A friend sent me the link to check out culturejam.com – after poking around on the site for a bit, it seems like they’re doing some interesting work in the twitter-world, with a specific eye toward music marketing.  One of the main things they seem to be doing is providing a twitter-app, that will back-end a download function.  Most of the examples they provide on the site seem to live on a sub-domain of the …

Myspace, Twitter, Facebook, LastFM, buzznet, Bebo, Xanga, Hi5, Youtube, Reverbnation, iLike, imeem, orkut, and the list goes on… there is seemingly a TON of different social networks that a band could potentially have a presence on.  The problem is, each one then requires updating and managing… which can become very time consuming.  The other problem is that these social networks seem to pop up all the time, there’s always new ones around the bend, and …

Two approaches to promoting your band, both of which are not mutually exclusive.  Meaning, you should try to do them both as best you can.
The first, Be Where Everyone Is… is all about knowing your target fans, and making sure that you are active in those places, both online and in the offline space.  Being active where your potential fans already spend their time – the bars, websites, blogs, concerts, radio stations, specialty record shops, …

So it’s the kickoff to the North By Northeast music festival here in Toronto, which is Canada’s version of the SXSW fest.  NXNE isn’t anywhere near as big as it’s southern brother, but in some ways that’s better… you don’t feel like you miss out on as much.  Oh, there’s lots happening, more than enough to fill your evenings with many options of great bands at each timeslot, but not to the point where every …

There are a lot of bands registering for Twitter these days, and while the subject of this post is not specific to Twitter, it certainly was inspired by what I’ve seen a lot of while spending time using the service.  I know I’ve touched on this topic briefly in one of my previous posts, but I feel this particular behaviour needed a post of it’s own.  The behaviour I’m talking about, is “broadcasting.”  This is …

I was recently watching a fascinating documentary called “Connected: The Power Of Six Degrees”  that focuses on a growing field of science called Network Theory.  It’s origins stem from the celebrity-game “Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon” that challenges people to connect two seemingly random actors through the movies they’ve been in and via their co-stars.  The documentary focuses on how the world is much smaller and more connected than we ever thought it was.  They …

Back in February I published an article, “Building Fan-Band Relationships In 420 Characters Per Day” that put forward some tips on how bands could take better advantage of the Twitter platform, and utilize it to more effectively communicate with their fans.
Since then, I have seen a large growth in the number of bands who are using Twitter, and have seen many examples of good practices and some examples of not-so-good practices, some of which I’d …

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, …

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 …

As a band who wants to spread the word about your music, promoting yourself is a great investment of your time and money.  Just please think twice before you spend your money on promotion, and also make sure you’re being smart about how you promote yourself.  A simple way to check and see if you’re being both ethical and effective, is to imagine yourself on the receiving end of your own marketing.  Imagine that someone …