Moby's Latest Is Top Bundles Seller

Usually when you think about BitTorrent you think of piracy, but the service has been working hard over the last year to go legit with its Bundles offering. A bundle is a collection of free content files like an album, with a gateway to paid premium content as well.

Bundles are beginning to gain traction, with over 60 million downloads in 2013 and an impressive number of big name artists signing on. As you can see from the chart on the left, Moby topped the chart with almost 9 million shares, but other major artists like Kaskade, Linkin Park, Public Enemy and Madonna were also included.

The secret behind Bundle's success is that they're included with every uTorrent or BitTorrent application, so the numbers can add up quickly.

Bundles are still flying under the radar, so you might not hear much about them at the moment, but with numbers like the chart provides, it won't be long until this becomes a staple release format of artists everywhere.

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5 Content SEO Tips

Search Engine Optimization is something we should always be thinking of whenever we're creating content that will end up online. After all, what's the point of posting it if it can't be found?

Here are 5 tips for making your content a bit more friendly to search engines.

1. Use relational linking. If you have a story that can be linked to a big brand or name, you'll get extra points from Google if you do it. That said, if you link to a page without any context to your content, Google will punish you.

2. Use Alt tags. Every image that you use should not only have a descriptive title, but an alt tag as well. That's the extra tag that provides further info as to what the image is all about that usually only a search engine can read. That way, you can be extra sure that the search engine will list the picture higher and add it to the correct search. For instance, the name of the image to the left is "SEO" while the Alt tag is "SEO image from Bobby Owsinski's Music 3.0 blog."

3. Use Header tags. HTML uses a series of header tags (H1 to H6) that work as a page, category or paragraph heading. The problem is that many WYSIWYG web design programs allow you to just make a font larger or smaller without regard to these tags. Search engines use the header tags to distinguish between copy lines, and lend some weight than others depending upon the tag. That's why it's a good reason to all use them if you can.

4. Use bold text for key terms. Bolding key terms and phrases can make them more searchable because a search engine reads the HTML and sees them as more important.

5. Use full names. Search engines like it better if you use a full name. Kanye West is better than just Kanye, and Adam Levine is better just plain Adam, even if we all know who you're talking about.

These five tips are extremely easy to implement, and while they won't guarantee a high search ranking by themselves, they'll help to improve it. For a real eye opener as to your page's SEO, go to this SEO site checker.

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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 discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

5 Viral Video Rules

I read an interesting article today called "How To Break All The Rules Of Viral Video - And Still Go Viral." The premise of the article is that what really makes something go viral is to break the rules. But you can't break the rules until you know what they are, so here's what the article spelled out.

• Rule #1 - Keep It Short. It seems pretty obvious, but videos have a much better chance of going viral if they're short, mostly because that's what our attention span demands these days.

• Rule #2 - Speak Clearly. Once again, it's pretty obvious. If you have any narration, you increase your chances of virility if your viewers can understand it.

• Rule #3 - Avoid Copyrighted Material. Copyrighted material can make a video stop in its tracks just as it gets some viral momentum due to a take-down notice from the content owners attorneys. You might get away with it; then again, you might not.

• Rule #4 - Reinvent Yourself. According to the article, try a different approach for each video. I'm not so sure I agree with this. If you have a style that works, you might be better off to brand yourself with that style.

• Rule #5 - Be Timely. You have a greater chance to go viral if your content is about something currently popular, although there are perennials like cats and babies that never seem to go out of style.

Ok, these are the rules. Now shoot a video that's nothing like them (except for #3, keep doing that) and you'll have a good chance to go viral.

Check out this link for the entire post.

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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.

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

The Myth Of "Distribution Is King"

Up until about the year 2000, it was pretty much a given that anyone who owned, controlled, or created content had the world at their feet. Without the movie, song, CD, DVD, television show, piece of art, book, poem or any other creative endeavor, what else was there to sell?

Somewhere in the last decade this concept has been twisted to where it's now popularly believed that content is not longer the essential part of commerce, but distribution is. I suspect that this idea has been perpetrated by marketers and the distributors themselves in an effort to increase their importance and obtain a bigger slice of the pie as a result.

Is distribution important? You bet it is. You can have a great product, but if you can't make it available to buy, then you won't have as many sales. But distributors overestimate their importance, and they're beginning to believe their own hype. If you have something that's really great, people will find their way to it, more so now than ever.

But the distributors will have you believe that you can have a great piece of content like a song, and it won't blow up (sell a lot) unless it has distribution. Or will it?

In the old days of Music 1.0 through 2.5 when the record label was essential to an artist's success and the fan only purchased physical product like vinyl records and CDs at a record store, distribution was a lot more important. There was only a single distribution channel and you had to abide by the system in order to get in it. But now that we're in Music 3.0 where the artist can communicate directly with the fan, I'd venture to say that distribution is LESS important than ever.

You want to distribute your songs online? There are at least a dozen online distributors besides iTunes that will do that for you, and if you don't want to use them you can go directly to your fans via email, social networking and your website.

You want radio airplay? Traditional broadcast radio that requires the big machine for placement is dying and turning to talk-radio, so you won't be played anyway. Plus it's now irrelevant because it's influence is at an all-time low and going lower. But there are hundreds of online radio stations that will gladly play your songs if they like them and they fit their formats, and there are dozens of streaming sites where you can list your music by yourself.

You want to distribute your product physically? You probably can't get it into most record stores, but so what? There are fewer and fewer of those every month anyway. But you can sell CDs and merch at gigs and personal appearances, which can amount to some big $$$ if you have the fanbase and visibility.

If anything, the viral nature of the Internet proves the point. Content is still king! People don't buy distribution, they buy content.

So don't believe the myth. After all, without content, what is there to distribute?

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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.