rather than an automated account or a marketing intern.

These online connections can be leveraged in several ways in landing that elusive fist gig. Crowd-source them – find out who would come out if you had a show, and where they like to see bands play the most. Offer an incentive if they commit to coming – a free piece of merch or an exclusive track that only the members of your network who show up will get. If you are really successful in connecting with a decent number of people on Twitter, MySpace or Facebook consider forming a ‘petition’ that includes your new fans’ names and email addresses. I would imagine that your friendly neighborhood talent buyers would be much more receptive to you with something like that in their hands.

No Excuses

The most important concept that I want to get across is that the only person who can hold you back from launching your career is yourself. Booking agents, talent buyers, club owners – none of these people owe you anything. They are never going to care as much about what you are doing as you do, and you shouldn’t expect them to. If one of these gatekeepers is standing in your way there is no reason why you shouldn’t simply find a way to go around them. Independent artists live and die on their ability to find creative solutions for difficult problems. So get creative.

I’ve given three simple suggestions but I’m sure there are artists who have done many crazier things to get their gigging off the ground. What have you found to be successful? What have you tried that has failed miserably? Let me know.

Living room photo by raisin.detre.

A goal is only as good as the strategy put in place to reach it. In my previous post I talked about Kevin Kelly’s 1,000 True Fans concept, and expanded it a bit to include the three other groups that make up an artist’s fan base: active, passive and potential fans.

This model may not be perfect, but I think defining these sub-groups is helpful because it allows an artist to have a different approach for each different kind of fan.

I’ve put together a series of posts with some practical tips intended to get you started in finding fans and moving them up through the pyramid. The goal of course is to cultivate as many true fans as possible so that you can eventually quite that day job (if you haven’t already) and develop a self-sustaining career in music. This first post deals with finding and evangelizing potential fans.

This series is just intended to get you started and is by no means comprehensive. Hopefully you’ll have some additional ideas – please feel free to share them in the comments section.

Start Local

The hardest part of building a fan base is often finding an audience in the first place. The best place to start looking is in your hometown. You don’t have to travel, which means you have little to no expenses. You probably have a decent idea of where bands play and what kinds of bands play there.

You also have the added benefit of a community that wants to get behind you. Everybody wants their city to have a thriving music scene. Sure, if you live in New York or LA you might find that nobody cares whether your band lives or dies. But in the rest of the country most people want to support their local bands.

Here in Chicago I met recently with Mike Sosin who manages a talented local artist named Dick Prall. We spent much of that meeting talking about ways we could have a positive effect on the local scene. I can think of so many others – Erik Peterson of Plugo.la, for example. Supporting local artists is his business. There are people in your community who want you to succeed. Find them and you will have an incredible resource at your disposal.

If you can get to the point where you can consistently sell 300 tickets in your city then chances are you’ve got a strong enough base to begin exploring the surrounding region. Find bands that are selling those same 300 tickets in neighboring cities and ask them to gig swap. You open for them in their city, they open for you in your city. You expand your reach and build your network in the process.

Utilize Online Tools

Beyond conquering your local scene you also have access to the entire world online. The internet has made it easier than ever to target the potential fans at the bottom of the pyramid. People wear their musical tastes like a badge of honor online. If you find people who listen to music similar to your own you’ve got a great place to start making inroads.

Search Twitter, join relevant Facebook groups. Set up Google alerts  and TweetBeeps for not only your band name but the names of your influences as well. Figure out where these people are and go after them. Send them free tracks and if enough respond from one particular place, make sure you can set up a show nearby to invite them to.

Martin Atkins, author of Tour:Smart, calls this ‘pouring gasoline on sparks.’ Find out where the sparks are and begin penetrating that city, or that region until you’ve turned those sparks into a bonfire.

Live Performance is Key

Notice that both of these examples revolve around live performances. Yes, you can distribute your music online and acquire new listeners and potential fans that way. And you should – maybe it will cause a few sparks to spring up in unexpected places. But the live performance is where the connection happens. Potential fans become actual fans at the show.

Where these tips helpful? As I said in the beginning this post is in no way designed to be comprehensive. It’s still very much a work in progress. What have you been doing to find and evangelize new fans? What has worked, and what hasn’t? Share the wealth in the comments section – you never know who might benefit.

Throughout the history of rock and roll certain bands or sounds have emerged every decade or so that have defined an era of music. Elvis, The Beatles, Dylan, Led Zeppelin, Nirvana – each one of these acts challenged the mainstream or uniquely tapped into the pulse of their generation. It’s now 2009 – who is our defining act? What is this decade’s sound?

Over the past forty-eight hours this conversation has come up twice for me, with two separate groups of people. No one could point to a single band or new sound that feels like it could be our Elvis, or our Kurt Cobain. There isn’t any one act that stands out from the crowd enough to consider definitive. No one sound that we can truly call alternative.

That may not mean much to members of my generation. By the time most of us were old enough to develop our own musical tastes Kurt Cobain was already dead. We’ve never known anything but a world where bands come and go and leave little more than a faint impression on the cultural consciousness.

I was born nearly 20 years after For What It’s Worth was recorded by Buffalo Springfield. What I know of the cultural and political unrest of the Vietnam era comes from history books and Hollywood. Yet, every time I hear those unmistakeable first few notes I feel like somehow I get it. Maybe it’s because I’ve seen Forrest Gump half a dozen times. Or perhaps it’s because Stephen Stills so artfully captured the tension and uncertainty of the late sixties when he wrote that song. Even someone as far removed from that time as myself is transported there.

Where is the song that  captures where the world was at on Sept. 11th, 2001? Or the deep divides over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Or simply the rise of technology and the socialization of the internet and business? Who knows? If those songs exist they don’t seem to have made the kind of mark they should have made.

Hardly any of the bands that were on the radio when I was in school are still active today. And if they are very few people care. Third Eye Blind came out with their first new record in six years this month. It was so under my radar that I didn’t think to include it on that week’s list of new releases. Coldplay, Radiohead – these bands are more recent and certainly sell a lot of records, but will we really sit our grandkids down and say, “It really was ‘all yellow.’”

So has music gotten worse? Or, from a different angle, has culture itself been diluted?

There are certainly those who would answer a resounding ‘yes!’ to both those questions. Yet, I have the privilege of hearing talented artists making great music every day. Most of these artists will never reach the level of exposure that ensured Nirvana’s place in music history, but the artistry is there.

As for culture, I’m not sure it’s been diluted. I would instead argue that an individual artist’s ability to influence culture has been hindered by a compartmentalization of the market.

It is so much easier to record music these days, and so much cheaper to distribute it. New voices are springing up everywhere, faster than anyone can pay attention. Instead of seeking to fill arenas and speak to entire generations like artists of the 60’s and 70’s, most musicians are carving out niches. They find a modest base of fans who have found some connection to the music they play and they speak to them.

So as the world becomes more globalized, the influence of an individual artist or band is becoming increasingly compartmentalized. This isn’t a bad thing – in fact, the idea that bands are feeling less pressure to fit into the mainstream mold is very encouraging. Yet it’s interesting that this has left us for the first time at the end of a decade with nothing to hold up as our anthem.

What do you think – is this important? Does it worry you, or do you not really care? I want to hear your opinions.

A few days ago Heap posted an update on Twitter linking to her website where she has her new album Ellipse streaming in its entirety. The record doesn’t officially drop until August 25th in the US.

Heap’s new work is full of her trademark quirky sentimentality. Her breathy, incomparable voice provides an anchor throughout the album’s different textures.  Ellipse begins with the bubbly, synthesized ‘First Train Home.’ In ‘Earth,’ Imogen’s multiplied vocals call to mind an assembly line of robots singing a cappella. ‘Swoon’ injects a bit of energy and and attitude into the middle of the record, giving way to an almost anthemic chorus. The breezy, sentimental ‘Between Sheets,’ and the manic ‘Aha’ finally lead the listener to the album’s dreamy anti-climax ‘Half Life.’

You can listen to the complete album for yourself below. Let me know what you think. Actually, you can feel free to let her know what you think.

It will be interesting to see the kind of buzz (and sales) that this full-album preview generates once the album is available for purchase. It has the potential to be pretty powerful. Listeners have made it clear that they like to try before they buy, and more  than 900,000 fans now have the opportunity to experience her new tracks before they hit stores. Remember when artists had to rely on radio for that kind of exposure?

Heap has also made it very easy for the stream to be shared by offering code for website owners to embed Ellipse with no strings attached. That means that with no additional cost or effort to herself and her team Heap has allowed the larger online community to promote her work on their sites. And why wouldn’t we bloggers take her up on it? She’s given us something that goes beyond self-promotion and actually adds value to our readers’ experience. Without the ability to embed Ellipse in this post I would have probably just retweeted the link to the stream and called it a day.

All hype aside, I think this is a nice move that is consistent with Heap’s marketing strategy up to this point. Not every act is going to be able to reproduce what Heap has done in the promotion of Ellipse, (nor should they try – come up with your own strategy!) But there are a lot of good lessons to be learned.

What are you doing to promote your music? How are you using social media and the web to engage with fans? Do you have the help of a label or are you doing it on your own? Let me know – it’s easy to get wrapped up in the buzz surrounding high profile acts but I’m interested in stories about artists at all levels.

Also check out last week’s post Imogen Heap shows us that DIY pays off – and takes a lot of work.

Photo by kk+