Find Keywords With Google's Wonder Wheel

Google has a great feature that just about nobody knows about called the "Wonder Wheel." It's a visual way to find related keywords (and keyword phrases) quickly and easily. Here's how it works.

1) After you do a normal search, click on the Show Options button just above the first page rank as in Graphic 1.

2) Now choose the Wonder Wheel option from the list options as in Graphic 2.

3) A Wonder Wheel will appear with your chosen keyword in the middle of the wheel, and different keywords at it's spokes, as in Graphic 3.

4) If you click on any of the keywords at the spokes, a new sub-wheel will appear with additional keywords, as in Graphic 4.


One of the reasons that you want additional keywords is that Google now looks at keyword diversity as well as keyword density in your copy text on a web or blog. Therefore, the more related keywords you have, the more it will improve your search ranking.

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

Online Radio's Takeover - Part 2

Last April, I posted an article on my Big Picture blog entitled, "Online Radio's Takeover" that outlined how online radio was gaining listeners at the expense of traditional broadcast radio. Now a year later we have a new survey from Bridge Ratings that illustrates just how quickly the shift is occurring, this time with a bit more granularity.

The figure on the left shows that people are listening to a lot less AM/FM radio these days, down from 22 hours per week in 2005 to 18 in 2010. Why has that figure declined? Because Internet radio now attracts more than 60 million listeners a week (predicted to rise to 77 million in a couple of years), putting a real dent in AM/FM listenership. But what's not shown in this chart (but was spelled out in other data by Bridge) is the fact that, although all listeners are listening to more online radio, it's the 18 to 24 demographic that now listens the most. And because they listen to more online radio, they listen to a lot less traditional broadcast radio.

Let me explain why that figure is important to artists, musicians, bands, labels and anyone who makes their living (or hopes to) in music:

1) Broadcast radio was always the biggest form of promotion of a record. You needed airplay to get a hit. If the very demographic that listens to your music isn't listening to AM/FM radio, why do you need to worry about radio at all?

2) Record labels always had two major jobs (forgetting about producing the product for a moment) - distribution and promotion. If your market doesn't listen to radio anymore, but a label is only good at that kind of promotion, why do you need them?

3) If more and more people are listening to online radio, and it's easy for you to get on it (either on the large stations like Pandora or any of the hundreds of small specialized stations), why do you need a label to do something that you can easily do yourself?

4) Because there are so many small niches served by online radio, it's much easier to build an audience than ever before. If you want to listen to only Saharan Cowboy music, you can program a station or find a dedicated one just for that music.

5) Here's the exception - you do need traditional radio if you blow up on your own online to the point that the only way to go to the next level is with the traditional marketing and promotion that a label is really good at. Good for you if you get there, but that's probably not a realistic goal to most artists and bands.

If you've been reading this blog, you know that there's a lot more that goes into distributing, promoting and marketing yourself beyond the points listed above. The main idea here is that to promote yourself, you need airplay. You can get that airplay yourself and for free online. And what's even better, that's where your audience is right now, and that audience is growing by the day.

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

The Ramifications Of A Lower Priced Rhapsody

As you may know, I'm a big proponent (along with a lot of industry pundits) of subscription music. It just makes so much sense for all the parties involved. It's a steady income stream for the artists, publishers and labels, and it's definitely a lot better for the consumer. Why download and fill up your hard drive when you can have every song at your fingertip anytime and anywhere? You can read a lot more about the advantages and disadvantages of subscription on my previous post.

Subscription hasn't hit critical mass yet, but it's used every day by a lot of people world-wide. Spotify is used by over a million subscribers in Europe, and Rhapsody, MOG and Napster together have over a million subscribers in the States.

Now comes word that Rhapsody (who last week was just spun off into a separate company by its owners - Real Networks and MTV) is lowering the price of a subscription from $14.99 to $9.99 a month. Why is this important? Because $9.99 is thought to be the magic price point where consumers feel comfortable paying a monthly fee. Why pay $10 for only 10 songs via download when you can have millions for $10 via subscription?

But Rhapsody was also forced into action. It has about 675,000 subscribers, but that's actually a decrease from last year, and both MOG and Napster offer $5 plans. But the real reason may be to strike before the 800 pound gorilla in the industry (iTunes, of course) introduces their hypbrid-subscription service, where you can put all your music in the cloud (their servers) and easily access what you don't already own. There's been no firm date for it's introduction, but industry insiders firmly believe it'll be sometime this year.

Subscription also holds promise in both the mobile industry (some can't fit all their music on a smartphone), and the possible licensing to various ISPs, which might end up just being an industry pipe dream.

That being said, it's important to stay tuned to the subscription story, since it has major ramifications for musicians and songwriters as well. How so? Most record label and publishing contracts don't account for record label income from subscription yet. There could be a lot of money that makes it into a label's pocket, and not yours.

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7 Website Mistakes Artist's And Bands Make

As I wrote in a number of previous posts, having a website is important to any artist or band. It's not enough to have just a Facebook or MySpace page anymore, a dedicated site is needed if you really want to control your message and build your tribe. Here are a number of common mistakes that artists and bands make when they don't pay careful enough attention to the dedicated sites.

1) No contact info. This is the worst offense of all. You can have a website that looks great and has tons of great stuff about the band, but it will all be for nothing if people can't reach out and touch you. This means they can't send you an email to book you for a gig, to ask you to exchange links, to become your fan, to buy something, or to complain about something. Music 3.0 is all about communication with your tribe, so displaying your contact info so it's easy to find is job #1.

2) No mailing list registration. If you don't have a mailing list, now is the time to create one. It's the main way to reach out to your tribe. Consider it your marketing arm for telling your fans when you have a new release or when and where you'll be gigging. Make this really obvious because it's one of the main reasons for having your own website. Check out this previous post for more info on mailing lists.

3) No easy way to purchase your music. It has to be both obvious and easy to buy one of your tunes or CD's. Don't make someone go find it. Either sell it directly from your site or have a direct link to iTunes, Amazon, CDBaby or any other distributor you're using. Make sure you go through the process yourself to make sure the process is completely easy and seamless.

4) Too much information. Don't make the pages of your site so loaded with photos and text that they're difficult to read. Try to keep the text down to 300 to 400 words, and make sure there's a lot of white space. Check out some of the artists and bands you really like for ideas.

5) Bad links. Everyone hates bad links. Your fans will loose interest and Google will penalize you in the search engine rankings. That's why it's important that every link works on your site, and every incoming link to your site work as well (which is a given, because you won't even have visitors if the links are bad to begin with).  Consider the "Error 404 Not Found" prompt as the worst thing that can happen on your site.

6) Bad email address. Almost as bad as a bad link is a bad email address that bounces. Fans find this very disrespectful. Sending them to an email address that you never check is almost as bad. Make sure that the address works and is forwarded to the address that you check every day. Make sure you answer any email within 24 hours.

7) No Press section. While not having a press section on your site is not fatal, having one is a sign of professionalism and will be a big help to anyone trying to book you or write about you. See this previous post for more about what your website press section should be.

These are mistakes that usually result from not giving your site enough attention in the first place. They're easy to correct and totally necessary to avoid in order to maintain and build your tribe, and facilitate any marketing and sales efforts.

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

6 Free Tools For Measuring Your Online Buzz

You can do all the social networking, friending, tweeting, and emailing you want, but if you don't have a way to measure how you're doing, you can never be sure that what you're doing is working or not. This can lead to a lot of extra work, taking up the time that you'd normally use to do the thing that you really want to do - make music.

That's why measurement tools are so important. You can instantly see what kind of reach that you're having from your efforts so you can operate more efficiently. Here are 6 free tools that will give you a surprising amount of information. I personally use them all and find them extremely useful.

Google Alerts (google.com/alerts) - This service sweeps the web and sends you an email whenever it finds a mention of your designated keyword phrase or phrases (your band name, for instance). You'll be surprised where you show up.

Twitter Search (search.twitter.com) - Acts much like Google except that it searches Twitter for any keywords or phrases.

Hashtags.org - I posted about this the other day. It's different than Twitter Search in that it looks only at a keyword preceded by a hashtag (#). You can read my article for more info on hashtags.

Who’s Talkin (whostalkin.com) - This service looks at blogs, Twitter and the news for your keyword. It differs from Google Alerts in that it doesn't send you an email since it works more like a traditional search engine.

Stat Counter (statcounter.com) - I love this one. Once you register with them, they give you a piece of html code to put on your site or blog that then provides statistics about who visits. It seems a lot more accurate than what you get from the statistics of your website (and you don't get much in the way of statics for most blogs anyway), and the info is really granular in that you can almost drill down to see the very house of one of your visitors if you want.

Tynt Tracer (tynt.com) - This one's similar to Stat Counter, except that it traces images and text that’s been copied off your site. Once again, when you register they give you a piece of code to put invisibly on your site. If someone copies some text, a Creative Commons notification will come up with the paste, telling both the copier and his readers where the text came from and under what provisions that it can be used.

I'm sure that these aren't the only free measurement tools out there, but they're the ones I use every day and find useful. I'm sure you will too.

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

Billboard Magazine Introduces Digital Charts

It's about 5 years too late, but Billboard magazine (once the bible of the music business) has finally introduced new digital download charts ranking the top songs in 21 specific genres, compiled from data gathered by Nielsen SoundScan.

Each week Billboard will include six 15-position charts representing digital sales, with rock, country, R&B/hip-hop and Latin running each week and two other genres rotating. All charts appear on billboard.biz, where Billboard's charts are refreshed each Thursday.

Billboard has had a general chart for digital songs and digital albums, but dividing it into different genres  is something really needed and too long in coming.

While chart position is all well and good, the real information that everyone wants to see are the sales figures. You can get these if you pay the hefty fee and subscribe to SoundScan (but who can afford a 5 figure subscription rate these days), but for physical product at least, you can still go to the Hits Daily Double and see the new sales chart every Tuesday. Be warned, it might not be pretty on some weeks, as sales figures can be really dismal sometimes.

Maybe Hits will also give us digital sales soon as well. We can only hope.

For production news, tips and tricks, check out my Big Picture blog.

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Unhelpful Advice

You read a lot of so-called "helpful hints" all over the web that say things like "don't suck" when referring to one of the keys that will make you successful in the music business, but I think statements like that are completely unhelpful. What sounds like moving furniture instead of music to one person may be the melody of angels to someone else, so who's to say just what is bad and what isn't?

The idea of Music 3.0 is that there are and will be many more micro-genres that cater to small but passionate believers in a very specific type of music. It might be progressive polka or it might be alien space-lounge music, but the beauty of the the online world is that there's someone out there that probably likes what you're doing and will be your fan if they can find you. Your audience may not be an army, yet. But if you keep persevering you can break through to a larger audience over time. Keep in mind that your audience, your superfans, your tribe, grows a single fan at a time regardless of where you're at in your career.

Now it never hurts if you're technically proficient on your instrument and in recording, but there are plenty of examples of somewhat sloppy players with limited technical chops that have become icons because of their passion and their ability to play within their limitations really well. For a good example, check out the DVD of the movie "It Might Get Loud" featuring Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White. There are a couple of short examples on my Big Picture blog from last week. The first post is called "It Might Get Loud - And It Does" (notice the anchor text, which is the topic of a previous post), and the second is "It Might Get Loud Again - Dynamically So."

The point is, do what you feel in your heart, but do it the best you can and with as much passion as you can. The audience is out there. Finding them, or them finding you, is the hard part, but that's what this blog tries to help you do.

For more on music and music production, check out my Big Picture blog.

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The Importance Of Anchor Text

Many artists and bands (and even web designers who should know better) fail to realize the importance of Anchor Text. What is anchor text? It's the highlighted text that you use as a link to another site or page. The reason why it's important is that these words can determine your page ranking when someone does a search since they carry more weight with Google than the other text on the page.

Here's an example of bad use of anchor text (forgive the gratuitous plug):

"To read my Big Picture Blog, click here."

"Click here" doesn't mean anything in terms of search. Do you think anyone will ever search for "click here?" Well, someone might (actually 879 million searches), but where do you think you'll rank? Even if you luck out and somehow wind up on page 50, you're still so far back in the search results that it won't do you any good.

A better use of the anchor text would be:

"Click here to read my Big Picture Blog."

Big Picture Blog makes much better anchor text and will take advantage of the way Google weights copy text. You can use your band name, song title, or anything else that's relevant to get the best results, but a relevant keyword or keyword phrase is always the best. Just remember, anything is better than click here.

And I really would like for you to visit my other blog regarding music production called The Big Picture. And you can follow me on Twitter to get daily updates on posts to both blogs as well as other music items that hopefully you'll find interesting.

Audio Is The New Radio

RBR recently posted an article regarding a new study by the Pew Project For Excellence In Journalism that came to the conclusion that terrestrial broadcast radio in any form was now better categorized by the term "Audio", since so may people now spend much of their day listening other types of audio-only program, like Internet radio, music podcasts on iPods and satellite radio. This fragmentation of the "listening market" is such that whatever market power that radio had is diminishing rapidly.

Yet another study from Arbitron and Edison Research found that 24% of drivers now use their iPod, iPhone or MP3 player to supply the listening material when they're in the car, pretty much confirming the Pew study.

Radio has already lost its influence on the record business so this is no surprise at all. Once upon a time, radio was the be-all end-all when it came to making a record a hit, but that power is mostly gone as a video on YouTube, a key blog post, or a high iTunes charting are more likely to help you break out than airplay on a station in Cincinnati. Of course, in the 50's through the 90's, all it took was one station to start the ball rolling, but those days are over for so many reasons.

The point is, there was a formula for making a hit in the "old days - do whatever you had to in order to get radio airplay. Record labels paid for it either directly or indirectly (through indie promoters), but that's how it was done.

Today the formula is different. You can't rely on radio so you start out small with your passionate fans (your "tribe") and build the tribe gradually, expanding it by a combination of great music releases, gigs in front of live people (as opposed to virtually), social media management and hard street work (in fact, this has never changed, except for the social media part). You may never attain the type of success that the old formula of radio brought, bit it will sustain for as long as you choose to keep the flame alive.

Check out my Big Picture blog and follow me on Twitter.

The New Release Schedule

Here's an excerpt from my Music 3.0 Internet Music Guidebook, about how the release schedule has changed and will continue to do so. But there are definite advantages to the latest timing in your releases. Read on.

"M30 requires new thinking regarding song releases. If we go back to the 50’s, vinyl singles had a notoriously fast turnaround despite the labor intensive manufacturing required to actually make a vinyl record. At that time, it was not uncommon to have a single (with a song on each side) on the streets within days of recording (or even writing) the song! Of course, the quick turnaround was helped by the fact that the song was usually recorded in a few hours since there was little or no overdubbing, so it was literally possible to record a song on Monday and have it on the radio on Wednesday of the same week. Perhaps the last time a record turnaround happened this quickly was the 1970 release of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s Ohio documenting the Kent State shootings.

When the emphasis on releases turned from singles to albums, the length of time between releases increased accordingly, which was natural considering that more songs were being recorded. During the M1.0 (Music 1.0) days there was a limitation on just how many songs could actually be recorded for an album since it was a limitation of the vinyl itself. 23 minutes per side was the goal to get the loudest and highest fidelity record. Any more and it became more difficult to fit the extra time without having the overall level of the record decrease as the noise floor increased. As a result, artists were confined to about 45 to 50 minutes per album (or less), but consumers didn’t seem to mind since they still felt they were getting value if they liked the songs.

The time limitation lifted with the introduction of the CD in M1.5 (Music 1.5). When first released, the CD had a maximum playing time of 74 minutes (the number rumored to be chosen because it could fit the entire movement of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony) which was later increased to a full 80 minutes. No longer saddled with the vinyl album’s built-in time limitation, artists were able to stretch out and add more and longer songs to each album release. This soon proved to be a double-edged sword, since it now took longer to finish each release because of the inclusion of all those extra songs.

But more songs doesn’t necessarily make for a better record and actually proved to even backfire in the face of the artist’s popularity. While 40 to 45 minutes was a time bite easily digestible for a listener, 60 to 70 was not. The extra songs were not only little appreciated but even worse, thought of as mere filler. The consumer began to think (sometimes rightfully so) that the songs were there just for the sake of being there and began to feel ripped off.

Over the years the time between releases gradually lengthened to the point where a superstar act might take several years between releases. While this might’ve worked in M1.5 and 2.0, that strategy can never work in M30 as the tribe has an insatiable appetite for product, and what’s worse, the tribe can actually dissipate if the product does not come at regular intervals - the shorter the better.

And with CD sales way down, the album format itself seems to be going the way of the vinyl single of the 50’s and 60’s. Consumers in M30 buy just the songs they want - they buy singles. Which brings about a new philosophy regarding record making and their releases.

In M30, artists will record fewer songs but have more frequent releases. It’s better to release two songs every 6, 8 or 12 weeks than to wait a year for one release of 10 songs. This benefits the artist in a few ways:

• The artist keeps their tribe happy with a constant supply of new music. New music keeps the tribe interested and keeps the buzz and dialog going. 

• The artist gains increased exposure for every song. In a 10 song album release, it’s easy for a fan, reviewer or radio programmer to focus on just one or two songs while the others fall in priority. When releases are in twos, each song gets equal attention and has the ability to live and die on its own merits. 

• The album still can still be compiled after all the songs have been individually released. At the end of the year, or at the end of the artist’s creative cycle, the songs are then put into an album that can be released in any format. The advantage is that the album has much advanced exposure and publicity thanks to numerous single releases. Plus it can be treated as a marketing event to the artist’s advantage.

Make no mistake, the album format is not dead in M30, but the emphasis has shifted to the individual song."

For some additional excerpts from the book, visit my website.

Using Hashtags To Increase Your Twitter Presence

One of the most egregious errors for an artist using Twitter is overlooking the use of hashtags (the "#" symbol before a keyword).

Using a hashtag is like including a keyword in your tweet. It's an unofficial feature of Twitter but now widely accepted and supported, and is an easy way for people to search for and find a particular topic.

Here's how it works, using some of my own tweets from the last couple of days.

"The Secret To The Merch Table. Want to sell more merch at gigs? Here's how. http://bit.ly/7GFjDq #merch #gig #bands"

This is a simple tweet regarding my Music 3.0 blog post from yesterday, complete with a shortened url link. At the end are the hashtags #merch, #gig, and #bands. How did I select them? First of all both "merch" and "gig" appear in the tweet, but I researched them first to see what kind of searches there were by going to hashtags.org (You can also do the same search on Twitter at twitter.com/search). There I searched for "merch" and determined that there was a sizable enough search so it was worth using, as was "gig." I figured that bands would be most interested in this tweet and the blog post, so I did a search and found that "bands" was also sizable, so I used it as well.

Here's another way I could've used the hashtags in this tweet.

"The Secret To The #Merch Table. Want to sell more merch at #gigs? Here's how. http://bit.ly/7GFjDq"

In this case I embedded the hashtag directly into the tweet text. This works too but I find it too difficult to read and it can turn quickly into a negative for less sophisticated users, so leaving some room at the end for the tags seems to work a lot better.

Here's another example.

"The Magic High-Pass Filter. Some tips for using the mixer's secret weapon. http://bit.ly/dpL9bv #highpass #filter #mixing"

Same thing here. I did a quick search and discovered that #highpass had a lot more searches than #high-pass and #mixing more than #mixer (there was also some confusion with a food processor as well).

Since I've been using hashtags the traffic to my blog sites have gone up by about 25% and I've gained some more Twitter followers as well. Using hashtags is a great way to help people find you, but don't forget to include a link to take them to your blog or website as well, since that's the real goal.

Follow me on Twitter either here, or here.

The Secret To The Merch Table

In Music 3.0, we use music as a promotional tool and not as a moneymaker for the band or artist. Where the artist really makes money is from gigging and merchandise. This income stream concept isn't really all that different from any time in the past though. In fact, one of the most powerful music attorneys in LA once told me that most famous recording artists have always made 95% of their income from touring and merch, not record sales.

Even if merch is really where the money is at, most musicians have a natural aversion to selling it (or selling anything for that matter). Yet one simple act that doesn't directly involve selling can help you make up to $500 a night from the merch table. Here's a great tip I found on a post by Daniel Kohn and his askkohnny blog.

In his post, Kohn talks about a band he saw where the lead singer would announce during their show, "After our show, we're going to be hanging out at the merch table, so come and say hi." He wasn't specifically selling anything, just announcing that the band would be available to chat later and where to find them.

At the end of the set came another announcement from the lead singer - "Thanks again for coming. We are xxxx. We'll be at the merch table so come and say hi," who immediately jumped off the stage and headed for the mech table where he was followed by fans.

At that point, nature took its course, and fans began to look at, then buy the merch as they were talking to the band (and buy and buy). It's a brilliant, low-key and low pressure way of getting people to look at your merchandise, which is always half the battle.

This one simple act can make a big difference in your merch sales, and that's the one place that you can be assured of making money these days, especially if you're just starting out. Remember, you don't have to physically sell anything yourself, just be there and talk to fans. Can you imagine what the sales would be like if Bono did that after a U2 concert?