• broadcast live from backstage before a show, interact with the fans in the audience, and build your set list together
• stream live performances from your rehearsal space
• video-chat with your fans no matter where you are
• give fans a live look at you in the recording studio
• post-concert wrap-ups live from the van/tour bus
• give your fans a “band’s eye view” of what it’s like to be on stage with you

I’m sure there are a ton of different and interesting ways you could use this tool to engage with your audience.  All you need is an iPhone and a free account at uStream.tv, which you can sign up for in seconds using the free app.  You can be broadcasting live video to the world in under a minute or two, using just your iPhone.

If you’re a musician with an iPhone and you want to check it out, download it now for free on the iTunes App store.

Add to all that, now the main ways artists are connecting with fans are all taking place online, where everything is trackable, and in comes web services offering email subscription tracking, myspace plays, youtube streams, blog-status grading, web-traffic measurements, “hit potential” analyzers, and more.

With more and more onus on bands to develop themselves, before working with business partners, it’s going to become increasingly important for musicians to become even more savvy marketers.  To understand all the different and powerful analytics that are available, and interpret the data into actions is going to become increasingly time-consuming (and potentially costly, if these services start introducing paid-subscription business models, which is the current norm for analytics services).

For a musician who’s looking to immerse themselves in information, and study their fan metrics intently, this onslaught is a dream come true, but on the other hand, when your main job it is to be creative, write, perform and practice, this could also become a real problem of time-management.

So what are services like the below doing to make this as easy and understandable as possible for musicians?

What services do musicians find provide the most useful and actionable information?

What are musicians saying about these and other services?

Is this type of information something a musician should pay for?

Are there other services out there that should be added to this list?

Music Metrics Services:

• Band Metrics
• Google Analytics
• Fanalytics
• Rockdex
• Artistdata
• MusicXRay
• Next Big Sound

In October I gave a talk on Communicating With Fans at the Halifax Pop Explosion Festival and Music Matters Conference.  I’ve received a lot of great feedback from that talk, and it prompted me to turn it into a free e-book, which I’ll make available here later in the new year.  But if you’d like to be one of the first people in the world to get it, all I ask is that you give me your input on the topic of my SXSW discussion.  See below…

The SXSW discussion will touch on the different ways artists communicate with their fans… raising and answering questions relating to sharing information, communication, and audience engagement… the how, the why, the when, and the what of sharing.

“A discussion on the ways artists use social networking tools to interact with fans, and how that affects their supposed “rockstar hero” status. Do fans really want to know every daily activity their favorite musicians do, or does sharing remove some of their unattainable magic? Can a balance be found?”

The panel will take place on the Saturday, March 21 and I hope anyone reading this who’s planning on attending the conference will attend.  I can’t say just yet who all will be on the panel, but it’s going to be great.

So now, I would like your input… I want to make the discussion everything you want it to be, so please email me or comment here and tell me your answers to the below four things… everyone who responds will be the first to get the Communicating With Fans e-book based on my talk earlier this year in Halifax.

Here’s what I’d like to know…

• what tools you are using to communicate with your fans?
• how often do you interact with them?
• are your fans happy with your level of interaction or do they want more/less?
• what tools/info/data/access that you don’t have now, would help you better communicate with your fans?

Thanks so much, your input is truly appreciated.

Is he an aspiring musician?

I heard a radio commercial the other day, extolling the virtues of the electronics and audio store’s vast selection of headphones. “And for the aspiring musician on your list… we have the… blah blah blah.”

“Aspiring musician”…. that phrase gets tossed around a lot, but what does it mean? It seems to me that it’s something someone calls you if they don’t think you’re very successful at the moment. It’s almost offensive really. Somehow, the word “successful” has become implied when talking about musicians. As if to say, you’re not a musician, unless you’re a successful musician. But really, if you pick up an instrument and create a sequence of notes that pleases your ear… you’re a musician. Or if you open your mouth, and intentionally make a melodic sound, you’re a musician.

You could be aspiring to become more successful than you currently are, but with so many different possible definitions of success, maybe you already are a successful musician.

Don’t let people call you an aspiring musician, because you’re not. You either are a musician, or you aren’t.

So… what are you aspiring to?

Letting the little things pile up is rarely a good thing

When you’re in a band, there are lots of things that have to get done, but aren’t the glamorous parts of the job… Sure when it comes time to get on stage, it’s no problem mustering the will to perform.  Or when you have to go on TV or the radio to do an interview, for the most part it’s not a hassle.  But there’s many things that need doing, like having to set up the facebook event pages for all your upcoming gigs, taking merch inventory counts, re-skinning the drums, entering all the email addresses into the database from the last few gigs worth of signup sheets… etc. All those little things that pile up because they’re not the most fun, most impactful, or most pressing things that need to get done.  The truth is, if you let them all pile up and become a big long list that’s going to take a ton of time to complete, you’re just making the task more daunting, which will most likely mean you’ll put off doing it even longer.

The best way to tackle those things is to just dive right in and do them right when you’re thinking about them.  Don’t sit on the couch thinking about all the things you’ve got to do… get off the couch and do one or two of them.  If there’s none that are truly more important than the others, just pick any of them.  Then do a couple more.

Believe me, we’re all guilty of procrastination… but it’s never a good thing.  Putting something off till later rarely has any benefit over getting it done right away.

And all it takes is one long-term thought or projection… “what am I working toward?” to give you the motivation to get those little things done.

It’s a great question, and sure it’s important, but the best way to get media outlets interested in you, and beyond that, the best way to get new fans interested in you is by engaging the current ones.  Too often it seems that musicians spend a lot of effort and time on spreading the word to potential new fans, and much less effort communicating with the fans they already have.  As an independent musician, you don’t have a staff supporting you, creating marketing campaigns, securing interviews and press coverage, and getting radio stations to interview you or play your music.  Those are some of the tactics that labels and marketing companies will use to generate enough media impressions so that it creates familiarity with your band and music, and the idea is that by reaching a very wide group of people, some of them will like you enough to purchase something.  But as I said, you don’t have access to those people or those methods.

What you do have, is your current fans.  People who have already stated (either verbally, or by voting with their dollars and attention) that they like and wish to consume your music.  And the thing about music is that people LOVE to tell other people about the music they’re excited about.  So respect your current fans, don’t look past them hoping for new ones.  Reward them and inspire them, and give them every reason to be excited about you and your music, and help them spread the word to their friends about you.  Engaging your current fans to spread the word is the best way to find your new fans.  And as the word spreads, the media outlets will want to talk to you, and radio will want to play you, etc. and the cycle will continue.

Sure it’s not a quick process, it’s an organic growth, but it’s effective, cost-efficient, and the best part about it is you don’t need to rely on anyone else’s help to get started.  You don’t need to hire a publicist, or a radio tracker, or get a manager or label before you can begin… you have control over this right now.

So what are you waiting for?

Of course, it should be mentioned that you shouldn’t be milking your friends either… they shouldn’t be expected to show up for every single gig, or buy every single new merch-item you release, but if and when they want something, or want to come out to support, don’t be guilted into letting them have it for free, simply because they’re your friend.

Just make sure they know how very much their support means to you.

Try adding a hook!

So if you’re in a band and you’ve decided that you need to post more updates on your site than you currently are, or if you want to try and make your updates a little more interesting (and who doesn’t?)… try applying more concept.  More of a “hook.”

Here’s what I mean… say for example, you just want to keep your site updated frequently, so you’ve decided you will write a daily blog for an upcoming tour… or you are going to implement a weekly update to post… don’t just write about what random stuff happened that day, or that week or whatever.  Posts like “so we woke up in the van, brushed our teeth in McDonalds bathroom, and set out on the road again… only to run out of gas, blow a tire, and overheat the engine all at once” are only okay if you’re REALLY interesting (best to assume you’re not), or if something really extraordinary happened… but for the most part, it will be generic updating of mundane life that isn’t going to really endear anyone to you, or make them want to come back to read the next one, or forward it to their friends…

One idea to make things more interesting, is to try coming up with a concept or theme for your updates… one band I know of wrote an entire tour blog where every entry was focused solely on documenting the unique filth and grunge that was the bathrooms at the bars they were playing in each night.  It was entertaining, and made me want to listen to the band, because I thought they were interesting.  Maybe you’ve got the opportunity to go on tour with your favorite band of all time, so you decide to write about your experience getting to know them, and watch them every night… even though it doesn’t actually talk so much about you or what you’ve done, that’s a great hook!  Not only does it show you’re excited about the tour, but you’re tapping into the other band’s audience as well, then they see how excited you are about seeing the other band, then they think you’re interesting and they’ll check your band out too.

Being more interesting isn’t the only reason to apply a stronger concept to your updates though… Something else happens when you’ve put the thought into it and come up with a hook for them too, and that is you’ll find them a lot easier to write because that extra bit of focus really helps to spur the creative juices on.  Before you know it, updates will be flowing out of you like crazy, they’ll be more interesting, more engaging, and more likely to create return readers.

And your own creativity is the only limit to what you could use as a hook, so since you’re all really creative musicians, this should be easy!  Have fun with it.

I don’t know how I feel about the value proposition, and what is the value of a single tweet?  It could be very attractive to developing artists, however it also seems like some of the artists they’re working with are fairly established… Moby, Imogen Heap, Travis Barker/DJ AM among them, though there are others who I was not immediately familiar with.

Might be a good idea, and the service seems to be a valuable one, although there’s no mention on culturejam’s website as to how much an artist/label has to pay to use their services.  At any rate, it’s worth a look.  You can check out other examples of their services, listen to a podcast by the CEO, and sign up for their mailing list, or contact them directly if you’re interested in trying them out.

www.culturejam.com

And if anyone’s worked with them already, post your experience in the comments section.

This is the subject of a panel topic I have submitted to SXSW2010.  The focus of the panel would be to have a discussion over the use of interaction and interactive tools, by bands and musicians.  Some musicians say they would rather remain private, and let their music do the speaking to the fans… others are more than happy to open up and communicate directly with fans.  Is one strategy better than the other?  Are they both mutually exclusive?  Do fans really want to know every daily activity their favorite musicians do, or does sharing too much remove some of the unattainable magic of being a star?

Here are some specific questions designed to lead the discussion:

• I’m a musician, should I be blogging/twittering my life for my fans?
• What tools are used online by fans and musicians to communicate?
• Is there such a thing as sharing too much information?
• How often should I be posting online?
• What are a fans expectations regarding online interaction with musicians?
• Does a musician need to answer every question/email/messageboard post/tweet send their way?
• Can I communicate regularly while still maintaining my privacy?
• What sort of things will a fan think is interesting reading online?
• How can a mundane activity be turned into an interesting post that a fan might care about?
• What if I want to remain mysterious? How do I do it, and can I get away with it? Will that hurt my career?
• Does a developing artist have a different set of “rules of engagement” than a superstar artist?

If you like this topic, and think it would make a valuable addition to the discussions at SXSW2010, I would greatly appreciate it if you would vote for this topic to be added to the program.

SImply click the “Thumbs Up” image at the beginning of the article, and follow the instructions!

Thanks very much,

Ian