Your Online Presence

[southpaw]

I searched and couldn't find anything other than "music hosting service" related questions (a' la.. should i choose soundclick, myspace, etc.)Your 'online musical presence' overall is what im talking about here. From developing a community of fans to correspond with, to spreading your music around and marketing yourself as an artist/songwriter/producer, etc. I imagine this discussion will move towards a few different areas. Anyhow the general topics i have been looking into lately is building a solid presence online as a musician, and maintaining a community of listeners that can (among many other benefits) produce a decent revenue stream. Part IBasically, i've decided to get the ball rolling with my central 'musician website', ive looked into tons of different packages and plans.. Man, there are more options than a decent looking chick has in the army. Im looking to hear what you guys have found that worked for you, anything you'd reccommend. Im familiar with most of the 'music hosting' sites, and i like my sondclick account, so im not really looking for another www.musichost.com/myname site, unless you know of one that just really rocks.. i am going to register my domain name and start my website. For you guys/gals that have done this or looked into it who did you use and why? Web hosting at a great price, is a dime a dozen these days and theres lotta good services to choose from.. So I am particulary interested in a good - website builder package/service or 'mac' software that cater to a musical artist. Something simple (not iweb, but not dreamweaver..) but allows me to modify and make it unique to me. Ideally, something like xsitepro 2 but for mac... Stupid pc, always got all the apps...Again, i have been looking at tons and tons of different packages all promising to be great.. Anyone recommmend something they've used or know about? Part III am an entrepreneur, and over the course of the last few years working on a handful of[small] business projects, I have learned a reasonable amount of S.E.O/online marketing/and the vast possibility that is the internet... or 'the google machine'. I now give my buddy (a computer geek since we were kids) the respect he deserves! Yet, even after understanding the power of an online marketing campaign (biting the bullet of paying a pretty hefty monthly fee for a yearlong S.E.O. marketing campaign) it is nevertheless a bit overwhelming still. And while i have a bit more discipline in strictly 'business dealings online', the artist in me sometimes says "just do what you do and everything will eventually fall into place"... This is of course is rather naive, but i have put off marketing myself and my songs the right way, for a little while now. Anyone really focused on using all (well not all, alot) of the tools available to market their music, and build your community to get out to shows, buy merch/cds etc..What kinda returns have you gotten, found any succes with it, dont care to get that deep into it, complete waste of your time?Ok, ya. Ive got a myspace/soundclick/facebook and what have you, im more talking aboutthe tedious marketing process' to try to get some real leverage going. I would def much rather be wirting /playing.. It seems that there is quite a goldmine of opportunity out there, but the only people i ever hear exploit it for music, is paid professionals who are hired by an artist with a big name and/or big wallet to work full time and internet market all day. Wow, that was much longer than i intended it to be... Alright, back to the homework..[sigh]Jamie

[mojobone]

I'm with ya, bro. The breadth and depth of the opportunities available are breathtaking in scope; how does one decide? There are many useful sites I can recommend, (this is one of my favorites) but here's how I'm breaking it down at the moment: My favorite host is ReverbNation, because the site provides the best tracking metrics, so you can determine which of your promotional efforts are gaining traction. This site and several others can provide worthwhile feedback from your peers, your own independent research will likely turn up important resources for gigs, depending on your musical tastes and relative inclination to gig; I haven't yet found the ideal site for recruiting street teams, but I'll let you know if I do. Since I prefer to spend time working on my art, I think Passive Promotion is a good source for ideas; likewise Andrew Dubber's blog. I also believe that Tony Van Veen and Michael Laskow have their fingers on the pulse of the modern music industry and that we ignore Moses Avalon at our peril. I think that a forward thinking modern musician needs to have a presence on MySpace, Facebook, and at least a couple of genre-specific blog sites, as well as a personal band site that's designed to bring your fans in close where you and they can get to know one another better. I believe the band site, the site where you have the most personal control is the site that should get the greatest amount of SEO (search engine optimization) attention.I think of fandom as a deeply personal thing; the music that speaks to you is indicative of the very fiber of who you are as a human being, so I would suggest that obtaining your fan's email address is a really good thing and selling it to a third party is really bad.I think the only real leverage a musician ever sees is the ability to put a$$e$ in seats, so legwork, marketing skills and word-of-mouth are as important, if not more important than they've ever been.I hope I'm not being Capt. Obvious, here, but this is how I see it.

[matthoggard]

2 great posts guys.My Cowriter and I were just talking about this the other day. Ive been getting some good "inside" information lately on the biz and everything Im hearing points towards self promotion in a hardcore way.Its getting harder to get publishers to listen to new material, especially artist/band material. If we can pitch our songs and show that we have an active fan base and sales through downloads etc, we stand a greater chance at getting out songs heard and licensed. Not just bands but songwriters as well. One of Taylor Swifts biggest assets was that she had 100,000 myspace friends and was an internet hit before she got signed. She self promoted her way to the top.Now is the time for us to take control of our own destinies.M~

[southpaw]

Very good points. Thanks fellas. Im checking out reverbnation now, appreciate it mojo.

[mazz]

As a non-performing artist, my focus is more of a business to business approach. My audience is music libraries, publishers and music supervisors. My website serves to provide a bio and credits up front and then a way to host music and have it organized in such a way I can send a link to a potential client and they can audition the music that they would be most interested in.I think of my website as a combination demo/business card/brochure.I see that most of the sites you mention are more oriented to bands and artists. I suppose that composers like me are trying to build an audience but an audience of a different kind, or am I missing the similarities? Most of these sites feel mostly useless to me since I'm not advertising gigs or selling CDs or T-shirts. I'd like to see a web hosting service that was more oriented to the composer types and their needs. I currently host with that "other" company and it's OK but there are some aspects of it that feel clunky and not oriented to what I do.I think an online presence is very important but a lot of my potential clients still want a CD demo they can play in their car.It's a good time to be a musicianMazz

[yammer107]

Good post. There's certainly oppertunity to multiply your online presence like rabbits ..... It's just so darn time consuming.... I mean you could make a full time job out of it. If I could I'd set aside a week to do nothing but seek-find-upload..... And honestly if your serious enough, a week's not that much to give up. But eh the maintenance.... ugh. I swear to this day that MP3.COM used to intentionally re-structure it's page formats every quarter just to make 80,000 artists all sign back in and fix things --- great for bragging up traffic to their advertisers! Only negative thing I've found is that your personal website is not going to get nearly the traffic of the www.musichost.com/myname sites.... How would anybody ever 'stumble or 'click thru to my personal site? Your really almost stuck following those trend websites, along with your own "official" website. Ultimately you need some way of 'funneling' all traffic to your offical site -- you need the big impressive impact of all that wonderful data in one place - to act as some sort of 'resume' for you. Thats really what your after correct? I did do online banners a few times - they do work. Maybe investing $$ in driving traffic to one place is more valuable than being present in many places at the same time? CD Baby is the other one I hear is good, legitmate tracking, etc that is recognized in the industry (from what Ive read) Chris

[mojobone]

Mazz points up some significant differences among songwriters (particularly performing songwriters) and instrumental composers in terms of who's being marketed to, and yeah, the format/tools should maybe be different for the personal website, depending on the target, but there's a lot to be said for those sites that the public at large already is familiar with and knows how to use; hence the MySpace, despite the inherent clunkiness.

[southpaw]

Mazz, Quote:I'd like to see a web hosting service that was more oriented to the composer types and their needs.It is indeed suprising to me that thier isn't. At least that i know about.I like your concept of your personal site - 'identity' and knowing its purpose. Would ya mind i checked your site out?Yammer, Quote:There's certainly oppertunity to multiply your online presence like rabbits ..... It's just so darn time consuming.... I mean you could make a full time job out of it. If I could I'd set aside a week to do nothing but seek-find-upload..... And honestly if your serious enough, a week's not that much to give up. Got that right bro.Quote:Only negative thing I've found is that your personal website is not going to get nearly the traffic of the www.musichost.com/myname sites.... How would anybody ever 'stumble or 'click thru to my personal site? Your really almost stuck following those trend websites, along with your own "official" website. Ultimately you need some way of 'funneling' all traffic to your offical site -- you need the big impressive impact of all that wonderful data in one place - to act as some sort of 'resume' for you. Thats really what your after correct? Well your personal site will surely not get the same amount of traffic as www.musichost.com.Thats not to say that you will get a lot of traffic at www.musichost.com/your name tho. For your personal site, its not that you cant get mass traffic to it, because you can get plenty of traffic to any site if you have 2 things: Good marketing/SEO + Good Content, actually all you really need to get traffic is the first, to keep traffic coming back you need both. The boggle for me is that this costs a lot of money either way.. Whether it be out of your time or your bank account. It is surely an investment, and for business, it is without a doubt worth it. What im wondering though, is for musicians, is it worth putting more into building a presence online than spending 20 minutes a day adding friends to your myspace page.. Im trying to find out what other peoples strategies/intentions/experiences are with this stuff to gather some information and share ideas. I think, like with most aspects of being an entrepreneur, you have to understand what results you are trying to achieve first. Then work to make that functional. Although for me, this is easier said than done because im still unsure which direction i will go.. Thus, i procrastinate on putting the website in place because when i do it i want to do it right and not have to make a whole new plan and waste what limited time i have already. Anyways, ill figure this out.. Meanwhile it is very helpful to me and maybe some others - to hear peoples take on this, so thanks

[hummingbird]

I'm a composer and I have a site dedicated to my film music where I will send anyone interested in hearing tracks for film/tv. It didn't cost the earth to set up, either. Hostbaby has very affordable monthly rates and you can get a domain through Godaddy for 10 or 20 bucks a year. All set up, it costs me about $140 a year for a very professional looking site I can refer music publishers to... or I can post tracks and send links to those tracks via email.This is separate from my 'artist' site where I post works in progress, have my blog, etc etc. I'm also on Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, and a myriad of other sites... but that's networking.

[southpaw]

Quote:I'm a composer and I have a site dedicated to my film music where I will send anyone interested in hearing tracks for film/tv. It didn't cost the earth to set up, either. Hostbaby has very affordable monthly rates and you can get a domain through Godaddy for 10 or 20 bucks a year. All set up, it costs me about $140 a year for a very professional looking site I can refer music publishers to... or I can post tracks and send links to those tracks via email.Yea i have a few domains through godaddy, it is quite cheap, long as the domain you want isnt a 'premium domain'. Its funny, they wanted to charge me over $2000 for soundscope.com, so i went with soundscope.net for $10 a year... They've got a pretty simple site builder that comes with the package for like $5 a month including hosting which is pretty cool.Quote:This is separate from my 'artist' site where I post works in progress, have my blog, etc etc. I'm also on Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, and a myriad of other sites... but that's networking.Theres so many dang social networking sites out there, i must have over a dozen accounts with these kinds of sites. I only really keep up with about half of them tho. Networking on these sites cant hurt. I dont think you could really consider it 'marketing' in the typical business sense. For you as a composer recruiting the right kind of people to come listen to your music on your site for the purpose of film/tv placement, social networking might be more advantageous than say one band or artist in a few million who wants people to 'come hear my music'. Cheers