Why Online Music Promotion Can Help Your Band


by Glem Janckins


As any self-respecting music article-writer would do, I have researched this subject as thoroughly as I could before writing the initial sentence. I have to state that the endless blogs and articles about marketing your online alternative music all say quite similar things about general marketing. I will condense it as concisely as I can in the following 10 things: 1. Join a social media (Facebook . com, MySpace, Band-camp, Reverb-nation, Soundcloud, Twitter etc) 2. Setup an online site, 3. Update your site and profiles typically as it can be, four. write a good biography, five. write a great press-release (inc Digital Media Kit), 6. make online videos and distribute to Youtube, 7. offer tunes on free download services, eight. communicate with other bands and musicians and artists, nine. talk with your ' online fans', 10. don't upload useless posts or be too metal-headed talking to your potential general public.

Now, this would appear a wise practice to the majority of people but it is potentially of very little help without organization. You can quite easily do most of these things yet still find yourself lost within the dense, over-booming clouds of the world wide web. Regardless of the many advancements in technology over the last ten years roughly, there is certainly still something being said for following more traditional routes: i.e. playing live dates as much as possible, getting mass media coverage and also radio airplay, regardless of the latter's apparently inevitable decline. Bands that have combined doing this with the online methods mentioned previously have often executed very perfectly- Meadow zero being one prime example.

There are several other instances of acts whose main talents seem to lie in relentlessly efficient PR and whose songwriting ability is often, at best average, and also at worst, downright mediocre. Try surfing Myspace's 'Musik Chart' and it seems quite astonishing that such sub-standard music may make it into any charts. Discouraging though this could seem, the sole acts that have any type of longevity are the types that can actually write decent music. It won't have to be brilliant or perhaps that original- just ' good and decent'. Nonetheless, longevity may not be much of a problem for some as earth's going to end in 2012 according to the Mayans, right?

The catch is that hardly any musicians have a huge talent for PR. They are in existence but have always been an important minority. Perhaps, with thanks to the opportunities offered by the Internet, this minority is growing in size. That which you now seem to have within our midst could be the 'Do-Everything all by-Yourself' modern online musician, who twitters, facebook blogs while twiddling knobs on a mixer, blogging 60 seconds or so, hammering out bass-lines and lyrics another, cutting and pasting links and vocal takes simultaneously. Is this this change really a fashion to happen? If it does however, i would question the standard of work that are the results. Like every other craft or skill, songwriting requires time, dedication and focus.

Can this research really go hand-in-hand with the type of thought-processes necessary for the effective use of online promotional techniques? Is one able to individually embody musician, management and Public relations department? It cannot be disputed that creativity running a business exists equally as it will in music. However it is a different type of creativity altogether. Precisely what is definitely an undiscovered genius with a couple of brilliant unheard tracks likely to do? Find an undiscovered PR expert who is a maven at social media SEM with Web optimization knowledge and form a partnership. Can't think of anything better for a modern musician.




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