Gen-Y Rock Stars

BandMetrics is a service that I have been anticipating since Duncan told me of the idea almost a year ago. Duncan and his team have been working hard getting this thing ready for musicians to take control of their stats and information on Social Networks and use that data to help their career and music marketing. Last night I got an email from Duncan saying that they are letting in some bands to test out and use the platform and I am extremely excited to let the readers of Gen-Y Rock Stars get access to BandMetrics.

For those that don’t know what BandMetrics is, here is a snip from their about page:

Band Metrics, a TechCrunch50 2008 semi-finalist and DemoPit company, provides a first-of-its-kind semantic web application for the music industry that collects, analyzes and displays dynamic popularity and trends about musicians and bands. The company’s real-time music intelligence is achieved through its patent pending technology which assists artists in understanding their fans, while also helping them to manage their digital identity. It’s a great solution for independent artists to understand the drivers of their music’s popularity, and their fans’ sentiments towards their music.

Go here to signup and use the code genyrockstars1 for instant access. From there you will have to enter your band information including a 140 word bio and URL’s for many of your social media and social network profiles including

• Myspace
• YouTube
• Last.fm
• iLike
• Twitter
• Yes.com
• Musebin
• Facebook
• Your Blog
• Your artist website
• SoundCloud

The more services you are on the more complete results you will see and be able to analyze to get an idea of who your fans are, where they are interacting with you and what you can do to improve on certain services.

BandMetrics also tracks spins on over 3,500 terrestrial radio stations to see where you are getting radio play.

More features and improvements are being made daily and the final product is going to be one that shapes the way that bands market themselves due to fan activity. There is a saying somewhere that says it easier to sell an existing customer something than it is to go and find a new one. With a service like BandMetrics you now have access to where your current fans are and can start applying the 80/20 principle to enhance your relationships with them and grow your music business.

Again, if you are one of the fast movers to BandMetrics.com and use the code genyrockstars1 you can go in and play in this revolutionary music service.You can be sure that we will have more coverage on this service and how to use it to grow your music career.

Have a great 4th weekend.

-Greg Rollett

This week the music discovery site and online radio sensation Pandora released their new way to get music into their service. Some people are getting really hot and heated over the new submission requirements and indie bands are making an even bigger stink. First let’s get into the details:

• Pandora is an Alexa top 500 website
• Their iPhone app is constantly in the top 50 free apps in the iTunes App store (currently at #17)
• Compete.com shows unique visitors at over 4 million
• In December of ‘08 Pandora had over 20 million registered users
• They are a long tail music service, allowing their users to select the direction of the songs they play

With that said, here is direct from Pandora’s site, the new requirements for indie bands to submit their music to Pandora:

We’re very excited to announce a brand-new process to submit your music (or your band’s music) to Pandora.

You’ll need:
* a CD of your music
* a unique UPC code for that CD
* your CD to be available through Amazon (must be a physical CD, not just MP3s for download)
* the legal rights to your music
* MP3 files for two of the songs from your CD
* a free Pandora account, based on a valid email address, which can be associated with your music

Once you have all of these items ready to go, you can submit your music to Pandora here:
http://submitmusic.pandora.com/

To obtain your own UPC code at a low cost, click here. If you already have a UPC code through your record label, just use that one.

To make your CD available on Amazon (after you have a UPC code), you can sign up for the low-cost Amazon Advantage program (click here).

NOTE: We cannot accept music available only as downloads through the Amazon MP3 store; you must have a physical CD for sale.

NOTE: We display album art directly from Amazon, so be sure your album art and other information are correct on Amazon before submitting your music to Pandora! Even so, album art may not appear on Pandora until a few weeks after your music goes live. If you need assistance correcting your album art or information on Amazon, click here.

The Pandora Indie Submission process starts when we verify the UPC code for your CD through Amazon. Then you will upload your MP3 tracks, and we will review the music you’ve submitted for possible inclusion. After we’ve reviewed your music, you’ll be notified of the outcome either way. If your music is included in Pandora’s Music Genome Project, then we’ll ask you to send the CD to us, along with a form legally authorizing Pandora to play the music on your CD.

Please don’t write to check up on your submission, as that will just take away time we could be using to work on listening to submissions. You’ll definitely hear from us after we listen to your submission!

We hope the new process will be faster, easier and much more transparent for submitting musicians, with a definite outcome for each submission.

Thanks again for your interest in having your music on Pandora!

At the surface this look like a good amount of work to get on the service. What is driving many musicians and music industry people a little crazy is quoted from Bruce over at Hypebot:

In addition to art and packaging costs, Pandora explains that to comply with the new “available through Amazon” rule, indie artists should join the Amazon Advantage Program. Membership costs $29.95 each year plus Amazon takes 55% of the list price of every CD sold.

Established artists and labels already comply with Pandora’s new rules. But for an indie artist trying to win new fans with a little help from Pandora and to keep his hard earned cash by selling direct, the new threshold may shut off an important avenue for exposure.

Is $30 Really Stopping You From Submitting to Pandora?

If so, get out of the music business right now! You are more than willing to drop a few hundred on new recording software, effects pedals, recording, mastering and even manufacturing, but you refuse to put money into getting people to listen to your music? Are you kidding me?

Ok so Amazon takes 55% of any physical CD sales that are purchased from the WORLD’s largest eCommerce platform. What’s more, if you are smart and tag your album accordingly, your CD can be bundled in recommended products and with a few “internal family” purchases can be put into the “recent customers who bought this popular CD also bought this indie band’s crappy CD.” Not to mention all the SEO powers that come from being on the site, the recognition and the fact that you can have an affiliate link on your site to your Amazon CD to make back 3-5% through an affiliate commission that puts your take home in upwards of 60%. Try and get that from a major label.

Many major labels see 45-55% from a retailer like Amazon. If the artist is lucky and has a 50/50 split they are then entitled to 22-27% of a sale. Indie artists wins again. But you were pissed about shelling out $30 a year to be a part of that service…

Indie Bands Still Don’t Get Marketing

Many indie bands that we talk to and even work with are still not up to par with marketing and creating a marketing budget. And yes, radio is a part of your marketing budget. Getting spins on Pandora is marketing. When you song plays on Pandora the following things can happen:

• A Thumbs Up - Fans that like the song give it a thumbs up and your songs will rotate into their mix more frequently
• A Thumbs Down - No hard feelings, your music won’t be on a station of someone that has no interest in your music
• Click on band name - Opens a new window and delivers your bio, a way to create a station for you with one click, view other fans that are listening to a station created with your band, comments for the band and similar artists.



• Click on song name - Opens a new window that delivers lyrics, features and qualities of the song, related songs, instant station creation and links to buy your stuff on Amazon or iTunes.



• Click on menu (in between thumbs up and thumbs down) - Fan can buy the track, bookmark it, see why it was played, move to another playlist (increasing your exposure) and don’t play this song for a month (ouch).

  

Marketing in NOT Always About Free

Most indie bands rely on free services and viral promotions to do the bulk of their marketing. Some get by just fine using Myspaces, Facebooks, Twitter, YouTube and ReverbNation. The ones that are truly successful use a combination of FREE and premium, including the above mentioned services coupled with an email provider, hosted Wordpress, shopping carts, subscription services, paid video sites for extra privacy and exclusives, advertising on sites like Jango, Facebook, Grooveshark or StumbleUpon along with paid radio inclusions on sites like Pandora and Last.FM.

You are in the music business - start treating it like a business. The more exposure for your music, the more potential reach, the more fans in the funnel, the more people you can sell music to, merch to and tickets to.

Before you draw a conclusion about paying for services and changes remember that something is usually free for a reason. There are limitations that come with free. There are also people that have mouths to feed and rent to pay and thus have created an amazing service so that people will exchange currency to use it. That’s the real world and if you want to succeed you’ll get in.

Till next time Rock Stars!

-Greg Rollett

I love Twitter. From connecting with bands andupcoming talent to promoting events virally via a RT or 2, leaking songs on the platform, to just well, meeting people that I would never have the chance to network with.

If you were skeptical of the service and its purpose, you may want to read this.

A new NPD Group study finds that active Twitter users buy 77% more digital music downloads on average than non-users.

I found this information from Billboard.biz this afternoon and started thinking about some of the implications.Here is a list of some reasons that I think Twitter is becoming the go-to source to sell stuff and get in front of a crowd that buys stuff.

Early Adopters - Many of the key influential people on Twitter are early adopters. They were there well before Oprah and Ashton and were influential in driving the direction of Twitter from “I had bacon and eggs for breakfast” to

“yvynyl: Listen to Samara Lubelski. Her new record Future Slip is coming out next month on Ecstatic Peace! http://tumblr.com/xqy24q53y”

Apple heavy - Those that are regular tweeters are on the cutting edge of technology. They show their love for Apple products and buy new phone upgrades like its the second coming. This also means they are frequently in the iTunes store looking for updates and browsing at the apps, music and movies. More eyeballs = more opportunity to sell your stuff.

1 Click Sales - Those that receive a Tweet about a new musician, album, song are only 1 click away from going to the artist’s web site, Twitter page or sales page. Those that still read Spin need to read the article, go to the store and deal with a physical purchase. Not knocking Spin, but knocking out steps gives people less of an option to second guess a purchase.

The Buddy System - Retweets (or RT’s) are the recommendation engine of Twitter. If you can spread a few RT’s about your release you open up the flood gates for people to at least recognize your brand. If you have 1,000 followers and Tweet something, 1,000 people see it. If one of your followers who has 10,000 followers RT’s your Tweet, now it opens it up to 10,000 more people. Imagine if you get that train moving with 10-20-50-100 RT’s. This is where the fun starts.

Exponential Growth. Twitter is growing and growiing fast. It is also growing in a wide rane of demographics. Some suggest that its the older crowd that is adopting faster than the Gen-Y’s and teens. If that is the case, awesome! This older demographic is the one with all the money to buy your music. They are now at almost 20 million unique visitors a month. That Oprah mention didn’t hurt!

There is so much you can gain from becoming an active member on Twitter. It doesn’t take much effort and the tools to use the platform help you manage and stay on top of replies, messages, mentions and other searches.

Get started in the conversation. Don’t be oversalesy, this isn’t Myspace Bulletins and Comments Part 2 - its real conversations, between real people.

Oh, and feel free to follow me - @g_ro.

-Greg

“The internet has changed the game for marketing in all industries. Some people don’t ask what happend, they just find a way to use it to their advantage.

Getting any message (including Music) out requires you to know what works. Label 2.0 shows you what WILL WORK for talented musicians to get their message out. A Myspace page alone isn’t going to distribute your music. Find out the right way with their in depth actionable guides for musicians.”

- Todd Malicoat, stuntudubl.com

Label 2.0 Will Help you Sell More Music, Create a Bigger Buzz and Keep More Money in Your Pockets than Any Major Label Deal…Hands Down!

Music marketing has always been thought of as something you do in your spare time, the time you spend between practices, shows, tours, writing, recording and spending your time being a rock star. Those days are long gone!

With the rise of technology music marketing is now on the same scale as writing, recording and playing out live. At the end of the day if no one listens to your music, YOU are the one to blame.

Music marketing is generally taught like this:

• Myspace Friend Adders
• You Need To Build Relationships
• Get an Email List
• There’s this new thing called Twitter…

This is all Bullshit! Not that they don’t work, but you need to know how to work these online tools to SEE results - BIG results!

With Label 2.0, we take you back to school and teach you - we hold your hand and help you create effective marketing strategies to gain more fans, sell more stuff and make a living doing this stuff that you love.

If you are looking to effectively create a buzz around your music, sell more of your stuff and find creative ways to drive you and your band’s income so you can quit working at Wendy’s or Pacific Sunwear and start working in a studio and living in a van, then Label 2.0 is going to blow your friggin socks off.

WE ARE REINVENTING THE WHEEL!

• Why give money from your sales to people that don’t give a shit about your career and development?
• Who says you can’t build a relationship with every single fan?
• Why can’t you record and broadcast live video and ask for sales?
• Why do you need a venue to rock for fans in Iceland, Australia or Nebraska?
• Why do you have to be afraid to sell your stuff to the people who want it?
• Why do you have to settle for being a local band?
• Who says the only way to make money is from selling songs?

Label 2.0 is the answer the indie music community has been looking for.

You see, there are a ton of music 2.0 entrepreneurs out there (I put out a report of 100 Social Media Sites for Musicians a year ago and from that point till now I could easily make a list of the 300 most influential Social Media Sites For Musicians) but there are no marketers who actually show you how you can leverage these sites to create your own record label!

In Label 2.0 you will learn:

• How to increase email sign ups up to 400% at your live shows
• How to cut out the middleman and sell your music on your own site
• How to stop relying on Myspace to keep your stats, traffic and fans
• How to ask for the sale without being pushy
• How to optimize your videos on YouTube to see 10,000+ more views
• How to use SEO to get more eyeballs on your website
• How to giveaway your music to make more money than most major label artists see selling their music
• How to find bloggers who would love to review your music and send your hordes of fans
• How to use Myspace, Facebook, Twitter and other trendy tools to funnel fans into your sales cycleAnd so much more!

Who is going to teach you all this stuff?

Greg Rollett – That’s me. I run a site called Gen-Y Rock Stars and a company called Rollett Marketing. I was an indie musician for 10 years, touring the country and playing on bills with Daughtry, Buckcherry, Bubba Sparxxx, Sevendust, Jesse McCartney, O-Town, Nina Sky and countless others. I have produced music for Layzie Bone of Bone-Thugs-N-Harmoney, Caveman Theory and Triggerslip.

After getting out of the music business I started my marketing consulting company helping companies like Coca-Cola, Miller Lite and Warner Brothers connect with the Gen-Y audience. My passion lies in helping indie bands and small businesses realize their potential by using the web as a tool to drive business and create opportunity.

Eric Hebert – Eric is an Internet Marketing Superstar and author of Evolvor.com, a music industry resource site that helps indie bands learn about tools and put these applications into motion. Eric is a keen marketer with a background helping big businesses, ecommerce sites, musicians and aspiring entrepreneurs make their businesses more successful by using the tools on the web as a friend and not a foe.

Eric Hebert’s skill and knowledge with the online marketing of independent music has helped me realize that there is a lot more to the music business than playing shows and selling CDs.

Through his guidance I am learning the steps I need to take in order to connect with my fan base in a way that will keep them coming back for more while at the same time growing that base to it’s full potential. Eric’s strategies are a perfect fit for my independent band and I recommend him highly!

- Ed Sadler, Fear Zero.com

How can you really make money without a major label?

I am going to tell you the story of Kevin Kelly, former writer at Wired magazine. Kelly stated that to achieve your desires you do not need a million fans (as Major Labels would have you believe). In fact you only need 1,000 TRUE FANS. These TRUE FANS are the ones who will do anything for you and your band. From buying concert tickets to pre-ordering your album to grabbing a shirt or 2, these true fans will spend on average of $100 per year on your STUFF.

Do you know what that equates to?

$100,000. That’s a good amount of change.

What if I told you that this was not only possible but easily attainable?

Label 2.0 is the system that we have used on countless bands to grow their TRUE FAN BASE from 10-20-50-100 fans to 1,000-5,000-10,000-50,000 fans in less than one year’s time.

They are creating the type of music business that allows these bands to

• Play Packed Shows Every Night Across the Globe
• Focus on the Music
• Write Better Songs
• Personally Connect With Every One of their Fans

We are going to SHOW AND PROVE to you why everything you know about marketing your music and trying to “MAKE IT” is DEAD WRONG!

You see, Label 2.0 is like Marketing School For Musicians, complete with modules on every facet of using the Internet as your own personal Record Label. We walk you through the use of these tools and how to milk every last drop out of them to get the most attention, the most fans and the best conversions!

Just take a look at the first Module:

THE FAN FILTER PROJECT

In this module you get advanced training on the fundamentals and advanced tips on creating a MONEY MAKING email list of fans that want to hear from you, want you to pitch them and want to get every detail of your career delivered straight to their inbox. In this module you will learn:

• Why You Need an Email List
• Free Email Service Providers
• FanBridge
• Reverbnation FanMail
• Champion Sound
• Aweber
• Getting Subscribers
• What Do I Say?
• Writing Your Newsletter
• Asking for the Sale
• Rock Star Email Hacks
• Legendary Email Marketers

In the Fan Filter Module you get 12 individual training lessons, 7 videos and a list of action items to get started right away in building this email list.

Here is a teaser from the 2nd Module: Using Video To Kill The Radio Star

____________________________________________________________

When creating video descriptions the first thing in your description needs to be http://www.yourlandingpage.com.

It has to have the http and you have to send them to an action page (aka not your Myspace). Using http will make the link live (meaning that your new fan doesn’t have to copy and paste, they just click). The 2nd reason to put it first is that YouTube only displays the first few words of the description on the video page, the rest can only be seen by clicking on more information. You want your link to be seen by everyone that comes to that page!

____________________________________________________________

And just think, we have video and step-by-step instructions to get you through every process in Label 2.0.

Free Bonus Download!

Download a MP3 Call with Spencer, Founder of FanBridge. Want to know what works in band email marketing from the guy that made an entire service devoted to it? In this 30 minute call we go over everything from landing pages, to mobile marketing to what makes a good subject to why some bands get it and some don’t.

Why is Label 2.0 Going To Give You Better Results than Anything Else Out There on The Web?

It’s pretty simple. We have used these strategies on everyone from small indie bands to major label artists to companies and small businesses. They work. AND THEY REQUIRE WORK!

This is not a magic pill but a blueprint to get the most out of you and your talents.

It is Up to You! Are you ready to join the Movers and the Shakers?

Look, I’m not going to hype this up and say you’ll build a million dollar business just like many of my clients. I don’t know what you’ll do… in fact you could do even better than them- that’s actually the goal. It’s all possible. All you need is the strategy to pull it off, and you’ll see every step of your process will have predictable, repeatable conversions. You’ll make your fans happier, build a rabid following, and most of all – give them what they want.

Check out what Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park had to say on Labels vs. the DIY Music Community:

…if we were 18 years old right now, unsigned, and had Hybrid Theory sitting on our hard drives, we could be very disruptive to the record business. In past generations, it would be virtually impossible to record, market, and distribute your album without help. Now, you can do these things alone with unprecedented quality and efficiency. Make a great album on your own, promote it in the myriad social networks, and sell it from your websites.

What are you waiting for? Enter your name and email address in the form below and we’ll sent you an early bird sneak peak into Label 2.0!

Yes, I am on the Grooveshark bandwagon, but for good reasons. Their artist tools are top notch and their innovation in the way users interact with the service keeps getting better. Just a few days ago they announced 3 major upgrades and releases:

• Facebook Application
• Wordpress Plugin
• TinySong API

Today I wanted to share with you guys 3 ways to use the Twitter Wordpress Plugin to promote your music. The pre-step if you will is to make sure that you are using Wordpress for your blog and CMS, if you are not then you are missing out on some amazing tools, great SEO benefits and a super smart and savvy group of developers and community that keeps making this thing better. Go download Wordpress right now if you are not running it on your site.

Grooveshark Wordpress Plugin

The Grooveshark Wordpress Plugin in its simplest form is a way for you or any blogger to integrate music into their posts, reference tracks or add to the mood by adding a track or playlist.

From the Grooveshark site

Made to make music easy to add to any post, Grooveshark for Wordpress takes the trouble out of mixing music with your blog. Just install, then enjoy instant access to literally millions of tunes you can use to make your blog posts even cooler. Create playlists of one song — or hundreds — and add them to any part of your Wordpress blog as a Grooveshark Widget. Your readers will love you for it.

Using Wordpress to Promote Your Music

On your own blog.

On your own blog posts, you can enhance them by sharing your music with your readers. No more coding up a player, dealing with logging into 2 places at once, copy/pasting and tab switching. In your post manager (the screen where you type out your post) there is a little box that allows you to search for a song, artist, playlist, whatever and then mess with the look and feel of the player. When you publish your post you also publish your Grooveshark player. It’s as simple as that. (check out the image below of what it looks like from the backend)

A tip to this is to share other music as well. If you played a show with a killer band or singer / songwriter, write a review about the show and create a playlist of their music. This will add value to your fans and readers and all keep them on your page longer as they listen to the tunes.

A second tip is to not over abuse the plugin. The more widgets you create the more stress you are putting on your server and on your fan’s browser. Use the player only when it makes sense and adds to the overall value of the person reading and viewing your site.

Leverage other musician’s fanbase.

Find other musicians that you can cross promote each others music. This was a tip in the last point, but it really is a source of traffic and promotion for your music on its own. The goal is to find musicians who have a fan base that would benefit from hearing your tracks. Have the other artist say a few lines, or even give you permission to write a guest post on their site, introducing you to their audience.

Be sure to return the favor.

Music reviews.

When pushing your music to reviewers that have blogs, be sure to include that your music is cataloged in Grooveshark and that is they have the Grooveshark Wordpress plugin, they can use it in their review of their music. This gets rid of any bad embed codes that may get sent in emails. If there is a specific playlist you want them to use, be sure to specify it in your email.

One way to get their attention is to create a playlist in Grooveshark that is specific to the reviewer. Upload custom freestyles or intros that address the reviewer and create a tailored playlist for them to check out and add to the review.

Now, with all the above tactics you will obviously have to have your music in Grooveshark’s system. Go ahead and get your music in their library now by clicking here.

Anyone out there that is using Grooveshark as a promotional tool for their music (through the plugin or their advertising platform) please reach out to us and let us know how it is working for you. Leave a comment or shoot me an email - marketing @ genyrockstars.com.

Till next time rock stars!

-Greg Rollett

P.S. Our Pro Memberships are going live on July 1. More details coming soon. If you want to be a part of this limited group of musicians who get expert training and tips from our professional musicians and marketing team, be sure to join our mailing list. Plus you get a bunch of free goodies just for signing up. Chat soon.

Oh, and you can listen to a cool track that I am loving today in my Grooveshark widget below.