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!

digg this story

For more information, check out the easy voting instructions posted on the Polyvibe site.

originally published on dr.xnlb.com

So instead of wondering, I placed a call. The services they provide sound really exciting, with the ListerLink service being the most applicable to Independent Labels. Where Last.fm associates artists to artists based on what their community is listening to, and where Pandora associates albums to albums and artists to artists based on what they have in their catalogue and the humans who stock it, MusicIP gets down to the track level associating moods to other moods regardless of artist, album or even genre. And because it’s all driven by their fingerprint algorithm, it should scale quite nicely as they add new tracks to the mix (about 100,000 or more a month). I’ll post more once I get to play with it, but until then, I suggest signing up for the their ListenerLink program and give it a whirl yourself.
originally published on dr.xnlb.com

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