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Written by Administrator
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Saturday, 24 April 2010 15:00 |
So you’re past the writing stage, you have an album of songs together, now you have the task of getting an audience. Funny thing is renting a hall to perform your songs live and renting a web server to post your songs on your new website are kinda the same thing, well sorta here’s my comparison / analysis. You rent the hall, all the gear, you’ve rehearsed, you’re ready for opening night, but wait you forgot to put up posters, some people passing by saw you loading your gear into the hall and asked hey wazzup? They might show up, maybe they’ll bring their friends unless  there is a more popular band down the street yeah maybe. But wait you have a web site and all your songs are on it, damn no one checks that out either. Just like the kids that saw you from the street you have all your meta tags in place and Google has indexed you so maybe just maybe you’ll be found. Keep dreaming, unless you do something to get the word out nothing happens. At least if you can fill the hall, 100 people will hear your set and maybe grab a CD on the way out. Waiting for Google to send you that many could take a month and there is a good chance they will leave your site in the first 10 seconds if you have not grabbed them with a great design, story and a reason to read and listen. Something happened a few years ago to form the way humans feel about downloading music online. Still there are some that prefer to help artists out and pay something for the files, at least they know what they are getting and it’s a clean file. But for the most part from my experience its hard to even get people to take a free mixtape or even visit an artists site. I don’t know why, but the majority need to know you’re the next big thing before they will even click through, have a recommendation from a peer, another artist or hear you on the radio. My point is everyone believes the internet is the golden goose, “as soon as we are online those millions of Internet surfers are going to download our tunes.” Yes the vehicle is in place the problem is connection. I have used countless music sites to try and connect because I can’t play live in every country that has Internet service, (aside from not being able to afford to produce a live show here in Vancouver). You’d think you would be able to introduce yourself to potential fans but its not that easy online. I have yet to meet an SEO expert that can give me the magic key word combo to drive millions of web surfers to this site. Still the best way to get in the ears of the people that might like what you do is offline media, radio, newspapers, trade mags, movies, TV etc.
The Internet is a great tool, use it that way, but don’t expect it to do all the hard work for you. Just like setting up in the Hall for a live show or setting up your website, this is just the beginning. Lately I have put more energy into http://facebook.com/mrdc.music Its clean people interact with it more and it’s easy. I also like http://www.thesixtyone.com/mrdc it has an interesting way of presenting new music. On the music discovery side of things check out http://mufin.com they are trying to serve up songs their engine thinks sound the same. Play around with it, its kinda fun.
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Last Updated on Saturday, 24 April 2010 15:23 |
