Tweaking Your Website's Contact Page

Believe it or not, many artists create a fantastic website and forget to include what may be the most important section of all - the contact page. After all, how can you take advantage of any prospective opportunities if people can't easily connect with you? What if a promoter wants to book you? Or if a record company exec wants to hear more? Or if a fan wants another piece of merch? None of that will happen unless they have your contact info.

Here are a number of items to consider when adding your contact info to your site:

1. Be sure that the contact section is easy to find. Don't bury it deep in a menu. Try to keep it as a top-level link that will be available on every page.

2. Include multiple ways to contact you, not just an email address. Some people are more comfortable on the phone, so include a phone number. Phone numbers also have the added advantage in that they tend to make people feel secure that you're actually reachable and will respond. If you don't want someone calling your cell, get a Google Voice number that will ring all your numbers, and that you'll be able to screen. Also include a snail mail address in case someone (like a fan) wants to send you something. You don't want to give out your home address, so open up a post office box just for this purpose.

3. Make the contact info prominent on the page. Make it the primary object of the page, not buried in graphics or other none-related text.

4. If you're looking for bookings, have a dedicated booking page that has all of your contact info there as well. You can check out this post for more on what to include in a booking page.

Remember that the more options you provide, the more likely you'll have someone connect or buy something from you, and the more secure they'll feel about doing it.

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A Look At Facebook's Graph Search

One of the things that's always bothered Facebook users is limited the search ability, both within the network and outside of it too. That prompted the development of the new Graph Search, the search tool that Facebook is slowly rolling out that allows you to do much more precise searches, and even employs Bing to search for things on the web.

While now it's pretty easy to find friends via the Facebook search, soon you'll be able to find things like:

• public posts
• people
• pages
• events
• applications
• groups
• places
• check-ins of users and friends
• objects with location information attached.

Users can also filter results and search only a user's News Feed.

Unfortunately Graph Search isn't available to everyone at the moment, and if you do a search you'll be greeted with a prompt like the graphic on the left that asks you to sign up to be alerted when it's available. That said, it looks like it will be a useful tool whenever it's finally rolled out. Check out this video that shows just what it will do.

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Music Celebs Extend Their Brands

It used to be that a celebrity musician was loath to do anything commercial for fear of "selling out."

If you were successful with your music, you risked all of your credibility with your fans if your music appeared in a commercial, or your image was found on a consumer item.

Those days a long gone, as music celebs everywhere do whatever they can to extend their brands. It's a money grab that's now condoned, accepted and even expected by management and fans alike. And all without any stigma whatsoever.

I've posted about musician's private brands and even custom items like toothbrushes and clothing (even Jimi Hendrix!),  but once again we have multiple examples of music celebs reaching way beyond the music that made them famous.

Take for instance, Beyonce and Taylor Swift becoming the new faces of Pepsi and Diet Coke respectively. Depending upon which study you use, these are mostly unhealthy products endorsed by women who exude health.

Then we have Sean "Diddy" Combs and Mark Wahlberg investing in the premium water AQUAhydrate for fit, active party people. At least it's healthy.

Hip hop girl group OMG Girlz are the new spokespeople for Wat-AAH, another premium water product.

Pop-Water, a new flavored low-calorie product (I thought water is supposed to have zero calories) is backed by Lady Gaga manager Troy Carter. Then there's Golnside, a tea product, courtesy of manager Kevin Liles (Nelly, Big Sean, Trey Songz and a dozen others).

The fact of the matter is that success in music is merely a departure point to consumer product success for most artists these days. But can you really blame them?

In the days when "selling out" was considered taboo, artists weren't used to making or spending the kind of money available to them today. And those that did actually make that kind of money in music could have it sustain over long periods of time because the business was healthy, selling more product than ever, and even growing at the time.

Today, with the industry roughly half the size that it was before, success is much more fleeting, and the money that's here today probably won't be there tomorrow, which makes artist's desired to catch whatever financial wave they can more understandable. Plus, management is smarter than ever at exploiting every opportunity and even creating new ones for their artists.

That doesn't mean that some self-aware artists understand that expanding their commerciality beyond their music isn't inherently good for their brand. That still happens, and those artists should be applauded, but even those they will look for products that best fit with their brands, even it they won't be found on a convenience store shelf.

So to all you old school people longing for the "days of artist integrity," get over it. It's a new world. You may not like it, but it's not going back to the way it was any time soon.

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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.

Social Media Listening Tools

Simon Tam wrote a great piece on Music Think Tank about the social media that every artist should be doing. One of the best aspects of the article was a section called "Free Listening Tools" that listed a number of tools that could be used to monitor your mentions on social media. It's worth repeating, so here it is:

"First, let’s talk about some of the free tools available to you. Here are some that I use everyday:

• Google Alerts: Google Alerts is a basic way to discover when a website is posting about you. However, it doesn’t capture everything and it certainly doesn’t cover social media or most blog sites. Still, it’s a good, automated, entry-level way to get some feedback about any kind of search query emailed to you. Sign up at www.google.com/alerts.

• Hootsuite/TweetDeck: Both Hootsuite and TweetDeck offer some tools to consolidate and manage your social media accounts. You can also add search columns that are scanning Twitter in real time. Not everyone who tweets about you will be using your hashtag or tagging you so this is a convenient way to spot what is being discussed and reply immediately.

• Icerocket: Icerocket specializes in blog searches. Their “big buzz” option also captures activity on Facebook, Twitter, and image sites such as Flickr too. It’s free, easy to use, and does not require registration of an account.

• Social Mention: Social Mention collects aggregated data across multiple platforms. You’ll see results from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, photobucket, etc. and there are some basic analytics that help you determine if the sentiment is positive or negative, how many different sources are active, etc. It’s also free and doesn’t require registration.

• Topsy: Topsy is similar to Icerocket and Social Mention; the main focus is around social media, especially multimedia and blogs. You don’t have to register, but you do have the option of creating an email alert (it ties into your Twitter or Facebook).

None of the tools are all-inclusive. They catch bits and pieces of what is out there but don’t always get it all. If you run a search every day, it will only takes a few minutes to scan through anything new. Make a habit of searching and listening. In addition to the above, I also run searches on Google, Bing, and Duck Duck Go twice per day."

I've talked about most of these in individual posts in the past, but this is a good list of them all in one place. For more good tips from Simon, go to his article.

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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.

Studies Show Piracy Doesn't Affect Music Sales

If you've read this blog for any length of time, or my Music 3.0 Internet music guidebook, you know that my mantra is "Your music is your marketing." I've advocated that you never worry about piracy, and should in fact embrace it, since that's the single best way for people to become aware of your music. In fact, sales will grow precisely because your music was interesting enough to be freely shared.

This was born out by the latest studies by the NPD Group and IFPI, as shown in this recent post. Now a new study from the EU has concluded that "digital piracy should not be viewed as a growing concern for copyright holders in the digital era."

Digital Music Consumption On The Interent: Evidence from Clickstream Data is a 40 page study full of statistical detail by the EU's Information Society Unit that used data from 5000 Internet users from the EU's five largest countries: France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK. While most of the data pertains to Europe, the conclusions are the same as previous studies.

No artist, songwriter or copyright owner wants their property stolen, but an odd quirk of music online shows that the more it's available for free, the more it sells. A number of artists have found that when they take the free music down from their website, their iTunes sales fall. Put it back up and the sales rise. You can look at it loosely like radio, where a song is heard for free, but it exposes it to people who might want to buy it.

It used to be that you'd buy the song or album because you wanted the convenience of hearing it when you wanted, instead of waiting for it to be played on the radio. Today you can find most songs instantly anywhere online, so the convenience factor is gone if you're into streaming. That said, some fans want to pay simply as a way to support an artist. Then again, it's been found that the biggest sharers of music are also the ones that buy the most.

Regardless, unless your music is heard in some way, it's invisible. That's why it doesn't matter how someone hears your music, just that they hear it.

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

Soundcloud Goes Pro

SoundCloud, the song hosting service that provides instant audio streaming of your material, has just announced a new subscription service called SoundCloud Pro. The new Pro and Pro Unlimited plans replace the previous Premium Lite, Solo, Pro and Pro Plus programs.

The company didn't mention many details in their press release last week, but it leads one to believe that this has much to do with its recent agreement to be the audio backbone of Twitter Music. In fact, you could see this coming when SoundCloud basically rebuilt it's platform in December, improving the user interface and making it Flash-free.

My guess here is that SoundCloud saw in Twitter Music an opportunity to scale in a way not possible otherwise. They could get massive growth in a short period of time, which is a way for their investors to make their money back and more. In fact, SoundCloud received $50 million in January 2012 from KPCB, one of the most revered venture firms in Silicon Valley. KPCB also happens to be an investor in Twitter as well, so this collaboration was probably baked way back then and only coming out of the oven now.

While you could look at all this cynically as just a money grab, I don't think it is. On all sides there are well-regarded, highly competent people that have a tradition of caring for the customer as well as for making money. That's why I look forward to both the new SoundCloud and Twitter Music. What we see now is probably only the tip of the iceberg.

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

The Ins And Outs Of Cookies

We're exposed to so much technical jargon every day that we think that we know everything just because we're familiar with a term. Take "cookies," for instance. So many of us have heard of the term, and we may loosely be aware that they have something to do with our browser, but that's probably it. If that's you, then let me take some of the mystery out the term.

A cookie is a small piece of data that a website stores on your browser while you're looking at a website that's used to track the number of visits and unique visitors to a site. In other words, the next time you visit the site that deposited the cookie, it records the fact that you've come back and how long you stayed.

There are two main types of cookies; transient and persistent, although sometimes they're called "session" and "user" respectively. A transient cookie is set when you visit a site and disappears when you leave, but measures everything about the experience while you're there, including what you clicked on and how long you looked at a page.

A persistent cookie is set the first time that you visit a site and stays with your browser for a period of time that can be finite (say 12 months) to forever. These alert the browser the next time you return and any preferences that you might have set, then act like a session cookie during that time. While this sounds somewhat insidious, it's important to understand that persistent cookies don't contain any of your personal information, and have only a simple character string that the company that inserted it can read. It's also important to understand that you can choose to delete it at any time, and each different browser has a way to do this in their Settings section.

Another type of cookie is a "secure" cookie, that's used on encrypted HTTPS sites, like for banking or sales. It's encrypted along with the transaction info of the site so it's less likely to be exposed to any outside eavesdropping.

Then we have first and third party cookies. First party cookies come from the site that you visited itself, while third party cookies that come from a different domain name. These are sometimes used by sites to measure what happens once you leave a site. For instance, Yahoo may insert a cookie that watches when you go to eBay, or any site with banner adds needs to utilize them to track the click throughs. Sometimes these are rejected by your browser, or you're specifically asked if you want to accept them.

There are many other types of cookies as well, but the idea here is to give you a reason not to fear them. A cookie is just a way for you to personalize your settings on a site, and for the site to measure what you do once you're there. No more, no less.

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

Twitter Jumps Into The Music Discovery Game

Twitter Music Test Tweet

Music rumors at SXSW keep swirling, and the latest one is that Twitter is getting ready to enter into music discovery thanks to their recent purchase of We Are Hunted. WAH scoured the web to find new artists that didn't necessarily have much visibility, but fit with your playlist tastes.

Once again, music discovery is the holy grail for most of the deep pockets in the industry, and a startup with any kind of working discovery technology is bound to find money or be purchased in no time. The reasons?

• Music discovery means it's easier to find new acts that fit the listener's tastes, which grows the industry.

• More new artists means less reliance on old catalog for the labels as a revenue generator.

• Being found by a discovery engine makes it a lot easier (or even possible) for a new artist to jump out of pack of hundreds of thousands of releases every year.

• Bottom line: a healthier industry with increased revenue streams, which hopefully benefits everyone, although the big dogs always seem to benefit the most.

On the surface, Twitter seems the perfect delivery vehicle for music discovery. Imagine that you tweet that you're listening to something and add a few hashtags to indicate same. The discovery engine reads that, finds a match of new artists, and tweets you back. If it knows what your music delivery platform is choice is, the links are to that platform. This is just speculation on may part, but seems like it would be a great way to implement it.

The leaks about Twitter Music (the name of the new standalone app) are different though. It will stream from Soundcloud, and have a number of tabs for song selections. Suggested recommends songs based on your tastes, #NowPlaying brings in song links from people you follow on Twitter that use hashtags, Popular brings in the current trending songs, and Emerging tracks up and coming artists.

The fact that it's linked to Soundcloud is interesting, since it's more of a storage platform than a delivery service. First of all, will artists and songwriters get paid? Who determines what songs can be used by Twitter Music? What happens if your songs are hosted but you haven't registered?

Supposedly there will also be links to iTunes previews, but there's no info about connections to other services yet. Of course, everything but the purchase of We Are Hunted are well-placed rumors reported by several insiders (check out CNET for more), so much can change before the service is even launched.

All of this means that music delivery and discovery is getting a lot more exciting. There may be some questions about Twitter Music at the moment, but it's a welcome addition to our music world.

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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.

Music Spending: The Same As It Ever Was?

SXSW is rapidly becoming THE place for all types of announcement and product releases, from hardware to software, album releases to media studies. Where once other conferences like MacWorld, New Music Seminar, MIDEM or MusicTech were the center of attention, they've all ceded their importance to the show held yearly in Austin.

And since the music world is now revolving around SXSW, it's only appropriate that Nielsen Entertainment should introduce their latest study of spending on music there. The study looked at the consumption habits of 4,000 "music fans," who's category accounts for 75% of music spending in the US, and takes into account everything from the purchase of music, concert tickets and artist merchandise.

As you can see from the infographic below, the most serious music fans, the "aficionados," can spend as much as $422 a year on music. The fact is that Nielsen also discovered that they illegally file share more than any other segment, with an average of 30 a year, which didn't seem to impair their actual spending on music music (perhaps it even enhanced it). This segment accounts for as much as 40% of music spending.

The next segment spends between $196 and $363 per year, with a subcategory called "Big Box" who shop at mass retailers partial to pop and country music.

Finally, the least engaged consumer spent between $44 and $121 per year on music. 60% of this category has never seen their favorite artist live and is more likely to use a free streaming service like Pandora. 25% of these use Spotify or Rhapsody.

I don't know that the general findings of this study are any different from any other era or decade of music. There's always been a multi-tiered system of music consumers that ranged from ambivalent to passionate to aficionado, so that hasn't changed. I don't even think that the spend levels have changed much, adjusted for inflation. In fact, this probably holds true for other segments of the entertainment industry as well.

What is interesting is the way music is being consumed, as shown by the study. Take notice the differences between the category between CD sales (purple) and digital tracks (orange). Then take notice how much live events (red) make up each category. Finally, check out where paid online subscription comes in (dark green).

This all goes to show that, if anything, there's a chance industry growth. In fact, Nielsen exec David Bakula estimates that it could grow as much as $2.6 billion, which is certainly good news for the for anyone with ties to the business.

The study does point out what everyone seems to forget is that when we speak of the "music industry;" there's a lot more to it than just recorded music. While recorded music is less than half of what it was at its peak, the rest of the business remains somewhat healthy.

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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.

The Harlem Shake Gets Busted

Harlem Shake - Kansas Basketball Style

Use a sample, go to jail. Well, not exactly, but unless you get permission, you're going to be hearing from an attorney. The latest episode of uncleared samples comes with the recent viral hit "Harlem Shake" by Baauer. It seems that the DJ used pieces of Hector El Father's 2006 single "Maldades" and Plastic Little's "Miller Time" without getting permission first, and now they want some money.

The fact of the matter is that most major labels have business affairs departments that would've made sure that all samples were cleared before the song was released, but "Harlem Shake" was on the tiny Mad Decent Records, who had no such resources. It was only after the video for the video went viral with it's crazy dance (if you can call it that) that the song became a hit.

"Harlem Shake" has spent the last 3 weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart and had over 800,000 downloads, and the video has over 27 million views. All of that has been very recent though, as the song was actually released last May and until the video broke, was destined to be one of the many songs that with little traction in the marketplace.

To a small record label who considers a couple of thousand sales a hit, clearing samples is hardly a priority. Chances are that the sample owner will never hear it, and if they do, there's hardly enough money involved to make a legal case of it. That all changes when the song is a hit however.

It will be interesting to see just how much El Father and Plastic Little settle for. I've known people in the past who know that they're being infringed upon and purposely wait until the song is a big hit before they announce the situation to the world. You get a bigger payday that way.

Regardless, it's just another lesson that if you don't get the proper clearances, it will cost you in the end.

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

The Reasoning Behind Apple's Low Streaming Rate

News seeped out last week about Apple pushing for a low-ball royalty deal with the record labels for their upcoming iRadio (or whatever they're going to call it) streaming service, probably from the labels themselves. The leak was made to make Apple look like the bad guy in the negotiations, and maybe it is, but you won't see the whole story in any of the news reports.

To recap, Apple is looking to pay half of what Pandora now pays, which is 12 cents per 100 songs streamed. That's still lower than what a typical radio station pays for their online service, which is 22 cents per 100. And then you have Spotify, paying what seems to be a whopping 35 cents per 100.

So why should Apple get away with paying so little in comparison to the potential competition?

The fact of the matter is that streaming experts all agree that Pandora's and Spotify's business models are broken, and neither company will survive if they have to continue paying the current rates. In fact, Pandora itself has said as much as it pushes hard for a better royalty deal than it has now. Apple does not only want to stay away from that trap, but it also wants to set a precedent for payment. It's pretty difficult to push for a lower rate once a higher one is agreed on, as Pandora and Spotify are now seeing.

Of course, none of this helps the artist and songwriter, who are not making much even with the current rates. They'd make more if they had better streaming deals with the labels and could participate in more of the upfront fees that the services pay, but that's not going to happen any time soon.

While I can see the labels point in keeping the rate as high as possible, the fact of the matter is that a strong Apple entry is good for the entire business, even at a lower rate. While free streaming with ads doesn't help the artist much, widespread subscription would. Any push in that direction only gets the industry to a better place faster.

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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.

Tumblr Discovers Music Discovery

For record labels and investors alike, music discovery is the holy grail when it comes to music online. Many of us tend to listen to songs that we have in our collection over and over, and that prevents us from finding anything new. Usually that's because we don't have a trusted source for new music and don't want to spend the time sampling new music without finding anything that suits our tastes. A reliable discovery method that knows our tastes is always welcome.

Just about every music service has tried to fill this void, some more successfully than others, but the ultimate discovery service is still elusive.

Blogging site Tumblr thinks it might have the answer. From their over 95 million users, the company will select a group of editors that share music, and their choices will appear on Tumblr's "Explore" page. They also have a new music.tumblr.com blog that will post announcements and music recommendations as well.

Both of these will be available to mobile users and non-Tumblr members, and will be officially rolled out this week at SXSW.

Music discovery really hasn't changed since the 50s. It used to be a radio personality who exposed us to something new. We liked and trusted his taste and knew that his selections generally jibed with ours. That still holds true today.

Although programmers have tried valiantly to design a recommendation engine that works, it still comes down to a human to point us in the right direction. That's why Tumblr's decision to employ editors as the basis of their recommendations is such a great idea. Of course, you still have to pick the right editors. We'll soon know how well they've done that.

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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.