Now that you’re presiding over your newly formed digital empire don’t think you can rest on your laurels, you can’t take a Field of Dreams approach to this stuff just because you build it does not mean people will flock to be part of it.

The digital world has put control firmly back in the hands of the consumer, this is no more evident than in the music industry. Fans can now download the once precious commodity of recorded music for free, all be it illegally, therefore you need to compete with free.

Now more than ever you need to “monetize”, “incentivize” and “supersize” your fan base, or just turn it up to 11… whatever floats your boat.

Facebook

If you’ve never heard of Facebook, well then quite frankly this whole new digital market place might not be for you. However, if you have you’re heart set on exploiting this new fangled Facebook this should help you out… http://lmgtfy.com/

• Give your fans a reason to “like” you. Yes, sadly just because you have a Facebook page does not mean that every one of the 400 million users will want to be your friend. Offer them something in return for their friendship, a free remix or exclusive video and you’ll have far more success snaring your piece of the Facebook pie.

• Make me feel special. A common mistake with social media is to post the same content across all your sites, while this does save time it’s important to utilise the strengths of the platform. Photo sharing and tagging is a big part of Facebook why not follow OK Go’s example and take photo’s of your audience and invite them to tag themselves.

• Can you say customisation? FBML, nope it’s not a new variation on FML but a Facebook application that allows you to customise your fan page… well with a little help from HTML. This website (this one right here) should give you some good examples as well as helpful templates for those non-geeks among us.

Bravenet

Wonderful little website that gives you tools galore for creating, hosting and adding to your very own bit of cyber real estate. Although granted you may need to pay/know a friendly geek in order to get the website up and running.

• Visit your own site. Your website should become the hub of your online activity therefore you really need to make sure it’s the most up to date and the one that you clearly spend the most time on. Your website is for your super fans, so make sure you treat it as your priority not just an afterthought.

• Flash is flashy and nothing more. We’ve all seen them, those intros that inspire, excite and make you think holy smokes batman that is frickin’ sweet. However when it comes to finding out when this totally awesome band is playing next your left scratching your head. Plus Apple doesn’t like flash and we all know they own the internet.

• Be prepared to love stats. Google Analytics is free and pretty much the best tool out there for analysing you’re web traffic. See what countries your visitors are coming from, and how well you’re doing at referring people to your websites from your other social media efforts. Yes, it may not fit into the sex, drugs and on the dole lifestyle but it a necessary evil.

PledgeMusic

No money to record and album? Wait a gosh darn minute, why not get the people that want it to pay for it? True they may want a piece of your soul in return, granted this could be hard for people who sold their soul to the devil in return for insane musical skills.

• You’re not a mobile phone seller. Although you have to sell your project to you’re fans it’s important not to come across too desperate (even if you are). This platform allows for a more inclusive artist to fan experience, and this is the way you need to position it to your fans.

• Offer them something you would want. A mini USB uzi? Perhaps, well it’s better than a t-shirt. Get your creative juices flowing it doesn’t have to be limited to physical goods, I’ve seen bands offering helicopter flights to festival gigs or band sleepovers with breakfast in bed.

• In for the long haul. This way of funding your album/tour is hard work, you need to put the effort in for the start of the project to the end. Keep your “pledgers” updated with video blogs, track demos, photos or anything that will make them feel warm and fuzzy inside.

Eventbrite

The internet’s full of these good ideas, sell your own tickets… Sounds pretty obvious when you say it out loud. Although granted not every promoter is going to be particularly happy about you doing it…

• Early bird catches the worm. Yep early bird tickets, fans love ‘em, venues love ‘em and you’ll love ‘em. However it doesn’t have to stop there you can create mailing list only ticket links, or special VIP tickets. Hell you can even make men only tickets… although I think that’s called sexist? Or is it sexy?

• Data can be fun. No honestly it can… well maybe fun is the wrong word. Mind numbingly boring might be more apt. Buuuut if you post different links to your different social networks you can then see which network contains your most loyal gig going fans. Fun huh?

• Rewards are even more fun. Everyone likes rewards, it’s a fact. There’s no scientific evidence for it but it’s a fact none the less. So why not give out a free download card to all the people that came to your gig? All they’re required to do is join your facebook page or mailing list which means you get even more fun data to play with…

TopSpin

Eminem, OK Go, The Beastie Boys… that’s the kind of company you’ll be keeping if you use TopSpin. Their artist store is easily the best on the web, allowing you to put together various fan packages and integrate it into a multitude of other platforms.

Knowledgebases are better than bullet points. I know what you’re thinking… where are the rest of the bullet points? Where’s the three point plan to stardom, well fear not because TopSpin’s knowledgebase is so comprehensive I feel I would be cheapening it by offering any “tips”. So read, absorb and say hello to stardom…

TopSpin Knowledgebase.

In the highly unlikely scenario that you did not read parts I & II you can find them here…

So You Wanna Be A Superstar? Part. I
So You Wanna Be A Superstar? Part. II

Any questions, feedback, rants, rambles or plain old spam leave them in the comment box below…

If you followed our tips in part one I wouldn’t be surprised if people were clamouring to get your music, come to your shows and who knows maybe even financially reward you for your efforts?

One of the hardest things about growing a following in the current media landscape is the ADD culture within which we live, nowadays there’s a new buzz band for everyday of the week. So given that you’ve worked hard to make it to buzz band of the day you’ll want to remain there, at least until the end of the week.

So let’s give your rabid music fans something to stop them salivating…

BandCamp

Free, yep. Everything is better when it’s free isn’t it. This service allows you to create your very own little music hub, allowing your fans to freely download your music, or enter their email address for free track or even the in-vogue pay what you jolly well like model.

• Your very own website. Until such time as you have sufficient technical skills and/or the money to pay someone with sufficient technical skills this will do nicely. Handily you can get rid of the web address bandcamp.yourband.com and replace it with yourband.com which means your page will get ranked higher on search engines.

• PWYW isn’t just a passing trend. Yep, that’s right the infamous Pay What You Want. If it worked for Radiohead it’ll work for you, right? Well not quite, however BandCamp user’s have had success with a slight variation on it, I’ll call it PMYW. Pay More if You Want; set your minimum price and if your fans want to pay more, let them.

• Music as an incentive. You can create discount codes, free download codes or offer a free track in exchange for an email address. With these tools in mind you can use your music as an incentive to get people to sign up to your mailing list, or blog or follow you on Twitter. Just remember music fans are fickle creatures you’ll have to use further incentives to keep them.

MailChimp

The disadvantage of having a chimp hand deliver all your emails is that if you have more than 500 subscribers you have to pay them. However while your still relatively small time it should be more than adequate, although once you go past 350,000 subscribers it becomes free again. Go figure…

• Email is the Holy Grail. Social networks may come and go but the one platform that remains a constant in our lives is email. MailChimp gives you a handy little widget that allows you to create a basic sign up form, as mentioned above give your followers a reason to sign up don’t just bully them into it…

• A fool speaks because he has to say something. Never a truer word spoken. Once you have those prized email addresses in your grubby mits do NOT abuse them. Only email them if you have something to say that they will be interested in, people are far more likely to unsubscribe because you email too much than too little.

• Location, Location, Location. It may not be as important as when buying a house, but this is crucial if you don’t want to risk infuriating your loyal fans. MailChimp gives you the option to collect your subscriber’s Country and City, I strongly suggest you do this. There’s nothing worse than receiving constant updates for gigs in London when you live in L.A.

WordPress

WordPress will let you create your very own fully functioning, fun filled, fan friendly… weblog (or blog for the cool kids). Sure there are hundreds of options out there for creating and managing a blog and you can call me old fashioned but I’m sticking with what I know.

• Personality counts. If you don’t have a personality… Blogging may not be the best option for you. Write about something you’re passionate about, this maybe music or it may be politics or it may be trainers. This should ensure that you write because you want to, don’t just post “updates” say something. You may alienate one group but you’ll be embraced by another.

• Control your comments. 99.9% of blog comments are from idiots or spam. You need to stay on top of this cause they can quickly mount up, and you’ll miss that one important genuine comment. These genuine comments are like gold dust, when you get one make sure you take the time to engage with the person posting the comment.

• Don’t forget to tag. Tagging isn’t just a pursuit of teenage delinquents with too much time on their hands. It’s also a handy way to let people know what your posts are about. They can also help increase the visibility of your blog; tagging your post with Lady Gaga means it will show up on a search for her name. All be it very low down, but you get the idea.

Zazzle

While it may sound like the name of a dancer in a down market strip joint, it’s actually an online store and merchandise service. The main bonus of this service is everything is made to order, so no more will you be forced to cart around boxes of unsold hoodies.

• Not everyone wants the T-Shirt. Get creative, you’re a musician right? The beauty of the Zazzle service is if your product doesn’t sell you don’t lose money… Not everyone will want your band’s logo emblazoned on a cooking apron, but someone somewhere might.

• Profits can wait. In order to make money on Zazzle you need to set a royalty rate, the higher your rate the more profit you’ll make. However this also means your product price will go up, my advice is set your royalty rate as low as possible at this point it’s all about exposure money is a nice bonus.

• An offer you can’t refuse. I believe this is what you call a no-brainer; Zazzle has a referral program where you get paid 15% referral fee for any sales made through your referral. This is especially great for artists as you can refer customers to your own store, all you have to do is add a * to the end of your Zazzle store link (zazzle.com/yourstore*). Simples.

Twitter

Yes my brave student we are entering the wonderful world of Twitter, soon @, #, RT and OH will become like a second language to you. It’s basically a micro-blogging site where you have a maximum of 140 characters to betwixt and bedazzle your loyal followers.

• Get involved. Twitter has a rather spiffing community spirit. Unlike Facebook which is usually driving by real world connections, Twitter makes it’s connections through shared interests. Got a video you think is funny/interesting share it, found an article you think is useful share it… Twitter is about telling the world what you are doing right now.

• Hashtags help you grow. For those not in the know Hashtag’s are this # symbol. They’re a way to create grouping’s on common topics to make it easier to follow, for example #nowplaying or #quote. Contributing to these popular hashtag topics can expose you to new followers, just don’t put hashtag’s on every tweet… it’s kinda annoying.

• Promote your @username. Twitter usernames are easily identifiable by the use of the@ sign as a prefix. You can use this to your advantage by signing off your emails or blog posts with your twitter username. This is a more subtle way of saying HEY LOOK EVERYONE I’M ON TWITTER…

Any questions, suggestions, rants, raves or insults please feel free to leave them in the below comment box…

Until next time my budding superstars…

If you missed Part I of this post you can find it here…

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.

MySpace

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.

HypeMachine

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.

SoundCloud

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.

LastFM

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.

YouTube

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…