Here is a great website community that endeavours to “help musicians and music entrepreneurs create sustainable careers.”  They’re building a vast wealth of resources that include video clips, articles, blogs, text transcriptions and full-length video pieces that cover a huge range of topics like musician strategy, marketing, production, legal, education and careers in music.  These topics then get broken down into more specific sections like tools/gear, careers, genre, networking, songwriting, publicity, promotion, advertising, retail/distribution, merchandise, touring, fan base, internet, arranging, home recording, pro tools, manufacturing, mixing and mastering, pro recording, msuic videos, entrpreneurship, ethics, publishing, services, touring, music as business, copyright, performing, learning, teaching, and believe it or not that’s not a complete list of the topics on which this site has resources for a musician to dig into.

This site is also an aggregator of video interviews and footage from a large number of musicians and music industry professionals… the list is way too massive to include here but I can link to it here.

Furthermore, Artistshouse is very active on Twitter, and they are always sending out links to articles from all over the web that will be of interest to independent musicians and people in the music industry, and I definitely recommend following them.

They also host a live weekly video-stream/online chat program that takes place every Wednesday (or almost every Wednesday anyway) that extends their community into the live arena, and allows you to see the folks at the centre of the site.  The folks seem really nice, they’ve certainly been kind enough to me by linking several of my blog posts out to their community of musicians, and I appreciate them for it.

The people behind this site are backed by the Herb Alpert Foundation, who had the idea to create an online non-profit resource for musicians to get information, support, professional guidance and expert resources to help them navigate the challenges of the music industry.  To read more about the folks who are at the centre of the artistshouse community, check out their about page.

It seems like Artistshouse is organized by people who are trying to help musicians for all the right reasons…which is a great thing, but as with all communities, they are only as good as what their members make of it, so I suggest if you’re interested in checking it out, then try it out with fervor.  If you’re going to sign up, then interact, watch, learn, listen, talk, comment, suggest and be active regularly… get involved and make the most of the platform being provided.

Audiolife.com - widget-based full-service e-com for musicians

Here’s something to look into… I haven’t signed up for an account yet, but it looks like the folks at audiolife.com could be on to something really interesting.  They offer full back-end services for bands to sell mp3 albums, physical CDs, ringtones, and merch, and there are two things that are most interesting about their service.

1 – Bands don’t need to create any inventory upfront… all the CDs are done using digital manufacturing, at audiolife’s HQ, and the clothing items are all made-to-order using some sort of digital printing techniques.  Again, that means that bands don’t have to pay to manufavture the shirts first, and they don’t need to worry about any shipping.  All bands need to do is upload content (mp3s of songs, mp3s of ringtones, and images for t-shirt designs) and audiolife handles everything else.  (Sure they take commissions, but who doesn’t?)

2 – The resulting storefront that you get from audiolife is fully widget-based, and can be embedded on any website or social network profile page you have, and the entire purchase process happens right inside the widget, never redirecting the customer to any other site.  They stay right on your site, the whole time.  The other beautiful part of the store being widget-based is that it can then be shared, and embedded on as many sites as you want, thus allowing all your fans to help you out by posting your store on their pages too… you just need to come up with ways to motivate them to do so!

It doesn’t cost any upfront fees to create your store, they only make money when you sell items (i like that). Their agreements are fully non-exclusive, thus allowing you to still post and sell your content any other way you choose.

My two questions would be:

a – how good do the t-shirt prints turn out?  It’s tough to say, so if anyone has experience here, please comment and let me know.

b – how detailed are the backend metrics?  I’m sure you can track sales geographically and demographically, but I’d like to know since the widget is embeddable, can purchases be tracked back to which instance of the widget generated the sale? If so, one could create incentive programs for fans who sell more merch for you… free tickets to the top sellers monthly etc.

Again, if anyone reading has experience using audiolife, let me know, it looks like it could be really useful!

check out their site here: www.audiolife.com and see an audiolife widget store in action here: www.myspace.com/theharmmusic

Use Ping.fm to send your message across all your networks at once.

Ping.fm calls itself “a simple service that makes updating your social networks a snap.”  It’s currently in beta mode, which means it ‘s free to sign up, and try it out.

Post a message to the Ping.fm service, and Ping then takes that message and distributes it out to all your social networking sites for you… so you only have to send it once.

You tell Ping.fm which social-networks you belong to (they support probably every one you already use), add them all  to your list within Ping, and then when you use Ping.fm to send a message, you just let Ping take care of the rest.  Type it once, and Ping can get sent out as your latest Twitter post, Facebook Status, Facebook Note, Facebook Photo upload, Linkedin Status, Myspace Status, Myspace Bulletin, etc.  Check out their mainpage for all the networks they support… a list of over thirty different ones.  It’s got built in support for URL-shortening too, and tells you how many characters your message will be, so it can stay Twitter-friendly.

You can send your messages to Ping.fm from many ways too… via SMS, instant messages, email, 3rd party apps, and more.  They make this very easy for you.

Signing up for a ping.fm account is about as basic as it can get… email address, user name, password, you’re done.  Then, when you’ve logged in, you can start adding all your networks, which does require you logging in to your various profile pages through their site (and presumably giving them your passwords… tin-foil hat-wearers need not apply I guess, but anyone trying to create a business like this, if they’re going to be successful at all, the privacy of this info has got to be fully respected… they wouldn’t dare compromise that.)

I only wish you could use it to send messages out to members of a Facebook Group, a list of email addresses, or more info beyond a “status update” but the reality is this service is still in beta and I’m sure they’re working on this.

For musicians, this is great simply because when you want to send a quick promotional news item or reminder out to your fanbase, if you’ve been active online you probably have many different places where you connect with fans, which makes updating each one of them separately a very tedious process.  So to only have to type your message once, and have it sent out across all your networks just makes things so much more efficient and easy, which, I hope, will make you communicate more often, thus strengthening the bonds you have with your fans, and keep you top of their minds.

The 21st Century version of being the DJ at a house-party.

In the dark ages before the internet, people used to share music physically.  They’d do things like make mixtapes for eachother, or trade albums back and forth, telling all their friends about what bands they’ve discovered.  At house-partys, invariably one person would end up “DJ” for the night… hanging out by the CD player and picking songs to play for the room.

Then, as it always does, technology comes in and makes things more efficient, faster, and better, though that last one can be debatable at times.

So along came Napster, mp3 players, P2P, etc.  We all know that story.  And now there’s an influx of different web startups that allow people to share their music and their musical tastes with the online world in all sorts of different ways.

Enter Blip.fm.  It’s the new incarnation of being the DJ at the houseparty.  You get to be the one to tell all your friends what songs to check out, and provide a soundtrack to an everchanging mood, timeline, day, whatever.

Similar to Twitter, Blip allows people to create their own profile, then send small messages (like tweets) out to their “listeners” which are the other people on the network who have decided they want to follow you.  The addition that Blip adds to the Twitter/micro-blogging concept is that they have a streaming audio player built in, so you can attach a URL to your message that will trigger a song to start playing.  And as long as the song has an mp3 posted somewhere online, and that location has been input into the Blip.fm database, you can stream it to all your listeners. Its very easy to add a song to the Blip database, all you need to do is post the mp3 online somewhere, and input the URL on the Blip site.

So for bands, it’s another great way to be active in the online space.  Musicians, you should start blipping songs by your influences, and by bands whos fans might like your music.  Start listening to other blip DJs who are blipping songs by similar artists too.  What will happen is, you’ll build up a listener-base of avid music-fans who happen to like bands similar to yours.  Then, when you occasionally blip one of your own songs, and you’re open and honest about it, you’ll have a receptive community of listeners paying attention to you, and maybe they’ll like what they hear.

Earn It Yourself - an online band community.

I recently came across this site, which is a community site for bands to network with each other, trade shows, read articles to get some tips on touring, radio, etc. plus bands can sell their music through the site as well.   They’re also affiliated with BYOFL (Book Your Own Fuckin’ Life) and you can search that entire database via this site.  Another thing that’s interesting is the fact they host a weekly online radio show that deals with the realities of being in an indie band in this day and age.  The episode I tuned into was talking about licensing songs for use in film, commercials, etc, and music publishing.  Listeners can also call in to ask questions and get answers live.  The site also has an arrangement with Warped Tour, that will allow EarnItYourself bands to win the chance to play on the Kevin Says stage this upcoming year.

The most impressive thing about this site, though, is their philosophy.  “Earn It Yourself” is their take on the classic Do It Yourself mentality, but adds to those ethics, the fact that it’s okay to earn money from your band or your music, providing you do it while preserving your integrity and sticking to your personal values.  And you know what?  They’re right.

A Couch-surfing social network for bands on tour.

As stated on their website:

“Better Than The Van is a couchsurfing-social network created to help touring bands and musicians. It’s a great way for bands and music fans to connect with each other for a practical reason. You can find a place to crash, look for bands to swap shows with or discover new music. Bands, fans, music lovers; all are welcome. You’ll meet cool people and help make touring a little easier.”

Having not tried out their services first-hand, I make no claim as to the quality or validity of what the site proports to offer, however I do think it’s an interesting concept that bands should be aware of.  A couch-surfing network connecting bands with friendly floors and sofas around the world is a noble concept, and those of you feeling adventurous enough to try it as an alternative to sleeping in the van, camping, or spending all your money on hotels, let me know how it works out for you.