Hip Hop Distribution

9 Must Read Articles for DIY Musicians

Mario Mendoza — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:10:44 PDT

Staring at my old Eric B and Rakim cassette next to a CD and flash drive made me think of how prepared am I for the next fundamental changes that might occur to my music operation once I get settled. As independent musicians, we need to create, maintain, critique and improve our methods for online promotion, or get left in the trash. The main thing I like about music marketing is that you can customize a marketing plan according to your needs. Pick the brains of fellow musicans and marketing experts and create a strong plan that can survive.

Agree to disagree. Prove your marketing strategies with numbers, build upon small success and do what works for your wallet as well. I selected some articles I found very informative that cover topics very important to every evolving music operation: Search engine optimization, album release planning, focusing on small or large fan bases, and embracing imagination with releasing your music.

Audible Hype

Justin Boland sparks the importance of planning when it comes to your album release and also embeds the importance of knowing your genre’s demographics and how to use it to your advantage.

Seth Godin

Seth Godin breaks down the music industry and the fundamental shifts which created opportunities and threats. Social media and interaction is at the heart and soul of creating that “tribe”.

The Live Music Talk

Music Think Tank

Music Think Tank gets musicians in gear with focus on work ethic and building a solid fan base from the ground up. Independent success is closer than you think.

Gen Y Rockstars

Greg Rollet delivers some insight on affiliate marketing for musicians. Creating extra revenue streams for your music is necessary, and goes a long way in offsetting costs. You don’t have to be chessy with sales to make a little change.

Major League Affiliate Music Marketing

Flatacre

Peter Holmes discusses branding from the ground up for success. Too many musicians rely on gimmicks leading to short lived fame.

Want to learn about music marketing? Don’t listen to major record companies.

Plugola Inc

Erik Peterson explains the importance of search engine optimization and music blogging. Small steps lead to major improvements in search engine rankings and traffic. When search engine spiders crawl your site, make sure they know what your website is about

SEO Basics for Musicians

Digipendent

Great article that discusses why we should encourage fans to share our music through social media. Use the tools if we have them.

3 Methods to Encourage Music Sharing

Musicians Analyzing Search Volumes

Mario Mendoza — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 15:24:18 PDT

Search volume in my research is very important. While I focus on my optimization for search engines, am I really covering all the ground I could?

When I think of search queries I automatically think about Search Engines such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. The one thing that strikes me is how people are using social media sites such as Youtube, Myspace, and Facebook for searches.

I came across a press release by comScore that displays some interesting search volume stats. To read more from the actual press release follow this link: comScore Releases August 2009 U.S. Search Engine Rankings

The numbers don’t lie and those sites are all in the Top 20 for search volume. Youtube actually ranked 2nd after Google which definitely makes me want to add more videos about my band, and provide content and tags that optimize my chances of being seen. Create an entry point for your website.

Here is a summary of stats that were presented as an analysis of the U.S marketplace from July to August 2009.

Google sites own the search market with 13 billion search queries
Youtube is the 2nd most popular search engine after Google and Google sites with 3.5 billion searches
Yahoo sites are next with 2.8 billion queries
Microsoft makes up for 1.3 billion searches, 6% gain from July
Craigslist followed with 682 million searches
Facebook saw the biggest percentage in change with a 20% increase in search volume leading to 324 million searches
Withing the top 20 sites in the US, there is Youtube, Myspace, Facebook
Social Media sites become search engine portals for users

With Facebook also seeing that 20% jump, which was the largest jump in search queries percent change for that month, I think its time to put aside some of my distaste for Facebook as a music marketing tool. A band page is a must. If someone is mainly using just Facebook for searches, will they be able to find you?

Maybe you may use some of these sites as landing pages or just display your RSS feed to create entry points. The key is maximizing your visibility where people are searching.

Part of our mission as Do It Yourself marketing musicians involves making educated guesses for planning our next moves. Find stats, analyze them and make moves according to what you conclude.

This is where the importance of keyword research lies. We know where a majority of our search volume for the U.S is located and who is hot or what social network we need to keep on our radar.

I want to place my content in front of a growing audience instead of a dying one. I want to make sure I can do my best to optimize my visibility online. I want to optimize my distribution channels and bridge that gap between my website and social network profiles.

These stats are very promising because they show the importance of social media sites, being used for more than their initial mission. Optimizing for search engines is only part of the attack.

Automatic SEO Links and Music Marketing

Mario Mendoza — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 15:04:10 PDT

Search engine optimization is a very critical part of your music marketing campaign. What active efforts are you taking to strengthen your keywords? I asked myself this same question and tried different ways to keep a continuous effort towards improvement. Keyword research involves planning for future stability in blog traffic.

With Bing gaining ground on Google’s search domination, I began to think about how my website structure is being interpreted by the search engine spiders. I do have a good amount of articles but are they optimized to my benefit?

Automatic SEO links is a great Wordpress plugin that allows you to take control of your keyword promotion.

Automatic SEO Links

Automatic SEO links is a Wordpress plugin that is a great time saver and efficient promoter. When blogging, you don’t have to manually enter your links, you just choose a keyword and a URL and this plugin will find the keyword mentioned on your blog and add a link of your choice.

For example, I want to promote a “free music” page on my website. I go to the Wordpress settings for Automatic SEO Links and add the keyword “free music” with a link to my free music post. Anytime I mention “free music” in future posts, it will go to the desired link I set. No more needing to remember URL’s and inserting links manually.

Hip Hop Distribution Homework

You don’t need this plugin specifically to practice keyword strengthening. The important thing to ask is how can I improve my blog’s keyword visibility, internal link structure and readability?

Here are some examples of how I will use this plugin:

Find 5 Keywords to Promote: Choose five articles you currently have that are getting visitors. Assign each article a strong keyword and use some of those keywords in future articles. Promoting old articles and increasing reader relevance. Use your new keywords stats to give your readers what they want and add hot new keywords to build on traffic.
Push a Call to Action: Your posts are your greatest asset. If you have a album landing page or music store, create some keywords that can direct your fans to those places. For example: “download our music”, “buy our album” or “free instrumentals” could link to your storefront or whatever desired posts. Great way to keep readers on your site and build out your pages as information resources. Don’t forget the important one: subscribe here
Affiliate Promotion: promoting affiliate links is easy now. Add your selected keywords and have them automatically link to your referral service. Nice way to make a little extra change without having to enter all the affiliate tags and id’s.

The main reason that I was impressed with this plugin is because it created a process of improvement in multiple areas.

While thinking about keywords, I began thinking about which articles to promote, or which ones needed the most help. The thought process also led me to think about how good was my call to action and my blog organization. Creating a better reader experience by increasing the relevance of your keywords to your title will lead to traffic improvements and better rankings.

Please feel free to leave some of your suggestions for keyword research and improvement: Musicians are always listening.

The All Purpose Blogging Musician

Mario Mendoza — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 11:13:47 PDT

Tailor the Right Mixture

The ultimate goal is creating a music marketing plan that works. Music 2.0 has offered an amazing amount of options and tools for independent musicians. The one thing I have realized is that every music operation is unique in its own sense.

Finding the right mixture is dependent now on the expectations of the artist. I’ve put a big emphasis on blogging for my Label in hopes of reaching value in time to come. Maybe its my Finance degree yelling at me to keep investing in this stock that is bound to take off.

The reason I find value is monthly visitors keep increasing and digital sales are coming in slowly but surely. The key component is converting sales. It’s a common problem many internet marketers face with monetizing their blogs and its a big issue for musicians. How can we become creative and use successful principles in relation to our music?

I want to take a pro active approach and test out different ideas that will take time but will be worth the effort. The first experiments will involve building Mailing list exchanges and affiliate marketing opportunities.

Mailing List Exchanges

write down goals and specifics to achieve those goals

Every musician needs a mailing list. Nothing new here, but we have to think about what do we want to get from our mailing list?

The discouraging thing for many new bloggers is building a mailing list takes some time and then they neglect its importance. I want to plan networking with fellow bloggers and exchange mailing list opportunities and let the test begin.

Step 1 involves you getting to know fellow music bloggers and establishing relationships. The main reason I see this as a good move is we got to think like an artist on a tour. Most tours have several opening acts that are the warm ups for the big show. The opening acts generally are in related genres and the opening acts benefit from the exposure to the bigger fanbase.

Why not treat our mailing list with a Pandora mentality? “If you enjoyed this song then you might enjoy hearing this band”. The key here is not whoring it out. Work with artists whose music you enjoy and brainstorm with these musicians. Offer to promote their song/album, blog article in a newsletter in exchange for the same effort. The power here lies in the numbers: building stronger exposure and branding while establishing a fanbase and networking.

Your blog visitors are just as important as your mailing list subscribers. These assets were built from your hard effort, now its time to put them to work for you.

The plan now involves talking with hungry musicians like you who are willing to share exposure. Take time to find the right partnerships. Power in numbers.

Affiliate Marketing and Music

Affiliate marketing provides a great way for you to get some extra income for your music operation. You essentially promote other services or products and in exchange get a commission. Many bloggers use this to make some extra money to cover hosting costs and promotion. I promote only products I use, so I feel comfortable promoting it and relaying my experience with it.

I am looking to flip this script and have other people promote for me. Affiliate promotion is ready for the music arena. This is not new but I personally have never been offered the opportunity to promote a musician’s cd and am shocked. The incentives through Amazon and iTunes affiliates provides a low commission rate, thus low incentive for people to promote.

As my label emerges, I would love to reward faithful fans with a commission for promoting my album. You share some album sales but may gain long term customers and loyalty. Who knows, even promoting an affiliate in your newsletter. Earn a commission while rewarding someone who is helping you. Monetize where you can and do it in a Ron Burgundy manner, “Stay Classy San Diego”.

Giving away some money to affiliates is not a bad thing. You would have to hire a street team for that kind of promotion and pay some money anyway. Share the wealth and watch your sales expand. The one thing I will be looking for is finding how to set up your own affiliate program or better solutions to establish this plan.

Why Is This Important for My Band

Judge what fits right for you in your operation. Some musicians use multiple blogs to promote their band while others prefer traditional methods. Do what you feel comfortable with. Most musicians play multiple roles to increase chances for success. The important part is finding what you enjoy and working hard at that goal. Build a fundamental business, with strategies in place, and watch your expansion take place.

The planning now begins and building these relationships with fellow musicians to stimulate sales and exposure. Selling music is just one aspect of a music operation for many bands. Build equity through your blog and use that leverage to expand on your ideas.

Should Musicians Use Photoblog Themes?

Mario Mendoza — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 13:18:16 PDT

My search for free Wordpress themes for musicians lead me all over the web, testing out various styles of themes. I came across Photoblog themes that were aimed towards photographers who wanted to display their picture portfolios, to better showcase their artistry. From a musician’s standpoint, these themes stressed an important idea: visual branding.

Here are some examples of 4 Free Wordpress Photoblog Themes:

New search engine, Bing has been providing our band website a lot of traffic just off of image searches. This just made us provide some more imagery with our music and made us prepared to label and tag every single photo uploaded to your blog. It does make a difference, search engines are watching.

We have recently been receiving amazing traffic from Stumbleupon and really wanted to understand the nature of the beast. If you have used Stumbleupon before, you can understand that you can cycle through so many sites within a minute. What is it that makes me stop at a page? In my case, images have grabbed me at times to see what it is, and if it interests me I will read on. At the very least, the visual branding can add an extra element to the flyby visitor. Get your logo, album artwork, and creative photos and use them strategically to express what your music is about.

Musicians underestimate the value of great artwork, gig photos, studio time pics, and even individual artist photos. This Music 2.0 affair is all about bridging that gap between you and your fans. Let them see more of you.

One main dilemma I’ve encountered with bands is generating fresh new content to keep their website active. Use these photos you take and tell your story. Each photo has some sort of memory, and it might ease that writers block.

Using Photoblog themes are great. It really comes down to personal preference of your layout and what you want to convey. I will use one of these themes in the future, just always remember SEO (search engine optimization) is the ultimate deciding factor in me using a theme.

Google Reader is My Music Marketing Apprentice

Mario Mendoza — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 19:45:24 PDT

Recently I’ve noticed alot of questions from musicians wanting to know how and why they should use Google Reader and I wanted to give a couple of reasons I find it so helpful. Google Reader is a great tool for organizing your music marketing campaigns. I began using it because it was recommended to help surf my favorite sites and keep updated to when they write new posts. If you have a Gmail account you can use that as your login to Google Reader. The set up is quick.

Visit Google Reader. Sign in or sign up if you don’t have a Gmail account. Now you can start importing your favorite websites and organizing them into their own folders.

Most browsers let you know if a site has a RSS feed so you can import that address into Google Reader. This is the blue button that is to the right of the address, in the picture above. I know Firefox and Safari display this Rss Feed Icon in their browser. You can click on that icon in your browswer and it will take you to a page where you can add this address to your account automatically.

Click and save

Once you add it to your account you can later organize them into specific folders. For instance, I have a some of my favorite music production sites in one folder and some of my favorite tech sites in another folder. The organization will allow you to absorb valuable information all in one place.

Why Do Musicians Need Google Reader

Discover the importance of a good Headline: when your blog is stripped down, how is your content going to grab your reader. What stands out? Do you need more pics?
Google Alerts: create a folder with your band name keywords or any keywords you want to track, delivered to your reader folder. Great way to monitor your brand and do research at the same time. I set some keyword alerts for my emcee name and one for “music supervisors” to keep informed on music licensing opportunities, getting closer contact to better music submissions. Job opportunities are always on the mind.
Keep Updated with Music Marketing Sites: learn FREE tips from music marketing bloggers around the web. Find sites you enjoy reading and keep updated with the latest marketing techniques for promoting online. I have at least 30 music marketing sites I enjoy reading. I go to articles I like and it makes my commenting increase while learning. Mix and match techniques from various blogs and keep your marketing vision active(feel free to sign up to my RSS feed).
Subscribe to some Blogging sites: Great way to rejuvenate your blog, learn from the pros. Discover free advice from professional bloggers helping your band gain more visitors, keeping your business alive by implementing techniques to increase your unique visitors. Learn from those who are good at what they do and keep teaching yourself. Sometimes we just need a little direction
Subscribe to Indie Music Blogs for your Genre:
Introduce yourself to these bloggers and let them know you have signed up to their RSS feed, might help opening lines of communication. Subscribing will keep you updated on new opportunities to submit your music for review, you will never miss an article. Build your press out, increase your band backlinks, find better ways to get your music reviewed and increase your monthly visitors

Use Google Reader to your advantage. Time is valuable and Google Reader keeps me informed every day by quickly visiting my favorite sites and keeping updated on news around me and my music operation.

DIY musicians are getting information overload on a daily basis, this way you can keep a hold on your favorite sites. With social bookmarking, social networking, and tons of valuable blogs out their, we can organize our thoughts and filter to relevant information we choose.

Their is an argument that some don’t like the fact that some RSS readers don’t visit your website, they just view your articles in the reader. I think these subscribers are very valuable because they have shown interest in your website and are looking forward to new content. I keep the faith alive that these users will eventually click links that we want to direct them to, such as Album landing pages and merchandise.

Identity Crisis: Music or Business?

Mario Mendoza — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 11:23:44 PDT

When I first began my musical journey, it was based on the love of creating music and a lack of appreciation for commercial repetitiveness heard on the radio.

While I was attending CSUF waiting for my bachelor’s degree, I started exploring the business side of music. This old music industry model seemed like it was being tested with increased piracy issues and crooked labels exploiting young artists.

As a musician seeking independent success, are you prepared to make your music operation into a business?

The simplicity of this question is a tough one many bands encounter. I’ve been on both ends of the spectrum and seen some musicians not want to think about business plans because it was viewed as selling out their creative process, taking something away from their identity. I’ve also seen too much of a concentration on business that leaves your music hurting because you are just focused on output, creating song after song without much quality control. Where do you fit in?

Music Business Plan

write down goals and specifics to achieve those goals

I came across a great article on Music Think Tank by Kevin English entitled “Template for Writing a Music Business Plan”. This template covers some very important aspects any music operation can implement, if not doing so already. One key point stressed by Kevin is that the planning process will enforce studying and researching your ideas in order to avoid costly mistakes later.

The template goes on to help you get focused and “be able to explain your goals you want to achieve, how you plan to reach them and specific ways you will measure success”. Do all of your band members share the same vision?

Creating a music business plan is important in the evolution of your music business. You are taking control of your marketing vision and implementing plans to achieve your goals. Many bands struggle just to meet up for rehearsals or sessions, I could imagine asking them what their music business plans are. Take charge.

What it came down to is focused energy on a plan. The big difference this time is this new music model has evolved into an artist driven machine. Indie artists still face many challenges but can now make an impact with a minimal budget.

If you don’t feel that music business planning is important, then don’t complain about low album sales and being broke!

The music business plan can also serve many purposes for you. If you are seeking signing with a big label, it can display your seriousness and potential, increasing chances for future investment.

My label partner and I focused on our business plan and saw our blog subscribers and visitors increase by 6x. Correlation: planning, specific goals, consistency, and grading your performance all improve your business and let you focus more of your time to your music.

Music Marketing Gumbo Needs International Spices

Mario Mendoza — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 19:04:28 PDT

Music marketing provides every musician with an interesting journey of finding the right ingredients for increased visibility. Part of my absence on this blog was due to increasing our band efforts on our Fried Roots blog. The key stat for us was seeing increased international visitors, and we wanted to capitalize on our new found success. Each month this number is rising but how can we reach out to them better?

See Global Search Results

Taking an active approach finding them and reaching their discussions could prove very beneficial. I began using Google Global, a Firefox extension, that allows you to see search results in Google from different places around the globe, such as, the UK, Australia and Ireland for instance. I am in the early phases of using this extension but can see some great uses for it: Find relevant users from different regions, increase your free traffic and improve your global presence.

Google Global allows for you to view paid and organic search results:

as they appear in different cities
as they appear in different regions
from a specific IP address
results from any US zip code
and opens in multiple tabs for comparison

As a musician, we are in a great position for marketing: music is universal. Experimenting in different markets will allow for us to find international success, by infiltrating markets that aren’t so saturated. For example, Hip Hop in the USA is very saturated. There is a new rap group coming to light every second.

By actively searching for new markets, you are taking action and testing different niches. Some actions might be hit and miss, however, how good can your music survive in the midst of infinite competition? I want to develop more of a SWOT(Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis that will improve our online presence. Who knew in college that endless research papers and case studies could improve my music marketing research.

Think about different ways of using these varying search results to your advantage. First thing you get to see is what kind of competition is ranking #1 in various regions. This might be a great thing to use for commenting: finding high ranking relevant pages in different regions related to your music operation. For example, doing a search for “hip hop music” since it’s related to my music campaign and finding pages in Australia that I can join the discussion on and even network with international bloggers.

The key for me is taking the active approach to increasing international visibility. This same energy can be transferred to Twitter and contacting international bloggers and musicians, asking more questions and finding what works in different countries.

My brother stressed a very valid point to me while listening to a favorite underground artist of his: “There are people out there that appreciate music like this”. It’s my job to find them and introduce them to Fried Roots.

I will update you later with any positive results we encounter and better uses of this tool I can find online. Have fun with this tool and at the very least use this extension to research your genre across the globe.

Comments Breathe Life Into Band Promotion

Mario Mendoza — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 18:03:53 PDT

While spending time writing for my band blog, I’ve been constantly monitoring whats been working with increasing our unique visitors. The weekly blog writing and social bookmarking has worked wonders seeing a continuous increase in monthly visitors and social networking is adding a great marketing attack. One key stat was seeing the number of external links bringing in visitors to the website, due to commenting. The mission is simple: share my opinion and give my blog an identity.

The more time I dedicated to commenting around the web, the better the results. The key here was breathing life into every article by promoting each individual article, not just the home address of my blog. Professional bloggers around the web have mentioned this technique as a way of keeping older articles in the mix and keeping them from reaching the search engine graveyard.

Little Step, Big Footprints

Since I dedicate time to writing articles and socially sharing them and bookmarking them, I owe it to my hard work to promote each article, it is a representation of your blog. Here are some important things to note about commenting:

Keeps music posts alive
You are actively pursuing Targeted Visitors and directing them to specific content
Open the door to networking: (bloggers love comments)
Creating more entry points to your blog

I am constantly adding sites to my Google Reader that would aid my efforts. Be picky and find sites you enjoy visiting. If you haven’t done so yet, get a Gravatar to make your comments stand out: This will associate an image with your comments, which is great for your branding.

Disqus is also a great service and tool for web comments. I use Disqus on this blog and it is great for making comments easier and more interactive, and its free. Its great for tracking and managing your comments and replies.

One useful feature from Disqus is you can import the RSS feed of your latest comments into other sites such as Friendfeed and have your comments spark more discussion. For example, the other day I received a comment on a post that was about 3 months old and I replied to it. This conversation was imported into my Friendfeed room showing both the comment and reply and the link to the old article. This way my Friendfeed subscribers can join the discussion and visit an article that was 3 months old.

Take an older article and promote it. Find other sites with relevant topics and leave your opinion. The days you are not writing like a newsreporter can become great days to leave comments and introduce the web to your blog. Make your articles work for you!

Steprep: Monitor Your Band Reputation

Mario Mendoza — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:51:14 PDT

Every band needs to pay attention to their online reputation. I created a post about a month ago that was called “Set Up Alerts for Music Promotion Campaign” that talked about using services like Google Alerts or Monitter for Twitter where you can see what is being talked about online, in particular your band and music. These tools allow you to find out what is being said and if positive, you can join in conversations around the web. If negative, you could start your clean up campaign and work on creating better press.

I received a comment from recent visitor Sexymathematics and he had a great recommendation to check out Steprep as another alternative to Google Alerts with better features. This is the demo video for the free service:

The key slogan here is “Monitor, Manage and Build”. This process gives musicians an active role in their positive promotion. This service allows you to rate the comments found around the web and taking the positive comments and placing them in a widget. This is a very nice feature for artists.

You can use this widget to let fans be introduced to other places people can talk about your music while promoting real opinions. The claim of this service is that if you place this widget with positive comments on your social profiles around the web, the links pointing back to the stories of your choice will show up higher in the search results. The end result, positive comments get more visibility.

I will definitely give Steprep a shot and add it to the arsenal of brand monitoring for musicians.