How Do You Add Value To Your (Potential) Fans’ Lives?

So many indie artists struggle to break through with their music that we now have the following near-synonyms:

• Indie = broke
• Indie = hopeless
• Indie = unknown
• Indie = poor quality

But as most of you know, “indie” simply means “independent”. And that can be a very good thing indeed. Former superstars are almost all “indie” now. A slowly growing number of successful artists don’t have major-label contracts either. The above epithets couldn’t be more misplaced.

And what about you? Yeah, I know. Broke, hopeless, unknown. But not poor quality. Right?

So, if at least 3 out of those 4 terms describe your musical career, what are you doing about it? If, as a result of whatever-it-is-you-do you’re still broke, hopeless and unknown – what’s your plan?

If you’re like some 99% of all the indies out there, you’re just doing more of the same. And after so many times around the track, you will proceed to join the let’s-bitch-about-the-music-industry club. In that case, let’s just face it: you don’t have a chance in hell and you can stop reading now.

Reading still? That potentially puts you in the top 1%. You DO have a real chance. Much better than 50-50 in fact!

Wanna join the top 1% if not there already? Then ask yourself: am I career-building or just playing around? Do I throw away opportunities or do I embrace them? Did I create a thousand average songs or 20 masterpieces? Do I promote my music to the best of my ability, or do I wait to be discovered? Do I always do the best I can with my music business – or do I say “Business? What business! This is art?“

All too often artists don’t treat their music like a business, but rather as a life’s vocation. A calling. That’s cool, and essential in fact. But they all too often forget that everything in life must have balance. Why shouldn’t your art also be a business? Are you a lone Messiah who doesn’t stoop to practicalities in your noble quest? Well, if you are, then I trust you won’t stoop to bitching about the industry when it’s all over.

Don’t get me wrong. The industry is sick and corrupted and it deserves all the bitching it can get. But… not from YOU. Not until you have crossed all the t’s and dotted all the i’s and persistently and patiently put up a good (and clever) fight.

A talented independent artist can indeed achieve his or her dreams, if they go about it the right way. With this in mind, here are your three basic rules to stick to at all costs.

1. Rule #1 – Get Your music right. Quality is paramount. Don’t brag about the dozen divinely-inspired songs you’re able to write in one sitting. ALL good writers/artists are capable of doing exactly that. Arrogance and ignorance are blood-thirsty sisters. They’ll eat you and your career. Avoid feeding either of them!
   1. When writing, be yourself
   2. Feel it – understand it – execute it well – perfect it, even if it takes you weeks. And ask yourself: does it have the best quality I’m capable of?
   3. Know what your music means and how it adds value to the lives of its listeners. If you set out to make meaningless music, you will have a meaningless career. This doesn’t mean you can’t make “light” music.
   4. Ask yourself: how exactly does your music add value to your listener’s life?
   5. Does it entertain, uplift, empower, inspire? Or does it bore?
   6. Will  people travel for miles just to hear you?
2. Rule #2 – Get your music business right. Music Art is linked to Music Business. Always has always will be. Without the two, you would never have heard of Leonardo. Or The Beatles. Or any of your idols. Neglect one and the other suffers.
   1. Be an idealist - but also be a pragmatist. You don’t have to be the alpha and omega in your business. But you have to have enough vision to be able to build an organization around you and have your team members do things for you which you can’t do as well – or don’t have the time to do. You need a team – don’t do everything yourself.
   2. Think in the long term first. Then medium term. Finally, in the short-term.
   3. Build a complete support team (who does what, how will they be rewarded (profit shares?), etc).
   4. Build honest relationships with everyone you meet.
   5. Organize your company (make a budget for 1 year, keep costs down, set achievable goals, and remember that you will have to invest in your future – just decide how much).
   6. Plan your first year (know what you would like to see happen and when – don’t dream: plan, use solid techniques to achieve goals).
   7. Prepare for success (dont get caught without promo materials or cds, ensure your website i great, have business cards printed).
   8. Recognize opportunities and learn the rules of the jungle – both the web and the real world. And plan who will do what.
   9. Always think: how do you and your business add value to people’s lives.
   10. Get to know your fans and followers
3. Rule #3 – Stick to these Do’s and Dont’s:
   1. Don’t
      1. Don’t be a bloody naive fool.
      2. Don’t dream – plan.
      3. Don’t be sloppy or lazy.
      4. Don’t be impatient - you’re in this for the long haul.
      5. Don’t be shallow - educate yourself.
      6. Don’t be careless - be meticulous.
      7. Don’t complain - ever. It just drains you and redirects your precious energy to wasteful things.
      8. Don’t be long-winded and boring in your presentations (be it your music, or your business).
      9. Dont party too much
      10. Don’t boast, over-promise, under-deliver. If you talk the talk then walk the walk.
      11. Don’t push your music on people.
      12. Don’t claim you’re unique or don’t fit any genre.
   2. Do
      1. Do enjoy the ride. Love the whole process.
      2. Do focus: don’t try to be 50 different things!
      3. Do know who you are as an artist – what do you sound like? What is your niche?
      4. Do understand your niche thoroughly. BE your niche!
      5. Do have a grand vision (not a wet dream, but an actionable plan).
      6. Do learn all you need to learn about the resources available to you.
      7. Do learn to leverage your talents in exchange for business deals.
      8. Do make friends - always be courteous, be considerate. Always give credit to others, even when it’s less-than-deserved.
      9. Do always put your best foot forward. Write good copy on your website and always offer great value.
      10. Do be humble, but also supremely confident.
      11. Do associate yourself with winners, people who are better than you – you can’t expect to fly with the eagles if you peck with the turkeys!
      12. Do follow people who are relevant, emulate them but don’t copy.
      13. Do get reviews and learn from them – accept critiques graciously and gratefully, even if they’re negative.
      14. Do play live as often as possible, even for free.
      15. Do look after your health.

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Most of us think of music reviews as something one encounters in a music magazine, or perhaps on some of the music sites on the web. Many artists have an ambivalent attitude towards reviews in general. On the one hand, they recognize their need for them, but on the other hand they’re afraid that their song – or performance – might get slated and they’ll thus lose out.

But surely you heard the saying that “any press is good press”, right? Is there any truth to this? And is there such a thing as “enough” press or reviews? The answer to the first question is “yes, generally.” The answer to the second one is “there’s no such thing as enough!”

On the assumption that your music is really good and you already have a lot of fans who appreciate it, there is no reason why MORE people wouldn’t want to share that positive experience! Perhaps your fans aren’t spreading the word fast enough? Perhaps there aren’t enough of them yet? So, what should you do to change this?

Before I will attempt to answer that, let’s remind ourselves why you’re reading this and are possibly considering applying this technique as well. And the answer is obvious: if you’re a professional artist, or an artist who would like to become professional, then we’re looking at a budding music “business” here. And businesses rise and fall on promotion. You can NOT have a career in music without promotion. You knew that, right?

Getting Plain Vanilla Reviews

So, you want to earn some money from your art or not? If you do, then this article is for you.

To get promotion for your music business (i.e. your act, your music), you can sit back and wait to be discovered – or you can take matters in your own hands. If you’re taking the first option, see you back here in 10 years time.

If you’re willing to embrace the notion that god helps those who help themselves, then you already know that you’ve got some work to do. Don’t worry, it’s not too much work and you might even enjoy it. Or enjoy delegating it!

As this article will show you, one really effictive promotional technique relies on reviews. There are a few different ways to get them.

One way is to simply sign up to an online music site which allows members to review songs (these sites are sometimes referred to as “OMD’s” which means online music distributors). Here are some of the biggest and best ones currently out there:

MySpace (where your “reviews” come in the form of posts on your wall, Bebo, iMeem, Buzznet, Rhapsody, Lulu, SoundClick, OurStage, ReverbNation, ArtistDirect, PureVolume, Broadjam and there are hundreds more!

Then, start uploading your songs and hope that reviews will come in thick and fast and that they will be mostly positive.

The trouble with this method is that it can take a long time to get “enough” positive reviews, even if your music is really great and resonates with people. Another much bigger problem is that getting to the top of Google Search from those sites (possibly with the exception of MySpace or SoundClick) isn’t all that easy either.

Yet another issue is that most of these music sites will not let you point your reviews at your own website, so you could argue that even if you get 500 reviews on these sites over a period of time, you will not see much benefit from it all in terms of fresh search-engine traffic to your site – or your band’s site. And traffic to your band’s site is, after all, the key here. This, simply because you want to KEEP some of the fans you win with your reviews.

So, while you should indeed sign up to a whole lot of music sites and have your music there for all to see, you must also explore other avenues of getting reviews which will help your “stumble-upon” factor on the search engines.

“There must be a better way!” I hear you say.
And there is.

Strawberry Flavored Reviews

Before I give you your power tip, let’s first look at the so-called “dedicated review sites” specialized in independent music, all of which are a very good complement to the above music sites. Here’s a list of some of the most important ones: Delusions of Adequacy, Fensepost.com, Junk Media, Pitchfork Reviews, Palebear, Sound As Language, Tiny Mix Tapes, Treble, Ultra Indie Album Reveiws, Veritas Lux Mea, Jamendo, and others.

Unlike most of the standard OMD sites, most of these reviews will easily show up on Google (especially from Pitchfork or Jamendo), and some will even place links to your website if they love your music enough.

All of these sites are very good to be featured on, but the majority of them share the same problem as the OMD sites: they do not allow you to properly “market” your musical presence on the web. They will point web surfers to your profile on THEIR site – and, typically, nothing else.

All this means that you’re still looking for a better way…

Chocolate Flavored Reviews

Music magazines with good terrestrial circulation are still extremely important to your career. If you can get in. There are also scores of online magazines, and most of the really good ones have both an online and an offline version.

You should ask the best ones among them to review your music. The biggest ones, naturally, have a long queue of reviews pending, but they’re almost all open to looking at new music.

For a comprehensive list of magazines, why not visit www.magazines.com and once you get there, look for music and entertainment mags.

With all of the above in mind, just remember one thing: when you register for all of the above services (they’re all free, by the way), make sure that your home site URL is prominent and hyperlinked within your profile, if possible.

A La Carte!

So, you asked if there is a better way to get reviews that actually help you “get found” – and I promised you that there is. When it comes to reviews of your music, by far the quickest way to generate fans is to… roll your own.

Aaah… I can already hear the screams of indignation. Don’t jump to conclusions, please.

But also, let’s keep it real.

Think of your “controlled reviews” as “promotional copy” for your act which can be placed in the form of a review on in an appropriate area on the web. If you’re squeamish about promoting yourself only, make it balanced and promote others too. Or simply ask your friends to write a review about your music which you can “live with” in terms of it being honest and you won’t feel guilty that you’re shamelessly self-promoting. By all means, some “negatives” only make such a review more powerful and believable. Or write a gut-wrenching story of how you were told to review your own music but you can’t bring yourself to do it! If you write it well – people will enjoy it for what it is and have a good laugh!

I know I’m treading on dangerous ground here with many artists who wouldn’t ever “stoop to that level.” But let’s leave value judgments out of this, okay? I’m neither endorsing nor condemning this method. It’s just a technique which can get you noticed, that’s all. Use it – or lose it.

But allow me to remind you that if you ever get signed to a major label, they WILL stoop to that level for you. And let me further qualify that: if you have an emotional or philosophical problem with “encouraging reviews” then don’t do it. It is, after all, only one out of some 200 promotional techniques available to you.

So, get someone else to do this for you, if you personally do not want to do this. But just make sure it gets done!

This method works extremely well, remember, and CAN bring you hundreds, even thousands of REGISTERED fans!

So, if you are more pragmatic in your approach, and you realize that a review is – at best – only an invitation to get the people to listen for themselves, i.e. it’s but a tool to accomplish that noble mission, then proceed to the next step which is: WHERE to place such reviews? Oh, and of course “HOW” to write them.

Where To Post Editorial Reviews

At this point in time, the ideal venue for reviews of this sort is something which marketers refer to as “feeder sites“. Those can be additional websites you create (the hard way), where each one ultimately points to your main site, they can be other people’s sites, blogs, forums or newsletters – or – they can be the so-called “hubs” or “lenses.”

In here, I will only focus on hubs and lenses.

Both hubs and lenses are just fancy names for externally-hosted mini-sites (typically 1-page long). If you host such a page at hubpages.com then it will be called a “hub” and if you host it on squidoo.com it will be known as a “lens.”

The chief advantage of these types of sites is that Google ranks them very highly, so even a relatively small number of reviews (with the correct keywords) can get you to the top of search engine results quite easily.

In order to create your own hub, simply register an account with hubpages, create your profile, and then go ahead and write a review. Both hubpages and squidoo make it easy to create beautiful-looking pages, so you can also place pictures and soundbites there if you like.

Make sure that whatever your write is USEFUL to your potential fans, so don’t just fill your review article with self-gratifying platitudes and meaningless comliments. Particularly if you’re writing about yourself! Place it all in context and give it an angle. For example “If John Smith can write an amazingly beautiful song such as ‘Hello Goodbye’ why can’t Kylie Minogue? And speaking of John Smith…“

There are tons of angles available, and you should use your natural creativity and talent to write a medium-length 300-400 words review which will keep the reader’s interest, perhaps even give them cause to smile, or give them valuable information, facts, figures, stats, leads – whatever.

Briefly About Keywords

But keep in mind the principal angle of your story, which is – essentially – the keyword (or keywords) of your article. And of course “your name” or “your music” are NOT the primary keywords, the SUBJECT of your song is – or the hook of your performance.

I’ve used the “broken hearts” theme in another article, so let’s stick with it. If the song you’re reviewing is about broken hearts, then look for key-phrases relating to that – in exactly the same way a Google user might type them into the search bar.

If your heart were broken what might YOU type in your search in order to get some help on the web? “I have a broken heart” or “how to heal from a broken relationship” and so on, right?

Whatever the key-phrase you select, make sure to use it within your review article. Make it a title or part of the title. Make it appear EXACTLY like that within the body of your article, possibly 2 or 3 times. Maybe more, if it makes sense.

The article should contain a couple of links pointing to the outside world, and that should almost always be your home page (where you engage and SIGN UP your fans), or your music sales page – or your YouTube page (where you must also have a link to your home page!).

At the risk of sounding like a broken record: be creative with your review. As I already said, don’t make it one-dimensional and obsessively promotional. Provide some information that the reader will enjoy. You don’t have to be direct. You may, in fact, write about something else entirely, and only mention that you were inspired to write all this after hearing “John Smith’s Hello Goodbye” (and then helpfully provide a link).

Hey, one thing just occurred to me, when thinking of classy ways to review a song or a performance. Remember Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly” (later covered by the Fugees)? Isn’t that a REVIEW song? hehe…. well – it is.

The Strategy

OK, back to feeder sites. Once you have your review, post it. Next, write a few more! You can even re-write the same review using different words, or write a bunch of brand new ones. Do this both on Hubpages and on Squidoo.

Post your song review or an artist review within those pages, from different accounts (perhaps using your friends’ help) once a week. If you can have around 50 review articles floating around after about a month, you’re not doing too badly. It’s an exercise which won’t take you more than a few hours to do right, all told, so you might as well set your sights higher still.

With around 100 reviews, all with your targeted keywords, you are all-but-guaranteed to rank on the first page of Google for your specific keywords. If you’re consistent.

If your keywords are popular, i.e. if they get lots of searches on Google, then you’ll stand an excellent chance of pulling in lots of visits to your site as long as they don’t also have too much competition. Once that happens, you can convert many of those visits to members, and finally members to clients/buyers of your music/fans at your gigs!

While I’ll make this a subject of a separate article, you have for sure asked yourself “how do I know if my keyword is popular?” as well as “how do I know if it has a lot of competition?”

There are many very sophisticated ways to establish that, but the simplest guide is provided by Google itself. To establish the size of your competition, type your keyword in and look at the number of returned results. That’s your keyword popularity. If you get a few million results, you KNOW that it’s a popular and attractive keyword.

Next, type in “google keyword tool” into Google, then just click through and enter your keywords/keyphrases in there – and look at the number of searches that have happened for each keyword last month. That’s your competition.  It’s slightly oversimplified, I know, but it’s a very good way to get started and to understand how the whole process works.

The biggest challenge in picking the right keywords in order to promote your music is to find a popular phrase which doesn’t have too much competition. How to accomplish that is a matter for another article. In the meantime – start writing those reviews!

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How well do you know your music resources on the net? Do you know that everything you need to succeed with your music is available to you online?

If only you knew where to look…!

You can create a massive fan base. You can create very respectable earnings with your music online. And you can even be noticed by the big labels, if that’s what you’re after.

But truth be known, knowing “where to look” is but a tiny part of the game. If someone said “you need a YouTube video” you’d know “where to look”, but you’d still be none-the-wiser. You probably already have a video (or ten) on YouTube and nothing seems to happen, right?

Knowing the “where” must therefore be strictly linked to knowing the “what (to do)” – and it also helps to know the “why.” But perhaps most importantly, you really do need to know the “how.”

I know this sounds a little cryptic, so let’s develop this just a little bit, using the above example of YouTube. (By the way, YouTube promotions are only one of nearly 200 (!) different promotional methods you COULD employ! Some might say “should” employ…)

Where: Where to upload your music?

Let’s stick to our example and pick YouTube.

Why: Why should you promote on YouTube?

Because YouTube is now the second most-searched destination on the web, and all Google searches (the #1 search destination) also include YouTube searches. So, having your music up on YouTube gives you the potential to have greater visibility and that “stumble-upon” factor.

What: What to do with it, now that you know where and why?

The answer to this question has two parts:

(a) getting the content and format of your video presentation right, and
(b) the manner in which you will promote the video after you’ve uploaded it.

The content - can be as elaborate (or as simple) as you like. You could shell out time and money and make a full-production professional quality video flick – or you could just set up a single camera and capture a live performance (as long as you make sure the sound is excellent). Or you could even just make a simple slideshow and have your music play in the background.

It doesn’t matter all that much how you format your video, but what does matter is whether you can make it “connect” with your listener/viewer. Ideas for that are a matter for another article. For now, just use your judgment and simply make it as good and engaging as you can. And don’t forget: it’s about the music!

The promotion - once you’ve uploaded your video you need to be aware that there are at least 200 different promotional techniques and resources and many of them require days, sometimes weeks of preparation to correctly execute – if your aim is to generate the biggest possible number of views. YouTube promotion is one of the easiest ones out there, but also one of the most effective if done right.

Knowing all this, you shouldn’t be daunted. Just remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day. Just do this ONE promotional technique (YouTube) and you MAY not even have to worry about all the others if you do a stellar job. What matters is that you do your best and at a pace you can absorb without burning out. And you should therefore start at the most obvious and easiest end.

In case of a YouTube video, you need to know that the following items are KEY to making your video “circulate”:

• Engaging content, good quality (regardless of how simple or complex the presentation is). Note: on your first time out don’t stress over this too much, okay? Give yourself time to develop a knack for this. Just be sure it’s “you” and it’s real. If you already have a video uploaded, then just skip to the next point.

• Correct choice of keywords (or “tags”) you attach to your video. I’ve looked at dozens, probably hundreds of indie videos and I was stunned at how many have no tags at all. Or, they might only have the name of the act as a tag. And that’s it! HOW is anyone going to stumble on that? So, if your name is “John Smith” and you have a song called “Hello Goodbye”, these are in fact two of the LEAST important tags! In fact, some will argue that they’re redundant, because you will presumably use them in the title of your video – and you can think of your video’s title as a “free tag.” The tags should include key phrases people are likely to use when searching for similar music. People whom you want to stumble on your song. If it’s a song that sounds a bit like Nirvana, then do make sure “nirvana” is one of your tags. If it’s a song about broken hearts then “broken heart” is another tag idea. You get the drift? Now, just don’t over-stuff the tags/keywords. Anything between 5 and 10 keywords/key-phrases is ample. If you have more – write them down and don’t worry – you’ll soon have an opportunity to use them as well…!

• A short but engaging story attached to the video (which you write in the “description” box. Make SURE that your BEST keywords are re-used within the body of your text. If your song is about “broken hearts”, then in your description MAKE SURE that the EXACT phrase “broken hearts” is used at least one, two or even three times, depending on the length of your description. The description itself shouldn’t be longer than about 200 words (typically), but also not shorter than about 100. The entire description is searchable, so it’s just one more opportunity to be “stumbled upon!”

• Place a clear link to your website, right at the TOP of the description area. Only ensure that the link sends the listener/viewer to the appropriate place on your site. Such an “appropriate” place can be a sales page (e.g. with your ITunes or CD Baby, etc order links, or even directly to your iTunes store – whatever).Or: send them to a page where you’re trying to engage your guests.This, in fact, is an even better strategy which has the potential to “keep on giving” well past the moment of that first sale of your download or CD.This “engagement” is a whole separate area which I will cover in another article, but briefly put for now, the whole point is that you must try to build a “fan base“, and to do that, you need to get your visitors to sign up to your mailing list. They may do that simply because they love your music, or maybe because you ALSO offer them something else they like – apart from your music. No matter what it is, they must perceive value in it in order for them to sign up to your list.In many cases that “value” WILL simply be your music, but don’t count on it. These days especially, people like to have more stimulus to get them to take action.How do you sign them up? Well, the very simplest way is to sign up to an auto-responder service like aWeber (a lot of marketers (!) use that service – but that’s simply because it does the job really well. Savvy indie musicians use it too!). I’ll cover this subject in more detail in upcoming articles, but for now, just know that this is probably the easiest way to “manage your fan base.”Once you have your fans signed up, you can then (with time) get them to not only “support” you and come to your gigs, but also to buy your music from you, your merchandise, and so on. But, ideally, all this should happen only after you’ve established a “relationship” with them. And you establish that relationship by inviting them into your world.How…? Well, you can have a page with your story, for example. But be careful: if it’s just a “standard” kind of story you may be better served by focusing them on something else. Perhaps some articles you wrote, pictures you took, resources you found, books you can recommend, free gifts you can bestow… and so on. Think of it this way: why would YOU sign up to someone’s mailing list? Would the music be enough? Or the promise that you’ll be the first to know when a new release is out? Or would you want more? And, if so, what would that be?

• Links (“annotations“) within your video. YouTube allows you to “annotate” your video. That’s your opportunity to send your viewers/listeners to your home page or to your CD/MP3 sales page. It’s very easy to do in YouTube, so only one word of caution: do NOT put those sales links at the top or in the middle of your video. They put people off and they’ll soon think you’re some kind of a marketer. But towards the end of the video is a good place. That’s because if they got this far, it means they’re probably genuinely interested in you, and by giving them a link they can click on you’re just making their life easier.

• Secondary version(s) of your video with a new title and tags! Now, this is a sneaky little technique, but it works really well. Re-upload your video. Yes, the same exact one!Only this time give it a different title and a whole new set of keywords.Sure you must keep the song title and the artist name the same, but the point is that you might want to take the focus off your name and song title and place it on “more important” keywords! So, if your song is entitled “Hello Goodbye by John Smith” and it’s a song about “broken hearts” your secondary upload just might be titled “The best song about broken hearts!”Try not to “judge” this method or get righteous about it, if you can. Many artists balk at the idea of such supposedly “underhanded” tactics. If you think about it more deeply, you’ll understand that you too have looked for music using “keywords”. You may have said to someone “what was that song about eclipsing the heart or whatever?” Are you beginning to see the logic here…?

• Notify your friends and ask them to spread the word. Now that you have your video properly tagged and linked, let everyone know about it. Of course, you’re just starting out so chances are that you have very few fans and no “list” to speak of. That’s not a problem. You DO know a dozen or so people in your family, right? You have friends, yes? Supporters? Email them and ask them to click through to your video and leave a comment and vote it up. Why not!

• Promote this video to other members of the YouTube community. Don’t forget: YouTube is a SOCIAL NETWORK. Most people I know don’t realize that! Did you?Just like on Facebook or MySpace, etc, you can make “friends” and you can interact with other like-minded people who are on YouTube. You can form or join “groups” and pretty much do everything you can do on any other social network. Knowing this go ahead and “friend” others willingly. Not just musicians, but especially people who love your kind of music! Most will reciprocate and “friend” you. And you can even use a little program that will help you accomplish the job much quicker.Don’t think of it as an underhanded marketer’s tactic. Leave value judgments out of this, please! It’s just something that WORKS, okay? The best program out there – by a mile – is Tube Toolbox, if you want to go down that route!

How: How to accomplish the above tasks?

Well, the reason why I even put this question in is that many artists simply REFUSE to get their hands dirty! Others still refuse if it’s “too much ” work, which, they fear, might turn them into marketers rather than artists.

On that note, I do have to hastily add that Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner – and literally the entire roster of the biggest classical composers – were all superb “marketers” too in quite the modern sense of that word! Many of your biggest rock or r&b or pop idols are – or were – very adept at this as well. And that includes all the “credible” ones.

So there is NO contradiction between these two terms.

Still, it’s fair to say that SOME promotional tasks can be VERY daunting. In case of YouTube promotions, it’s really not a very big job. You can get the entire promotional campaign I outlined above accomplished in a day, once you have your video done. In fact, you could do all of the above in under 2 hours, if you already had experience doing that sort of thing, so a “day” is just a rough outside estimate.

This said, you might still consider this to be “too much” for you. But even so, you might be tempted to try it… if only there was an easier way!

Well – there is. You can OUTSOURCE the job.

And just before you think it’s gonna be a nightmarishly huge expense, I’ve got good news for ya. A little job like this can be outsourced at a very – VERY – low rate. I’d say you can get the whole thing done for under $100, possibly for as little as $10 or $20, using REAL PEOPLE to do the job too.

How? Well, there are loads of outsourcing sites out there. One interesting one is www.fiverr.com where everyone is offering to do something for you for $5. Some offers are silly, but some may be exactly what you’re looking for. Other sites where you can easily find people to (cheaply) help you include www.guru.com, www.virtualemployee.com, www.odesk.com, www.elance.com, www.freelancer.com, www.rentacoder.com and many others.

Costs: What can the above “self-promotion” on YouTube cost?

You can do the entire campaign, as described above, for nothing – not counting your time, which of course HAS a value. But no cash needs to change hands.

If you decide to automate some tasks and start collecting a list of your fans, then aWeber will cost you only $1 for the first month, and then it’s $19 per month, while Tube Toolbox costs just under $8 per month (with a $19.95 activation fee – though you can also use a limited free version which also works great). If you furthermore ALSO invest in an outsourced assistant, you can get all the above tasks done for another $50-100, realistically speaking. In other words: a full-blown YouTube campaign can cost you as little as ZERO, or up to around $400 for a whole year, everything included.

Personally, I would do a campaign like that on my own, without having to pay for anything other than aWeber and Tube Toolbox.

What to expect from a “good” YouTube promotion

A campaign like the one I described above, if designed well, can increase your visibility on YouTube by a factor of… infinity, really. If you just do the basics without “really” trying, you’ll increase your views by a factor of 5 or even 10. But if you do the whole thing carefully and methodically, you can increase your views by a factor of a 1000. Yes – a THOUSAND. Or even much more…!

Now are you beginning to pay attention?

And what can a thousand-fold increase in views do for you in terms of your career? Well, that depends on how well you applied the above advice. If you signed up to aWeber to build your fan list (or another auto-responder service, or indeed if you have coded your own), and you’ve created a good incentive program to ENGAGE your signups/fans, then here are some numbers for you to consider. I’ve taken them from experienced MARKETERS, and they can be treated as “web averages” for a campaign of this kind.

If you get 1,000 views of your video, and have everything else set up the way I described, you can count on at least a 10% click-through rate to your URL. This means, that 1,000 views will get you 100 visits to your site. If your site is engaging and they love your music you will probably beat the web average of 1% visit-to-sign-up rate to something nearer 10%. And this would mean that 10 out of the 100 would sign up to your fan list.

If, at some point, you would like to share with your fans more than just cool information but perhaps also entice them to buy your music or your merch – or whatever – then a conversion (from member to “buyer”) of around 25% would be considered “reasonable” for this type of site, with a web average hovering around 10%.

If you assume it’s only going to be 10%, then your 10 signups will yield 1 sale. So, if you’re selling your MP3 album for $10, that’s $10 in your pocket. And remember – later on, chances are better than 50% that you can sell again to that same person.

So, 1,000 views can easily equal 1 sale, or in this case $10. What about 10,000 views? Well, that’s a much cooler $100. And 100,000 views…? Now, we’re looking at a very likely $1,000. Nothing to spit at, eh? On total auto-pilot too!

But there’s absolutely no reason why your video shouldn’t get 1,000,000 views.

In fact, using ONLY the technique described above, you can drive your video to 1,000,000 views in a matter of… weeks or short months, especially if you utilize a program like Tube Toolbox. Sounds crazy? Well, it’s definitely possible and achievable for ordinary people who simply do the job the right way.

What would that kind of money do to help your career?
More importantly – what would a FAN base of thousands do for your career?

What other ways are there for an artist to achieve success online?

This article is now becoming very long so I won’t go any further, except to say that there are some 200 methods for selling – very successfully selling – your indie music on the web. I will be positing articles about this in the upcoming weeks.

Additionally, when we finally launch Fame Games 2.0, we will help you get all these possible methods SIMPLIFIED and ORGANIZED like you’ve never seen them before, thereby helping you shift to second gear. So DO make sure to support this effort!

Until then – I hope the above tip will be useful to you!

You agree? Is this helpful? Then “LIKE” it. Re-Tweet it. Facebook it. Social Bookmark it.

DO check this video out…!

Managing Musical Artists in the new Digital World from Peter Malkin on Vimeo.

Now, isn’t that what it’s all about?

The “indie” illusion…

The word “indie” as a blanket term for any kind of “independently produced music” has lost all its relevance – if indeed it had any to begin with.

It’s not just that the distinction between production quality of the “majors” and the “indies” is getting increasingly blurry. And it’s not just that the majors have long ago hijacked the term and applied it to their version of edgy and slightly garage-band-sounding rock, thereby confusing everybody – except the real indies themselves.

The real reason why the term “indie” is now more of a hindrance then a help to you the indie musician, is, ultimately, because the punters don’t know any different. For this reason alone, promoting your music as ‘indie’ is self-defeating.

In fact, it’s prejudicial in at least three ways. Firstly, most audiences will think you’re doing some kind of slightly sloppy but edgy rock – and there goes 90% of your market. Next, many others will think that your music is therefore not quite up to scratch – that’s another 99% of what remains. But finally and most importantly, the vast majority of the rest will have no idea what you’re talking about. They’re not aware of the music business politics. And they don’t care!

If you tell your non-musician friend “I just released a record” do you really think he’s gonna ask you “who did you sign with?” Even you, as an indie, will not ask that question of an author who’s just published a book, will you? “Was that a Random House deal then? Doubleday perhaps? Or did you narcisistically self-publish?”

No. The term “indie” has done its duty and it’s time to move away from it – and move on. The sooner, the better. Stop confusing the masses and let them simply know you’re “releasing music.” Not on a big label, not on a small one, not independently nor backed by a soulless corporation. Just music, that’s it.

If you must, you can label it with genre descriptions, but you should remember that even then you’re paying homage to the radio people who are responsible for naming up to 90% of all the genres – not in the name of clarity, but in the name of commerce. Still, you can go ahead and do that so as not to come across as arrogant. I mean “I’m doing MUSIC” sounds a bit full-of-yourself as opposed to “I’m doing R&B.”

If you abandon the term “indie” when promoting your work, your audiences will respect you more.

Silly, perhaps, but undeniably true. You’ll now be able to save on precious advertising space. Contrast these two pitches: “Check out the newest release from the hottest indie band on the planet, The Wankers!” with “The Wankers, out now – worldwide. You’ve been waiting for this!”

Will this level the playing field? Not by much, but at least you won’t be playing into the public prejudice of independent=poor-quality vs major=officially-sanctioned-and-good. Yeah. Confuse and befuddle them. And stop being indie today!

You agree? LIKE it. Re-Tweet it. Facebook it. Social Bookmark it.

Is there such a thing as a musical middle class? That would be hard-working artists who make a decent-enough living from their art – and only their art – while remaining relatively unknown?

Of course there is. But the thing is that  “middle class” implies something really huge and dominant at least in terms of numbers. Like 80% of any given society or group may fit into the “middle” while maybe 10-15% could be the “underclass” with 5-10 being the “top class.” A numbers thing.

This rough guide works in most professions actually. Take accountants. There’ll be a small group of 10-or-so-percent who just can’t make ends meet and another 10-or-so-percent who make millions. All the others will be earning within the $30k to perhaps $250k per year bracket loosely qualifying for the “middle class” definition. Same goes for just about any other profession.

Not so when it comes to creative arts. The fame game.

The upper class, i.e. people who make well over $250k is TINY. You can count them in thousands out of a pool of probably something like 100,000,000 worldwide. Maybe even a lot more than that. A fraction of a percentage point! And, mind you, only a tiny fraction of those are actually well-known.

The “middle” class, i.e. those artists who rake in anything between, say, $30k-$250k per year are not 80-million-strong as ordinary job stats would imply, but are also but a tiny percentage. I wouldn’t put this at much higher than maybe 25-50,000 people tops, worldwide. And that’s still but a fraction!

This means that the “underclass” is nearly 100 million strong! Could this be?

OK, let’s break this down a bit. Of the 100 million, surely majority are not “professionals” and are at best only talented wannabes. How many should we say? 80% perhaps? OK. So let’s get rid of the 80% as “non-professionals” and we’re STILL looking at 20,000,000 artists in our underclass!

But let’s be even more harsh. Most of those 20 million have other jobs and only wish they could devote all their time to music and they proabbly don’t even gig. So as much as I hate to do this, let’s lump them together with the rejects and leave only those who make at least a partial living from their music. How many would that be then? Well, let’s be really harsh and say 80% again. That leaves us with 4,000,000 members of the musical underclass – typically very talented people who can NOT make ends meet with their music alone.

If we were to go with these numbers, all of which are rather conservative (i.e. there are actually MORE artists in the underclass, and fewer in the middle and upper classes!), we’d be looking at this worldwide trend:

• 98.63% – 3,945,000 – Total underclass artists (earning below $30k per year, but more than “nothing”)
• 0.01% - Total middle class artists: 50,000 (earning between $30k and $250k per year)
• 0.001% - Total upper class artists: 5,000 (earning over $250k p.a.)
• Total professional music artists: 4,000,000

Tweak these numbers as much as you like, but your general percentages will remain dismally stacked against the middle class!

So the obvious question is WHY?

We can slash the middle class number by a further 80% – just to be nice and cruel – and declare the remaining 20% as supremely talented, while the rest are run of the mill. Well… that’s still nearly 800,000 world-class artists who should be earning enough money on their art but aren’t!

If you’re reading this blog, chances are you’re one of those artists.

What should you do? What strategies might you employ to move out of the underclass and – at the very least – enter the middle class? Would you want to?

You’ll find that part of the problem with moving forward is that that “underclass” artists typically DON’T WANT TO BE MIDDLE CLASS. It’s either upper class or nothing with them (they’re confusing economy with art!). This is actually one of the key reasons why the middle class in the arts department is so dismally under-represented! It’s not so much the lack of qualified professionals or even the lack of market for their talents, but primarily the lack of will on part of the artists to consider anything other than shooting for the stars!

That’s the problem with the fame game. The prevailing all-or-nothing mentality. And this mentality results in opposite outcomes to those that are intended. Artists burn out trying and their talents (or should I say determinations and drives) eventually fizzle out. Untold numbers of timeless masterpieces were never heard of and have been neatly flushed down the toilets of unfulfilled expectations. Only a tiny fraction of those artists eventually come to their senses and decide that “any” income is better than NO income – as long as it comes from music.

And that’s why the musical middle class is so tiny so as to be nearly non-existent.

So what do you do? You’re in this semi-permanent underclass now and you have to decide:

(a) Remain musically unemployed for an indefinite amount of time, hoping for the BIG BREAK? or

(b) Start turning your art into a business NOW, and if any breaks come – let them come. But at least you’re making a living doing what you love?

The answer that MOST artists will give will probably surprise you. The vast majorty, especially the under-25′s will knuckle down and… wait for that big break. Not only are they not considering turning pro, they don’t even know that it’s POSSIBLE! (Except through “being discovered”)

Ask one of them “how” do they think they might make money, and most will only come up with one or two answers: “from gigging” or “from CD/download sales.” Given the gig situation out there, the limited number of venues and the fact that these acts are unknown and can only hope their gigs won’t be pay-to-play, the first option is not a great model for earning money, and neither is the second one, where CD sales are these days only really viable at gigs, while the competition for the paid download market is simply insane.

Upon hearing this, the majority of our underclass only get stronger in their resolve: “we’ll get discovered sooner or later!”

The lack of vision and understanding of economic realities, possibilities, ideas, planning, strategies, tactics – all this dooms all these creative and bright people to forever staying in the “low” class – until eventually and belatedly they start looking for “real jobs.”

This article wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t end it on a positive note.

There are dozens of ways a musician can make money. Enough money to enter the MIDDLE class and swell its ranks. NONE of those ways are “easy”, but equally NONE are all that hard. None of them will give you “real” incomes in “weeks” but SOME may give you those real incomes in less than a year if you’re serious.

I’ve addressed just a handful of ways to make money on music within these pages. See “Cashing In – Making Money On Your Indie Music“.

Additionally DO check out our newsletter site at Fair Play For Music and read the lead article. While it might sound like a wishful marketing pitch to some of you, in reality it is nothing short of an invitation to a REVOLUTION.

YES, we are asking for people’s support in it, and YES it’s still a work in progress and YES, we are going to employ established marketing tactics to help YOU generate business (why the hell not?).

But it is also – to my knowledge at least – the first and perhaps the ONLY effort of its kind which aims to create a musical middle class! Because ONLY if you’re in the middle class can you realistically hope to move up to the top (“being discovered” notwithstanding).

We’re working furiously on creating turnkey systems for you which will help you accomplish this mission – as long as you’re not hell-bent on forever remaining in the noble-but-poor underclass.

DO visit FairPlayForMusic and contribute to your future!

Making money with your music is a dream we all share, as artists. At first it’s planning how we’ll spend the millions of dollars, deal with the spotlights, paparazzi, all that. Later it becomes a bit more modest and all we really want is just a 6-figure annual income from our art. Later still, we dream of just making “anything” at all. 20 bucks would do nicely, thank you.

And then… we start to dream of giving it all away – to millions. But when the millions aren’t up for your freebie, we revise the dream and aim to give it to a few thousands. Nah. Still not right. We eventually settle on blissful happiness with all our family and friends agreeing to download a free copy of our latest masterpiece.

That’s it. Dream’s over.
Or is it?

Some of us, even in the above nightmarish (and yet SO common) scenario… some of us have a god-given talent and our production quality is market-ready. REALLY.

Some of us – and we number in the tens of thousands, from among the millions of the “rest of us” – are ready for the big time, and people WOULD pay money to buy our music and they WOULD pay money to come to our gigs. OK. So … where are they?

The CHIEF among the many keys to commercial success of ANY venture or product is to have access to an audience. In online terms, let’s call it “traffic.” Think of it as being able to fill a venue with punters who’ll come from far and wide just to hear you perform. Having an audience is – if you know what you’re doing – a nearly guaranteed way of generating incomes. This is because of the marketing phenomenon known as “conversion.” If you have 100 people and can “convert” 10 of them to buy something from you – you have a 10% conversion rate. This applies to both the online and offline worlds.

The NEXT key is having the product right. The “right” music for the right crowd. Music is most certainly a part of your product. For most artists, it’s the ONLY part. But there’s also merchandising – stuff like T-shirts, mugs, posters… heck, even album pre-sales.

ANOTHER hugely important key is organization. Doing the above in a way that still leaves you time to actually do the gig, eat, sleep and be merry. That sort of thing. And not just doing it, but also doing it WELL. You can outsource this sort of thing, or you can do it yourself. Maybe.

Let’s leave the nitty gritty of all that for another time and here let’s only have a look at the different WAYS of promoting and “monetizing” (dontcha just love marketers?) your act, along with their respective merits and demerits.

So, what are the ways in which indies can make ends meet?

Here are just a few of the most common methods bandied about out there. Each of them most certainly worked at least once for someone. And who knows some of them may still do the trick for someone in the future.

Offline

• Working a day job, doing music on the side. Believe it or not, this is the one method known to man with the highest likelihood of success – if you define success as “doing what you like and not dying of starvation.” The trade-off? You can’t do music full time and you’ll probably never be able to compete with the big boys – but you’re alive.
• Regular gigs. Assuming your music is good enough to entertain, attract and keep people listening – the first challenge is finding a venue which will actually pay you. Some venues want YOU to pay THEM (which is cool if you know what you’re doing, but very uncool if you don’t!). The more paid gigs you have, the more money you’ll rake in. But – caveat emptor: the more band-members you have the less money you’ll make per person. Another caveat: the smaller your “band” the less (potentially) attractive it is to the punters. Solo acts who can generate the energy and pulling power of a band are few and far between. Having an agent to organize these gigs for you is a HUGE bonus. But also a cost.
• Specialty gigs. Assuming you know some popular covers pretty well and are not above doing weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, birthdays and other such events, you can actually make a semi-decent living on this. But you do need an agent or be able to act like one yourself. Oh, and playing covers for a living does tend to have a nasty side-effect of somehow… derailing your original sound. If you’re not careful.
• Sales of CDs at gigs. This can be a really good bonus income for any touring band or solo act. Naturally, you will need to have the CDs pre-made and hopefully you will have made them cost-effectively.
• Sales of merchandise. If you’re well-prepared, have cool merch and your act is attractive, you can supplement your incomes nicely with this as well.
• Fan club signups. This is usually not an income supplement but rather an income “driver.” Using snail-mail and email notifications you drive fans to your gigs (to sell them more of your CDs and merch).
• Teaching. Some artists do teaching gigs on the side. If you’re well-organized and don’t get burned out easily by students who just don’t want to learn and suck your energy dry – this can even be a source of inspiration, not just money. But if you’re not well organized and are unlucky to have lazy-ass students… RIP.
• Patronages, private investors. If you’re lucky enough, appealing and savvy enough to attract a business angel or a company to back you – congratulations. This is the best way to keep you focused SOLELY on music in order to maximize your chances of “making it” – and thereby maximizing your investor’s chances of seeing any returns as a result of your focus. A word of caution: don’t just take “anyone’s” money. This kind of a relationship can last for years, and if you’re not on the same wavelength with your sponsor, you may be entering a path of self-destruction.
• Sponsorships. Some popular acts are capable of attracting sponsors and affiliating with them. If a local business loves your music, they just might back you. If you’re THAT good, sky is the limit for you, if you have good organization.
• Ticket touting (hehe, it’s kinda music-related, no?). Sorry I had to throw that one in! OK. Call it “other incomes“. If you’re a born marketer (and believe me, some artists ARE), you can make money on “everything else” too. Check out Solomon Burke’s story for more on that. He’d personally sell pop-corn, ice-cream and other concessions during breaks in his concerts and wouldn’t allow anyone else to do that either! Hilarious, awesome – can be done. But not by everyone.

Online

• As offline so online. Almost all of your offline incomes are possible to create online as well, or at the very least to organize via online connections. But there’s more.
• Setting up your own site. Creating a site where you showcase your act, allow downloads (some paid, some free), sell tickets or at least advertise your gigs, peddle merch – all that is great. Except that it can be worthless if you don’t get any traffic. And to get traffic, you need to “drive it”, and “keep it.” You drive it with various marketing techniques, and you keep it with the quality of your content (and that’s NOT just music, mind you!). Outsourcing this job is a good option for many artists. It can be totally absorbing and time-consuming, leaving you little to no time for your art. This said, it will bring you closer to your fans and you’ll understand the realities of life and business so much better…
• Joining pre-organized sites. This is the most popular way today. You sign up to SoundClick, SonicBids, MySpace or BroadJam – and others. You get a page, some pre-made “tools” to help you attract fans, some perfunctory ways to “expose” your music to their “community,” various “opportunities” and so on. Some of these sites are really cool, beautifully organized, full of things to do. But – they ALL require WORK and daily engagement on your part to make ANYTHING of the opportunities they offer. Some are free and some cost a premium. Regardless of whether you pay for a membership or not, regardless of the inherent quality of each such site, you’re ALWAYS expected to do the main work yourself. And what is the main work? Driving traffic, of course!
• Online Contests. If you win one of the major contests (e.g. John Lennon Songwriting Contest, USA Songwriting Competition, Billboard Song Contest, etc), you’ll get tens of thousands of dollars worth of merch, maybe a few K in cash, and some industry exposure. A typical “large” online contest may have 10-15,000 entrants and a panel of industry “ears” who will pick the best tracks. Your chance of winning is 1-in-15,000, and your chance of winning a consolation prize (e.g. best-in-category, etc) is slightly higher – but still not ideal. If you think that the quality of your music will be the only thing that matters, you’d be wrong. It’s ONE of the things, but it’s also how the reviewers feel at the moment they review you. And how well you fit the category you’ve submitted to. And it’s other things too. Your super-hit may get rejected at the preliminary stages of one contest – and win the whole thing at another. Does winning a contest help in your promotions? Yes. If you know how to “spin” your victory. (Note: sites like Fame Games which offer airplay on merit to the (weekly) winners – for free – are highly uncommon. So uncommon, in fact, that we’ve spent YEARS looking for “direct competition” and couldn’t find it. You need to SUPPORT Fame Games if you know what’s good for you and all the talented indies!)
• A&R sites. Sites like Taxi or AnROnline and others with “anr” or “aandr” in their name as well as music licensing sites like WacBiz are all good sites to get your music heard by “experts” who are prepared to sign, buy or license your music. There are a few things you should know, however. If you don’t respond CORRECTLY to their listings – i.e. give them EXACTLY what they’re looking for – you’ll waste the song evaluation fee. You may have the best pop track in the world, but if you send it to a lead which is looking for a “60′s-sounding R&B with Southern roots feel” kind of song – you’ll get flat-out rejected. Sites like WacBiz don’t charge an upfront fee and only charge you on the other end. If successful with placing your music. All those sites are not “artist scouting” companies. They are SONG-scouts. (Note: Fame Games has also been used as an A&R platform by these and other A&R sites as well as labels)
• Specialized sites. Distribution sites like CD-Baby or merch sites like Cafepress can be extremely valuable as aids to your “monetizing” efforts. But don’t forget – they don’t drive the traffic for you. That’s your job. There are also other interesting sites which help you with money raising (for example Sell-a-Band), but while the IDEA is brilliant – in practice the amounts raised for the average artist are minimal and, once again, it’s UP TO YOU to drive the potential supporters to their site.
• Reviews. Getting your music reviewed – anywhere, really, but ideally on popular sites, forums and blogs – can really help drive traffic to your product page. Providing that people KNOW where to find it! But note: you too have to review music to have a chance of being reviewed!
• Other ideas - So how about putting your music up on eBay or advertising it on a free cassifieds site? Sure, this CAN work, but it’s not a formula for selling any kind of “volume.” You MIGHT sell 5 copies this way, unless… unless you can find ways to drive traffic to those ads…!
• PAID ads and placements. Yes. This can be a good way to get noticed and to actually drive traffic to your page – wherever it might be. The first trick is to get the ad just right (it needs to invite people to click on it), next to place it in exactly the right niche (don’t try to sell a rock album to a women’s knitting club), and you need to work out which payment method (e.g. CPA or CPM, etc) as well as which advertising platform to use (e.g. Facebook, Google, MySpace, etc, etc, etc). The downside is that you MUST pay. And if your campaign is half-baked, you’ll spend potentially a lot of money for nothing. But the upside is that if you make a good campaign, each sale will more than pay for the advertising outlay. (Note: Fame Games has been known to drive traffic to its best artists at a rate higher than any known free medium! Yet another reason to get behind this superb PR vehicle!)

So, are there ways to make money on your music?
Yes.

Are any of them “easy”? Something I could do WHILE doing everything else?
No. Any method worth its salt REQUIRES you to put something in to get something out. It’s the GIGO principle: garbage in – garbage out.

So “how much” is “much” work? And is it worth it?

The work required to successfully promote something can be extremely intensive. If you can’t outsource it and have to do it yourself, it REALLY can be a full time job for a while. And that’s if you’re lucky and have GOOD ADVICE to start with. If you’re in the dark, the work will never end and you’ll never ever advance “enough.”

But if you take a good marketing course TOGETHER with a friend or two, and if you’re able to ORGANIZE yourselves, you can make this chore into a PLEASANT and extremely useful – and profitable – exercise. And your music career can actually TAKE OFF!

Are there any guarantees?
Yes. I guarantee you that if you don’t do anything, you will not accomplish anything. (Smart-ass!)

The rest is just a matter of logic and statistics. Let me break this down for you real quick. If you can get 100 people to come to your site – and keep coming back for more because they like it so much… perhaps you can sell something to 10 of them. If that “something” (like your MP3 or merch, for instance) gives you $10 of profit, you’ll make $100. If you can “convert” them once a month, you’ll make $1,200 per year. If you can attract 1000 people… and still have the same conversion rate…. well you get the drift. There are indies online who make 6 figures per year – and their music isn’t even “that” hot. But their organization IS.

The challenge is HOW to drive QUALIFIED traffic. This is what you learn in all those self-help books and ebooks. The main thing anyway.

I’ll leave you with two recommendations for products you may want to try. In fact, if you’re serious about “monetizing” your music on the web, you will WANT to try at least one of them.

The first one is not a “music” product, but a general “marketing” product. A training course, if you like, but also so much more. It WILL help you sell your music. It is beyond question the BEST such product we’ve so far tried. It’s a membership site which explains the ins and outs of online promotion to you in such a simple and powerful way you will BELIEVE you can make money the very next day. And.. you would be right, were it not for the fact that you have to invest some TIME into learning all the methods they teach in practice. That site is called Chris Farrell Membership and I personally recomend it above everything else I’ve seen on the web to date. It’s the one NO-SCAM site I can totally vouch for based on personal experience.

Another product which is really rich in information and really good for any ARTIST wanting to advance their career is “Record Label Business Plan“. It REALLY is a great product and I can only imagine the number of months – even years – that have gone into all that information. Highly recommended, if you want to learn how to market your music effectively.