8 Landing Page Optimization Tips

One of the things I preach in Music 3.0 is the importance of a website as the central point in your online strategy. It's the one thing that you have totally under your control, where you don't have to worry about a change in the look or terms of service like with many social networks.

That said, there are a number of quick and easy optimization tricks for your landing page (home page) that are important for user experience and search rankings. They are:

1. Make it load fast. 25% of visitors abandon a page that takes 4 seconds to load.

2. Have some copy. Search engines love 200 to 600 words of copy sprinkled with keywords.

3. Kill the Flash. That's so 2004. Search engines can't read it. iOS can't either.

4. Make the text large enough to read. Text that's too small is the number one complaint of people visiting websites.

5. Have a mailing list subscription section. You're missing a big opportunity if it's not available.

6. Have a contact section. Make sure people can easily get in touch.

7. The user experience takes precedent. Make it fast and easy for the visitor to easily get the information he's looking for.

8. Test it and test again. You will be penalized by the search engines for things like broken links, and it downgrades the user experience.

These aren't the only things that you can do, but they're a good start at improving your site and ranking higher in the search engines.

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Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

6 Artists That Changed The Business Of Music

Inc. recently ran an interesting article about the iconic bands that changed the business of music. Yes, they all influenced music to a great degree, but most overlook their moneymaking abilities and how their actions improved the lot for all that came afterwards. Let's look at them:

Led Zeppelin
Major change: Zeppelin shifted the balance of power from the concert promoter to the act. They were the first ones to negotiate a deal to take 90% of the gate.

The Rolling Stones
Major change: The Stones were the first major group to pay for their own recordings, then lease the master to the record label. This allowed them to retain ownership of their copyrights for future licensing deals.
Major change 2: Their lips and tongue logo became a classic brand identifier.

KISS
Major change: Kiss took merchandise and licensing to a new level, eventually licensing over 3,000 product categories. This is a common tactic for artists today, but it was KISS who saw the value in licensing before everyone else.

The Grateful Dead
Major change: While other bands from the '60s through the '90s were all wrapped up in record sales, The Grateful Dead realized the current Music 3.0 mantra way before anyone - "Your music is your marketing." They encouraged people to tape their performances and share them with their friends, thereby broadening their fan base. Sound familiar? That's what acts are doing today, only online.
Major change 2: The Dead were social way before social media, selling concert tickets directly, creating an engaged fan club, and promoting and selling special products and fan-generated materials through the fan club.

Journey
Major change: You don't think of Journey as being at the forefront of any business dealings, but they were the first major act to go for a tour sponsorship deal (with Budweiser).
Major change 2: Journey was also the first act to own their own touring infrastructure, owning their own sound system, staging, and transportation.
Major change 3: Although the Stones led the way by being the first to lease their masters to the record label, Journey took it a step further by providing the artwork and marketing material as well.

Moby
Major change: Moby was the first artist to realize the tremendous potential of media licensing. When his Play album first came out it did nothing on the charts and was ignored by radio. That was before he licensed every song on the album for commercials, television and movies, then the record blew up.

The next time you hear the music of any of these artists, give a little thought to the behind the scenes influence they've had on the new ways of revenue generation they helped create.

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

Interested in the Music 3.0 archives? Buy The Music 3.0 Guide To Social Media. The best of over 800 posts.

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

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

You Might Be A Spammer If.....

I just love this one. I've been collecting items for the "You might be a spammer if....." list for a while, and since I've been inundated with unwanted email lately, now is the time to post.

Like you, I hate spam. I don't mind being solicited, but don't hit me with the same thing over and over (that's spam). Here's the list.

You might be a spammer if:

• you send me something in a language I don't understand.

• everything you tweet, post or email is an ad to buy your music/book/art etc.

• all of your links are to your shopping cart or affiliates.

• your email is nothing but an add for your newest album/book/project.

• you send something "fascinating" that you've found to people you don't know.

• you send an unsolicited email with your music attached.

• you send a press release to people who aren't journalists. 

• you send a holiday e-card.

• you buy lists.

• more people unsubscribe than open your email.

• you're afraid to include your name and number in your newsletter.

• you're a 3 person company but have enough telecommunications and Internet equipment to power Norway.

• you're forced to keep all of your company's assets in the Cayman Islands.

• your ISP has quietly engaged a hit man to eliminate you, and your mother has contributed funds to the contract.

Some of these were funny, but most are dead serious. No one likes a spammer. Don't do it.

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

Interested in the Music 3.0 archives? Buy The Music 3.0 Guide To Social Media. The best of over 800 posts.

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

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

How To ScreenCast Live On YouTube

Here's a great video about how to do a live screencast using the Hangouts On Air feature of Google+ that can be accessed via YouTube. The video demo shows how to broadcast a screen on your computer, but you can eliminate that and just do a live Hangout using your computer's camera in the same manner. The cool thing is that YouTube saves your Hangout and turns it into a video on your YouTube channel so people who missed it can watch later.

Keep in mind that Google announced a full screen mode for Hangouts just a few weeks ago.

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

Interested in the Music 3.0 archives? Buy The Music 3.0 Guide To Social Media. The best of over 800 posts.

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

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

Top 20 Wealthiest Musicians

Here's a list of the top 20 all-time richest musicians from Popdust. I always take these monetary rankings with a grain of salt because they're just educated guesses and sometimes not very good ones. I say this because I've known some people on similar lists (although not this one) who had some big-time money problems with completely dried-up income streams, yet a list made them out to be wealthy. That said, these lists are fun to read, so indulge me as I reprint the Popdust list.

1. Andrew Lloyd Webber - $1.2 billion

2. Paul McCartney - $800 million

3. Bono - $600 million

4. Bing Crosby - $550 million

5. Sean "Diddy" Combs - $550 million

6. Mariah Carey - $500 million

7. Jay-Z - $475 million

8. Dolly Parton - $450 million

9. Jimmy Buffett - $400 million

10. Michael Jackson - $350 million

11. Garth Brooks - $325 million

12. Gene Autry - $320 million

13. Mick Jagger - $305 million

14. Gene Simmons - $300 million

15. Beyonce - $300 million

16. Elton John - $300 million

17. Ringo - $300 million

18. Sting - $290 million

19. Dr. Dre - $250 million

20. 50 Cent - $250 million

Looking at this list, there are a number of entries that look way too high and a few that look too low, but how are we to know? Only the artist and their business managers know for sure.

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

Interested in the Music 3.0 archives? Buy The Music 3.0 Guide To Social Media. The best of over 800 posts.

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

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.