So you’ve made the decision, you want to be a superstar…
Congratulations…
You’ve taken the first step, ahead of you lies misery, heartache, betrayal, divorce courts, a crippling alcohol/drug addiction and if you’re lucky, you’ll survive long enough to make your triumphant comeback tour (Whitney Houston aside)
But all that’s in the future right now your puzzling over why your internet search for “how do I harness the all encompassing power of the internet to become an incredibly famous and successful musician overnight?” hasn’t turned up anything useful.
Well my musically gifted (?) friend, look no further…
I feel I must point out this should be treated as a basic starting point, you’ll notice it’s missing some high profile websites… fear not my eagle eyed friends all will be revealed in future posts.
Yes yes, I know MySpace is dead, it’s sooooo 2000. Sure the interface leaves a lot to be desired, and your 20’000 fans are largely made up other artists shamelessly promoting themselves, but it’s still an essential landing page for new artists.
• If it ain’t broke…The uniform layout is one of the reasons MySpace has remained relevant. People know where they can find your music and where they can find your events. If your page takes longer than a minute to load regardless of how incredible your custom graphics are it will put people off.
• Less is more…more or less. Think before posting anything to your MySpace. Videos and pictures are all well and good, but if you don’t have any decent ones don’t put them up. Take the time to create quality content, and unless you have the most incredible back story please don’t post a bio.
• Let’s hook up. MySpace is great as a landing page but it leaves a little to be desired when it comes to actual communication. So please put an e-mail address up. Then if somebody important wants to contact you it doesn’t get lost under the mountain of spam that’s become synonymous with MySpace.
Like them or loath them music bloggers are the new tastemakers. Hype Machine gathers these musical taste makers into one handy resource, it allows you to tap into a worldwide community of passionate music lovers.
• Research can be fun. Simply spend time on here listening to bands and checking out music blogs, this is often a good way to see what is happening in the world of “buzz”. I’m not suggesting you jump on the latest trend but it is a good idea to at least know what’s being talked about, and you never know you might even enjoy it.
• I like your style. It seems simple but you should send your music to blogs who will like it. Search for bands with a similar sound to yourself and see who’s writing about them, target the smaller blogs as the chances are they will get sent less music and are therefore more likely to write about you.
• It’s nice to be important, but it’s important to be nice. Music bloggers are fragile little beings. Check how they like to be contacted, and avoid mass emails like the plague they may save time but believe me they are not cool, dude. Don’t be afraid to put a bit of personality into your email, they may seem like uber cool taste makers but they are human like the rest of us.
This is a great service that let’s you upload your tracks so you can share them with other people that may wish to hear them. It also lets you get the Stat-o-Rama, or stat down, or stat attack… call it what you wish to make your feel cooler it’s still analytics.
• Quality and quantity. Your track limit is set by time not file size. Clever huh? So you get 120 minutes for free, perfect for collaboration or when you’re trying to get that final mix just right. It means you can keep the quality high without worrying about quickly filling up your free allowance.
• We’re better together. Join some groups and contribute to the forums. SoundCloud has good community of artists, producers and music fans so get involved. It’s also the perfect platform to dish your songs out for remix’s, and as we have already seen bloggers do like their remix’s…
• Human contact. Yep that’s right, the internet is being used to bring people together…in real life. SoundCloud users’ arrange these meet-ups all over the world and they’re a great opportunity to meet potentially like minded people. You never know who could be at these events.
Easy to set up and it’s a great way to expose others to your hip new music. Crammed full of salivating music lovers don’t be offended if they tag your music as something you don’t agree with.
• A rose by any other name. First things first CLAIM YOUR NAME. You didn’t waste all those precious band practices discussing potential names only to have to share it with someone else. Claim it, get your logo/picture up and write something about yourself this does not mean a bio a brief description will do.
• Swedish industrial doom funk. Tagging is one of the best ways to expose LastFM listeners to your music. So tag away but try and make it relevant, search for bands similar to you and see what users have tagged them as. Don’t be afraid to get creative with your tagging, although general tags may aid exposure unique ones may get you noticed.
• Scrobble away. One other way to increase your exposure to LastFM users is by sharing your own musical tastes through the audio scrobbling software. Hopefully your musical tastes marry with your influences, this will mean your band will appear as a musical neighbour to users with similar musical tastes.
Nowadays thanks to MTV music just seems boring without some sort of visual excitement. It’s also fast catching Google as the go to place for information, why read about something when you can watch it?
• Covers are king. This is a great way to get noticed. If you’ve ever searched for a popular song on YouTube chances are you’ll come up with a host of bedroom covers, some good, some bad, some terrible. The biggest youtube hits normally come from a re-interpretation of a classic song in a completely different style, think Gin ‘n’ Juice in bluegrass.
• I want more. If I find something that is partially interesting or funny I’m happy to spend a little more of my precious procrastination time looking at other videos. With this in mind the more stuff you can get on here the better, video blogs, live gigs, acoustic versions of original songs, you get the idea.
• Collaboration. There are lots of budding directors, presenters and creative types on YouTube. This not only lends it self well to collaboration but why not see if a popular YouTube show wants to use your music? After all it’s exposure and some shows are really, really popular…
If you completely disagree with me, which I am sure many will… please do not hesitate to let me know. But remember to play nice, we bloggers do have very sensitive egos…
Tags: app, music industry, Web 2.0
[...] Click links below to go to next or previous post « So You Wanna Be A Superstar? Part I [...]