Thursday, July 14, 2011

A Comparison Of Social Media Networks

Valleyarm, a digital distributor based in Australia and serving the Pacific Rim, posted an interesting comparison of social media services the other day. Here's what they think are the advantages and disadvantages of the major ones. You can see a few others when you read the article.

Facebook Artist Pages

  • Details:
    • Facebook artist pages contain a whole plethora of information about your band – your songs, your tour history, your contact details etc. You’re also provided with a wall that allows your fans to chat not only to you but to one another as well.
  • Advantages:
    • Facebook is incredibly popular. It allows direct contact with fans in a medium that they’re extremely comfortable using. People can comment and interact with you very easily allowing greater fan penetration.
    • Clean interface that provides all the information that music professionals and fans could want to know about you.
    • All of your shows can be created as Facebook events making people more likely to come.
    • Interfaces well with other social media platforms, which allows you to access your fans across many mediums easily.
    • Can augment your page with tabs – customisable ‘pages’ within your artist page – which allows you a reasonable degree of customization. Tabs are often used to allow fans to listen to your music directly from your Facebook page.
  • Disadvantages:
    • Facebook doesn’t allow you to upload music directly, you have to either embed your music (via Soundcloud or similar) or use a tab like that provided by Reverbnation.
    • You can’t directly message your fans, though you can post status updates that will show up in their newsfeed.
    • It’s nowhere near as customisable as an individual page, though it does cover most of the functions you’d require from a band website.
    • Facebook is blocked in some countries, reducing your penetration overseas.
  • How to:
    • Go to www.facebook.com and click ‘create a page’ in the bottom right hand corner, just beneath ‘sign up’.

YouTube

  • Details:
    • YouTube allows you to upload video (and audio) clips for fans to access, share and comment on.
  • Advantages:
    • YouTube is insanely popular.
    • Is a one-stop-shop for people to view all of your official videos, music and information as well as unofficial (fan) videos.
    • It is one of the best places to view video and will usually be the first result in search engines or the first port of call for people looking for footage of your band.
    • Allows you to interact with your fans directly (via replying to comments they may make on your clips) and to also reach fans of similar bands by commenting on their videos – indirectly linking them back to your music.
  • Disadvantages:
    • If you want to upload audio you’ll have to pair it with a video clip, whether that’s an actual clip or a static image. Doing so isn’t difficult but requires slightly more work than just uploading an MP3.
    • Many viewers of YouTube are passive in that they don’t have an account, which means you can’t easily interact with them. This is slowly changing as YouTube now allows you to log in with your Google account.

Myspace

  • Details:
    • Myspace is the original social networking site that spurred the entire social media age. It allows bands to upload and stream media, display bios and gig information as well as interact with fans.
  • Advantages:
    • They have an active chart system and emphasis on music promotion – they review and try to expose unsigned bands.
    • Instant recognition – Myspace is still a household name even though people are leaving in droves.
    • Can customise pages pretty heavily in order to present a cohesive band image – though this can be both a blessing and a curse. Many people make horrible customisations that are either insulting to the senses or slow the entire thing to a crawl – which discourages people from going to Myspace at all.
  • Disadvantages:
    • Audio quality is poor. Myspace reduce the quality in order to make music stream faster, but given that almost everyone has broadband these days there is no point in taking the significant quality hit.
    • Rapidly decreasing user count. Few people use it anymore, especially for social networking – which means that you’ll find it hard to connect with your fans except in a passive ‘here is our music’ way. The whole reason anyone uses social media in the first place is to create stronger connections with fans – so it’s really a waste of time. 

Twitter

  • Details:
    • Twitter is a service that allows you to send short 140 character messages (tweets) as broadcasts. Anybody who ‘follows’ you on Twitter sees those messages and can reply using their own tweets directed at you (and others simultaneously if they wish). You can also use your messages to send links, such as to a press release or album download.
  • Advantages:
    • Is very fast and succinct which allows you to communicate with your followers in a rapid way without overburdening them with information. Is basically like text messaging en masse.
    • Can interact with other Tweeters easily – your replies are seen by anyone looking at their Twitter page – which is a great way to get your voice heard over a large area.
    • You can also follow all your favourite bands, magazines and blogs in order to receive up to date information and links.
    • Best used as part of a larger social media effort – fulfils a specific role – of complementing and reinforcing your other social media.
    • Very good for doing personal little updates at gigs/rehearsal/studios etc. to keep your fans engaged.
  • Disadvantages:
    • Only a small volume of information can be communicated at any one time – which is the point. It is a niche medium that is best used as a strategic reinforcer to your other efforts.
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Wednesday, July 13, 2011

The Pitfalls Of Social Media For Musicians

While this blog and a lot of others try to show artists, musicians and bands how to use social media to their advantage, there's a number of big downsides as well:

1) It takes a fair amount of skill and a well-thought out strategy to use social media for promotion and branding.

2) The amount of time it takes can be just too much as it takes away from the time normally spent on creating.

John Mayer has come up with another one though; the Twitter mentality actually caused him to be unable to write songs.

JM just gave a terrific lecture at Berklee (you can read about it here - it's worth it) where he stated:
"You’re coming up with 140-character zingers, and the song is still 4 minutes long. I realized about a year ago that I couldn’t have a complete thought anymore. And I was a tweetaholic. I had four million twitter followers, and I was always writing on it. And I stopped using Twitter as an outlet and I started using Twitter as the instrument to riff on, and it started to make my mind smaller and smaller and smaller. And I couldn’t write a song.”
That's what happens when you get caught up in the personal aspects of social media. It becomes an obsession and it's no longer a tool for promotion. You've got to keep social media in perspective. If you're promoting yourself and your music, you've got to keep your interaction via social media mostly professional. Sure, you can let your guard down occasionally and get personal, and your fans will love you for it. But there's a limit, and JM never knew what that was. All you had to do was follow him for a short time to see that (or read his Playboy interview).

Remember, your online presence is more than just Twitter or Facebook. It's your blog (if you have one), your mailing list, your YouTube channel and your website (and shortly Google+). Yes, it takes a lot of work to keep it all in play. Yes, you should get some help if you feel overwhelmed. No, you shouldn't spend more time on one aspect or network instead of the others. Otherwise you'll wind up just like John Mayer.
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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for daily discussion of music, recording, and production tips and tricks.

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

The Cost Of Making A Hit

The Cost of Rihanna's Man DownOccasionally I cross post from my Big Picture production blog when there's a topic that pertains to the readers of this blog as well. For those of you who read both blogs, I apologize for the duplicate, but this is something that the readers should know about.
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NPR had a news item the other day about the cost of making a hit today, using Rhianna's recent single "Man Down" and her album Loud as an example. As you can see from the chart on the left, the major cost wasn't so much actually creating the music as marketing it. While this hasn't changed all that much from any period in music history, what really jumped out was the outright manufacturing of the song.

Writing the song is the result of a "writer's camp"strictly intended to crank out a hit. According to the article,
"At a writing camp, a record label hires the best music writers in the country and drops them into the nicest recording studios in town for about two weeks. It's a temporary version of the old music-industry hit factories, where writers and producers cranked out pop songs.

"It's like an all-star game," says Ray Daniels, who was at the writing camp for Rihanna.
Daniels manages a songwriting team of two brothers, Timothy and Theron Thomas, who work under the name Rock City. "You got all the best people, you're gonna make the best records," he says."

"Here's who shows up at a writing camp: songwriters with no music, and producers toting music tracks with no words. The Thomas brothers knew producer Shama "Sham" Joseph, but they had never heard his Caribbean-flavored track that became "Man Down."

According to Daniels, the brothers listened to the track and said, "Let's give Rihanna a one-drop! Like, a response to 'I shot the sheriff!" They wrote the lyrics to "Man Down" in about 12 minutes, Daniels says.

To get that twelve minutes of inspiration from a top songwriting team is expensive — even before you take into account the fee for the songwriters. At a typical writing camp, the label might rent out 10 studios, at a total cost of about $25,000 a day, Daniels says. The writing camp for Rihanna's album "had to cost at least 200 grand," Daniels says. "It was at least forty guys out there. I was shocked at how much money they were spending! But, guess what? They got the whole album out of that one camp."
"Man Down" didn't do that well, reaching only #58 on the Billboard Hot 100, proving that you still can't craft a hit no matter how much talent and money you throw at it.  Loud did a lot better as it ended up selling about 3 million worldwide, but it's not what you'd call a critical success. But how could it be? Rhianna isn't an artist; she's a singer-celebrity. She'll be a concert draw as long as she has a song on the charts and be immediately forgotten thereafter, which isn't how you build a long and sustaining career.

As I always say, "Art is something you do for yourself. A craft is what you do for everyone else." That certainly applies here. Read the entire article, including the enlightening section on "marketing" the record, here.
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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for daily discussion of music, recording, and production tips and tricks.

Monday, July 11, 2011

The Top 10 Facebook Artists

Now with Google+ introduced and, at least initially, a hot topic, Facebook seems to have more and more detractors. That said it's still a vital part of most artists online strategy. Here are the top 10 artists (those with the most pageviews) in the month of May, according to Visibli (which is really a cool site to check out to see how effectively you're connecting with your fans).

While Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga were no surprise at #1 and 2, I'm pretty shocked at Bob Marley coming in at #3.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for daily discussion of music, recording, and production tips and tricks.

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Selling A Million And Still In The Hole

If ever there was a reason to not be on a major label, imagine finally hitting it big with a million selling album only to find out that you're in the hole $500k to the record label, with additional money owed to management and agents. You think that's far-fetched? Watch this video by entertainment attorney Martin Frascogna, as he explains an all-too common scenario where just that happens.



Now keep in mind that if you have a good music lawyer your situation might not be as bad as what's described in this video, but you could still easily wind up owing money. The good part is the fact that you'll probably be in-demand to play shows, which will bring in additional revenue, but if you've signed a 360 deal, the label will have its hands in your pocket on that too. This can discourage someone who's only in it for the money, but not if you're in it for the music. Which one are you?
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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for daily discussion of music, recording, and production tips and tricks.

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