What I Wish Someone Would Do for Artists Online

This should probably be a more thoughtful post than what I have time to write... but that's the whole point of this post anyway.

I have a band that I really love to work with. Playing music, writing, performing, recording... it's all great fun and I love being an artist and creator again.

What I don't love is dealing with promotion and maintaining a presence on at least 15 different sites.

So here's what I'm wishing for...

A service that would have a real person evaluate the type of music my band makes, that can then put the music in the appropriate social networks, and perhaps more importantly, tell me what blogs to contact. That's step one.

Step two would be a timely way to help me update all these sites, let blogs know about my latest happenings and keep them current.

I enjoy writing things and can email and so forth. But to put a blog up on the 5 or 6 blog sites the band has (plus this one, plus my own web site, etc) is time consuming. It would be great if I could just have someone email me and say "Please write a 1 paragraph description of what's going on with your band last week and the upcoming month." Please attach a new photo as well.

I would reply to the email and then it would be parsed out to imeem, iLike, facebook, myspace, garageband, secondlife and whatever else needs to be serviced.

Because it feels like my biggest obstacles are
1. prioritizing my time to know what's important to get out in the world (show updates, emails to fans?)
2. Prioritizing the places to put this information.
3. Taking the time to do all this.

If somebody could help me figure out what's effective (in terms of what I need to create) and then where it goes (in terms of where I need to publish it) then I could probably hire somebody else or automate the last bit.

Some Useful Blogs about Online Music Marketing

There are so many music blogs out there that it can be difficult to
keep up with all of it. As with finding new music, finding good blogs
is often a result of what's recommended from people you know. Here's a
thread of the top 5 blogs that I've been reading that I think are
insightful and relevant to selling music online.

1.
NewMusicStrategies.com - Philosophy of selling music online by a
Birmingham (UK) professor named Andrew Dubber. Download his ebook, it
is incredibly important. He also has a couple of sister sites that he
started: MusicThinkTank.com and NewMusicIdeas, which are both good.

2.
SethGodin.com - A general online marketing blog, but he often makes
direct comments about the music business. This is the #1 marketing blog
online.

3. KnowTheMusicBusiness.com - Sometimes an aggregate of other blogs, but well culled and good writing.

4. Coolfer.com - Music Business news about artists, labels, tech startups. Some good editorial content.

5. Digital Music News - A daily feed of what's going on in the online music business world.


Anybody have other ones that are useful?

Promoting is harder than creating.

I have a lot of friends who are in the middle of making records.
Some of them are half way through the process.
Some think they are half way through and are much farther away than they realize
Some are nearly done and don't want to admit it.

There is a strange disconnection between recording an album and releasing it.
I think this is because there is a great deal of work that goes into releasing an album that has very little to do with music and a lot of musicians get held up in all these non-musical parts.

Art work always takes ten times longer than it should.
Duplication takes forever.
Getting the credits right takes forever.
It's a lot of leg work and once you've finished recording, it seems like a lot of drudgery.

That's because, for a musician, it is.

But drudgery quickly turns into procrastination and it becomes really easy to second and triple guess everything you've done musically, until the album becomes a huge and heavy burden. You place massive expectations on it. It must succeed and therefore requires some sort of supernatural strength and planning to release it. And where will that strength come from? Usually the answer becomes... "somebody else"... "maybe if we just wait for a label..." and a whole bunch of other stuff that means "anybody other than me"

I would love to be able to offer some sort of advice on how to overcome this, but the fact is, making a record is a lot of hard work. And a lot of is boring, unsexy and tedious. It requires working really hard and doing things that are not that interesting. Or else finding people who are willing to do that work for you.

The best advice I can offer is, just get it done as quickly as possible. Rely on experts, if you can find them. Hire the best ones you can find, and if you can save time by spending a little (but not too much) extra, then do it. Don't wait around for it. Just get it done. Make some decisions and move on. Your second and third albums are waiting for you to make them.

And come up with a plan. Releasing an album requires planning and preparation. And you may need an expert for that too... More on that later...

Top 10 Issues Facing Music 2.0 (From Hypebot)

This is a pretty useful and insightful posting from Hypebot

I haven't been keeping on my blogs (or my blogging) this weekend... see last post.

Finally a weekend day of doing nothing computer related.

Oh wait, I'm on the computer again.

Back to not computer. Have a nice weekend.

Overwhelmed with the internets

OK. I have to admit it right now.
I'm really really tired. It's been a long string of 12 hour + work days plus supporting my fiancé who just finished her masters thesis.

That leaves me feeling really easily overwhelmed. And it's one of the first things I keep hearing from people who are trying to figure out this online music business: it is totally overwhelming.

There are just so many competing players out there right now, that it's really difficulty to cut through the noise and figure out what's useful, what's fluff and who the hell is paying attention to all this stuff anyway?

I've been busy promoting my new band Super Adventure Club over the last several months and through it, I've learned a great deal about what's out there.

But that doesn't necessarily mean that I've learned what really WORKS. There are a few sites that I visit regularly (even when I'm this tired) and try to keep updated, but there are a lot that feel to me like they are languishing in obscurity.

So here are my top sites of use in my state of overwhelm-edness

1. MySpace - the original social networking site still has the biggest audiences and is a place where people come to discover new music. Commenting on other bands and friends pages is a very good way to keep people remembering that you exist. And that's a very important part of being in a successful band.

2. Facebook - this is more for my personal life. I keep track of my friends and can read about them. I don't really view it as marketing and I don't promote my band here very much. But I enjoy learning what all my long lost friends from grade school are doing...

3. ReverbNation - this is a new one for me and I'm just starting to discover its usefulness. The most useful thing about it so far, is that it has an excellent mailing list collector, lots of widgets you can employ to get your music on loads of websites and they are pretty artist friendly. I'm going to explore these guys more once I quit feeling so damn tired.

4. My own websites. - theoretically this should come first. And this is me, in my tired state, admitting shortcomings of self-promotion by not updating my own site enough (and not doing it first).

My approach to web promotion is still hackneyed and haphazard. The more I learn about what's out there, I'm determined to put a plan together. I have a feeling I'm going to need some help on that from some one who is younger, more dedicated to it and has a lot more time to devote to it than I do.

Or perhaps when I get some more sleep, I'll get right on that.

Jay Clifford's big break

Sardinia with Jump Little Children (Michael Winger Drinking with Jay Clifford, originally uploaded by mwingerski.

Here's a picture from way back in 2002 when I travelled to Sardinia with Jump Little Children working as their sound engineer / Italian translator.

Jay has recently had some great success with his new album "Driving Blind" and the single from it was just featured on Gray's Anatomy last week.

Meanwhile, he's got a promotional site up to make his next music video. His friend, Zach Braff, is making it by soliciting clips of people lip synching the song in various parts of the world. Check it out at www.jaycliffordmusicvideo.com and watch as Zach explains the process while he pimps Jay's new record.

I've known Jay for a while and he's one of the most talented musicians I've met. We toured together when I released my solo album and also with my old band, Dayroom. I always love seeing old friends get the success they deserve... congratulations Jay!

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.