I came across this brilliant pdf report by Virgine Berger about a month ago that sets out a blueprint for your online music marketing and asked her if we could pass it on to you for free.

She was happy to let our readers have it, but we didn’t get round to posting it until now as we are still busy redesigning the site and preparing more great stuff that we will be adding when we have the makeover – we’re hoping that will be at some point in September. Thanks for putting up with our delays. Oh, and I am on holiday a lot with my kids too!

So, when I read the pdf, I was very impressed. It covers all the things that you should be doing for music promotion online – why MySpace still counts, how to use Twitter, what Facebook can and can’t do for you etc. More importantly, it ties together all the strands that you need to be providing to your fans.

You can get your copy of Virginie’s report here -  ‘What is a good digital music Strategy’ pdf.

Why should you listen to Virginie?

Well, she is the former head of marketing for MySpace France. Now she works as a music marketer and with more than ten years in the entertainment industry (television channels, radio broadcast industry and digital music industry), she knows her stuff backwards.

You can find out more about her at these links below:

Email: virberg@gmail.com
Web: www.digitalmusic.tumblr.com (in French)
Twitter: www.twitter.com/virberg

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Our last post was all about the best software and methods you should use for building your band mailing list.

Although our best pick is Aweber (read the post to see why!), one of our mild criticisms of Fanbridge has just bee fixed.

With the launch of the Fanbridge Fan Collector uses of Fanbridge for their band mailing list solution can now get a fancy app for Apple mobiles (ipod, itouch and ipad) that can be used at a gig to take email addresses and whatever other details you desire to take from your new fans.

We love any method that does away with handwriting lists and scraps of paper and this is very welcome.

It also syncs automatically with your online FanBridge account.

The key issue for us is that we want to see all artists building a mailing list in a professional software system that they control. If you’re not sure whether to go for FanBridge, the app is another reason that might well sway it for you.

Let’s hope that Aweber are going to get this sorted soon too – as they have indicated!

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I just read about this minisite that Devo put up a few days ago and tweeted it, but thought I ought to leave a permanent post about it and just give a little more detail. It’s a brilliant piece of online music marketing.

Why?

Well, it’s a perfect example of fan acquisition, engagement and selling. An object lesson in the mindset that you should have in the modern music business. Sure, Devo have label funding and this particular idea might be too expensive for you if you haven’t got their budget, but it’s the mindset that you need to learn from and the steps that you need to employ.

Have a look at the promo video that they have made for their ‘Devovision’ YouTube channel…….

…..and then go and take the test at the Devo song study site.

So, the site is there to help Devo get feedback from their fans to choose what tracks should be on their next album. But, it’s not just for that is it?

No.

When you’ve listened to and selected your favourite 12 tracks, you’re then asked to pick your favourite. Now, that information (data, if you must – but that makes it feel too clinical!) is obviously very valuable to begin with. Devo are finding out what their fans want on the record. That’s great for them as they can pick the record that most appeals to their fans. Remember that in the digital music age you are free to make music for your fans, rather than for radio or your record company bosses, but you need to know what they want.

However, what is also going on as you select tracks is that you are pre-selecting yourself as a future Devo album buyer. Not everyone – in fact, just a small percentage – but you’re now engaged in the debate and will, despite yourself, need to find out more when the record is released.

I bet that the track that most people select as their favourite is the lead single! Don’t you think?

The next bit is even better. So, you’ve picked your favourites and then you’re asked to give up your name, email address and location. We’re all used to giving this up for free music, but here we’re doing all the giving and not getting anything for free….but the humour in the site and the historical oddness of the band has helped us want to be part of the process. The request for additional thoughts and a photo (nothing rude, please!) all just adds to that sense of ‘Devo fan’ inclusion.

I’d have added a surprise bonus. When you click the final ‘Submit’ button, it would’ve been great to be taken to another page where you were thanked and maybe given a free download of a couple of tracks or a pre-order button for the album with a discount.

In online music marketing it’s essential to remember that your fans are ‘hottest’ to take action just when you’ve engaged them, usually by giving them something free, but here by giving them a sense of ownership and having some fun with them. That’s the time to sell them something or give them something else for free to cement their love of your band.

An unannounced bonus as a thank you would’ve made this perfect. And I’d have sent an email to each person who did the survey and signed up, immediately, saying ‘Thanks’ too.

So, what else do Devo get out of this?

Well, obviously, they’re building a very targeted list of fans and, in particular, as I said above, people who are pre-selecting themselves to buy the next record.

But, the minisite also engenders discussion and is newsworthy itself – thereby spreading across the internet and by word-of-mouth, bringing more people in to the site to learn about Devo. An idea like this is, by its very nature, inherently viral and will do more than just reach existing fans. It can even ready traditional offline media to be more interested in the band when the new record has its traditional release.

Devo have been no slouches when it comes to using the internet to connect with a pre-web audience from their original incarnation. But, because they were making records before all the online marketing techniques that bands are now using came in to play, they need to use all the tricks they can to dig up old fans and get them on to their email list.

It reminds me of the Led Zeppelin reunion concert a year or two ago. With no database of fans from their active years, the need to register your name, email address and location for the ballot for tickets for the only show, brought in a million fans in a matter of weeks. I wonder if that list will be used time and time again to market re-issue albums and merchandise to Zep fans?

So, have a look at the Devo song study site and see what you can learn from it to apply to your own efforts marketing your band and reaching your fans.

Let us know what you think by leaving a comment below.

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I’ve said before how much I love Ariel Hyatt and what she does, both as a PR person and as a musician’s resource.

Check out her site and products here – Ariel Cyber PR

She’s just posted a fantastic article (as she does on a weekly basis) about how to maximise your traffic on YouTube. It’s actually written by Cassie Petrey of Crowdsurf.net, a company that specialises in Social Media campaigns for artists.

Read it here and digest. It covers all the essential basics of how to set up a channel and build awareness for your band through the wonders of YouTube.

We’ve been making all the people we work with use Youtube for a long while, particularly making tour diary videos and rehearsal back stage videos. The fans love it and you should be doing it.

A few other tips about making videos and looking for traffic on YouTube (and the other video sites too!):

• don’t forget that looking to drive traffic is an essential part of your job as a self marketing musician and that ultimately you want to get people to your site or MySpace page and to join your email list but the video should also always be an end destination in itself and should therefore be as good quality as you can make it. That doesn’t mean it has to be polished and brilliantly edited – it just needs to be good quality content and entertaining or inspiring or revealing;
• Google and the other search engines can’t see videos (not yet at least!), so you need to make sure that your title and description are telling them what it is;
• if you have a 10 minute video, break it down into parts 1 and 2 of 5 minutes each. People have very short attention spans and this will help to keep them watching and hopefully make them move on to part 2;
• in your description, ask people to comment. This helps the search engines rate your video as well as doing so for YouTube;
• Top Tip, and a bit sneaky! – Target related videos: search on YouTube for the videos with the most views in a day and check from the comments and their dates that they are still getting views now. When you’ve established that they’re being watched a lot right now, try to match your title, tags and description to those that are in that high rotation. Obviously, your video must make sense with those tags. Then, YouTube will place your video in the ‘Related Videos’ column to the right and you will get a load of traffic from people watching those high rotation videos.
• A great way to do the above trick is to find a massive new single that is getting huge views and film something a.s.a.p that makes sense in relation to it. So, just a few minutes of your band doing a rushed cover version in rehearsal or something like that. Then the keywords will match up.
• Don’t just use YouTube – it should be your focus because it is for everyone else, but also getting a lot of traffic are Google, DailyMotion and Viddler. If you really get into that, you’ll be needing to use Tubemogul to upload to multiple sites at once.

So, that’s a few extra little insights into Ariel’s chosen topic for the week. Go and check her post out – Read it here

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I think these might become a bit of a feature on the blog – little quick posts that point out a neat little tool that can help you in your mission to market your music.

We covered ArtistData the other day, which amongst other things gives you greater control over listing tour dates. Well I’m not sure if the application covered in this post will read the feed from ArtistData or not – I’m not that techy, but I assume it will. Let me know if I’m wrong!

So, what is it?

It’s a MySpace application from the lovely people at iLike. Great site that you should and probably do know about – it’s not in my top 5 of places that you should be using, but it’s not far behind. The Universal Artist Dashboard is good if you are an artist, and although it’s not as comprehensive as ArtistData looks like it will be for posting to all your profiles at once, it’s a pretty serious tool. It remains an awesome route to fans for larger artists.

But that’s not what this post is about!

They have just released an App for MySpace that replaces your MySpace calendar for listing your dates. As you’ll know the MySpace calendar isn’t very attractive and doesn’t allow any of the features that this brings to your profile. As well as being update-able from your iLike UAD, if you have one, so that MySpace updates with facebook etc, the App also has the ability to host buy links for tickets. There’s more – a whole load of info is dragged into the event page automatically – which friends are attending, venue map and details of pre-gig bars nearby. All  sounds pretty good and gives that little bit more engagement with your fans.

Add to that that it is customizable to fit in with the look of your page and it seems like a worthwhile MySpace page upgrade. Check it out here – Concerts powered by iLike

Note to self – make sure we put this in the next edition of Make It On MySpace!

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