Tag Archive for 'MySpace'

So you want to get signed…

Published on July 7, 2006 in Article and Blog. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

This post is a response to the avalanche of half-baked requests we get from our record label’s website, our myspace, and in our email. However, this advice applies to anybody trying to make in the music industry.

Ever since we launched our record label, the number of come-ons we receive from new artists (as opposed to artists we know and already have our eye on) has steadily increased. The avalanche of appeals from both talented and not-so-talented artists is both overwhelming and exciting. However, a pattern has emerged lately that I feel needs to get addressed. This pattern is largely made up of a mix of bad habits and laziness, coupled with a lack of knowledge about what it takes to properly promote yourself. In response, Polyvibe

Entertainment Group offers up the following tips for how to approach us (and anyone) about your creative project with more effectiveness.

  • Formulate a full message. In other words, don’t send something out until you’ve spent sufficient time actually formulating what you want to say and ensuring that what you are saying is landing for the other person the way you intend. This means that you should craft a message that clearly states who you are, what kind of music (or other art) you create, what’s special about it, and why they should care. Write and Re-write it until it’s right. It will never be perfect, but if you’ve covered all your bases you’ll be in good shape.
  • Stay On Topic. Take a page from political play books, and always stay on message. In other words, put together a total package. Every footprint you leave in the world should be reinforcing the same message. By all means tailor your message for your audience, but it should have a common theme running through it. This also applies to your visual communications as well. Everything you put out should have a similar look and feel, and include your logo or other unique graphics. Re-use and Re-mix the same colors, layouts and other distinct elements, whether you’re designing your web site, a newsletter to your fans, or a One Sheet you’re sending out to the press and promoters.
  • Define Your Message. In order to stay on topic, first you need to figure out what your message is. One of the things that we do internally for our artists, and is provide them a worksheet in which to figure out what the message is. We adopted this worksheet from questions we wanted answered, and from information we got from Bob Baker’s “Guerrilla Music Marketing”. It’s an interesting process but what it brings to light is even more useful. It’s an exploration of what drives you as an artist, and forces you to connect with your fans by discovering what it is about you that inspires them to support what you’re up to in the world.
  • Get a One Sheet. If this list was numbered, this would be #1. Think of a One Sheet as your musical resume. In one or two pages, you should be able to clearly state what your music sounds like, why your are unique, and why I should pay attention. List your biggest successes so far. Include links to your best tracks, and to your websites. In short, it should summarize your message and present that information in such a way that it literally turns heads, and motivates the reader to want to learn more. Here’s a decent template you can start with, that explains all the basics and has spots for everything that you’ll want to include. You should create a One Sheet for various purposes – including but not limited to: Seeking Distribution (the example provided above), Booking and Gigs (concentrate on what’s special about your live shows, and de-emphasize, but include information about any of your releases), and General Purpose (expand the info on your sound as well as you, and your accomplishments).
  • Educate yourself about music marketing. You’ve already started doing that by reading this blog, and subscribing to our RSS feed and/or Newsletter. There are tons of books out there, so you need to start diving in and buying some of these books. Also, sites like Rhino’s R-Zine, Bob Baker’s Buzz Factor, and The Indie Bible newsletter, will also help get your marketing chops up to where they need to be. Marketing is an art, not a science, so be prepared for lots of trial and error, but if you present yourself in a clear, concise and professional manner, you will get noticed.
  • Respect your self, and your audience. This can’t be stressed enough. All the bad habits, missing or misinformation, and laziness add up to a lack of respect. This is just how it comes across, even if it’s not intentional. If you don’t have enough respect for yourself to tell me about your project in a way that gets me excited, then how do you expect to have any results? You took the time to craft the music, arrange all of the elements, and get your master just how you like it… so don’t skimp on the time required to promote yourself. Remember, you’re not selling yourself, or even your music. You’re selling the experience, the headspace you and your music puts the listener in. If you’re inspired enough to make it, then take the time to put together a strong message that moves the reader to want to listen to your music. Plain and simple.

In the day and age of a 1:1 ratio of Content Maker to Content Consumer, you’ve got to do more than write a catchy hook to get noticed. If you’re approaching Record Labels to get signed, propositioning Press Contacts for reviews, or contacting Promoters and Club Owners to book you for gigs, then you obviously want to be taken seriously. And if that’s the case, then put on your game face, and suit up. Making music is only half the battle.

If after reading this you are still interested in submitting your music to be considered for release on Polyvibe Records, then put the above advice to work, and send us a One Sheet (PDF preferred), with links to your 5 best tracks and your websites, to press@polyvi.be. We’ll reply to each one of them, but you better come

correct if you want us to take notice. We look forward to your submissions!

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Why Google DID NOT buy MySpace…

Published on July 1, 2006 in Blog. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

It has recently come to light that there were other companies with their eye on MySpace, before it was scooped up by Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. It seems Google was also considering it, but didn’t go after it because it will essentially kill it’s AdSense business. Think about it, if they purchased a content site, with more hits per day then god him/her-self (s/he’s got his/her own homepage it seems), they would be a direct competitor to every single one of their content partners that use AdSense to pay for their site.
Read the 2nd hand report here, as told by an anonymous Google employee.
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originally published on dr.xnlb.com

Hope against Hope makes it big because of Myspace.

Published on June 24, 2006 in Blog. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

MySpace can make you big. Fast. Suppossedly this is how the Artic Monkeys did it. This was also lauded by the Jupiter Research report I tore apart recently. And now it’s worked for Hope against Hope. There’s just one problem… The band is fake.
Hope against Hope was a sham-rock/indie band “with no talent whatsoever” made up by british magazine Q. Their intention was to expose the Rupert Murdoch-owned site for what it is… just another method for Big Music to hype crap music.
What’s even funnier is that in just 4 weeks they fooled Alan McGee, the guy who broke Oasis, into offering them a gig at his famed Death Disco club night. “Shoot me an email and I’ll sort you out with a gig” said his myspace message. Talk about drinking the kool-aid.
Read the whole article on the Guardian Unlimited site, as the article tidily devolves into a history of other bands and the PR that tried to pull one over on us.
Brings new meaning to “The Great Rock ‘N Roll Swindle”, doesn’t it?
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originally published on dr.xnlb.com

Price Points vs. Perceived Value

Published on June 21, 2006 in Blog. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

One of the hot topics of conversation in digital music is price points. It’s such a grand term, and it makes you think big things. Of course, it’s really just two memes strung together: the idea of price, and the idea of points. Neither of which is really the issue at hand in the music business. Labels should be more concerned with the perceived monetary value of music if they don’t want to go bankrupt by the end of the decade.

Any conversation about digital media (also known as content) seems to focus on what to charge people, and how to control the services presented by content providers (including a desire by the major labels to continue to control the cost of music as if they were selling fuel).

The more artistically inclined probably find terms like content and product to be a horrible way to describe art and expression. This conflict in perception drives the heart of the digital music revolution, and the birth of post capitalism for artists.

How can you put a price on art? Apparently, it’s pretty easy to put a price on anything. In a true free market economy, the artists that evoke the greatest response and move the most people would always be the most successful. Mostly because people want to support things they believe in, make them feel good, and are fun. And all you have to do is look at the last one hundred years of recorded music to see how free this market has been.

My understand of ‘point’ in the fiscal sense is that points are percentages. Like when a major label gives you 6 points per track, and then you find out it’s 6 cents. On your own album. The obfuscation of literal meaning through fancy words has been a powerful ally in the way people have been exploited for a long time (-). We should call it the price of music instead. We talk that way about water, radio waves, and the written word, so why not music? Or we could talk about price points for oil, but then we’d all be spending too much time wondering where all that money is going. The true invisible hand of economics is the one that tries to turn our head away from the important issues, and focus on the ones the ‘majors’ want us to see.

Perceived value is the cornerstone of the future music as a revenue stream for artists. The idea that something is only worth what we are willing to give up for it. It doesn’t really matter if it’s time or money; the important thing is that it’s worth it to us. Myspace didn’t get bought by NewsCorp because it was a novel idea, but because the platform of Myspace was perceived as valuable. That’s the same reason the MPAA and the RIAA had Pirate Bay taken down (with the help of the US State Department).

It’s sort of a testament to the power of free press that the issue of the monetary value of music is driven by what people are paying for it, and not what people are making from it. It’s almost enough to make you think the average ‘music consumer’ sees the choice between music as no different than buying brand name or generic cola at the store.

Then again, maybe if it didn’t cost a dollar for a DRM encoded piece of music that only played on one platform, and the only format that has no signal loss is not catching on (http://flac.sourceforge.net/), maybe the price shouldn’t be so high.

If the price of a digital album, with no tangible product (and sometimes incomplete art) was lower, and if the artists were getting a fair share of the price, then maybe people would get the point and buy more music.

Then everyone would be happy, because no one would have to absorb the cost of breakage on physical albums (a cost usually relegated to the artists by major labels, sometimes even on digital releases).

The real price point questions should be things like: How many points does the artist get on the price?

Isn’t the point of having all of this fantastic musical technology to bring down the price of creating and releasing an album?

If the music is good, won’t people get the point, and pay a fair price for it?

Since people are paying no price but time and effort to find good music for free, shouldn’t the record industry stop trying to dictate people’s tastes and get the point that people want what they want?

And, most importantly: When will corporate multinational conglomerates get the point that music is the soundtrack of our lives, and that it’s priceless?

Jupiter Research says MySpace best place to promote music, but I disagree…

Published on June 3, 2006 in Blog. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Jupiter Research, usually a pretty good source for third party anaylsis, has recently placed MySpace Music above other rivals in being successful at promoting music. However, the report was suspect, in my opinion, not only in the way it was conducted, but also by which sites they covered.

First, the rivals to Myspace Music, as defined by this Jupiter Research Report, were Yahoo Music, MTV.com, and AOL Music. This essentially limits the list to 5 sites… not exactly a deep core sample among the universe of music community sites. Perhaps they were asleep at the wheel, but to disregard last.fm, a site that has been in existence in one form or another for 5 or so years is ludicrous.

MySpace is junk. The site was poorly architected, and poorly coded, and uses an outdated development framework for ColdFusion. The design is atrocious, and I’m not talking about the customizations featured on individual profiles, either. With that said, MySpace, due to it’s size and supposed reach still can not be ignored. As far as promoting music goes, the study tracked promotional activity, across the five sites, on the Black Eyed Peas, whose recent sell-out come back was already generating plenty of buzz elsewhere before they exploited these community sites, which in my mind skews the results significantly. Think about it… the BEPs were being shoved down our throats long before they invaded community sites as “one of us”.

Sure you’ll have results if you’re a big label buying space on the front page of MySpace Music, but what about the independents? A quick pass through the pages of MySpace and you’ll soon realize that all of this “community activity” is primarily made up of disingenuous “Thanks for the Add” billboard size graphics posted by your “friends” in your comments, bulletins that go largely ignored, RSVPs to Events that are accepted but not attended… the list goes on. So where are all the powerful promotion opportunities on these sites?

If MySpace is your only website, then you’re already loosing half the promotional battle right there. From where I’m standing, one of the biggest values you can gain from MySpace is in back links. If you don’t have a site to link to, get one. No one is going to take you very seriously, anyway, if the only link you’ve got to give them is a MySpace address. If you do have a site, then make it the center of your web presence, and use MySpace as an auxiliary or what I like to call passive marketing site. MySpace is a huge site, with hundreds of thousands upon thousands (if not more) pages. All indexed by Google and the other search engines. This means that links from this site are weighted pretty heavily in their Search Algorithms, and you can take advantage of it by making sure you post your links throughout the site… on your profile, in your bulletins, and in your blog posts (you are using the blog on MySpace aren’t you?). This will ensure that your site will get better ranking (over time) in the search engines. You’ll also discover (if you haven’t already) that one of your biggest referrers is MySpace, if you have access to your site’s log files. Referrers, for those that don’t know, are the sites that your visitors were on before they clicked over to your site. Now for these to work you’ll need to ensure that anywhere you post your Site’s URL is clickable, but once these two forces (back links and referrals) start to go to work you should see your traffic steadily climb, and the percentage of traffic from MySpace increase.

With your site firmly re-centered as your web presence, you can now start treating MySpace as an auxiliary publishing platform for your marketing messages. Post tracks that you’re giving away on your site. Re-post news and events, and even better if they are enticing excerpts with links back to the main story on your site. Use the bulletins, and blog features to get the word out, but don’t expect a ton of traffic. Basically treat it as a copy+paste dumping ground for repurposing your other marketing. No one on MySpace is really reading it anyway, but at least it will be there for the small percentage of people that are following you on MySpace. Concentrate your efforts there to convert MySpace fans to tracking you on your web site, with your newsletters and other updates, and not relying on MySpace to do it for you. If you’ve got e-commerce capabilities, on your site or with some other service, then feature links to buy your album front-and-center on your MySpace profile. Give visitors to your profile the opportunity to buy from you, as it may be your only chance to get their attention and keep it long enough from them to support you at what you do.

There is no magic bullet when it comes to music marketing. You already know this. Community sites such as MySpace are great for passive marketing efforts, and creating nice back links to your main web site. You may be able to easily pump information into the system with out much effort, but so is everyone else. Once you recognize this fact, then your can set about to create a compelling message so that you can rise above the noise. However, for more serious community interaction, Last.fm, various message boards and mailing lists across the internet are the real community gold. Shame on Jupiter Research for not recognizing this fact.

originally published on dr.xnlb.com