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A few weeks ago I sparked the conversation on Internet Music Marketing, or how musicians need to start thinking like the Internet Marketing crowd in order to really capture data and sell their music online. What sparked was a really cool conversation on promoting other people’s stuff via affiliate marketing. This is by no means the official guide, but a way to make some money by promoting offers to your fans via your mailing list or your blogs, Twitter accounts, etc.

As with all marketing, this is best used in a transparent mode (read the new FTC stuff by Frank Kern, who was sued for millions by them a few years back), and used in moderation. Just because a few people bought something from an affiliate link, doesn’t mean you need to star over stuffing your emails and blog posts with them.
The Major League Affiliate Networks

This post will feature 2 networks and I aim to continue to work with music companies to get their affiliate info. The overall data will be inside Label 2.0 (sorry, need to give preference to those that put food on my table). We will be looking into iTunes and Amazon and how you can use their expansive network and product catalog to make some extra change.
iTunes Affiliate Program

Sign up to becom an iTunes affilaite here. It is super easy and done through LinkShare (affiliate link), a reputable affiliate marketing company that is known for paying its affiliates on time and tracking your stats pretty aggressively. The notion of the iTunes affiliate program is that you can link to albums, singles, movies, ringtones and really anything else in their marketplace and make 5% on all transaction. This means if you sell an album for $9.99 you will generate about 50 cents. Not exactly retirement money, but get creative and grow your audience, and the residuals can add up. Signing up for the iTunes program may take a few days for approval.

Check out a FAQ here.
Amazon Affiliate Program

Amazon was one of the pioneers in online affiliate marketing and is essentially how they grew to the size they are. With their affiliate program, you can link to digital singles and albums, physical CD’s, books to guitars and musical instruments along with the millions of other products they offer. Amazon pays commissions directly and has a tiered commission structure, meaning the more you sell the higher your commission. You start at 4% and can easily work your way to 6% and higher by gaining a few sales. Again, this may not be the money to retire on, but in the following idea session part of the blog post, you may be able to get gas money for your next road trip.

Sign-up to be an affiliate on Amazon here (disclosure: Affiliate link)
How to Use These Affiliate Programs for Your Music

Now that you are signed up to the top 2 networks you need to start putting the links in your content, in a very usable and trustworthy way. In this tutorial we are going to use Amazon as they offer a wider range of products and the ideas can be structured for all of them.
Campaign Ideas

The first step is to generate an idea of what you want to promote. Some things off the top of the mind include:

Your gear – Talk about the guitars you use, why you use it, the sound it gives you, etc. At the end of the post say something like, if you want to try it out, here’s a link to grab one yourself.

Bands of a bill – This is the easiest and most efficient. When you have an upcoming show, do quick reviews on the bands you are playing with. Maybe a few sentences on why you are excited to play with them, some pics and maybe a YouTube video. Tell your fans that if they want to check out their music and start learning the lyrics before the show, grab a digital download here and thus link to their album on Amazon. This will get your fans excited about the show if the other bands are cool too and helps promote the other acts and they may return the favor.

Bands of a bill on Twitter – Fire out a Tweet or two saying something to the tune of: “Can’t wait to rock with XYZ Band this Friday – Insert Affiliate Link”

Sidebar links – If your band has a blog (Music Marketing 101) use the sidebar as a place to promote stuff you believe in, from music to gear to great books you read on a road trip. Your fans are interested in the stuff you do and these links can get a good amount of attention. The best part is that if they click on a link to buy something and end up buying something else during that visit, you get credit for that sale as well!

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Sites like propeller.com, digg.com, stumbleupon.com and other social bookmarking sites can give you a huge traffic. How about having 30,000 or more visitors everyday when your website is on the front page. Here are some useful tips on how to get huge traffic from these social bookmarking sites:

* Catchy Headlines – There are many articles got ignored on social bookmarking site because of their headlines. Your title should always be catchy because people first see the title of your article. If the headline or title is not that catchy, expect a small traffic from that article.

*Short but Meaningful Description – Write a short but meaningful description about your article. The description should be intriguing to catch more attention but don’t use false facts just to get the interest. If you want to have long description paragraph to describe your story, always remember that people usually don’t read above 100 characters. Plus, other social bookmarking site have character limit in description, so you need to think a short but meaningful description about your article.

*Outstanding First Paragraph – It is important that you have great first paragraph with your article on social bookmarking sites. If you already have successful headlines and description to have the User’s interest, don’t forget to create great first paragraph for them to visit your site or else they’ll not going to visit it because of your awful first paragraph.

*Content is Everything – If your article is a junk, social bookmarking is useless. Your site can also get banned on social bookmarking sites if you continue to post junk articles.

*Right Time to Submit – Most of social bookmarking sites only have 24 hours for your article to stay there in front page. So it is not advisable that you post when Users are still sleeping. Weekdays is also a right time to post in terms of traffic because you can have more competitors on weekends.

*Right Category – Some sites might not have the right category for you. If you find that there no right category for you, you can submit to Miscellaneous, General etc. where all uncategorized matter goes.

*Build a Good Profile – If you have an old profile user in social bookmarking sites that posted hundreds of interesting stuff, there is a chance that you’ll receive a notice on what you submit. Many social bookmarking prohibited to add links to the interesting articles because it like self-promotion. The worst part of it, you could get banned to their site.

*Cooperate with other Users – There are many articles that made it to the front page of the social bookmarking site because they have networks of friends. If you have at least 15 votes from your group of friends chances are other user might also vote for you. On Digg.com, if have 50 votes your story is on the top of their page.

*Submit in English – Majority of the users are English speaking. So, social bookmarking sites only accept English language. Using different language is not recommended. If you really need to submit your story in different language, make sure that you include English translation.

*Don’t submit Old Stories – If you really need to submit old news, make sure that you have updated story related to that.

*Check your Facts and Spelling – You could have negative votes if other user found that you haven’t got the right facts about your story. There are some social bookmarking sites that that don’t permit to edit your post after you posted it. If you misspell your keyword, title or even your URL, it will stay forever when you posted it. So before posting your story, check your facts and spelling first.

*Have Related Articles – One of the technique to keep your visitor longer on your site is to have related or similar article so that they’ll read more articles on your site.

*No no to Automated submitters – Submitting stories on different social bookmarking sites takes a lot of time and you could think that automated submitters is the answer. It is not advisable to use this because it has malware that steal passwords and you could get banned on social bookmarking sites if you use this.

*Responds to Comments – Always respond to the comments on your article. It is possible that you could make more friends and have a top-profile if your story has many comments.

*Prepare your server for a Huge Traffic – If your articles gets the interest of many user to visit your site, thats a great news because of huge traffic you have but if you have a so-so server you need to changer your server that can handle huge amount of traffic.

*Snowball Effect – The good thing about snowball effect is that if people find your article interesting they could start talking about your story. They could start blogging your topic and you could have lots of backlinks from them.

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Everybody these days wants to create buzz. They want to grab people’s attention on a large scale. And they want to do it sooner rather than later.

Therefore, everyone wants to know the secret steps they can take to ensure their marketing idea sticks — that it gains traction and reaches the people who need to hear it the most.

A good lesson on this topic comes from musician Paul Hipp. Check out his YouTube music video called “We’re Number 37” — which, as of this writing, has nearly a half million views.

It’s a rockin’ original song that tackles the current health care reform debate in the US with a decidedly liberal slant. And it’s been seen by a LOT of people.

You may think you know where I’m going with this, but I guarantee there’s an unexpected twist coming. So stay with me here …

If I were to ask you why this song has been watched by so many people, you’d probably say because it’s a decent tune about a timely issue. Plus, it features some clever editing and funny moments throughout — which makes it more likely to be enjoyed and passed on by those who watch it.

Correct! You can’t go wrong with songs about current events, especially when they are done in a creative way that elicits a reaction from people who are exposed to it.

But here’s the thing …

This is not the only music video Paul Hipp has posted. He has several others, most of which also deal with current events from a liberal perspective. And those have respectable numbers — from 1,000 to 18,000 views each. But they pale in comparison to the half million views that “We’re Number 37” has earned.

Here are three lessons we can learn from this:

1) You have to throw a LOT of stuff out there to find something that sticks. Sure, some people hit on something big right out of the starting gate, but that’s rare. The usual pattern with artists who create popular viral videos (or songs, blog posts, ideas, etc) is a history of trial and error.

The more active you are in creating a volume of content to share with your audience, the greater your odds of producing something that will spread on a larger scale. So stay busy creating new stuff!

2) Regular output hones your craft. “We’re Number 37” is Paul Hipp’s 18th and newest video. Look through his previous clips and you can see an evolution. His most popular video is his best one, because he learned by creating all the ones that came before it.

Learn as you promote yourself. Consider it a living, breathing classroom.

3) Being bold and specific helps. “We’re Number 37” is not a generic rockabilly song. It’s about health care reform — a polarizing topic being hotly debated these days — and Paul makes it clear where he stands on the issue.

Don’t be afraid to take a stand or directly appeal to a specific slice of the population with your art.

Another quick example comes from Maria Andros, who has posted 47 YouTube videos on social media marketing and other topics. Most of her videos have between 50 and 25,000 views each. Not bad.

But one stands out at 151,000-plus views. The title? “How to Get Rid of a MIGRAINE Headache.”

Who knew? I’m sure she didn’t.

So … Throw a lot of stuff out there, hone your craft as you go, and don’t be afraid to be bold and specific!

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Promoting your music online these days is meant to be easy – but due to the sheer number of sites out there it might not always seem that way. This is a brief guide to why Last.fm should be one of the main sites you use to promote yourself, and how to get the most out of it with minimal effort.

The Last.fm music database

First off, you might already have a page on Last.fm without realising. Huh?

This is how it works. Last.fm is built on the data generated by our community of music fans (21 million of them!) ‘scrobbling’ their music collections. ‘Scrobbling’ means that when a Last.fm user listens to an MP3 on their PC or iPod, the title of the track and artist name is entered into our database – and, if a page for that track and artist has yet to be created, we automatically create one. In this way we’re building a massive, ever-growing database of information about all the music ever made.

So, if you have any music out there already, chances are one of your fans is a Last.fm user who’s scrobbled your music to our database – so you might already have a page on the site. (If not, you can always create one yourself.)

But don’t panic: even if a page already exists, this doesn’t mean we have your music actually on the site. We’ll only have this if you’ve given it to us or we have a deal with your label. So the first thing you need to do is register and upload your music: http://www.last.fm/uploadmusic.

What makes Last.fm different?

The important thing to note about Last.fm (and what makes us different to other services) is that we start promoting your band for you from day one. As outlined above, as soon as one of our users listens to your music it is ‘scrobbled’ to Last.fm. From this point on, we’ll start recording the number of times Last.fm users listen to the track, and more importantly, start actively recommending it to other users with similar music tastes to the people already listening to you.

We know you’re busy, so we also get our users to help out on a lot of stuff: they can upload band photos, write biographies and describe your music using tags. All these things are essential in maintaining an active community, based around music discovery and sharing tastes. What it means for you is that once you have a page on Last.fm, it can be kept up to date thanks to our users.

The Artist Royalty Programme

What’s more, by uploading your music you’re not only helping people discover it, but you can also get paid every time anyone listens to it on Last.fm as part of our Artist Royalty Programme. Enrolling in this scheme allows you to earn money each time your track is played by someone using our On Demand service, or if it is streamed on one of our radio services.

What next?

If you want to go all out and make sure that you get the most out of Last.fm, then here are my top tips for promoting your music on Last.fm.

1. Make your music available for free download

Assuming you have already registered for our Artist Royalty Programme then your songs will automatically be available as free on demand streams for our users. However by making one or two songs available as free downloads your artist will instantly become more visible on Last.fm as we promote free content more vigorously than anything else.

2. Upload Videos

Just as we promote free content, we also push videos straight to users who might be interested in them via their recommendation dashboard. You can upload as many videos as you like and whilst promotional videos are the obvious first port of call you can also upload live performances or anything else you have kicking about, which leads me onto…

3. Create special content

If you want to raise your profile on Last.fm by leveraging your existing fanbase, a great way to do this is to upload special content to Last.fm. This could be in the form of a video tour diary, studio diary or interview, or it could be a preview of your new album interspersed with you chatting about the tracks. Not only will this be promoted automatically on Last.fm, adding interest for existing users, but you can also promote the content via your own mailing lists or MySpace page using our range of embeddable widgets.

4. Add upcoming events

Last.fm has an extensive events system that recommends events users might enjoy, as well as allowing them to invite their friends and see what other people are attending. Adding your artist’s upcoming events is a great way to keep people informed and interested. Plus, if you’ve followed the above steps, hopefully you now have a few of our users who are curious to check your band out!

5. Get involved

Last.fm is a community-based site and so conversation is important. Start using your own personal account, and join some groups. As you start to figure out the landscape you’ll be able to work out when it’s appropriate to mention you’re in a band. If people already trust you, they might be more inclined to listen when you mention an upcoming release or gig. You can also communicate with existing fans through Last.fm via things such as journals, so jump in and have a play!

6. Get an extra boost

If you’ve got an album coming out or a tour to promote, and thus some money to be spent, Last.fm also offers highly targeted advertising. We know what our users like which means that you can make your budget stretch further by only reaching those people you know will be, or should be, interested in your music.

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There is an entire school of thought, as well as a sizable industry, dedicated to the optimization of websites to show up higher in Google search rankings. Search engine optimization (SEO) techniques vary from simple content changes to tricks that game Google’s system, referred to as “black hat” SEO. Optimization can be a complex topic — read Mark Glaser’s article 9 Tips to Improve Search Engine Optimization to get a good feel for the process.

SEO rules tend to apply universally, but specialty sites require some additional thought. When assessing a music artist’s site in regards to optimization, one has to consider that artistic expression is often more important than search visibility. From this, many artists make decisions in the name of art (or just not knowing better) that have an adverse affect on their search engine rankings. Below are seven of the most common mistakes and how to remedy them.
1) Site Built Fully in Flash

Having a site made entirely of Flash is usually the best way to maintain massive artistic control. HTML, CSS, JavaScript, or any other combination of web technologies simply cannot rival the level of interactivity given by Flash. However, this flexibility comes at a major price — unless properly planned out in the design stages, Flash cannot be indexed by search engines. Therefore, a site built fully with it may significantly hinder SEO efforts.
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Adobe Flash

Why is that? In a published Flash document, most applications of text become bit-mapped graphics and lose their status as individual characters. A search engine has nothing to index and process when scanning for relevant text. In addition, Flash documents tend to contain multiple states and therefore might not display all text at once; a search engine does not have the ability to interact and follow each path the way links allow in HTML.

The solution most SEO experts will tell you is to not base your site in Flash. However, if that is how it has to be to achieve your artistic vision, then there are a number of tips to get around these limitations. Most are advanced and require a solid understanding of multiple web technologies but can be implemented without too much extra effort.

RESOLUTION: Create an HTML site to run in parallel, give the users a choice, and send the search engines to the HTML side. Or, do some homework at places like The Adobe Developer Connection. They have published two documents that may be of assistance — Search optimization techniques for rich Internet Applications and Search optimization checklist for rich Internet Applications. These articles discuss topics such as using variables to display content, implementing behind-the-scenes HTML tricks, and creating sitemaps to help search engines navigate your site.
2) Site Built With Images Only

Another common technique for building artist sites is to construct the entire site out of images. Like Flash, this allows a high level of artistic control, but does not provide indexable text that the search engines need to categorize a site.

Fortunately, the HTML code behind images allows for ALT text that serves two purposes — explaining to visitors what is on the site if images don’t load or if they are browsing on a device that doesn’t support them, and providing search engines a description of what the graphics are displaying. In addition, the file names of the images provide information to search engines. All titles should use relevant keywords, and individual words should be separated with dashes (e.g. My-Band-Name-Cover-300dpi.jpg) to clearly delimit the search terms.

RESOLUTION: Always ensure you are providing ALT text behind any image, especially if the site is built primarily or entirely of images. Be smart with file names.
3) Lack of Keywords in Content

Traditional SEO states that the cleanest way to optimize your site is to jam it full of content rich with relevant keywords. For example, if you have a real estate site, words such as “mortgage,” “refinance,” and “realtor” should appear over and over.

For artist sites, keywords are not always so clearly defined. There are obvious terms that are likely to be on most, such as “guitar,” “bass,” or “singer.” Beyond that, however, many artists do not like to define themselves with standard music phrases. Most artist bios and related pages contain a wide range of terms that aren’t necessarily going to be what fans are searching for.

RESOLUTION: Find as many places on the site that allow for the basic keywords you believe your fans will be searching for. If the majority of the site is artistic and full of creative, descriptive phrases, it may be worth adding a static page that is focused solely on band facts — member info, publicity quotes, simple description of the band’s sound, detailed discographies, and more.
4) Relying Solely on Meta Tags

Early SEO relied heavily on behind-the-scenes HTML code called meta tags. A sample meta tag might be a phrase like this, enclosed in carrot brackets:

meta name=”keywords” content=”Microsoft, product, support, help, training, Office, Windows, software, download” /

The name section determines what type of meta tag is being declared, and the content section lists all the keywords that define what the web page is about. In this case, it would be for the Microsoft.com site.

Unfortunately, as soon as search engines started relying on these tags, people began taking advantage of them. For example, if I were performing SEO on a site that sold computer hardware, and wanted to glean some traffic from people searching for Microsoft, I could use the meta tags above even though they did not accurately describe my site. Realistically, that alone wouldn’t complete the job, but at one point it did have a significant impact on site indexing.

Meta tag relevance has been primarily phased out over the years, but many site developers still rely heavily on this as their primary form of SEO. Depending on the search engine, the value of these tags may be zero.

RESOLUTION: Include relevant meta tags on your pages, but realize that the value is minimal and spending time on other SEO strategies will be much more effective.
5) Poor Link Strategy

As meta tag significance faded away, other ways of ranking page relevance came to prominence, the majority of which make much more sense in regards to legitimacy. One of these that weighs heavily into search engine rankings is link strategy — managing incoming, outgoing, and internal links.

The theory of link strategy is simple — the more sites linking to a page, and the more prominent the referring sites are, the more relevance the page has in the search engines. For example, if a highly established site such as PBS.org links to an artist’s site, that artist page is given a slightly higher boost in rankings as web surfers may assume the site has some level of significance or else PBS wouldn’t be linking to it.

When running the publicity and marketing campaigns for an artist, getting a partner site to link to yours is critical. Not only does it drive traffic directly, but it can also have a significant impact on search results.

A site is also given a level of credit by outgoing links. The nature of the web is one of discovery, and sites are looked upon favorably if they are linking to other relevant sites. This is not nearly as effective as getting inbound links from prominent sites, but it does have a small effect.

Lastly, internal links can boost a page’s search engine ranking. An internal link is one that points to another page on the same site. Blogs use this technique inherently; by linking from one piece of content to other relevant content, search engines view the site as being rich and pertinent.

RESOLUTION: Encourage other sites to link to yours via networking and marketing. Link to relevant sites. Link to other pages within your site.
6) Overlooking Alternate Search Types

People don’t just search for text. Google provides alternate search methods including image and document searches. Artist sites, often rich in images, allow an opportunity to index digital assets in search engines. Similar to the ideas discussed in tip #2 above, we can use those rules to ensure that your cover art, promo photos, show posters, and any other image can be found.

In addition to images, documents can be indexed in the search engines. Google can index PDF files, and display them as HTML via search results. This is useful for band bios, press releases, order forms, and many other documents bands use on a regular basis.

RESOLUTION: Learn about alternate file types your fans and the media are searching for, name them intelligently, and link them so they can be found by the search engines.
7) Ignoring the Logs or Not Utilizing Analytics

Once a site has been optimized for search engines, content is flowing, and the traffic is coming, an additional SEO challenge begins. A common and terrible mistake is to assume that because a strategy was working at one point it will continue working indefinitely.
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Urchin

There are two primary ways to monitor what is happening on a website from the back end. Most web servers offer statistics programs such as AWStats or Urchin. These allow you to see where traffic is coming from, what people are searching for that end up at your site, popular pages, and more. In addition, a webmaster can install Google Analytics, a robust tool that offers deeper analysis than many standard web statistics packages.

A significant advantage of Google Analytics is that after setting up an account, you simply need to add a few lines of JavaScript code to your pages. The actual software lives on Google’s servers, which is beneficial when it comes to updates and new features. Google has also integrated Analytics into some of their other applications, creating a massive tool for webmasters.

The data these tools output can give you a clear picture of what your fans want. If the majority are entering on your media page, you know where you need to focus extra energy (such as making sure you are capturing email addresses off that page). The search engine stats are extremely valuable to see what keywords people are searching for prior to landing on your site. Advanced features also include integration with Google AdWords, motion charts, and custom reporting.

RESOLUTION: Take the guesswork out of figuring out how your fans interact with your site. Enable and constantly monitor website statistics through a package such as AWStats or Google Analytics.
Conclusion

Search engine optimization is just as important for musicians’ sites as any other type of website. And there’s no reason that an artist must forsake creativity for better search rankings. Keep these seven common mistakes in mind when you’re designing your site, and you should be able to drive more traffic to your website — and, most importantly, reach more fans.

UPDATE: As pointed out in the comments, Google has made strides to be able to correctly index Flash documents. Visit this blog post to read about the ways Google can interact with Flash. However, I still stand by the idea that a site that utilizes text and other searchable HTML is a cleaner, more clear-cut way to enhance your search engine rankings. Although your Flash may be indexed, the likelihood of accurate and comprehensive indexing still does not compare to straightforward text and HTML.

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As the music industry continues to evolve and search for a sustainable and profitable business model, the direct-to-fan (D2F) approach is making great advances, from artists just starting their career up to superstars with massive fan bases.

Artists marketing and selling directly to their audience is not necessarily a new or revolutionary concept — one can find examples of artists offering their products to customers directly in every generation of music. For established artists, it is used as a way to inexpensively leverage all the awareness they have amassed. For evolving artists, it is often a necessity. Without a label and distributor, the usual options for new artists have been selling music at live shows, selling through fan clubs or sympathetic indie record stores — or sometimes just selling out of the trunk of a car (which is how N.W.A. got started). But today, advances in technology have opened up exciting new avenues for direct-to-fan sales.
Successes in the D2F Market

Direct-to-fan sales and marketing have seen a significant spike in recent years thanks to a number of factors. First, technology has given artists at all levels the opportunity to sell and market to their fans in a clear, inexpensive, engaging fashion online. Second, many emerging artists see less value in signing to a label and instead choose to steer clear of entangling contractual obligations. Finally, established artists are choosing not to renew their label contracts at a record pace, realizing that the brand they have developed can be leveraged without a label. All of these situations benefit greatly from direct-to-fan initiatives.

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The list of interesting applications of direct-to-fan marketing and sales seems to grow daily. As with anything innovative, a few core examples will always stand out. Most notable is Radiohead’s 2007 offering of “In Rainbows” — interesting both because of the name-your-own-price model and the absence of any middlemen upon initial release. What was revolutionary about this was that the band enabled both the transaction and digital download directly from their site at a price of the fan’s choosing; the experiment brought the band a significant amount of publicity and awareness.

Many critics of Radiohead’s approach felt it would not scale downwards, but that was proven wrong when the band Metric launched a successful D2F offering surrounding their April 2009 release “Fantasies.” A combination of free content (in exchange for email addresses), streaming media widgets, and intelligent social networking strategy resulted in more gross revenue in a few weeks than in four years for their prior release. The band was in full control of their retail presence, and was able to offer heightened packages (at heightened profit margins) to dedicated fans. So as not to exclude fans that preferred a traditional retail experience, the release was also made available at iTunes.

Josh Freese, a studio drummer extraordinaire but not a household name, used the direct-to-fan approach to launch a campaign that completely re-wrote the rules of music marketing. His sales page included everything from a $7 digital download to massive packages in the thousands of dollars that included a level of personal interaction never before offered as a retail music item (e.g. foot rubs, drum lessons, and Josh’s 1993 Volvo).

The unique packages generated massive amounts of press, which certainly helped, but the bigger point is that a $20,000 rock fantasy week that included mini-golf with Maynard James Keenan is not the type of offering that the traditional music industry is built around. Selling this type of experience directly to a hardcore fan created an opportunity where each side saw massive benefit.
Why Now?

The biggest hurdle most artists have faced in setting up a direct-to-fan marketplace has been distribution, followed closely by dealing with financial transactions and customer service issues. For many years retailers have been willing to help facilitate the process, a good example being Amazon.com’s Advantage Program, where any artist can pay a $30 yearly fee as well as 55% of each product sold. Although this does enable artists with no distribution to sell via a massive online retailer and not be concerned with transactions and customer service, it comes at a major profit hit. Essentially, instead of a label, distributor, and a retailer, Amazon is the sole middleman existing between artist and consumer. Forty-five percent of a sale price is higher than most signed artists get, but far lower than the margin from selling directly.

Fortunately for artists at all levels, technology has allowed direct-to-fan to become much more viable. Digital distribution has significantly leveled the playing field for all artists, and transaction processing has become widespread and easy for most bands to implement. Enterprising companies have created products that offer services typically reserved for those artists signed to a label and distributor.

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Companies such as Topspin and Snocap have made it very easy to sell products and collect revenue. Websites such as Reverb Nation and Nimbit offer tools that enable artists to build, interact with, and sell to their fan base. Aggregation services such as TuneCore allow artists to get their music onto digital retailers such as iTunes (not quite true D2F, but cutting out at least one middleman).

Topspin has taken direct-to-fan much further than simple transaction processing. It has developed widgets and technology that gives artist and fans levels of control never available at the DIY (do-it-yourself) level. Artists with little tech ability are able to upload content, create sales offers, and then distribute them in embeddable widgets. In addition to a software platform, they have developed a full methodology and set of best practices for optimizing the D2F process. (Full disclosure: I am a certified marketing partner of Topspin.)

Reverb Nation also gives artists a sizable toolkit to market and sell to their fans, including a catalog of widgets that fill many purposes, including streaming audio and tour routing. The site also provides a back end for managing fan interaction, organizing street teams, and social networking.

Topspin CEO Ian C. Rogers feels that direct-to-fan is helping define the new direction of the music business.

“The greatest thing about the future of music is that artists have choice of who their partners are,” he said. “It’s not about ‘getting signed’ — it’s about choosing the right team and running a smart business. At the end of the day there are only two important things in the music business: the artist and the fan. The rest of us are here to provide value and efficiency to them. It’s not up to them to provide value to us; it’s up to us to provide value to them.”

Through the use of technology and a forward-thinking digital strategy, artists at all levels finally have the tools necessary to build and maintain an environment that lets them dictate the terms of their business.

Jason Feinberg is the president and founder of On Target Media Group, a music industry online marketing and promotion company. He is responsible for business development, formulation and management of online marketing campaigns, and media relations with over 1,000 websites and media outlets. The company has served clients including Warner Bros. Records, Universal Music Enterprises, EMI, Concord Music Group, Roadrunner Records, and others with an artist roster that includes The Rentals, Flipper, Thin Lizzy, Sammy Hagar, Primus, Poncho Sanchez, Ringo Starr, Chick Corea, and many more.

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Some people find Hype Machine to be a deplorable place where blogs are robbed of the glory of finding new songs. If you are like me you find it to be the greatest thing that ever happened to easily finding music by the groups you like. Aside from being able to easily find tracks by your favorite indie artists it also acts as a great way to find blogs that would be potentially in to your music (pending you are in the genres that are covered in their site). As anyone knows getting blogged about these days is one of the ways to getting into good graces of the Internet elite. Follow me to the jump and I will show you how it’s done.
Head over to Hype Machine and the first thing you will see is on the right hand side is a field to “search blogs”. In this field we are going to type in a group that has fans that would like your music. For example, let’s say you sound similar to Classixx, one you type this in you will be taken to a list of all the times Classixx have been blogged about. You will see this below:

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Inspired by Mike Masnick’s recent NARM talk, I thought I’d provide yet another example of a band that has used the direct-to-fan (D2F) channel to connect with their fans (CwF), give them a reason to buy (RtB) and have not only made money, but earned thousands of fans in a matter of days.

Fanfarlo is a band from London that a decent following in Europe and the UK. They’ve toured Europe a few times, and even made it to the US and made a bit of buzz at SXSW this year. They really wanted to expand their fan base in the US, so they looked to Topspin for some guidance. I won’t be too much of a Topspin shill, but I will provide some anecdotes that I learned while working on their latest campaign.

marketing basics are still relevant in the D2F channel

First let me break down the 4 P’s of marketing (remember those?) and how they related to Fanfarlo’s latest D2F campaign:

Product: Their latest LP, “Reservoir”, which had been released previously and bought by a few hundred people. They didn’t was to piss off their previous paying customers by offering the same album for only $1, so they included 4 bonus tracks to give their previous customers something to come back for, and everyone was happy.

Price: $1. That’s right. 15 tracks (11 album tracks + 4 bonus tracks) for just one stinking dollar. But wait…

Place: Only on Fanfarlo.com. This allows them to control the messaging and method by which people purchase the album. It’s a seamless and controlled experience, which is one great aspect of the Topspin platform. (Hint hint.)

Promotion: Remember that $1 price point? Well it’s only $1 until July 4th. This creates a feeling of immediacy. If you don’t get it now for $1, you might miss out. We also made it easy for fans to share the deal with their friends on twitter and facebook, which can work extraordinarily well because friends serve as great filters and recommendation engines. Another key aspect of this campaign’s promotion was an email sent out by Iceland rockers Sigur Ros. They encouraged their fans to check out the Fanfarlo deal, which did lead to a significant sales bump.

what can i take away from this as a musician?

The first thing you must remember is the product must be good. None of this would’ve been possible if the music sucked. Also, remember to give your music away, in some way/shape/form, for FREE. As you’ll see on Fanfarlo’s website, there is a streaming player there for you to stream all of the tracks, in their entirety, for free. (And in decent quality I might add.) A $1 price point is hard to beat, but may not work for every act. The objective here is just to raise awareness and build up some fans. The great thing about Fanfarlo is that they knew they had to be in it for the long haul. They knew that building rabid fan base is of utmost importance right now. Those fans will then be willing to purchase any offers or packages in the future. It’s critical for new bands to remember this: focus on fans now, and the money will come later. Don’t expect to record a 10-12 track LP, sell it for 10 bucks and get rich in a few months. If nobody knows you, who’s going to spend $10 on your album? NOBODY.

What was also crucial to the success of this campaign was the Sigur Ros endorsement. All unknown bands should try their hardest to get some sort of endorsement from a band that is more popular than them. Remember, this is a business, and “who you know” can often play a key role in the success of any business. You don’t necessarily have to shoot for the starts and go for a Sigur Ros type endorsement, but you have to be talking to and networking with other, more popular bands. Send them your record and see if they can say something nice about you to their fans.

CwF + RtB = $$$

This is Mike Masnick’s golden equation. Connect with Fans + (give them a) Reason to Buy, and you’ll make $$$. Let’s break this down.

So how did Fanfarlo connect with their fans? The promo on their website was written by them, in a very casual manner. You can tell it’s not marketing speak and it’s direct from the band. Fans fell a real connection with this type of language and are more apt, in my opinion, to buy the album. It was also a controlled experience all on the Fanfarlo website, so the messaging was controlled and the fans were always connected to the band. When you sell via iTunes or Amazon, that connection is lost and is very difficult to get back.

What’s the reason to buy? It’s only $1 until July 4th. After that, this deal will be gone. As they say on their website, after July 4th, you can buy the CD, vinyl and a “beautiful new special edition at normal prices.” Basically, if you don’t act now, you might miss out on this crazy $1 deal. And if you like it, maybe after July 4th you’ll buy the CD, vinyl, or even the special edition package.

To sum it up, Fanfarlo is yet another example of an unknown band that harnessed the power of the direct-to-fan channel and have been very successful with their latest campaign. They’ve got thousands of fans in the U.S., where they had effectively zero fans only a few weeks ago. Services like Topspin, Bandcamp, nimbit and others enable any band to experience the same success. The future certainly looks bright for independent musicians.

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Search engine optimization is a very critical part of your music marketing campaign. What active efforts are you taking to strengthen your keywords? I asked myself this same question and tried different ways to keep a continuous effort towards improvement. Keyword research involves planning for future stability in blog traffic.

With Bing gaining ground on Google’s search domination, I began to think about how my website structure is being interpreted by the search engine spiders. I do have a good amount of articles but are they optimized to my benefit?

Automatic SEO links is a great Wordpress plugin that allows you to take control of your keyword promotion.
Automatic SEO Links

Automatic SEO links is a Wordpress plugin that is a great time saver and efficient promoter. When blogging, you don’t have to manually enter your links, you just choose a keyword and a URL and this plugin will find the keyword mentioned on your blog and add a link of your choice.

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For example, I want to promote a “free music” page on my website. I go to the Wordpress settings for Automatic SEO Links and add the keyword “free music” with a link to my free music post. Anytime I mention “free music” in future posts, it will go to the desired link I set. No more needing to remember URL’s and inserting links manually.
Hip Hop Distribution Homework

You don’t need this plugin specifically to practice keyword strengthening. The important thing to ask is how can I improve my blog’s keyword visibility, internal link structure and readability?

Here are some examples of how I will use this plugin:

* Find 5 Keywords to Promote: Choose five articles you currently have that are getting visitors. Assign each article a strong keyword and use some of those keywords in future articles. Promoting old articles and increasing reader relevance. Use your new keywords stats to give your readers what they want and add hot new keywords to build on traffic.
* Push a Call to Action: Your posts are your greatest asset. If you have a album landing page or music store, create some keywords that can direct your fans to those places. For example: “download our music”, “buy our album” or “free instrumentals” could link to your storefront or whatever desired posts. Great way to keep readers on your site and build out your pages as information resources. Don’t forget the important one: subscribe here
* Affiliate Promotion: promoting affiliate links is easy now. Add your selected keywords and have them automatically link to your referral service. Nice way to make a little extra change without having to enter all the affiliate tags and id’s.

The main reason that I was impressed with this plugin is because it created a process of improvement in multiple areas.

While thinking about keywords, I began thinking about which articles to promote, or which ones needed the most help. The thought process also led me to think about how good was my call to action and my blog organization. Creating a better reader experience by increasing the relevance of your keywords to your title will lead to traffic improvements and better rankings.

Please feel free to leave some of your suggestions for keyword research and improvement: Musicians are always listening.

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Google Analytics provides some of the best free web analytic tools on the web. You can view a detailed breakdown of your visitors by country, type of browser, and how they found your site.

You can also track your ecommerce sales and see how well your email or banner campaigns are doing. You can even see a report of how your campaigns affect your sales. These statistics are important for you to measure how strong your band’s web presence is and to identify areas that need help. Google has a lot of features on here, and some might not inerest you at all. Create a customized report to view only the stats you want to and in the order you prefer. It is fairly easy to integrate Google Analytics into your website, and they have very detailed instructions if you run into any problems.

If you give Google Analytics a try, we want to know if you were impressed with their free web stat tools. Leave a comment and a site rating here.

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