The Gregory Brothers of “AutoTune News” have entered the chart at #89 with “Bed Intruder”. The debut chart position was almost entirely the result of 10,571 copies of the track downloaded from iTunes in just two days. The original news video has been watched 4 million times on YouTube. The thing that has me scratching their head is if you go to their website, they have no way to contact them directly. – BOO
Please note after recording this and posting it I see below the picture for booking information, contact gregorybrothers at g mail – oops
Route Note Rates Places to Sell CDs
Routnote.com has a story that (shockingly) shows how they are a great deal if you want to distribute your music on the Internet. The article has lots of places listed and rated.
www.NuMuBu.com is a free website with tips on recording, marketing, and more. Their website is kind of clunky. Their color scheme is weird. What are your thoughts? Leave a comment on the blog.
Linking to Your CD at CBaby.com
If you have a CD on CDBaby, I would not link to a search result of your band such as http://cdbaby.com/found?allsearch=bosco+and+peck&submit=
Today we get a question from Jon Solitro who is trying to find popular cover songs. I explained that you can get a better result doing “popular cover songs” as it is looking for a phrase. Also don’t forget that there is an advance search for google where you can be much more specific.
To be found in Google, one of the many things you can do is to make sure your title tag (the line at the very top of the browser screen) has your band’s name, maybe the style of music, and your location (anything that people may be entering to find you). Jon just had the word “welcome”
You can also keep up with other people talking about your band online by setting up a Google Alert that will notify you whenever someone puts your band name on a website you will be notified. Here again, be sure to use quotation marks to specify that you are searching for the whole phrase.
HOW MANY CLICKS TO PURCHASE YOUR MERCHANDISE?
I found a great article that had some great stats. For example if you have an itunes or Amazon account it takes 5 clicks to purchse music. If you do not have an account it takes 14.
The point being that not everybody is completely crazy in love with your music, and many not jump through that many hoops to purchase your music. Make it easy to buy. I always advise that you have a “Buy” button on the same page where people listen.
Today I talk about getting exposure from youtube. This can be done by attaching your band to a viral video. For example the “Double Rainbow” video has 6,974,712 views as I put this together. It’s averaged 35,226 views per day. So the Gregory Brothers who like to “Auto Tune the News” made a song (catchy little ditty I may add) and it has receive 58% of the traffic of the original or 4,049,030 views. This means its averaging 213,107 per day. If you take that 58% percentage that followed the original to the remix, and say 58% follow to their website that would be 2,348,437. Then if 58% of those people went to their audio page on their website that would be 1,362,093. If only .01 percent purchased a song that would be 13,620 sales.
HOWEVER,
That 58% is a bit steep compared to reality. If we went with 5% (high but realistic) that would be 202,451 to their website, 10,122 to their audio page, and 101 who then might like it so much that they purchase their EP. They also have merch to accent their you tube videos and more.
What I Would Change
I had a really hard time finding their original music on their site. I could go to itunes, I could purchase their original music (without hearing it). I would also set up a link to my website like mywebsite.com/youtube that would collect email addresses and offer free downloads (and to track if making these videos were worth it).
If you’re going to go play in traffic be sure that your website is ready to maximize the potential of all the visitors that are coming.
One band I was in made a nice chunk of change by finding products that were inexpensive to make, and then sold them for a small fee. In my case it was sunglasses that cost $1.00 to make and we sold for $2. We sold over 500 pairs one summer. I found a new product that fits this criteria. The product is temporary tattoos. You can have 1000 tattoos created for $89. That means your cost is about .09 each. You could then sell these for $1 and if you sold 10 of these a show you would make $9.1 profit. Granted these are small 1.5″ X 1.5″ tattoos and you could get bigger sizes for more money. For example a 3″ X3″ has a #20 cost. You can still sell these for $1 and make over .60 in profit.
The best part of these is they are temporary. It’s a way for fanatic fans to show their support at the gig, and best of all they can do it again and again and again.
You could have your logo (and website) put on to the tatto0, and sell these on breaks. Don’t just think this could work for a punk band. You can use this for any band as they are temporary. For more information go to www.musicianscooler.com/temptattoo
UPDATE: Use the coupon code cooler5 to get 5% off your order (which adds to your profit margin).
Our old friend George Hrab back again. George has been a huge fan of the show, and this is a ONE of a kind show. George is doing a marketing experiement by giving away – in its entirety – his new album TREBUCHET. We get to listen to every second of it. There are some catches if you’re thinking “but how is going to make any money on this”
1. The file he provided is just that. It’s one file. If you want to listen to song 6, you have to fast forward.
2. It’s an mp3, and yes they do sound different than CDs especially with the giant vocal sound of the first track. (courtesy of Slau of www.sessionswithslau.com)
3. George has taken a page from the Willy Wonka Movie and put in an actual golden ticket which means if you get it, George will come perform for you.
4. The physical CD comes with a 20 page booklet.
5. You have to go to CDBaby or iTunes just to get a track listing (motivating to get people 1 click away from buying at least one track).
Pretty cool stuff, and a gutsy move. George will be on later to fill us on on the experiment. In the meantime enjoy the music.
Today I interview Chris Cox from Make Your Band Famous and he talks about the reason he started the site, his background, how he developed the program (a ton of information). The site talks about how music piracy can actually be a GOOD thing when you plan for it, and use the tools available to get your music going viral.
There are 13 tried and true practice that you can learn to get more fans, more gigs, and more music sales.
Learn how to use things like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and email tools, but more importantly how to monetize these tools. You will learn others items such as
The Party Principle
Promoting Piracy
There is a 30 day money back guarantee.
There are free videos (the first one is 26 minutes so this is not a “skimming over a topic” kind of training.
Check it out at www.makeyourbandfamous.com
The price will eventually be $297. During Launch week you can get it for $197 )(save 21%). You can also pay for it in 3 installments of $79. Check it out at www.makeyourbandfamous.com
Today I talk about how a few “hit” email between my bass player lead to my band splitting up. I had invited a keyboard player to come practice with us, and he got upset. He sent an email without using the BCC option (which pissed me off). Here is the email I sent to him:
I remember how you didn’t like me inviting strangers into your house. You just gave out my email address to all sorts of people I do not know, and may possibly think I care about your topic. I have lost not one, but two email to this exact kind of shit. This email is one I give out to people that are my friends, family, and music business contacts. This is completely unacceptable. If you do not understand the concept of BCC (blind carbon copy) I highly suggest that google it and learn how to use it (it hides peoples email address). As a band member I need to be able to communicate with you via email, and if this kind of crap shows up in my inbox again I will block you and have to call you for all future communications.
I apologize for the tone, but if you’ve ever had to update your entire address book to let people know you no longer use an email address because it gets (no joking here) 300 pieces of spam per day its a pain in the ass to get everyone to start using the good email address.
Lastly, I do not care about anyone’s politcal views. America gets what it votes for. Our government is a bunch of crooks, and the people will never do anything to change it because we are too concerned about jail time for Lindsay Lohan. So please, band related stuff only.
In a nutshell things went down hill from there (even though I did apologize for my tone later). I think we both knew that we were not seeing eye to eye on a lot of topics, and this was the best for both worlds. In the end I wished them the best, and we went our separate ways.
So when it comes time auditioning people, you might want to talk about what you have to do before you ask strangers over to your house. You might also want to state up front when you give someone your email address and what you are and are not interested in getting in your email box.
Rever Nation Launches Gig Finder
Trying to plan a tour?
Looking for all the music venues in a specific area?
Need recommendations of venues that fit your type of music and the capacity that fits you best?
Try Gig Finder right now for free! It’s one of the largest free venue databases in the world, and can even recommend venues that fit you based on where you’ve played in the past, where comparable Artists like you play when they tour, and venues that book your type of music.
GigFinder is easily accessible to every artist on ReverbNation. Just login to ReverbNation and click on the “Shows” tab in your Control Room, and then hit the “Gig Finder” link
Cool Tools To Add Harmony To Solo Singers
I was amazed at some of the tools that are available that can listen to the cord you are playing and automatically add harmony.
The first example was a digitech Vocalist Live 4 $498
The second sample is from the TC-Helicon Vocal Live 2 ($800)
There are some less expensive models as well.
The Harmony G-XT from TC-Helicon is $249
While there are plenty of interesting names in music. For example:
The buthole surfers
The rolling stones
Devo
The Dead Milkman
When you are looking into naming your band, there is more to think about than if it sounds cool.
I was previously in a band called the Sugar Daddies (we thought we were cool and spelled it $ugar Daddies). What we never realized is how many internet sites are dedicated to women finding gentlemen with lots of cash (a Sugar Daddy). We never thought about being hassled by the charms company (makers of the Sugar Daddy candy) or the fact that sugardaddies.com was a porn site (we had THEsugardaddies.com). Which is another point, make sure your band’s name is available in the shortest URL available. If its not available, and you have to put “band” or “music” to the end of it, you know you are going to have some competition on the Internet fighting for that keyword.
Does your name give an idea of what the band sounds like? Most people don’t think about this. We know “metallica” is probably not a folk group, but Pearl Jam could be just about any type of music (which may be why they chose it – they are all over the map).
Make sure its not being used by someone else. Nothing worse than having to name your band “The New originals” as someone else had “the Originals”
Take some time to think about a name. Get some good ones, pass them around and get some response from friends and family, then go buy the domain name. Speaking of that, use the godaddy coupon code cooler10 when you check out to get your .com domain name for $7.49 at godaddy.com
Today I talk about “making a moment” which technically is a phrase I’ve heard Tom Jackson use (and from what I hear his DVDs are awesome). When you are on stage there will be times when the audience decides to have their own show. An example of this is at a Pearl Jam concert in St. Louis where “Kim” was translating the lyrics into sign language. Eddie Veder decided to pull her on stage. This made a one of a kind moment that people will remember, “remember when Eddie pulled that chic on stage?”. Here is the video.
One of the things that can make you more endearing to the audience is to have a good sense of humor about yourself. Justin Timberlake has boosted his popularity through his appearances on Saturday Night Live. This boosted his popularity amongst men (a demographic he was probably lacking when he was in the boy band). Michael Bolton was on the Jimmy Kimmel show the other night, and working with Jimmy he produced a bit called “The Michael Bolton school of Michael Bolton.” It’s hilarious as Michael continues to steal the microphone from little kids. While I’m not a huge fan of Bolton, I do give him credit and think he’s “cooler” now that I see he’s not so uptight. You can watch the video here
So when the audience throws you a curve ball, don’t get upset, laugh it off, and go with the flow. Chances are you will end up with a one of a kind moment that you’ll end up telling your grandchildren about.
I heard a line on a podcast called “Help My Business Sucks” (www.helpmybusiness.com) and the host said “Everything is marketing and marketing is everything.” This is a great phrase. Recently, sadly Ronnie James Dio died of stomach cancer. Musicians far and wide have come out to pay their respects. Story and story from fans talking about how Ronnie would stay out all hours until everyone got an autograph. Musicians who played with him said he was always a “gentlemen.” That he was the “nicest guy on the planet.” Apparently, people like Kanye West and Axl Rose did not graduate from the Ronnie Jame Dio school of tact.
It’s not just being nice when things go good, in fact its more important to keep your cool when things go bad. I remember playing a wedding once where the band basically didn’t get to eat. My singer through a tantrum, and really embarrassed the band. He forgets that there are other people there who will be getting married, or paying for weddings, and no matter good we played that night I doubt his tantrum was erased from the minds of the audience.
I leave the show with the song “Straight From the Heart” a classic Dio song from the Holy Diver album
While there are plenty of interesting names in music. For example: