Put Your Band’s Music On YouTube

If you are a music creator you probably use a number of streaming audio sites to make your recordings available to listeners: Bandcamp, Soundcloud, Spotify, etc. But are you using YouTube?

If your answer is “Well, we some amateur videos of live shows” or “No – we can’t afford to shoot a real music video!” then you are missing a great opportunity to get your quality recorded music into people’s ears! One report found that the majority of teenagers look for music primarily on Youtube, and many people I know go their first when looking for a song they don’t have on their mobile device or computer.

So how do you take advantage of this opportunity for little or no cost?

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Review – Video House Concerts Beta Site

Last weekend I got to check out VideoHouseConcerts.com, which is a new business designed to allow performers to host a web-streamed concert from their home, studio, or any place with a good internet connection. Why is this any better than using one of the other available streaming services, such as Ustream or Google+ Hangouts? Video House Concerts provides some features not currently available to non-commercial users of those services:

• VHC sells tickets at several different access levels so that you can generate income

• The VHC concert experience allows for in-concert interaction with the performer, via text interaction or actual video & audio interaction for VIP ticket holders.

Sounds good  – so how was the actual experience? Read on…

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Friday Faves (Free-Cheap Edition) 03-05-13

Free Music Business Book

I’ve just started reading an ebook, The Six-Figure Musician. So far it seems filled with good points about what you need to do to “make it” as a professional musician (spoiler: mostly, work really hard at what you decide you want to do). It is available as a free PDF download from the author’s site (and geek kudos to him for getting the domain name “musicianbook.com”!), or you can buy it on Amazon for Kindle for $4.99:


Free Facebook Newsfeed Optimization

I’m testing a 30-day free trial of a Facebook posting service. PostRocket analyzes the fan engagement data you see at the top of your band/business/etc. Facebook Page and uses a proprietary algorithm to decide when to make posts to the page that maximize your fans’ interaction with them.

To do this you set up several posts in advance and they post those at the times they deem best. And since recent research shows that pictures get more attention than just verbal posts they help to turn the latter into pictures from the site being linked, and let you apply some Instagram-like photo filters and add text into the image.

I didn’t have to give them a credit card to get the free trial, and even after 30 days they have an ongoing free option (which limits your account to managing 3 Pages, and does not give you as much analysis of your posts’ performance).


Pay What You Will Music Downloads

First, if you haven’t seen Amanda Palmer‘s recent TED talk The Art Of Asking  I recommend you do so.

Palmer’s message is that there is no shame in asking your fans to support you, and that while it’s impossible to force people to pay for music they generally will give you money and/or other kinds of support if you give them the opportunity to offer it.

So keep your eye out for performers who offer their music for whatever you are willing to pay. Usually there is an option to stream the music first so you can get an idea about whether you like it –  if you do please consider the time, efforts, cost of musical gear, cost of music lessons, nights spent playing in bars for little or no pay while honing their chops, etc. as you decide what amount to give them for their download.

If you are a starving artist/musician/un-or-underemployed whatever: don’t feel guilty if you can’t toss a lot into their virtual hat – but DO drop them a note about liking the music, and tell your friends about it.

Here are a few musicians with pay-what-you-will downloads:

Amanda PalmerTheatre Is Evil

Walter Sickert & The Army Of Broken ToysSoft Time Traveler (just released!)

JaggeryPrivate Violence

Ginger IbexThe Rusty Goat Sessions (disclosure: this is one of my bands!)

Ginger Ibex – Firefly (our 2009 album – following my own advice and just made download PWYW!)