Pro Soul Alliance is a unique, artist focused
independent record label for the 21st century.
We’re a team of professionals of varying skills ready to help you develop your career. We consult with the top leaders and futurists in the new music business to assist you effectively release your music the way music lovers want to get it, build a growing audience, and earn income, making sure you keep the rights to your music, and save money on expenses. And best of all, we don’t take any of your profits!
Pro Soul is music business, done better.
Here’s a short video to help explain more about what is happening and what we do:
Blind faith is the belief in yourself and your music. The belief that it is good and it has value. As strange as it sounds, many musicians and artists lose it especially when their promotional efforts don’t yield the results they want, the media doesn’t respond favorably to their music and/or they don’t sell the amount of CDs or downloads they wanted. Regardless of what people say, whether they are in the media, the industry or they are music fans, you have to believe in your music and yourself. Too many times as artists we give more value to the negative responses than the positive ones. Ten people can say how much they love your music but if you get one negative email, you let it bother you more than enjoying what the ten other people said.
To find the blind faith that was once there, stop doing some of the following (I’m sure you can think of more!):
Stop comparing yourself to other artists! If someone doesn’t like one of the artists you compared yourself to, they won’t even listen to your songs!
Stop using genres to limit your audience. I recently spoke at a conference where an artist introduced himself and told me what kind of music he played. I told him I didn’t like that kind to see how he would react. He was stuck. He didn’t know what to do next. I told him music fans can react the same way. Tell them what’s in your songs and make sure not to use any clichés about the performances in the recording.
Stop telling people that your new songs are better than the old ones. Every artist, songwriter and musician evolves and grows. Their songs are different as time goes by. What would Beatles fans think if the band said, “Our old songs sucked. The new ones are much better. I hope you didn’t buy any of the old records.”
Stop limiting what you are capable of! You can accomplish more than you think.
The point is, you have to find the blind faith you once had and use it! The faith that made you write songs, record them and then go out and sell them. The faith in yourself that made you get up and play in front of family, friends, everyone you knew and complete strangers. It’s time to get rid of the excuses and limitations and once again realize the value you and your music have right now. Believe in what you have created and push us to listen to it and become fans!
Here we are in January, the start of a new year where every artist has great hope for new fans, better shows and a lot more sales to go along with achieving their biggest dreams and goals. Sadly, most artists’ careers will go backwards this year because they won’t change the ways they promote themselves or their music. With that in mind, let me give you an interesting thought to consider.
Sometimes a step back into classic promotion or using an “old school” method can yield you greater results in the short and long term.
For example, instead of just emailing and texting your friends and fans about your next show, call them! Calling and talking to them is more likely to get them to come and hang out with you. It certainly is a better way to explain the “benefits” of coming to your next show.
The time you spend on the phone could make a big difference besides just emailing and texting.
Thank you to all the artists we work with, you have made this a great year, helping us take the music business into the future!
In return, we hope expanding your career to new heights has made this a great year for you as well.
We've got some fantastic new things planned for our artists in 2010, and were looking forward to a great year!
Happy new year to all of you, all the best for the year ahead.
Director Jarome Matthew, and the Pro Soul Alliance Team
It's the end of our first year providing record label representation, and professional management and promotion to artists worldwide, and to celebrate (and because we're feeling generous) we're having ayear end special!
Pro Soul Alliance is offering artists who have some professionally recorded material:
• professional management and promotion to take your career to the next level!
• the latest tips, techniques and tools to help you build your audience, connect, and give them reasons to compensate you
• professional phone consultation and assistance with CEO of Pro Soul Alliance on your development and career
• professional bio and press copy writing, blog development and updating
• mailing list setup and integration, with fan capture into database for website and social networking profiles
• search engine optimization for effective search ranking
• graphic design, photography and image assistance for promo materials
• social networking configuration and integration, connecting with fans
(ReverbNation, Facebook, MySpace, Blip.fm, Twitter, Youtube, Ourstage etc.)
• offline & online marketing assistance, radio & podcast airplay, follow up, and tracking
• product development, design, CD production and digital distribution through major online retailers worldwide including ringtones and mobile phone
• licensing and song placement; electronic licensing options online
• scheduling of show dates for live performances
• and much more as we explore exactly what you need right now for your music career to thrive!
Cancel / upgrade any time! No contracts required! No rights taken! No profits taken!
[make sure you choose the 'Basic Label' $100 subscription option after completing your submission form!]
Also on special:
• a professional, blog based website you can edit and update with basic word processing skills, upgradeable with hundreds of plug ins for all kinds of functionality, and different design themes you can choose from! Complete with hosting by Rackspace, one of the best in the world, with yourname.com
We now have our two winners in the recent Pro Soul Alliance next great Indie artist contest!
There was some great talent that entered so it was a tough decision to make...
Congratulations goes to Antoine C. Smith indie composer/artist and aspiring producer, that "loves to write everyday" - This gifted, now 17-year-old first rate drummer and pianist composes and plays contemporary jazz and other genres. Antoine is actively pursuing his music career receiving rave reviews as a very popular young artist on the air in rotation of many wonderful hosts on Blog Talk Radio, Black Talk Radio (e.g. Black Teen Enpowerment Radio). Along with composing his music in the tradition of the original jazz masters, his future plans include to enter an excellent music college, and continue his studies in composition and performance. His winning track "Emotional Explosion" blew the team at Pro Soul away - there is no doubt this talented young man is an up and coming music sensation for his generation. Already compared to Jazz greats like Coltrane, Miles, Blake, and Byrd, Antoine Smith is just getting started!
The Return of the Magnificent HPhenomenon also known as Hassahn Phenomenon, shares Pro Soul's belief that music speaks to the Soul. An accomplished MC that understands that MC means, "Move The Crowd", HP says "Whether I move the people to dance, sing, cry, think, make a change, stand up, or just listen, I truly understand that my music is only a catalyst for me to aid in changing the world for the better." Rapping positive messages in tracks like "That Aint Me", and a smooth R&B roll like "Down and Up" raised the bar, and HP clinched the winning spot. Writing his music with integrity in the lyrical rhyme, True Magazine stated, "HP breathes new life and energy into a somewhat asthmatic industry." We're proud to be a part of Hassahn's journey - "if you are searching for someone that is ready to make a significant mark on the world, then I am definitely the Soulful entertainer you want." Yes you are Hassahn!
Tim Sweeney, one of the music industry's most sought after experts and consultants, offers this advice....
A few weeks ago a new artist called me and asked how he can get more people to a new venue he wanted to play. The booker told him as the opener he had to bring 25 people. Not an overwhelming number by any stretch. The only problem was he was averaging 5-10 people per show.
I asked him what he had done to promote his previous shows. He sent me copies of his emails or should I say, “show announcements.” He discovered about 2 percent of his mailing list responded to his emails and he wasn’t sure if anyone was ever coming to a show. With that in mind, I told him let’s start with a basic idea, go through your mailing list and make a list of fans you feel you can count on to really support you. He came back with a list of 57 people who lived in the area of the new venue. I told him to start calling each one. For the people he didn’t have phone numbers for, simply email them a note asking them to call him, nothing else.
We talked in great length about what his conversations should be about and also we wrote a new email to go out to the rest of the list. While he first complained about the amount of time it would take to call everyone, I reminded him of the joy of playing to an empty venue.
To make a long story short, 39 people came because of the phone calls and another 16 came from the new email. Then as life goes, he learned some other important lessons that night at the show.
As the “opener” he brought 55. The person who played after him brought 10 and the “headliner” brought 4. Not only did the booker get mad at the other artists, he gave their money to my guy and told him he would pay him double if he played there next month as the headliner! The other artists asked him how he got so many people to come. They said they had sent out emails like they always did and didn’t know why people didn’t come.
The comical ending to the story is that the artist sold 21 CDs to the people including fans of the other artists and even one to the writer from the newspaper who always ignored him. The writer told him he was there to review the headliner but came early because he really liked my guy’s email about the show. Good thing he called all those people and connected with them more personally then an email!
The moral of the story? Most likely you got someone’s email address from talking to them in person. You had a connection with them for them to give it to you. Pick up the phone whenever possible and continue the relationship. You call the bookers to get a show, the press for a story, industry people to see if they reviewed your music, call your fans!
THANKS TO ALL THE ARTISTS WHO ENTERED OUR CONTEST - WE WILL NO LONGER BE CONSIDERING CONTEST SUBMISSIONS. BEST OF LUCK TO THE 2 LUCKY MUSICIANS. WE WILL BE POSTING OUR DECISION DECEMBER 1ST!
.
Receive 6 months of professional management and promotion to take your career to the next level!
Services and support selected artists will receive include:
• professional phone consultation and education with CEO of Pro Soul Alliance on the artists development *and career
• a professional blog based website they can edit and update, complete with hosting by Rackspace, one of the best in the world, with artistsname.com
• Professional bio and press copy writing, blog development and updating
• Search engine optimization for effective search ranking
• Graphic design, photography and image assistance for promo materials
• Social networking configuration and integration, connecting with fans (ReverbNation, Facebook, MySpace, Blip.fm, Twitter, Youtube, Ourstage etc)
• Offline & online marketing assistance, radio airplay, follow up, and tracking
• Product development, design, CD production and digital distribution through major online retailers worldwide including ringtones and mobile phone
• Licensing and song placement; electronic licensing options online
• Scheduling of show dates for live performances
• Video Production; Youtube promo viral marketing videos
To narrow down the 2 winners, Pro Soul Alliance will be choosing the artist that is the most marketable, and has already shown commitment, and dedication to their career.
Contest ends October 30th. Details, entry information and music submission can be accessed here: http://www.prosoul.com/contest
Building a successful career in music on your own terms and with your own two hands is a difficult task - the business side and the art of self promotion, may rain on the "rockstar" parade.
Your reaction may be - is it all worth it?
Another successful example of the wonders of social media and the marketing genius behind a talented DIY (Do It Yourself) artist, describes Imogen Heap as she tweeted us through the 2 years leading up to the release of Ellipse. Yes, she has a major record label, and when she began promoting Ellipse she already had a committed fan base - a host of films and TV shows featuring her music. But with Ellipse Heap has expanded her reach exponentially thanks to her determination. She refinanced her house to fund recording, and with over 1 million twitter followers, she communicates constantly with her fans. " I've been tweeting about making my new album, Ellipse (out 24th Aug). Now... I guess I'll be tweeting about how it gets from my studio to your ears."
Using Twitter to allow her fans a glimpse into the world of a "rockstar" with a few lines of text en route to a Berlin airport, or while preparing for a video shoot - responding fans RT or reply, just as friends would, and as the relationship grows - so grows the fan base and eventually trickle through revenue.
So, is it all worth it - considering the artist/fan relationship is the "expected" in today’s music marketplace and that relationship also takes a lot of time and energy to maintain - and with every successful relationship, takes time to nurture? Being ‘all about the music’ is being about your career, and there are many other responsibilities vying for your attention. Depending how deeply you feel your passion, and what sacrifices you're willing to surrender in order to manifest a dream into reality - is the hard work, commitment and dedication really worth it - time will tell. Join as many music networking sites as you possibly can, and build your Twitter profile, and may be the most important in your arsenal of social media tools.
And if you need a hand, don't forget - There is professional help, that's what we're here for!
The growing number of social-networking sites aimed at bringing aspiring musicians and loyal music fans together, gives way to greater control of an artist's career, while entertaining music lovers everywhere.
Encouraging the emerging artist to connect with fans, and promoting music is the purpose of sites such as Ourstage.com . Among its many partners, Ourstage has joined with MTV for the Emerging Artist Program. Sonicbids.com brings the artist and promoter together, and is a place where any band from any genre anywhere in the world, can come to find and connect with any type of music promoter, licensor or broadcaster — easily, effectively, and quickly.
As technology advances at such a rapid pace, so goes the advancement of innovative ways to meet the challenges of music promotion and the business of making music. Unlike the new frontiers of days ago big band Radio, and major labels, this new wave of Music Business done better sets out community guidelines that its independent members must agree to:
"We like to think we’re in this together, meaning we provide the platform to showcase your talent, but we need artists’ help too. Keep your profile updated, keep uploading into our channels, make friends, recruit fans—help us help you." Ourstage Community Values
When the "help them to help you" gets overwhelming, there are professionals like Pro Soul Alliance to assist artists while allowing them to keep in control of their career.
Founder of Pro Soul Alliance, Jarome Matthew, just posted this on his own blog, a must read for any performer and artist.
An important part of my role as a music producer is to get the best possible performance from artists in the studio both technically and emotionally.
I find I often fall short in this area though because unless they are professionals who have done large live performances for many years, most vocalists are often unable to deliver to their full potential. This doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t give great performances, it just means they could have done even better.
This is usually because the vocalist is not in optimal physical shape. Your health and physical fitness level has a huge impact on your vocal performances in the studio, and of course live. Sure, how comfortable you are with letting go and giving your all emotionally in the studio is also very important. But to get a great performance, you really need to have a lot of power to deliver strong, clean vocal phrases. Without this power and energy, your performances will sound weak and shaky, quivering, particularly on the ends of longer words or sustained melodies and this drastically reduces the quality and impact of the performance.
Studio tools and tricks can rarely correct these problems effectively, so that’s why it’s so important for singers to keep in top physical shape if they want to give the best performance they’re capable of live and in the studio. Eat healthy food that gives you lots of energy, and adopt a regular cardio exercise routine at least 4 times a week.
Another recommendation, in addition to warming up properly before a performance and singing regularly in a choir, is opera training, or a great vocal coach such as Brennan Barrett, to help you get as much power as you can without exerting yourself more than you have to, and to assisting with effective breathing techniques that will give you better phrasing and power in the right places.
A producer can only do so much, and in my case, I can work a lot of miracles to make you sound great no matter what, but ultimately, I can only use the best you give me! Make sure that really is your best, as you never know who will hear your finished performance, or how far it will spread.
Never leave promotion to the other guy. Depending on your point of view don't count on the label, band or publicist to do their jobs. Do it yourself or it may not get done.
Know your niche market(s) or hire/befriend someone who does.
Always think of the fans first when making decisions.
Start early. Pre-promote. It allows time for viral buzz (aka free promotion) to build and ensures you’ll get you a larger share of a discretionary spending.
Take the time and spend the money to get a great publicist to get free media.
Produce great promotional material and send it out early and often. Don’t wait until they need it.
Email lists must be your new religion. Make sign up simple and easy to find. Put it visibly on the top half of the front page and watch it grow.
Segment your email lists (genre, location) to fight email burnout.
Produce and send great e-cards. The best ones get forwarded to others
Make your web site a destination by keeping it updated and including news, giveaways, polls and things to make it worth visiting.
Put your promo online in downloadable form for easy access by the media and your fans.
Enable and encourage others to do your promo for you. Ask fans to put up flyers and send out emails. Put a poster online as a free downloadable PDF for fans to use.
Create, utilize and reward a street team. Here’s a short article on the subject.
Talk to people and take informal polls. Have they seen your ads? Where? Did they grab them and provide useful information? Survey your audience via email, on the web and at shows.
Get every free listing everywhere you can no matter how obscure or far away. Maintain an extensive “listings” email list and use it.
Enhance the value of press releases by always attaching a photo or graphic file or a link to one.
Aggressively seek sponsorships. Big sponsorships are great, but no sponsorship is too small to consider even if its just cross promotion in ads or free give aways.
Always think yourself as a brand that needs to be defined, marketed, and protected.
Try local cable TV. Some local spots on Fuse or other targeted channels go for as little as $7 each. Check out Spotrunner, dMarc or your local cable company.
Try local internet advertising via Google Adsense, Facebook or local web sites. MySpace is adding targeted advertising early 2008.
Advertise on internet radio and blogs that serve your market.
Create consistency by creating ad mats and radio spots beds.
Sponsor non-commercial radio and get mentions. NPR is great, but don’t forget college radio.
Think out of the box with radio tie-ins. Rry talk radio for a classic rock or jazz radio for a fusion. Radio stations want to expand their audience too.
Co-brand. Celtic Music with an Irish bar or specialty shop or metal with a tattoo parlor. Worry less about money and think more about exposure.
Create your own affordable net radio station on Live 365.
Add a blog to your website to keep content fresh. Blogger.com has free tools.
Go viral and post on related list-servers and discussion groups.
Can't find the right discussion group? Start your own discussion group for free at Yahoo or Google Groups.
Get on both MySpace and Facebook and stay active. Don’t just
set it up and forget it. Update it and promote it. Make it worth
visiting. iLike and others are creating services to help you keep track and update more than one site at a time.
Make everything you do an event. What holiday is near? Is it a band member birthday? An anniversary near?
Consider the internet your new best friend. Study it, learn from it, explore it and use it
Run contests for best poster design or homemade video. Share all the entries on the web.
Produce monthly or even weekly podcasts. Consider having it produced cheaply or in trade for tickets, etc, by a local college DJ.
Do anything you can think of to enhance the consumer experience.
Give stuff away – backstage passes, seat upgrades, seats on stage, tix to the sound check, mp3’s of live songs.
In the entertainment business perception can be reality. Is your show the biggest, best, loudest, “most talked about”? Then be sure to tell the world that it is.
Enhance and monetize the hard core fan experience with a Platinum level fan club that offers exclusive downloads, pre-orders, insider news, preferred seating at shows, etc.
Go old school and cut through email overload by also faxing calendars and press releases. Use a free computer based fax broadcast service.
Don't just send announcements to the main stream press but include bloggers, internet radio, record stores, colleges and even large offices.
Make your faxes look like mini-posters worth hanging up.
Fly a plane with a banner over someone else’s event.
Park a van or truck with a banner on a main street or across from a show by a similar act.
Buy a billboard for an event or series of shows. Place it strategically near a competitor or across from a college campus.
Use one of the cheap automated phone answering services advertised in the classifieds to set up a special phone line for your schedule.
Pass a clipboard(s) around before a show to capture emails or do a survey.
Meet your fans face to face and ask them for feedback but how you can serve them better.
Try the good old fashioned US mail occasionally. It actually gets peoples attention.
Promote “After Parties” that are cheap or free with a concert ticket. This allows you to extend your brand or even tag onto someone else's at low cost.
Hand out flyers on the way out of the live shows.
Capture info from any one who make a purchase particularly ticket buyers.
Ask your web visitors questions. Polls are free and easy to set up with sites like PollDaddy.
Sell merchandise at affordable prices. It’s branding that someone else pays for.
Get creative with your merchandise – don’t just sell shirts. Try flip books, for example
You can add variety to your merchandise with no upfront costs using CafePress or Zazzle.
In this age of too much info and media, work to make yourself a trusted gatekeeper for your genre(s) of music. Use newsletters, blogs, tips, links, internet radio, and more. Don't just write about yourself. Write about things people who care about you also care about.
Carry a video camera everywhere and post short videos on YouTube.com and elsewhere of live shows, interviews, backstage, etc.
Create your own related niche blogs or web sites (for example MidWestmetal.com or NightlifeDetroit.com or FansOf____.com). You can make yourself the only (or primary) advertiser, but keep it real with info and news from others.
Send thank-you notes. Not emails; written notes. No one says thank-you anymore. It will be remembered.
Ask for the purchase. Never forget that you are in sales.
Market to the niches. Market to bartenders in Irish pubs for a Celtic or motorcycle shops for a heavy metal. Try tattoo parlors, coffee
shops, book stores, niche clothing shops.
Make your emails and web site useful to the reader. Add info and links to things your audience might find interesting or useful that you have nothing to do with.
Share your best promo ideas and avenues of promotion with other stakeholders: bands, promoters, labels, publicists, and sponsors.
Share media lists with others highlighting things you think will work best for each project.
Sell a series or combo. This works for recorded music and live tickets.
Surprise people. Give them something for free that they did not expect.
Create and use banners. Don’t have time or $ for Kinkos? Try Avery Banner Maker.
Trade others occasionally for targeted email lists, but don’t overuse them.
Hire or befriend a geek who will help you keep up on new technologies and internet promo opportunities.
Partner with a charity. Build good will and get more free media. Maybe you're giving a small % or maybe it’s auctioning off or selling the seats on stage or tickets to the sound check.
Consider unusual places on the internet like Craigslist, sBay and StubHub as promotional tools…Try selling tickets and other stuff there.
Musicians want to be actors and actors and athletes want to be musicians. Think about how you can cross promote so everyone wins.
Always make available a hi-resolution color photo available for easy download and you’ll get much better placement in print Sunday editions and calendar sections.
Some fans travel so try cross–promoting with another show (by the same band or just a similar band) in another city 50 or 100 miles away.
Create a special “Insider” email list fof a few fans, key media, tastemakers and bloggers for pre-announcements who love to know things first…and like to tell others.
If the there is going to be a meet and greet after show make sure that it's advertised. Fans always want a chance to meet the musicians.
Consider offering a student discount or senior discount.
Work to make it easier and cheaper for fans to buy tickets online. There are always going to have to be some fees, but some services like InTicketing charge much smaller fees than Ticketmaster.
Find ways to your regular ticket buyers.
Enhance your gatekeeper status by creating your own free Pandora or Last.FM “radio station” and linking to it from your site.
Create free custom Pandora or Last.FM for each concert event…”Get in the mood for the Al Green concert with this classic soul stream…”. It’s a free way to make the concert an event and keep them talking about it to others.
Start a short term blog for every big show or series. Post when it goes it go on sale, when an opener is added, when the front rows are sold out, news about the bands, everything.Link to it from our wen site.
Produce and sponsor a cable access show.
Utilize free interns. Try to make sure they are getting college credit so they are motivated to work.
Use cell text messaging to communicate instantly. Try Nightlifetexting.com or Google to find other companies.
Flyer - It’s the cheapest form of advertising. Clubflyers.com even offers free flyers every month or a try local printer.
A good flyer promotes more than one show and is also worth of being hung as a mini poster.
Flyer someone else’s show in a related genre.
Make sure all important info is on the front page of your site: new gigs, news, latest photos/songs/videos, etc. Make it easy as possible for fans to see the site is update and to get to stuff quickly.
Make sure everywhere you are mentioned (club listings, others bands you are playing with, etc) links back to your site. If they aren't linking, ask.
Encourage fans to "tag" you and your content on other sites like flickr, blogs, etc. Then aggregate that data on your site.
Do the same using recommendation sites like Digg and Stumble. See example links at the bottom of every Hypebot post.
As Tip #7 stated, email lists should be your new religion. A few sites like scriggleit.com offer free mailing list and text messaging solutions. There's no excuse.
Finding the time to keep up with all of this is hard but essential. Take advantage of new free services that offer the ability to manage content across platforms: >Nimbit enables mp3, CD, ticket and merchandise sales on MySpace, Facebook and elsewhere from a single integrated widget. >ReverbNation provides email sign-up, street teams and web promotion tools. A new addition allows multi-artist tracking. > iLike has made its fan communication and community building tools instantly compatible on both its site and Facebook and provides tracking tools and stats.
If you hear about a good promo idea, go online and research it RIGHT NOW. Try it before it becomes over used. You can drop it if it doesn't work.
Up your promotion Karma. If you try something and it's a hit, tell others. Then they will be more likely to share ideas with you.
Read Hypebot regularly. We'll help you keep on top of what's hot in music marketing.
AND, our own little addition to the list here:
If all this is too much for you to effectively take on yourself, hire the professional, risk and royalty free assistance of Pro Soul Alliance!
100 Free & Affordable High & Low Tech Music Promotion Tips
Never leave promotion to the other guy. Depending on your point of view don't count on the label, band or publicist to do their jobs. Do it yourself or it may not get done.
Know your niche market(s) or hire/befriend someone who does.
Always think of the fans first when making decisions.
Start early. Pre-promote. It allows time for viral buzz (aka free promotion) to build and ensures you’ll get you a larger share of a discretionary spending.
Take the time and spend the money to get a great publicist to get free media.
Produce great promotional material and send it out early and often. Don’t wait until they need it.
Email lists must be your new religion. Make sign up simple and easy to find. Put it visibly on the top half of the front page and watch it grow.
Segment your email lists (genre, location) to fight email burnout.
Produce and send great e-cards. The best ones get forwarded to others
Make your web site a destination by keeping it updated and including news, giveaways, polls and things to make it worth visiting.
Put your promo online in downloadable form for easy access by the media and your fans.
Enable and encourage others to do your promo for you. Ask fans to put up flyers and send out emails. Put a poster online as a free downloadable PDF for fans to use.
Create, utilize and reward a street team. Here’s a short article on the subject.
Talk to people and take informal polls. Have they seen your ads? Where? Did they grab them and provide useful information? Survey your audience via email, on the web and at shows.
Get every free listing everywhere you can no matter how obscure or far away. Maintain an extensive “listings” email list and use it.
Enhance the value of press releases by always attaching a photo or graphic file or a link to one.
Aggressively seek sponsorships. Big sponsorships are great, but no sponsorship is too small to consider even if its just cross promotion in ads or free give aways.
Always think yourself as a brand that needs to be defined, marketed, and protected.
Try local cable TV. Some local spots on Fuse or other targeted channels go for as little as $7 each. Check out Spotrunner, dMarc or your local cable company.
Try local internet advertising via Google Adsense, Facebook or local web sites. MySpace is adding targeted advertising early 2008.
Advertise on internet radio and blogs that serve your market.
Create consistency by creating ad mats and radio spots beds.
Sponsor non-commercial radio and get mentions. NPR is great, but don’t forget college radio.
Think out of the box with radio tie-ins. Rry talk radio for a classic rock or jazz radio for a fusion. Radio stations want to expand their audience too.
Co-brand. Celtic Music with an Irish bar or specialty shop or metal with a tattoo parlor. Worry less about money and think more about exposure.
Create your own affordable net radio station on Live 365.
Add a blog to your website to keep content fresh. Blogger.com has free tools.
Go viral and post on related list-servers and discussion groups.
Can't find the right discussion group? Start your own discussion group for free at Yahoo or Google Groups.
Get on both MySpace and Facebook and stay active. Don’t just
set it up and forget it. Update it and promote it. Make it worth
visiting. iLike and others are creating services to help you keep track and update more than one site at a time.
Make everything you do an event. What holiday is near? Is it a band member birthday? An anniversary near?
Consider the internet your new best friend. Study it, learn from it, explore it and use it
Run contests for best poster design or homemade video. Share all the entries on the web.
Produce monthly or even weekly podcasts. Consider having it produced cheaply or in trade for tickets, etc, by a local college DJ.
Do anything you can think of to enhance the consumer experience.
Give stuff away – backstage passes, seat upgrades, seats on stage, tix to the sound check, mp3’s of live songs.
In the entertainment business perception can be reality. Is your show
the biggest, best, loudest, “most talked about”? Then be sure to tell
the world that it is.
Enhance and monetize the
hard core fan experience with a Platinum level fan club that offers
exclusive downloads, pre-orders, insider news, preferred seating at
shows, etc.
Go old school and cut through email overload by also faxing calendars and press releases. Use a free computer based fax broadcast service.
Don't just send announcements to the main stream press but include bloggers, internet radio, record stores, colleges and even large offices.
Make your faxes look like mini-posters worth hanging up.
Fly a plane with a banner over someone else’s event.P
Park a van or truck with a banner on a main street or across from a show by a similar act.
Buy a billboard for an event or series of shows. Place it strategically near a competitor or across from a college campus.
Use one of the cheap automated phone answering services advertised in the classifieds to set up a special phone line for your schedule.
Pass a clipboard(s) around before a show to capture emails or do a survey.
Meet your fans face to face and ask them for feedback but how you can serve them better.
Try the good old fashioned US mail occasionally. It actually gets peoples attention.
Promote “After Parties” that are cheap or free with a concert ticket. This allows you to extend your brand or even tag onto someone else's at low cost.
Hand out flyers on the way out of the live shows.
Capture info from any one who make a purchase particularly ticket buyers.
Ask your web visitors questions. Polls are free and easy to set up with sites like PollDaddy.
Sell merchandise at affordable prices. It’s branding that someone else pays for.
Get creative with your merchandise – don’t just sell shirts. Try flip books, for example
You can add variety to your merchandise with no upfront costs using CafePress or Zazzle.
In this age of too much info and media, work to make yourself a trusted gatekeeper for your genre(s) of music. Use newsletters, blogs, tips, links, internet radio, and more. Don't just write about yourself. Write about things people who care about you also care about.
Carry a video camera everywhere and post short videos on YouTube.com and elsewhere of live shows, interviews, backstage, etc.
Create your own related niche blogs or web sites (for example MidWestmetal.com or NightlifeDetroit.com or FansOf____.com). You can make yourself the only (or primary) advertiser, but keep it real with info and news from others.
Send thank-you notes. Not emails; written notes. No one says thank-you anymore. It will be remembered.
Ask for the purchase. Never forget that you are in sales.
Market to the niches. Market to bartenders in Irish pubs for a Celtic
or motorcycle shops for a heavy metal. Try tattoo parlors, coffee
shops, book stores, niche clothing shops.
Make
your emails and web site useful to the reader. Add info and links to
things your audience might find interesting or useful that you have
nothing to do with.
Share your best promo ideas
and avenues of promotion with other stakeholders: bands, promoters,
labels, publicists, and sponsors.
Share media lists with others highlighting things you think will work best for each project.
Sell a series or combo. This works for recorded music and live tickets.
Surprise people. Give them something for free that they did not expect.
Create and use banners. Don’t have time or $ for Kinkos? Try Avery Banner Maker.
Trade others occasionally for targeted email lists, but don’t overuse them.
Hire or befriend a geek who will help you keep up on new technologies and internet promo opportunities.
Partner with a charity. Build good will and get more free media. Maybe you're giving a small % or maybe it’s auctioning off or selling the seats on stage or tickets to the sound check.
Consider unusual places on the internet like Craigslist, sBay and StubHub as promotional tools…Try selling tickets and other stuff there.
Musicians want to be actors and actors and athletes want to be musicians. Think about how you can cross promote so everyone wins.
Always make available a hi-resolution color photo available for easy download and you’ll get much better placement in print Sunday editions and calendar sections.
Some fans travel so try cross–promoting with another show (by the same band or just a similar band) in another city 50 or 100 miles away.
Create a special “Insider” email list fof a few fans, key media, tastemakers and bloggers for pre-announcements who love to know things first…and like to tell others.
If the there is going to be a meet and greet after show make sure that it's advertised. Fans always want a chance to meet the musicians.
Consider offering a student discount or senior discount.
Work to make it easier and cheaper for fans to buy tickets online. There are always going to have to be some fees, but some services like InTicketing charge much smaller fees than Ticketmaster.
Find ways to your regular ticket buyers.
Enhance your gatekeeper status by creating your own free Pandora or Last.FM “radio station” and linking to it from your site.
Create free custom Pandora or Last.FM for each concert event…”Get in the mood for the Al Green concert with this classic soul stream…”. It’s a free way to make the concert an event and keep them talking about it to others.
Start a short term blog for every big show or series. Post when it goes it go on sale, when an opener is added, when the front rows are sold out, news about the bands, everything.Link to it from our wen site.
Produce and sponsor a cable access show.
Utilize free interns. Try to make sure they are getting college credit so they are motivated to work.
Use cell text messaging to communicate instantly. Try Nightlifetexting.com or Google to find other companies.
Flyer - It’s the cheapest form of advertising. Clubflyers.com even offers free flyers every month or a try local printer.
A good flyer promotes more than one show and is also worth of being hung as a mini poster.
Flyer someone else’s show in a related genre.
Make sure all important info is on the front page of your site: new gigs, news, latest photos/songs/videos, etc. Make it easy as possible for fans to see the site is update and to get to stuff quickly.
Make sure everywhere you are mentioned (club listings, others bands you are playing with, etc) links back to your site. If they aren't linking, ask.
Encourage fans to "tag" you and your content on other sites like flickr, blogs, etc. Then aggregate that data on your site.
Do the same using recommendation sites like Digg and Stumble. See example links at the bottom of every Hypebot post.
As Tip #7 stated, email lists should be your new religion. A few sites like scriggleit.com offer free mailing list and text messaging solutions. There's no excuse.
Finding the time to keep up with all of this is hard but essential. Take advantage of new free services that offer the ability to manage content across platforms: >Nimbit enables mp3, CD, ticket and merchandise sales on MySpace, Facebook and elsewhere from a single integrated widget. >ReverbNation provides email sign-up, street teams and web promotion tools. A new addition allows multi-artist tracking. > iLike has made its fan communication and community building tools instantly compatible on both its site and Facebook and provides tracking tools and stats.
If you hear about a good promo idea, go online and research it RIGHT NOW. Try it before it becomes over used. You can drop it if it doesn't work.
Up your promotion Karma. If you try something and it's a hit, tell others. Then they will be more likely to share ideas with you.
Read Hypebot regularly. We'll help you keep on top of what's hot in music marketing.
Building a successful career in music on your own terms and with your own two hands is a difficult task - the business side and the art of self promotion, may rain on the "rockstar" parade.
