new website - work in progress

[fusilierb]

May 25, 2009, 7:10am, coachdebra wrote:It might be worth the investment to hire a Marketing/PR person to write the bio. It's very challenging to write for yourself. I'm a great writer and help my clients a lot with their stuff - but I still hired someone else to help me with my bio.Also, in thinking about language - it's a good idea to think about who your target audience is and use language that speaks to them - their words, their concepts.I have a couple of great classes recorded about these concepts as well as SEO and making a website that sells for you on the Artist's EDGE Membership.In particular:Pick Your NicheInterview with Patrick SchwertdfegerInterview with Jeri Goldsteinhttp://artists-edge.com/joinYes CoachDebra,That is exactly the place that I'm stuck at right now. It feels a bit too early to be hiring a PR firm right now, but I do need help with the bio. I really suck at writing about myself. My biggest sticking point is picking the Niche right now.I do know this much, the main reason I'm doing this is that I've met a few videographers in town, one of which I'm working on a little scoring project with, and she is gonna talk me up to her friends. So I really need a place that they can go to see who I am and what I do beyond her personal reference. So for now, that is my target audience. For this kind of music I'm not expecting this to be a "fan" site for the general public. But you did make me remember why I started this in the first place. That will help me focus again.Thanks!B

[fusilierb]

May 25, 2009, 7:11am, coachdebra wrote:Oh - and as a complete technophobe myself - I absolutely love the wysiwyg features and ease of SEO with wordpress.Yes, I've been reading about wordpress and that app was the sole reason that I've decided to go with GoDaddy, as they have a one button setup for wordpress. And I've also heard of a nice download store that is open source and plugs right into wordpress. So, when I decide on the hosting package I want to commit to with GoDaddy, I'm integrating wordpress into parts of this, if not ditching the entire thing for it. But I have yet to really see it and play with it, so I just started out with iweb, since its already installed on my machine.Thanks,B

[fusilierb]

Here is something else that I'm kind of struggling with. I'm a big believer in sharing and I have no intention of selling my music to the general public. But I have NO intention of ever allowing my music to be used for commercial purposes without me being compensated. My motto is, if you're making money, I want to be making money. If your just enjoying my stuff for personal reasons and want to turn other people on to it, you have my complete blessing.I'm looking into the creative common licenses right now on what my options are in defining what I consider to be fair use. I want to be careful of how I position this on the music pages themselves. I want it to be clear that if you are just a casual listener and you like my stuff that you can download and share it with anyone and everyone you know. But if you are needing music for any project that you are gonna monetize, we have to talk about price. I'm not sure how to position that on a site that is supposed to be dedicated to me being hired to write music or to get my music licensed. I'm thinking of forcing people to at least sign up for my mailing list before allowing them to download anything, so I can benefit from the marketing side of sharing. Any thoughts on this? I might even just put together another site that is just for the casual user where everything is downloadable for free and keep that completely separate from this more commercial endeavor.B

[sgs4u]

May 25, 2009, 9:18am, fusilierb wrote:Any thoughts on this? I might even just put together another site that is just for the casual user where everything is downloadable for free and keep that completely separate from this more commercial endeavor.BI like the above idea. You might not want to put all your music on the free site... Keep them separate, and you might be able to watch how much stuff your giving away as well, instead of always wondering of someone's grabbing and using it. Personally, I don't worry about people stealing my music and making money with it. Have you noticed that many of the more experienced members here, don't even link anything to their music sites. Just worth noticing I think. And hey, writing bios is much easier than writing music and recording it. I saw this video from Derek Sivers, and he shares a bit of wisdom about the descpription and stuff for bios.





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and a bunch more videos on his blog about marketinghttp://sivers.org/soundadvice

[fusilierb]

Thanks Steve! That was very interesting and very helpful. Thinking of it like that will make this much easier. Almost simple.I can only imagine the more experienced people here aren't linking to their music, and I' only talking about the film/tv instrumentalists, which is what I'm after, is that I really don't see a lot of gig's or activity coming from a website. I do see it as a kind of business card that shows what I'm capable of for those people who I meet in person who might want to know more about me. A site that really pushes music seems more geared towards people who are pushing themselves as artists and needing to stay in touch with their existing and hopefully new fans. And who, besides those of us who write this stuff and people with visual projects who need this stuff, are really going out of their way to listen to and buy film/tv instrumentals? Unless of course you've scored a popular movie, and at that point in time, you're moving more into the pop star type of range.I've never heard a film/tv cue blasted at a party, with the notable exception of the theme from "Halloween" which I always love to blast at a party!

[mazz]

The website looks good. Easy to navigate.What differentiates "Music" from "Orchestral Instrumentals" or "Electronic Instrumentals"? Shouldn't it all be under "Music"? Or are you differentiating between "Music for Downloading" and "Music for sale to production clients"? That was a little confusing to me.Having the little music player on the right hand side while I was on the Orchestral Instrumentals page was a little confusing. Do I listen to the music by clicking on the song in the big list or do I go to the player to start listening?At this point I don't make any of my music downloadable. I consider my site a business card/demo for potential clients. If and when I make a CD for sale, I'll probably market it via the usual channels and put a link to those channels on my main website, which is in my mind more of a B to B site.Call me old fashioned but is music so de-valued in our society that the only way we can get people to listen to it is to give it away for free? I'm a pretty generous guy, but when I go to my day gig, I don't donate one day's pay a month for free just because I want my boss to like me. This is our life's work and it's worth something!!!!!OK, off my soap box.I think you're headed in a very good direction with this site, Bryan, and you're getting some great feedback here. I'm watching this for when I jump ship from BJ!!Cheers!Mazz

[fusilierb]

May 25, 2009, 10:08am, mazz wrote:The website looks good. Easy to navigate.What differentiates "Music" from "Orchestral Instrumentals" or "Electronic Instrumentals"? Shouldn't it all be under "Music"? Or are you differentiating between "Music for Downloading" and "Music for sale to production clients"? That was a little confusing to me.Having the little music player on the right hand side while I was on the Orchestral Instrumentals page was a little confusing. Do I listen to the music by clicking on the song in the big list or do I go to the player to start listening?At this point I don't make any of my music downloadable. I consider my site a business card/demo for potential clients. If and when I make a CD for sale, I'll probably market it via the usual channels and put a link to those channels on my main website, which is in my mind more of a B to B site.Call me old fashioned but is music so de-valued in our society that the only way we can get people to listen to it is to give it away for free? I'm a pretty generous guy, but when I go to my day gig, I don't donate one day's pay a month for free just because I want my boss to like me. This is our life's work and it's worth something!!!!!OK, off my soap box.I think you're headed in a very good direction with this site, Bryan, and you're getting some great feedback here. I'm watching this for when I jump ship from BJ!!Cheers!MazzThanks Mazz!The music pages are confusing, because at this point in time, I'm confused about how to group them. At first I was going to lay them out grouped by orchestral, electronic and rock, but after thinking about it I'm starting to think that, for this particular audience, it should be grouped more by genre, like a libarary would. So I added the extra music link page and stared at it for a while and gave up on going any further. So as of right now, I'm thinking of stripping out the designations in the nav bar and going with a set of links that are more like, Extreme Sports, Dramatic, Suspensful, etc. Still not really sure how I'm going to end up on this one.The player is on everypage cause the original idea was that you would have two ways of hearing music on each page, the embeded flash player which is easiest just to hit play and sample bits and pieces AND the more detailed breakdown of each piece on the left, in case anyone wanted to really drill down into details about a piece. That way I could write a more descriptive paragraph of instrumentation, bpm, style, etc. I'm still leaning towards doing a, two ways of drilling into the music, but I will be very specific in the text at the top of the screen that describes what the options are and why you might want to use either way. I agree with you about the giving away stuff and I know I'm riding a controversal fence on this one, especially since I claim to want to make a living at this. But I'm from the "new" school and in that school music is already devalued to that point and has been for a while. I've accepted that many years ago. I am not pushing an agenda on this topic, but in my particular case, I know for a fact that I'm not gonna make anything resembling a living by trying to sell my midi mock-up's of film/tv type cues to the general public. Who has ever made a "bunch" of money doing that? I only expect to make money by residuals and custom composing for projects and in a perfect world writing concert music that gets performed and scoring large films. I'm just being a realist for the type of music I write and the situation that we find ourselves in today with file sharing. Now, if I one day get inspired enough to write enough tunes in a particuar style that feels like it should be an album AND my midi mock ups become as convincing as yours are, then that will of course be for sale, with certain tracks given away for promo. But that's just not what I'm into nor what I'm focusing on. So in my case, if you're not gonna commericalize my music for profit, I'm just happy you like it and have at it.Ok, now off my soapbox. Thanks for checking it out! I have a feeling that this site will look and act completely differently than it does now when its time to "officially" launch it.Thanks again Mazz!B

[hummingbird]

Bryan - I think it might be confusing to have more than one way to play the songs. on my film/tv music site, I have everything on one page, organized by genre.... IMO you have to think about who is going to be going to your site and what you want them to get from it. If it's a music library or music publisher, you want them to be able to get to the music in one click. You want your track titles to reflect the style of the music.If you want to have a look at mine, it's www.vikkiflawithmusic.com , I offer a simple bio & everything is 3rd personit's somewhat different from my artist-based website for fans @ www.vikkiflawith.com , I offer a more extensive bio & it's in first person, post my gigs, and blog, etc. (PS - if you go there, please sign my guestbook)

[fusilierb]

Yes Vikki,I think you are right. It should be two websites. That makes much more sense. I do think I see the advantage of one music page. I've got some ideas. I'll try them out and repost to see what you think.Thanks!B

[fusilierb]

Yes Vikki,You are definitely right. Two sites for sure. It solves all my problems and makes more sense in the long run. Thanks!Old site down, new site(s) soon...