cjb2293

Promotion Help! V2.0

My apologies for not keeping up with this as life has been busy, but I figured I was long overdue in making a brand new promotion help page. The old one had links that didn't work and was very outdated.

Below I've listed a bunch of online resources to help promote your band and to help with all of your band's needs. Hope you find it useful!

Social Media
-Social media sites provide a great way to connect with your fans and for your fans to share your music.
Facebook Page
Twitter
Myspace *Note: Myspace has completely redesigned their website and may be worth looking into.
Google Plus

Promotion/Audio Hosting
-The best tools for your group.
Reverb Nation *Highly recommended
Youtube
Our Stage
Pure Volume
Super Nova
Sound Click
Sound Cloud
Tune Hub

EPK (Electronic Press Kit)
-Press kits to send to new opportunities
Our Stage *Free EPK
Sonic Bids
Reverb Nation

Internet Radio
-Submit music to online radio play.
Last.FM
Distortion Radio
Pandora Radio *Links directly to submission info
iHeartRadio

This next link is a listing of many online indie radio stations you can try to submit your music to
Indie Online Radio Stations

Production/Distribution
-Create CD's and release songs to online stores.
CD Baby
Song Cast
Tune Core
Ditto Music
Mondo Tunes
Catapult

Mastering
Last Drop Mastering
*use code "CobretteLDM" an you'll get a discount on mastering services

Help Guides
Band Bio Writing
Create a Promo Package


Just as before I will attempt to update this and add/remove links as necessary. I have a few to add yet, but here is my start. I appreciate all of you who helped keep the last one up to date and edit it for me.

cjb2293

hey guys, just updated again, and i felt the need to stress the importance of Myxertones!

myxertones is a website that allows you to create and will host your own ringtones. You can charge for them or make them free and can be sent to any phone that can download the ringtone files.

__________________
Band
www.facebook.com/RedLetterStance

Solo Project
www.facebook.com/CobretteBardoleMusic

Endorsements/Sponsorships
Cactus Picks
Curt Mangan Strings

cjb2293

Artist Resources

So i've decided to start another list of websites/ideas for you guys that can be used as resources, rather than having lists of websites to promote yourselves.

Mainly, i want to point out recording studios. With well produced tracks, it is much easier to promote yourself and earn some cash on the road (by selling cd's) so that you can pay for the gas to get around.

Hopefully you guys find the resources u need and post links to any resources you may know of. (also check out my other list of site for promotion by clicking this )

Recording Studios
-Canada Studio List
-France Studio List
-German Studio List
-Russian Studio List
-UK Studio List
-USA Studio List

-Village Studios (West Los Angelos, CA)
-Paramount Studios (Hollywood, CA)
-Pittsburgh Studio Directory (Pittsburgh, PA)


Mastering Studios
-Last Drop Mastering
-Peerless Mastering
-The Soundmasters (UK)

Merchandise
-Stickers
--Sticker Junkie

Music Distribution
-Tunecore

*The list will be an ongoing process due to the number of places i will be attempting to cover (mostly major cities), please be patient or PM me for if you need help finding a studio*

__________________
Band
www.facebook.com/RedLetterStance

Solo Project
www.facebook.com/CobretteBardoleMusic

Endorsements/Sponsorships
Cactus Picks
Curt Mangan Strings

Jandy

A tip for promoting on Myspace
SAD EDIT: MYSPACE HAS SINCE CHANGED THE WAY THEIR FRIEND PAGES WORK

Okay so I just wanted to share this with you, a way to somewhat quickly send friend requests to a targeted demographic for free with no programs or bots or anything. I apologize if this is obvious, but its the best way I've found to do this.

I hate sending unsolicited friend requests, but there's no shortage of people to promote to and something like 60% of requests send will usually get accepted.

What you do:

1. Sign in to myspace
2. Go to another band in your area's page and click the VIEW ALL FRIENDS button under their top friends.
3. Make sure your browser is set so that when you hold control and click a link it will open in a new tab and not take away the focus from your current tab.
4. Mouse over each of their friends one at a time and while holding control click the people in the area/age range you're trying to target.
5. After clicking through about 20, or a page of friends, or whatever your browser can handle go to one of the windows and type a little friend request message. Save it to the clip board with Control-C.
6. Now Control-V to paste it into the next person's friend request message, hit send, then hit Control-W(firefox) to close the tab and move to the next quickly.
7. When captcha's and other security such as full name requests come up, just hit Control-W again to skip, there's no use in taking all that extra time, like I said there's no shortage of human beings.
8. When you've gone through all the Friend request windows, go back to the band's friends (hopefully you kept that tab open and didn't accidentally control-w it) Then start again.

NOTE: After every 10 to 20 friend requests (not sure the exact number) myspace will require you to fill in one captcha to continue. This is easy to notice when this happens--- When you are at a friend request page for someone and they don't have a captcha, but then you put in your message and hit send; it refreshes asking for one... that means Myspace wants you to fill it out to continue.

With this system you can easily hit myspace's limit of 500 friend requests in about 2-3 hours. Again, this may be really obvious, but its all in the hot keys, once you get a rhythm down you can really blow through these.

G'luck, anyone else have some tips?

__________________

Raybone31

Thanks for the time took to put this together...there is so much on here that I have wanted to locate and/or know.

Thanks again.

__________________
"We've all been someones ammo at some point in our life..."

someones ammo ... my band.

1337Gu1tar

I would add youtube to the list. It makes it easy to show videos of your to people and it can help with publicity too

__________________




:stickpoke why dose yellow hate blue? WHY!

In-f3st

The Outside Review doesn't seem to have that many reviews, are there not that many people sending you material?
And yeah, I sent an email, but for 2 weeks now, no response.

__________________
http://soundcloud.com/subscale/subs...metallica-cover

marchoso

*Youtube added

Unfortunately, The Outside Review hasn't done a critique since October.

__________________

Jandy

Please delete this post, I have updated this and was forced to split it into two posts.

__________________

Jandy

Here's another AMAZING resource:


http://indieonthemove.com

Seriously, check this out.

__________________

SomeoneYouKnew

*reported for spam*

__________________

Meadows

gallagher2006

Sorry to jump aboard the Myspace bandwagon, but if your myspace looks bad (or ****) would it be worth getting someone to design it properly?

__________________

My Band (Synth Rock/Noise Rock)

stiff-upper-lip

Hey Dude.
Can you just add http://noizepollutionradio.mevio.com/ to your list of radio stations please. Its help for unsigned bands.
I've got a thread about it, but the more people see, the more bands can get help getting their stuff out .

__________________

Monolith295

If you want to put out a couple songs for free for promotion you can upload them to mediafire and send them to

1)The Last Disaster

2)Pull the Deathcore Bitch

3)Deathcore is Sexy

Despite the names they take all kinds of music. I guess you could put them up there under Blogspots

__________________

SaraphTravis

If more people realized this simple fact it might help to clear the playing field of undertalented starry-eyed bands.

Also, I would recommend getting your music on iTunes, Napster, and other digital distribution sites. Besides the obvious benefit of making your bands music more available, for some reason many people will automatically assume that you are a credible band if they find out that you're on iTunes.

I know that DiscMakers offers a Mega Bundle that you can buy when you have your CD's duplicated there.

A better deal might be CD Baby as they offer (what i think) is the same thing for less money and don't have to order anything else.

__________________
Saraph Official MySpace

Saraph Official Website

Epiphone SGs
Ibanez Jet King
Marshall JCM 2000 DSL
Fender Bandmaster
Big Muff Pi
POG

cheap guitars

Jandy

TWITTER

Here's a helpful Twitter article for musicians courtesy of Ryan Guitierrez

Part of the beauty of Twitter is that it can be many things to many people. As part of my effort to recruit as many people to Twitter as possible, I decided that I should write posts about how Twitter can be used in different situations. For example, of course you can just use Twitter to make plans with your friends, but the interactivity of Twitter can be very useful for people in all sorts of different professions. I'm going to attempt to come up with as many different uses for it as I can and I'm going to start with the one I feel (for better or worse) qualified the most to talk about: using Twitter to promote your band or music.

Your Fans Really Do Care What You're Doing
Believe it or not, if you've been making music for a while, you've probably accumulated a not-insignificant group of fans who are interested in what you do on a daily basis. These are the fans that download all your songs (whether you want them to or not), go to all your shows and buy all your t-shirts. Every band has these, no matter how long you've been around or how bad your music is. These are the people that you can cater to with Twitter.

I suggest updating at least twice a day. Once when you get up you should post what you're going to be doing that day, whether or not it's related to your music, and once when your day is done to let them know how it went. Believe me, if Cedric and Omar from The Mars Volta
or Daft Punk were on Twitter, you better believe I would be following them and would get super excited whenever they updated, even if it was just to let me know that they were eating a bowl of Cheerios.

Promoting Your Shows
Twitter can be an extremely effective promotional tool because you can ask people to come to your shows on several different occasions. If you are booking a tour, I suggest updating on Twitter when the dates are finalized and linking to the posted dates on your web site. Also, the day before the show, as well as the day of, you can update reminding everyone to come out to see you.

If you have enough fans and followers, you could make them feel extra special by having exclusive shows or afterparties that you only mention on Twitter. Once your fans find out that you are having these secret events, they will start following you on Twitter, thereby increasing your reach.

Take Requests
Since Twitter makes it so easy to interact with your fans, why not ask them what they want to hear when they come to your show? Maybe you've been neglecting to play an old fan favorite. Twitter is an easy way to find out what your fans want to hear, straight from the source. All they have to do is either direct message you or reply to you using the @ symbol.

Twitter-Exclusive Downloads
Say thank you to your biggest fans by giving your Twitter followers the heads up on exclusive new songs and videos. Posting a link on Twitter and NOT your web site says that you really value your fans enough to give them something special. Of course, once word gets out that you have a new song available for download, your non-Twittering fans will download it, but your Twitter followers will feel special because you gave them the heads up first.

Get Instant Feedback
Not sure if that hook you're writing is trash or gold? Post a clip on Twitter and if you have enough followers, you'll get instant feedback in minutes! Jason Calacanis, founder of Weblogs Inc. and Mahalo, uses it to get feedback on new designs for Mahalo. Sure, you could say that the fans should have no impact on the music you make, but if you want, you have an instant focus group that has your best interests at heart, wants you to succeed and would love to have you take their feedback into consideration.

Twitter-Exclusive Contests
This falls along the same lines as taking requests via Twitter, except it's more fun. You could create a contest in which they plug your new song or upcoming show in one of their updates and that enters them into a drawing where the winner gets free tickets to an upcoming show in their area. You get free promotion, they get to come to your show for free and their followers check out your new song. It's a win-win for everyone involved.

This is really just scratching the surface of how musicians can leverage Twitter to build their brand, increase their audience and get more people to hear their music. I'm sure as time goes on and more and more bands adopt Twitter the way they did MySpace, we'll see some really innovative ways to use Twitter, but these ideas should be enough to get you started.
Follow me on Twitter!

__________________

Dylan_182

Thank you so much for the Distortion Radio tip, they played by band! MY BAND!!!
wooooo

__________________
http://www.facebook.com/wefoundnemo

newbassmaster

hi me my brother and friends have a band started. we had one song we made to see how it would work out it was ok so we decided to make other advanced songs so we are in the middle of a song so when we finish what would be a easy way to recorded them?????

HolmesMonaco

one great way to promote your band these days is to get some videos on youtube and sites like this: visual music . make a music video for your songs and get them up on youtube with a link back to your site. this will get you some new fans that come across your videos.