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FanBridge: Fan List Management

published
on April 1, 2010
by
Sandra
in DIY, fans, music, music business, social media, technology, and tools for musicians
. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , .

We’ve talked ad nauseum about the importance of interacting with your fans via the many social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook, via your very own iPhone app, and also via a newsletter. As you fanbase grows, however, you’ll need a way to manage this process. Enter FanBridge. What FanBridge does “is very, very simple: help musical acts email and text their fans.”

FanBridge, which is all about “powering valuable fan relationships,” will help you not only get more fans, but also keep them engaged, and track your analytics so you can see what’s working and what’s getting them excited. After all, that’s what you’re working toward isn’t it — getting (and keeping) your fans excited? Let’s examine their 3 steps: 1) get more fans, 2) excite your fans, and 3) keep your fans engaged.

Get More Fans

Let’s say you’re somewhat organized and established and you already have a list. It’s super easy to add said list to your account. They’ll even do it for you for free if you want. Once you’ve got a list going in FanBridge, then you’re ready to start growing it.

Fans that come to your website/blog/myspace etc. need a place to type in their email address so you can add them to your list. FanBridge will whip up the code you need for these forms which, of course, are totally customizable in look and feel. They even have downloadable signup forms for live shows/events that’ll work without an internet connection.

If you are offering a fan incentive, like a free download with signup, they handle everything. You just upload the incentive. Easy.

Excite Your Fans

FanBridge makes converting browsers into buyers easy with simple tools that take visitors to the point of sale for whatever it is you’re selling (i.e. tickets, merch etc.) Whatever actions your fans take are tracked and converted into data that help you understand which of your campaigns are most effective, who is clicking on what, and what you need to do to reach out to your most active fans.

Another important feature is the tour calendar. Your calendar can be part of your newsletter and is also posted on your fan “action page.” Fans can even set reminders about your shows.

FanBridge understands how valuable your fans’ friends are, and gives your fans the tools they need to share your music with them. Viral marketing tools like contests, prizes, “share this” links, etc. are automatically integrated into the system. Remember, the easier it is for your fans to share your music with others, the more likely they are to do it!

Keep Fans Engaged

Artist-fan interaction has become the norm. Finally. It takes a LOT of work to stay on top of all the various ways you are interacting with your fans, though, and you can’t afford to waste your valuable time toggling between twitter clients, facebook pages, and everything else. FanBridge solves this problem by allowing you to communicate with fans across many networks all from a single location.

Email newsletters (which are super important) are a breeze to send out, because FanBridge handles all the backend stuff for you. You simply need to come up with the irresistible content that goes in them.

Another brilliant feature is their mobile text messaging platform. Imagine sending last minute text messages to your fans to remind them about your upcoming show or sending updates from backstage! You can schedule them to send later, too, so you don’t have to worry about doing it live all the time.

This service is priced insanely low for all the cool stuff you get. Seriously. Really cheap.

In case you’re still not convinced you need FanBridge, they’ve come up with 5 simple reasons why you need them: 1) you get superior client service from real, live people, 2) their only priority is making your fan list more valuable, 3) they automate the fan-getting process so it’s working for you 24/7, 4) they do all the analysis so you don’t have to, and 5) you can communicate with all your fans in one place.

Be sure to check out these handy FanBridge resources too:

Tips on Sending Effective Fan Newsletters

3 Fan List Basics for Musicians

How Do I Get More Emails at Live Shows/Events?

Music in the 2010 Academy Awards

published
on March 5, 2010
by
Sandra
in culture, fans, film, music, and music production
. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

“Movies without music are just snapshots”
~ Stephen Whitty

With the Academy Awards just a few days away, the exciting is growing. The heavy red carpet gets rolled out, Hollywood celebrities grin (hard under the influence of botox!) and bear it during their grueling last minute nips and tucks, starstruck fans buzz with anticipation, and talented artists from all facets of the film-making world hope and dream that this might be their year…

Let’s – just for a moment – bypass all the rest of the ruckus, though, and focus on the music. Though not a central theme, music plays an undeniable role in the biggest night of the year for film. In fact, though it rarely gets the attention it should, the music often makes the movie.

Naturally, we’ve got the four award categories that are music-related, which is all about the behind-the-scenes artists. These are the guys and gals who slave away composing, editing, and mixing and hardly get any recognition for their hard work. Unless, of course, they win an Oscar. Here is a breakdown of those categories and their nominees.

– Music (Original Score): Avatar (James Harner), Fantastic Mr. Fox (Alexandre Desplat), The Hurt Locker (Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders), Sherlock Holmes (Hans Zimmer), Up (Michael Giacchino)

– Music (Original Song): The Princess and the Frog for “Almost There” and “Down in New Orleans” (Music and Lyrics by Randy Newman), Paris 36 for “Loin de Paname” (Music by Reinhardt Wagner and Lyrics by Frank Thomas), Nine for “Take it All” (Music and Lyrics by Maury Yeston), Crazy Heart for “The Weary Kind (Theme from Crazy Heart)” (Music and Lyrics by Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett)

– Sound Editing: Avatar (Christopher Boyes and Gwendolyn Yates Whittle), The Hurt Locker (Paul N.J. Ottosson), Inglorious Basterds (Wylie Stateman), Star Trek (Mark Stoeckinger and Alan Rankin), Up (Mark Stoeckinger and Alan Rankin)

– Sound Mixing: Avatar (Christopher Boyes, Gary Summers, Andy Nelson and Tony Johnson), The Hurt Locker (Paul N.J. Ottosson and Ray Beckett), Inglorious Basterds (Michael Minkler, Tony Lamberti and Mark Ulano), Star Trek (Anna Behlmer, Andy Nelson and Peter J. Devlin), Transformers (Greg P. Russell, Gary Summers and Geoffrey Patterson)

Beyond the music-related categories, there are the movies about music, like Crazy Heart. Apparently, public opinion has Jeff Bridges taking home the Oscar for Best Actor. It’s his fifth nomination and this time, say fans, it’s his time. Over here at Evolving Music, we say movies about music and the profound role it plays in people’s lives should win more often! Actually, there should be more movies about music (and musicians) period. Interestingly, this year it seems the music stars themselves did not come out on top. Idolator points out that Leona Lewis’ Avatar theme “I See You” didn’t even get nominated (although it did get nominated for a Golden Globe.)

Whatever your predictions and sentiments are for the event his year, don’t forget to take a moment to appreciate the music because, as the wise Stephen Whitty said, “Movies without music are just snapshots!” Speaking of shots, here are some drinking games for Oscar night in case you’re interested.

Top 30 Music Quotes

published
on February 8, 2010
by
Sandra
in music
. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

The above quote is by Friedrich Nietzsche.
(I assume A.Z. is whoever put the quote on the bench.)

“We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.” – Decca Recording Company, rejecting the Beatles, in 1962

“I don’t know anything about music. In my line you don’t have to.” – Elvis Presley

“If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.” – Albert Einstein

“Music is everybody’s possession. It’s only publishers who think that people own it.” – John Lennon

“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.” – Aldous Huxley

“Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent.” – Victor Hugo

“When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.” –  Jimi Hendrix

“There’s nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.” – Johann Sebastian Bach

“Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” – Berthold Auerbach

“Music is love in search of a word.” – Sidney Lanier

“Music is the art which is most nigh to tears and memory.” – Oscar Wilde

“A jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges.” – Benny Green

“Master your instrument. Master the music. And then forget all that bullshit and just play.” – Charlie Parker

“When I first heard Elvis’ voice, I knew that I wasn’t going to work for anybody … hearing him for the first time was like busting out of jail” – Bob Dylan

“Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without.”  – Confucius

“If you can walk you can dance. If you can talk you can sing.” – Zimbabwe Proverb

“Where words fail, music speaks.” – Hans Christian Andersen

“Music is the shorthand of emotion.”  – Leo Tolstoy

“A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.” – Frank Zappa

“Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.” – Voltaire

“I stole everything I ever heard, but mostly I stole from the horns.” – Ella Fitzgerald

“Playing ‘Bop’ is like Scrabble with all the vowels missing.” – Duke Ellington

“Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.” – Igor Stravinsky

“MTV is to music as KFC is to chicken.” – Lewis Black

“I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer.” – Richard Strauss

“He has a woman’s name and wears makeup. How original.” – Alice Cooper, on Marilyn Manson

“If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.” – Gustav Mahler

“Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.” – Charlie Parker

“The Irish gave the bagpipes to the Scots as a joke, but the Scots haven’t got the joke yet.” – Oliver Herford

Contest: Funniest Music Video of 2009

published
on January 20, 2010
by
Sandra
in fans, music, and video
. Closed Tags: , , , , , , .

Get off the boat, take your d*ck out of the box, and cast your vote for the funniest music video of 2009. Why? To put its creator in the music video for the Weezer song, “Raditude. ” That’s why.

This contest is brought to you by music parody show, “The Key of Awesome” on Next New Networks. Click here, and enter the youtube link of your submission near the bottom of the page. Deadline is midnight ET, January 27th 2010.

Rivers Cuomo, the lead dude from Weezer, and the show host talk more about the contest here:

Music Discovery in 2010

published
on January 18, 2010
by
Sandra
in fans, future of music, music, music business, social media, technology, and tools for musicians
. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

A year and a half ago I wrote a post about the Top 5 Music Discovery Sites. A lot has happened since then: MySpace acquired iLike, MySpace acquired (and buried) iMeem (and then brought back their users’ playlists), Google Music Search was born, and the mobile music space exploded all over us thanks to the iPhone and the whole new world of opportunities now open to iPhone app developers… to name just a few things.

So, what are the best options available for music discovery right now? Here is my updated list:

Pandora
The customizable internet radio station that knows your musical taste so well it’s just plain creepy. Assuming you use Pandora somewhat actively, i.e. click the thumbs up/thumbs down buttons or suggest songs, the service is shockingly adept at playing music you will dig. Cool features like station gifting and the ability to share songs via email, Twitter, or Facebook give it a social slant. Links to iTunes and Amazon let you quickly purchase songs for your personal collection. And of course, if you’re striving for musical snobbery, Pandora not only tells you all sorts of fun facts about the artist, the album, or the song, but also explains (in terms probably only the serious musicologists among us would understand) exactly why it recommended a particular song. Oh, and Pandora is coming soon to a car near you.
Mobile Status: Android, Blackberry, iPhone, Palm, Windows and more.

thesixtyone
Our current favorite place to discover sick ass new music is thesixtyone, which purports to make music more democratic: “artists upload their work for review, but, rather than allow a stuffy suit in a boardroom to decide what’s good, thousands of listeners do.” The site also rewards listeners who are active participants by allowing them to “earn reputation, level up [their] influence, and collect badges,” making it almost like a Yelp culture for music fans. You can connect your account to Facebook, share what you’re listening to etc. If you’re an artist planning to put your music on t61, here’s what you should know.
Mobile Status: Nothing yet, but fans are chomping at the bit (check out the comments on their Facebook note.)

Midomi and Shazaam
I’m grouping these two together because they are different versions of the same thing. While Shazaam seems to have the most traction (likely due to its simplicity and clean look and feel), Midomi has more features. It can recognize not only that song playing on your car radio, but also singing, whistling, and humming. Although it’s very gratifying to instantly identify a song you hear, the real power in this technology lies in the actionable options presented along with the search result. Once you’ve identified the song, you can buy it, share it, watch the video etc.
Mobile Status (Midomi): Android, iPhone, Nokia, Windows.
Mobile Status (Shazaam): Android, Blackberry, iPhone, Nokia.

Grooveshark
First of all, let me just say that I am not a fan of the current design. Specifically, it’s the sidebar on the left that I find very aesthetically displeasing. Besides that, however, Grooveshark is a very cool service. You can upload your own music collection and stream it from wherever. Or search for music and stream it instantly. Of course it has all the social goodies as well, including embeddable widgets for your blog.
Mobile Status: Android, Blackberry.

Hype Machine
This clever little site is a music blog aggregator. As they say, “every day, thousands of people around the world write about music they love — and it all ends up here.” Go ahead. Nerd out. Worth mentioning, also, is RCRD LBL, which is a “network of ad supported online record labels and blogs offering completely free music and multimedia content from emerging and established artists.” Yes, free mp3s.
Mobile Status: iPhone app in the works?

Honorable Mentions:

Blip.fm
Blip.fm is essentially Twitter for music, allowing you to share tracks (along with brief comments and messages) with other users in a real-time stream. Naturally, it’s also integrated with Twitter and Facebook, so you can showcase your awesome musical taste by becoming the DJ and showing off your skillz. Or, you can use the service as a music discovery tool by listening to other DJs.
Mobile Status: iPhone (“Boombox Pro”)

Amazon Music
Amazon created a lot of buzz early on with their recommendation engine for books and things. Why shouldn’t it work just as well for music? Turns out it does… In fact, it’s a pretty solid option. You can listen to samples, plus do all the usual nifty Amazon-y things.
Mobile Status: iPhone

JamLegend
While JamLegend (the computer nerd’s answer to Guitar Hero & Rock Band) is first and foremost a game, it’s also a totally viable place for music discovery. As you sort through featured or new artists and songs, you might just stumble upon some great new stuff… You might also get sucked in and spend 12 hours pressing the 1, 2, and 3 keys on your keyboard. Consider yourself warned.
Mobile Status: JamLegend hasn’t gone mobile, but RockBand has an iPhone app, and of course there is Tap Tap Revenge (the Guitar Hero-style game).

How will YOU discover new music in 2010?