Archive for the 'DIY' CategoryPage 3 of 15

The Indie Invites Artists to Win $25k in Prizes, Including a Free MobBase App!

published
on August 17, 2010
by
Alan Khalfin
in contests, DIY, fans, MobBase, and music
. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Are you the Ultimate Social Artist of 2010?
TheIndie.biz wants to know and to find out, they just launched a contest for musicians that has up to $25,000 in prizes! Their Ultimate Social Artist Contest invites bands and musicians from all over the world to take part and bring their fans along for the ride, who can also win up to $3,500 in prizes. The band that signs up the most fans to their TheIndie.biz profiles, while selling the most songs through the site and receiving the highest ratings from the contest’s panel of judges, wins.  Contest sponsors include YouLicense, Media2Radio, and MobBase, who has also partnered with The Indie to create iPhone apps for its artists.

“Social media has changed the music landscape,” says Damon Cleveland, CEO of TheIndie.biz. “With millions of people online, updating their profiles, chatting, giving status updates, the biggest audience in the world, at any given time, is online. TheIndie.biz gives independent musicians the opportunity to tap into that audience and introduce them to their music, while music fans from all over the world can discover new bands. The rules have changed and we want to help indie bands take advantage of the new opportunities.”

How to Participate
To participate in the contest, bands must be registered artists on The Indie, which is free. There are two phases to the contest: first, bands must have/sign up 100 fans on The Indie, after which they will be eligible to submit a song and a brief note on how they acquired their TheIndie.biz fan base. The contest winners will be judged based on:

  1. The content of the song submitted (production, composition, and lyrics)
  2. Number of TheIndie.biz fans
  3. Artist development, marketability, and overall readiness
  4. Ability of the artist to socialize their music on The Indie
  5. Creativity of their social media campaign

The contest ends on October 31, 2010. Registration and participation for fans and bands is free, and all genres are welcome, so why not enter the contest here?

Prizes and Judging
The Ultimate Social Artist will be selected through a 25/25/50 weighted formula, with 25% of the weight going to the number of fans registered, 25% going to the number of songs sold on TheIndie.biz, and the remaining 50% toward the subjective portion including the song submitted along with the other elements of the band’s portfolio. The Grand Prize includes $25,00 in prizes:

  • Full publicity campaign (releases, industry media blitz, etc)
  • 30 day full ad campaign (Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, etc)
  • Social media marketing campaign – up to 50,000+ subscribers
  • A MobBase iPhone App with one year of free service
  • Global marketing of winning song – up to 1,100 radio stations
  • Global marketing of winning artist – up to 1,350 DJs
  • One week feature placement on iTunes, Napster, Amazon, and others
  • A professional, personalized band management plan
  • A professional, personalized band marketing plan
  • Regional tour marketing & booking
  • Song/Voice licensing for The Music Producer
  • Six Month private label song licensing account, and more…

About The Indie
The Indie is a premier social music promotion and distribution platform that encourages the discovery, and consumption of music created by unsigned artists, independent artists and indie labels. They strive to meet these goals by creating simplified, highly effective, social solutions that enable artists to exponentially promote their music and dramatically grow their fan base; providing artists with emerging channels where their music, performances and videos can be discovered and consumed; and creating a marketplace the attracts and encourages music fans to explore, discover, share, and consume music socially.

Outside Lands Remix Contest Winners Selected!

published
on August 12, 2010
by
LG
in collaboration, DIY, music, remixing, and tools for musicians
. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

All in all, there were some amazing remixes submitted for the 1st annual Outside Lands Remix Contest powered by URB.com and MixMatchMusic. Entrants from around the world competed for a once-in-a-lifetime chance to DJ at this year’s festival. After torturous deliberations among the judges, the grand prize winner is Nisus for his remix of Gogol Bordello‘s “Transcontinental Hustle“. As the winner, Nisus will get to perform in front of thousands of festival goers at Outside Lands this weekend, so be sure to check him out if you’re going! Nisus will also get $500 and a free iPhone app from MobBase. To learn more about the winner, check out his website.

We’d also like to congratulate the following winning remixes selected as finalists:

Rebirth Brass Band – SaQi (http://saqimusic.com/about/)
My Morning Jacket – Irene! (http://soundcloud.com/djloosefit)
Beats Antique – Giancarlo (http://djcarlo.net/)

Listen to all the winning remixes below, or check out all the remixes submitted here.
Outside Lands 2010 / URB.com Remix Contest Winners Selected!

Root Music: BandPages on Facebook

published
on June 10, 2010
by
Sandra
in DIY, fans, future of music, music, music business, social media, startups, tools for musicians, and website
. 13 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

Remember when the tables turned and MySpace went from being the coolest social networking site around to a shady place for scantily-clad teens in questionable photos and, well… musicians? Despite the seizure-inducing animated gifs and glittering madness that came with the pimp-your-profile craze, MySpace somehow still maintained its role as THE place for musicians. Your band maybe had its own website if, you know, it was all fancy and stuff. But your band definitely had a MySpace page!

Then Facebook came along and soothed us with its minimalist design and all its tangible real-world benefits, and rocked our collective worlds. And yet, the musician was always left to fend for him or herself.

Enter Root Music. Musicians now FINALLY have a home on Facebook. This clever little San Francisco-based startup has created a way for musicians to share their stuff right from within Facebook. The BandPage is a tab just like your photos, info, or wall tabs. While they browse your page, fans can listen to your music from the embedded SoundCloud player. Want to place a banner on your page? Easy! Just upload the picture you want to use. No need to create a custom one. Every section of the BandPage is easily editable. Just drop, drag, and customize as you wish.

What you end up with is a sexy place within your Facebook profile, which you already use and people are already looking at, to share all your stuff (info, photos, shows, twitter feed and much much more) with your fans. In the place where they are already hanging out! It’s an elegant solution to an obvious problem, and Root Music has done it with aplomb. Once you setup your Root Music Bandpage on Facebook, be sure to set it as the default landing page so that it’s the first thing fans see!

MobBase Speaks To Label 2.0 Members In Music Marketing Training Session

published
on June 7, 2010
by
Alan Khalfin
in DIY, interview, MobBase, music, music business, and tools for musicians
. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

Last week, MobBase co-founder Alan Khalfin led a music marketing training session with Greg Rollett for Label 2.0 members. Alan shared some great music marketing strategies and explained how mobile apps are one of the best ways to engage with the modern music fan. He gave a thorough overview of the MobBase platform and shared some best practices on how to create iPhone apps for artists.

While the training session was limited to Label 2.0 members, you can listen to it here:

If you’re not a Label 2.0 member or don’t know who they are, you should definitely check them out! Label 2.0 is an interactive learning community for musicians that empowers you to build your own music business and keep all the profits. When you sign up for Label 2.0, you will receive monthly, interactive training programs that guide you through all the steps of managing your music business online.

You will get interactive screen cast videos, where you will learn how to setup marketing campaigns, manage online accounts, and utilize a plethora of resources to build a passionate fanbase. They also do white board training to deliver concepts and show processes of moving fans through buying and sales cycles. And just like they did with MobBase, they do live calls and sessions that give you the opportunity to ask questions and get feedback on your efforts. All from some of the digital music industry’s brightest minds. Check them out here.

How To Use Email To Grow Your Fanbase & Drive Music Sales

published
on June 3, 2010
by
Alan Khalfin
in DIY, music, music business, and tools for musicians
. 11 Comments Tags: , , , , , .
This is a guest post by MusicNomad, a musicians advocate organization that researches, reviews and ranks thousands of companies in the music industry to filter out the ones that help musicians the most.
Your relationship with your fans has never been more important. They hold the money and are the ones that want to buy directly from you. They love your music and are the people you need to develop an intimate relationship with if you want your band’s career to grow. If used right, email and email management is a powerful tool that can make the artist-fan relationship grow stronger. Email can be used in a range of ways, such as a personalized messages to give fans an update or a call for action to buy something from you. Here is a list of what we believe are the best ways to use email to connect with and grow your fanbase:
  1. Bands (and not management or interns) should always write their own emails to be authentic.
  2. Noon Eastern time on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday is the ideal time to send broadcast emails to your fans, as people are at work across the US and Europe.
  3. The ideal frequency of emails to fans is about every 2 to 4 weeks, with updates on your tour, merch and music announcements.
  4. Negotiate upfront if you leave from a record label that you keep your email list and you own it.
  5. Give great deals through email offers for pre-orders, such as a $50 package for $25.
  6. Don’t put links to iTunes and Amazon in your emails. Fans want to buy direct from you so always link them directly to your website (or Bandcamp).
  7. In each email, make sure you have direct and separate links to buy merch, buy tour tickets and buy music. Don’t be afraid to have a big “Buy” button in the email.
  8. Sell email exclusive package offerings around holidays such as Christmas, Halloween, Cinco De Mayo, etc or just give some music away for free that day in exchange for an email.
  9. Your fan email lists are gold and building them up is huge! Collect emails and zip codes from your fans at shows or ask for them in exchange for a free download.
  10. Pay someone to go around and collect emails and zip codes at your shows. It’s that important.
  11. Ask your merch company for the emails and zip codes for the fans that bought your merch.
  12. Send emails by zip code so that you can target emails to promote upcoming shows. The best time to send a show announcement is 30 to 45 days before the show date. The ideal time to send an email reminder about an upcoming show is 5 days before the show. Offer fans something special like a $5 off coupon at your merch table. In the subject line, be sure to put the name of that city, such as “New Tour Date announced in Chicago”. This will personalize the email and increase its overall open rate.
  13. Don’t go overboard in graphics and special effects in your email, but make it look nice and spend some time designing it.
  14. Before you send out a fan email, send a test email to you and your band members to see how it looks. Fix any issues before sending.
  15. If you have only a fan’s email and no zip code, give something away for free (like a live show recording or free album download) in exchange for it and tell them it will help you more effectively communicate with them about tour dates or special appearances in their city. It’s the truth.
  16. Don’t cut and paste blanket emails to your fans. Be authentic even if it takes you longer — you will be much more successful this way. Fans will tell a friend about the personal email they received from you and viral marketing will begin. Split up the emails and get everyone in the band involved.
  17. Send an email to fans in a city you just played in and thank them for their support. Have a local connection in your email to those fans and tell them what you did in or thought about their city besides your show.
If we missed something that you have found to be successful in your email marketing experience, please comment below!
About MusicNomad
MusicNomad is a musicians advocate organization that tries to make sense of the vast and fragmented music industry through researching, interviewing, reviewing and ranking thousands of companies in the music industry and filtering the ones that can really help musicians. They then do write ups on the companies, rank them and give you a direct link to their website. There are also tips, news and articles for musicians to explore. The website is free to use and focuses on fighting for the underdog, independent musicians!