While it’s great exposure for bands to get their live music heard by thousands, on free music torrent sites like DimeADozen.org (with their 100,000+ users (wow- I really downloaded nearly 2 terabytes of live audio & video?)) and TheTradersDen.com and etree’s live music archive (with over 3,300 bands), what if your band benefited from an open taping policy with one caveat?

Here’s the scenario;

You’re on stage in front of 600 screaming fans. You are 25 minutes into your set, in between songs, and the lead singer leans into the mic and announces, “Just so you know, we’re recording tonights show.  (Cheers)  If you want us to send you a link to download it free, put your address on the sheet by the t-shirt booth.”  That’s it.

The result? Depending on your performance, you’re likely to find a nice crowd of people surrounding your booth after the show.  Just drawing them to your booth is bound to help merch sales, because while waiting to put their name, email and zip code (ALWAYS get the zip/postal code!) down on your free concert recording list, they can’t help but stare at your cool t-shirts, CDs, 8-tracks, lunchboxes and what-have-you.  And how hard is it to create a printed form with a column for name, email and zip code?  Not hard, I just created one in 10 minutes (a PDF example is attached, but sign-up for my free SMMuG Email list off to the right and I’ll email you the Excel version so you can put in your own band logo). —> Make a dozen copies of your form, invest in a clipboard or two, and you are in business!

Now, the show is over, you dump your recording to the laptop, edit the tracks and compress to MP3.  Post the tracks up to your website using a unique path for each show; something like yourbandname.com/2009/pittsbrgmp3s/.  Email everyone on your new list, thank them for coming out, apologize for the exploding drummer and include the link to the mp3s.  You, my friend, have  just made a bunch of your people VERY happy!   And what do you have, beyond some great karma?  Well lookie there; you now have a list of fans/friends and followers who you can reach out to next time you’re coming to town! Or next time you’re releasing a new CD.  Or next time you’ve got a new t-shirt.  Or next time… You get the idea. Put that list in Excel, a database or better yet your favorite email campaign system, like MyEmma.  A few years from now you can send me a thank you card when you have 5,000 people in your system and can go just about anywhere and draw a crowd.

Now, how does this play with your taping recording policy that you’ve posted on your website? If you actually do tape all of your shows as my friend does, I would encourage the audio recording and free trading of your shows, but request a 30 day grace period before audience recorded live shows hit the trading networks.  This will increase the value for the people receiving the links to the bands mp3s since they will be the first recordings of that show available.  Not to mention that the band recordings will be from the soundboard and the other recordings are mostly audience mics. Keep in mind that tapers take their passion very seriously and it is not usual for them to get recordings from a live show up and available via bit torrents in the same day, which is why the 30 day grace period in critical to this process.    The other thing that this new process addresses are some venues who have strict policies against the audience carrying in mics, booms, laptops and harddrives to capture your show.

One last thing to consider, a lesson learned from prior Pearl Jam tours. Some of your audience members haven’t figured out how to download Mp3’s or use Torrents.  A few of your audience members haven’t figured out how to get music to their iPod. And some of your audience members would rather BUY a CD of the live show they attended, because of the convenience, or as a gift or because of the lossless quality of the music.  How easy would it be to offer that low price live CD option up to all of those who attended within the email notification to show goers? Easy. Easy money baby.

Let me now how it goes!

-pjc

I get emails from bands every week thanking me for the website and asking how they can contribute.  The best thing to do is post your comments, concerns, questions below and create a dialog with other bands and musicians.  Who knows, you might find a new collaboration amongst this little community!  Make sure your comment below has a link to your website or social media page (Myspace/Facebook/Twitter, etc.) otherwise it will not be approved.

Way back in 2004, during the earliest days of podcasting, before most people and trade associations like the RIAA knew what podcasts were, Chris MacDonald started the indiefeed podcast. The idea was simple; several times each week deliver one great music track with details about the artist and the song. Simple, but this idea would not have worked if it were not for the quality of music selected by Mr. MacDonald and his team based in Washington DC.

Chris MacDonald Founder of indiefeed

Indiefeed started out with a just handful of podcasts that could be subscribed to, according specific genres listeners could narrowcast themselves into. Regardless of your musical taste, the format remains the same; one good song with all the pertinent details that benefit the featured artist. As people became familiar with the idea of Podcast subscriptions, having great new music automatically downloaded to your iPod (or other audio device) established excitement and credibility, not just for indiefeed, but for all future podcasts as well. Today indiefeed provide six music genres, plus a few spoken word options that were rolled out in 2008.

According to the information Mr. MacDonald provided for this post, indiefeed averages more than 2.5 million downloads monthly, as confirmed by the Nielsen ratings service. When we break this down to unique programs each week, per musical genre, we are still left with averages that place subscriptions at roughly 20,000listeners  per genre, with nearly twice that going to the long running Alternative/Modern Rock stream (according to Chris). The current music genres, as of this posting, are:

* Alternative / Modern Rock
* Blues
* Dance
* Electronica
* Hip Hop
* Indie-Pop

With the popularity of podcasts continuing to build as people actually figure out how to use their iPods and iTunes, having your music considered for the indiefeed podcast should be a primary goal for most independent musicians. Mr. MacDonald and his staff are waiting and review every submission.  What follows is a quick preparation checklist for those of you ready for your four minutes of indiefeed fame:

1. Make sure your website is ready: Even if your track only intrigues 1% of 25,000 people who might listen to your song, make sure those 250 new visitors can take action and engage on your website. That means capturing email addresses (and zip/postal code!), providing future tour dates (not last years) and having merchandise/music available for purchase and download. Also keep in mind that while you can expect traffic to peak with early with the podcast release, do not be surprised if you continue to receive podcast traffic for a month or two following the release.

2. Make sure your music is ready: The submission form clearly states they do not want your Myspace links to music or links to download your entire album. Pick ONE track. If you need help with that, email me and I’ll find the one for you. Be sure that it is encoded to at least 128k which is what they use for their podcast (I would encourage 256kbps just to make sure your quality is at its best). I would also encourage you to make sure your mp3 file is properly tagged with all the right information (artist/album/url/etc.). Also, do not waste time with WMV, OGG or Flash file formats.

3. Make sure your background details are triple checked: On the indiefeed submission form you’ll need to provide a description of the track and a bio for your band. You’ll also need to provide artwork for your track (GIF or JPEG only), which should include both your band name and your URL (again avoid Myspace and Facebook to push traffic to your website).  Again, refrain from sending the staff to look through your flickr account and give them the ONE image they need that you want them to use, that has been triple checked for accuracy. Do not got overboard with the size – something 600 x 600 will likely cover the bases. Make your submission based on the expectation that you will be featured and if not, do not give up.  Try again in a few months with a new track.

My final strong suggestion (demand) is to actually subscribe to indiefeed.  If you’re uncertain about which genre your music would fit best with, subscribe to the feeds and listen for yourself.  Also keep in mind that many of listeners to indiefeed are musicians themselves, along with “industry types”.  If you get featured, don’t be surprised to be considered for additional interviews, tours or other possible deals.

And don’t forget who helped you!  Remember -being on your VIP guest list is all I’m asking for when you’re in NYC or Boston.

-pjc

While the former music industry crumbles into a slow, self-inflicted suicide stabbing of itself, there is an opportunity for independent musicians/bands to form alliances with independent filmmakers. Recently, I read a story in TechDirt about a independent movie production, for a movie called The Graduates, that was going to heed SEC Bad Boy Mark Cuban’s suggestion of giving away soundtracks to movie goers.  Being a big fan of both independent movies and indie music (not to mention Mark Cuban), I was really intrigued by the idea of attempting to give away 1,000,000 soundtracks to an independent movie.  So I contacted executive producer of The Graduates, Ryan Gielen, for an interview to better understand this process and how it might benefit both independent musicians and movies in the future.

SMMuG: For the bands and musicians who are not familiar with the movie making process, how do Executive Producers find music for their films?  Is there a directory, website, association or service that helps movie makers find specific types of music?

Ryan: Many films have music supervisors who seem to have an encyclopedic knowledge of music. They’re like a Cinematographer in a lot of ways- they interpret the story and the tone and the textures and pick out music that expresses those things. On The Graduates we asked bands I already knew and loved, and we put out a call on several websites and blogs for music submissions. The soundtrack is a mix of both.

All told, Matt (my producer/brother) and I received about 10,000 song submissions and whittled that down to 24 songs. I didn’t particularly care where or who the music came from, I just wanted to find the perfect song for a particular scene. There are so many incredible bands looking for exposure that it wasn’t difficult to find those songs.

Ryan Gielen

SMMuG: It’s clear that your Free Soundtrack promotion would be beneficial to the movie, but what are the specific benefits that musicians would receive by participating in your project?

SMMuG: There are some good examples of strong soundtracks drawing attention to a movie, but do you seek out independent bands that have large followings in order benefit from their fan base?  If so, how did you determine what kind of following each band might have?

Ryan: For The Graduates, I never looked at the bands’ followings, because the soundtrack is not the product. The film is the product, so I wanted songs that made the film stronger. I don’t think I’ve ever looked at the MySpace friends or whatever bands use to determine their fan base because I’m not a promoter or a booker, I was just looking for pieces that would help this scene or that scene.

SMMuG: What are your plans for marketing and promoting this very unique offer in the markets where your movie will be screened?  Do have street teams or what local promotional efforts are you using to raise the awareness for your film?  Are any of the bands involved in your promotional efforts?  Maybe brief concerts before or after the screening?

Ryan: When our release schedule is in place we’ll work with the bands to schedule the kinds of events you’re describing, but in the meantime we’re doing tons of grassroots outreach- emails, phone calls, blog articles. When we get close to screenings we’ll have our street teams in place along with articles and other local coverage. We’ve gotten pretty good at this- we’ve had 7 or 8 standing room only festival and sneak preview screenings in five different states. I hope we can carry that over into the release, I know we’re working our asses off to make that happen!

SMMuG: Frequently, I’ll purchase soundtracks to movies prior to actually seeing the movie – Mark Mothersbaugh’s musical influence with Wes Anderson movies are a prime example.  Watching the movie, the familiar soundtrack increases my appreciation of the movie.  Is there any discussion about getting ticket sales up front so that the soundtrack could be in possession of the movie goers prior to the screening?

Ryan: We hope the free soundtrack will have this effect. We’re giving away the soundtrack in order to generate buzz, sure, but most importantly we want people to see the quality and entertainment value of the film. We’re not just competing against $250,000 movies, we’re competing against all movies, so how does a little tiny indie like us get attention, and show off the goods? We think this is a start.

Plushgun

Plushgun is a great example. Dan Ingala was making music in his room, but he started putting it out there and playing a little in Brooklyn where he had a dedicated following, and then he let a small little web tv show use his song “Just Impolite.” They put the song in a video on the web, it got hot because it’s a great song and people could easily pass it around, I stumble on it and loved it and put it in the film. Around that time he gets invited to SXSW, later gets signed by Tommy Boy, and now he’s releasing his first full album in two weeks, and “Just Impolite” is featured in a long, critical sequence in The Graduates. But it all started with him making his great music available online for people to pass around.

Regarding directors- IMDb.com is a great place to start (the Internet Movie Database). If you pay $100 per year you can join IMDb Pro, which has contact information and production information for most people in film. Filmmakers update the status of their project and you can search for projects “in development” or “in production” or “in post production.” I would contact every single one of those filmmakers with a link to your myspace or iTunes pages and mention two songs they might dig. Make a quick mention of why the songs are good for the film: “saw this is a family drama, you might dig this acoustic track.” If you don’t want to pay the $100, chances are you have a friend or acquaintance who has IMDb Pro, I’m sure they’ll let you hop on for a good cause.

This is also why it’s smart to produce your own music videos. If you post a job on Mandy.com looking for a Director, and you do three or four videos a year, after three years you have ten to twelve young directors who know and like you and your music. Chances are these guys are going to try and make another short or feature at some point, and your music will end up in the score.

I would also put all these videos, even if it’s just concert footage, on Youtube and Blip.tv. Blip is amazing because it lets you submit to all online video sites with one click, including podcasting on iTunes. If your band recorded every concert on camera and with good audio through the soundboard, and uploaded that as a podcast to iTunes and other video sites, you would be pretty groundbreaking. And the only investment is a $500 HD camera and a couple cables to connect your laptop to the soundboard.

I think tracking down filmmakers is a lot like tracking down your audience- if you don’t put content out into the world, nobody’s going to find you… I think this is attributed to Cory Doctorow, but I completely agree: “The greatest threat to an artist is obscurity, not piracy.” There’s a reason The Dead let people tape their shows. They wanted people to hear them whether you could make the show or not. The bottom line is we all want that great distribution or record deal, but the reality is that it probably won’t happen. So artists really can’t afford to sit on their art, you have to put it out there.

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Keyword: SMMUG

Beyond providing us with some great direction, inspiration and information, Ryan Gielen has also promised to give 100 SMMuG readers the full, 24 track soundtrack to The Graduates!  Visit the Graduates website. put the digital soundtrack in your cart and use the following code at check-out to get the whole thing for FREE: SMMUG.  Beyond getting the soundtrack for free, you’ll also be registering for an almost monthly SMMuG newsletter, from yours truly.

-pjc

Since late 2002, Frank Yang, the owner/operator/writer for the music review weblog called ChromeWaves has turned his passion for music into a “second full-time job”. Beyond writing really informative music reviews, Frank shares news and links to MP3’s for most of the bands featured.

His own stats link indicates that he receives about 1,600 visitor each day, which puts him the top 25 music blog websites, according to Hype Machine.  ChromeWaves is a part of the BlogAds advertising networks, so if you have the cash to spare, be sure and include this website in your a la carte order.  According to Alexa, half the traffic for this Canadian blogger is coming from outside the US.  QuantCast seems to put the volume of US readers at only about a quarter of total traffic (~10k U.S. Visitors per month).  While some might see this as a disadvantage, I think this global diversity is an amazing way for ANY band, regardless of geography, to be seen by the world at large.  Technorati gives this music blog an Authority Rank of 281, which would likely put Frank in the Top 40 of all music review blogs that Technorati monitors. The Alexa traffic ranking for the site, over the past three months has it at 184k, an impressive score for ANY website. And according to Google, there are over 28,000 websites linking to ChromeWaves.net.

What’s unquestionable is Mr. Yang’s amazing dedication to bringing great music to light for so many years, and making ChromeWaves (a name taken from a song from one of his favorite bands, Ride) an important consideration for bands of many kinds.  Recent reviews this month included; Land of Talk, Zeroes, Friendly Fires, Cut Off Your Hands, Woodpigeon, Jealous Girlfriends, Sky Larkin, Emmy The Great, Ida Maria and more.  What I love about this blog is that Frank infuses news, tour dates, video links and mp3 files within his almost daily postings.  Really great stuff.

If this sounds like a man you want to make contact with, please do NOT send him MP3 attachments.  A simple email with a link to your MySpace/Facebook or website URL will suffice.  Email your message with link to submissions at chrome waves dot net.  I’m not including a direct email link, because he didn’t and I don’t want to be responsible for spamming this already very busy man.

-pjc

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Your comments below are HIGHLY appreciated, but please be sure to include a URL to your website or social network page.  Any Comments submitted without a connection to a legitimate website or page will not be approved.  And spammers and sploggers can suck my cancerous nut – wherever in hell that might be.

The result is a very easy to understand and access set of charts that should put Billboard magazine to shame.

Beyond being an solid source for the popular music being covered by thousands of music bloggers, Hype Machine also has a player built into the bottom of their page which preloads with the song at the top of the particular chart you’ve selected.  Chart options include; Latest, Popular, Radio and Spy.  While Latest and Popular should be self-explanatory, Radio is actually monitoring songs beings played by online stations.  Spy is simply collecting random mp3 tracks from the music blogs being frequently checked – consider your “feeling lucky” option.

While I’ve only visited the Hype Machine a few times, most of the music I’ve heard has been heavy on the dance, remixes and mash-ups.  I will not claim to be an expert on current musical trends, but there may be some genres left out of their blog rotation.  One of the important elements that should be understood is the SEARCH function.  Type in an artist you know and not only will you find tracks available for both streaming and downloading, but you’ll also find references to other SIMILAR sounding artists.  A sound way to discover new sounds.

We will use this resource, along with other tools, to help us target the most popular music blogs to review.

-pjc

Justin Vernon

Late in December 2008, the WSJ posted an important and useful story about Wisconsinite Justin Vernon and the road from north woods recording obscurity to having record labels chasing him for deals.  Beyond a great story for aspiring music artists, there are some excellent resources listed in the article as well including TuneCore.com, CDBaby.com and SonicBids.com others.

The WSJ story concludes with some wisdom about the Internet causing the equivalent of the French Revolution for the old music industry.

Wall Street Journal Article: Musician Finds a Following Online, written by Shelly Banjo & Kelly K. Spors

-pjc