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!

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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

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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!

According to Hypebot.com there are 10 Commandments of Music 2.0:

The first Commandment “Thou Shalt Not Worship False Prophets – Neither a record deal or auto-tune are your saviors.”

Coming in at a very, very close second “Thou Shalt Worship Only One God – He (or she) is called The Fan.”

Following the first two (which, I might add, should be your daily mantra) are Commandments 5 and 6 respectively – “Thou Shalt Blog – Your flock wants to know what you’re doing, and Thou Shalt Create Profiles – Wherever your flock may go, you must be there.”

Closing out the “Holy Grail” with Commandment 9 “Thou Shalt Share Thy Bounty. Share gigs. Share ideas. Share with your fans.”

And let us not forget the final Commandment 10, “Do Unto Others As You Would Have Others Do Unto You – You meet the same people on the way down that you did on the way up.”

Hypebot.com asks for an eleventh Commandment? “Thou shalt Twitter – tweet like you’ve never tweeted before.” Twitter is the ultimate tool in the world today which allows you to reach out and given 140 characters per tweet, you speak to your fans as though they were in the studio with you. Bonding and building your personal relationships creates a loyal fan base. Thus honoring Commandments 1 through 9 – number 10, that’s between you and your conscience.

Because it is daunting to accomplish all these tasks while trying to be creative, Pro Soul works with artists of all genres, helping them develop their music careers in a changing industry to meet the needs of the modern music lover without taking any rights or profits.

We recently blogged about the importance of Twitter for artists, and connecting Twitter to your other social networking profiles. But if you don’t use Twitter effectively, it doesnt do much good…

In addition to tweeting at least a couple times a day, we wanted to share our top pick for the most important feature to be using on Twitter: @replies or ‘mentions’ as they are now called.

Using @replies is simple: always @ People you like!
This is a public message that everyone in your network, or who search Twitter, will see.
To comment back at things you would like to react to or to connect directly with someone just tweet: @ and then their username. So if you want to say something directly to prosoul (our Twitter ID) type @prosoul – this will turn up in the @ Mentions in our Twitter dashboard and we will see your comment, and here is the key, so will everyone in your network!

Here is some detail on how @replies/mentions work:
http://blog.twitter.com/2008/05/how-replies-work-on-twitter-and-how.html

Create relevant and interesting tweets, and people will reply, thereby creating curiosity about your original message, and revealing your Twitter ID to their whole network, which is great exposure, especially when some of your followers have thousands of followers!

Many of our artists have had great success using @ replies/mentions, getting a few thousand people listening to their music within a few days of Tweeting!

We also highly recommend sending an @reply to all the cool people that follow you after you follow them back to show your appreciation, but NOT to those MLM and Internet marketing people! (direct messaging is not the best way to do this as too many people using automated direct messages now)

Use Twitter incorrectly and your announcing ‘I’m a clueless rookie’ to the world! Contact us if you want assistance using Twitter to promote your music more effectively.

We talked about posting your Twitter feeds to Facebook, which can also be done for many other music social networking sites now, such as reverbnation.

We encourage most artists to have a blog for reasons best described in Andrew Dubbers post about it. So how can you get people to read your blog? Import the blog RSS ‘feed’ to other popular sites such as facebook!

Without launching into geek overload, an RSS feed allows you to put something anywhere that supports RSS technology. Facebook supports RSS and so does Twitter, so that’s how you can text from your mobile phone, and have it update your facebook status. A feed is a special url or web address. Usually you can get it for your blog site by just adding /feed to the end of the address, for example: http://prosoul.com/feed/ gives you an RSS compatible version of this blog, kind of like the ‘print view’ button websites have for your printer.

To automatically publish your new blog posts to facebook:

- copy your blog RSS feed address as mentioned above.
- login to your Facebook account
- Go to bottom of page, Applications Menu and click on Notes icon, or click here:
www.facebook.com/notes.php
- Click On ‘Edit Import Settings’ on the Right of Notes page
- Paste in your blog feed here
- Have more than one facebook profile, or in a band? Use the most popular, most active one

Now when you post a blog, Facebook will create a new note, and publish a news item about it on your profile and in your friends news feeds. If your blog settings are set to partial feed, readers will have to go to your website to read the full post which is a good thing, because then maybe they’ll listen to your music, subscribe to your mailing list, or who knows, maybe even buy something, and that is ultimately what you want with social networking – to drive people back to your professional ‘www,yourname.com’ website (Hint: a myspace.com page doesn’t count and screams ‘rookie’!!).

This kind of feed publishing can be done in many other social networking sites such as myspace as well. Check out the settings and applications supporting RSS feeds for them to find out more, or get assistance from Pro Soul Alliance.