Since launching in December 2011, Webdoc has experienced great fan engagement. When British-Irish boy band One Direction asked their fans to wish happy birthday to group member Zayn Malik on Webdoc, within 48 hours more than 6,800 fans had created rich media posts to show their love; spending on average between 15 to 30 minutes on the page, while creating, consuming and looking for One Direction material online.

Webdoc

British jazz funk and acid jazz band Jamiroquai have experienced similar results, with the band’s Digital Manager Neil Carwright commenting, “As a fan engagement site it really surpassed my expectations. Engagement was far higher than I thought was possible.”

The social sound platform SoundCloud is now officially represented on Webdoc through a drag-and-drop widget. This allows users to incorporate SoundCloud tracks in their Webdocs, played via the HTML5 player.

Songkick allows fans to track their favorite artists’ live performances and to be the first to know when tickets go on sale. Performing musicians can now insert the new Songkick widget in to their Webdocs to sell tickets to their gigs and shows to the public (a nice way to create a digital flyer!).

Topspin is a direct to fan sales and marketing platform used by artists and filmakers to grow their online audiences and convert fans into customers. We here at Dotted Music were really excited about this particular integration, allowing Topspin users to insert various widgets inside Webdocs, but were a bit confused this morning, vainly trying to test the new feature. While it wasn’t a problem to connect a Topspin account and insert an E4M widget, for some reason it didn’t want to show up on the created Webdoc. Let us know in the comments if you have tried the same and it worked fine (or did not)!

Here’s a Topspin video, describing the integration with Webdoc:

And below are links to some of the recent Webdoc implementations:

• Sharing of Nirvana memories around the 20th Anniversary of the group’s album ‘Nevermind’
• A promotion to create a Christmas Card for One Direction

What you’re immediately introduced to are two columns with our life’s events hanging off of a lithe, blue, never ending trunk that’s topped off by a summation of our identity – who we are, where we are, what we do, what we like – enclosed in a 851px wide white rectangle. Amid the changes, we retain one recognizable feature, our Profile Picture. But behind the recognizable, lurks an over-sized opportunity to personalize yourself, which Facebook calls a “Timeline Cover.” To leave it blank is almost a sin.

You may have noticed friends taking creative advantage of the Timeline Cover, or you may have caught Amy-Mae Elliot’s compilations of creative Timeline Covers on Mashable. While you can take advantage of third party apps to achieve pictorial harmony between Cover and Profile Picture, where is the fun in that? Luckily for you, I did the math so that you can pull out your favorite photo or vector editing programs and create a uniform Timeline and Profile Picture.

As you’ll notice right away from the pictorial representation above, the size of the Cover is 815px wide by 314px high.

Cover (red) = 815px wide by 314px high

Here what you should recognize is that the Porfile Picture, represented in blue, is 125px by 125px. A white 5 px wide frame borders the Profile Picture, but for designing purposes we will imagine that the Profile Picture was superimposed and centered on a larger 135px by 135px box represented here in yellow.

Profile Picture (blue) = 125px by 125px
Outer square (yellow) = 135px by 135px

Before proceeding further, for simplicity and efficiency’s sake, superimpose the Profile Picture over the Timeline Cover and build the Cover around the Profile Picture according to the following dimensions:

When designing, omit the white frame (in yellow) and position the Profile Picture as leaving a 28px space between the left edge of the Cover and the left edge of the Profile Picture (in blue). The correct vertical positioning of the Profile Picture is achieved at a height of 87px from the top of the Profile Picture (in blue) to the bottom edge of the Cover, as illustrated by the red rectangle.

Cover Edge to Profile Edge Positioning Dimensions = 28px wide by 87px high

For your reference, I also added an additional reference rectangle, illustrated in green at 5px high and 23px wide, in case you’re looking to manually reposition and center the frame (in yellow) behind your Profile Picture.

Cover Edge to Profile Frame’s Edge Positioning Dimensions = 23px wide by 5px high

Now that you’ve been enlightened, share with us links to your creative Timeline Covers that best represents yourself as a musician, or your band.

Francis Bea is a New Yorker turned Chicago co-founder of Musefy.com (in development), Proptone.com and writes Musefy’s blog Musebox. You can find him at @francisybea or @musefy.

A common thought on the view of Spotify is that is it great for the consumer, and bad for the artist. Valid point. Considering that record labels are getting about a third of a penny per play, leaving artists with even less. So for instance, every 15 tracks you play, which is an average track number for CD’s, is going to cost you around 5 cents. Well, when it is put like that it certainly seems like stealing. Great for the consumer, considering that an average CD usually runs about $12.99. So how can this not be labelled stealing from the artists.

Spotify iPhone app's Playlists screen

To take a deeper look into the music industry, you should start by looking at the numbers. Since the late 1990′s the music industry has fallen from a 45 billion dollar industry to a 12 billion dollar industry. This is largely due to the increase in piracy, and internet distribution of media – in this case, music. Therefore artists simply are not making as much money as they did. People don’t buy CD’s because distribution of music has been made so convenient. Even things like Pandora radio station give us another alternative to buying CD’s. Spotify is the latest alternative to buying music. And just like Pandora, you do not physically own the track with Spotify.

This brings the question of how much is each track play worth to an artist. Are artist entitled to make large sums of money because of their work? I think not. As a technicality an artist is only an employee of a Record Label. Very few artists make it big without being signed to a record company. If any artist choses to go independent, more than likely they will see less success then they ever would as a signed artist. Record companies are striking up deals with Spotify obviously because there are some profits to be made. The profits may be less than they like, but without Spotify or any other music service, songs will just be pirated. Piracy is wrong, and it is unfortunate that it exists, but the problem doesn’t necessarily have to do with piracy as much as it has to do with distribution.

Just because at one point in time the only way you could buy CD’s was to go to the local store and buy one, doesn’t mean that model will always be sustainable. The music industry was making record profits during this time. Music was harder to produce, and there was only a select few who had the opportunity. Now, during our internet age, music can be delivered to your computer over the span of just a few minutes, and there are many more opportunities for artists to be successful. You can buy professional recording equipment for under $500 dollars with Pro Tools. You can broadcast yourself on YouTube. You can distribute your music on Myspace. There are endless ways to get seen these days, and the costs to produce music have gone down considerably. Artists, more than anyone else are ignoring this. Just like any other business, you are not guaranteed to make “x” amount of dollars because you or someone else has in the past.

The record companies do understand this. That is why they are making deals to be a part of it. It may not be the most beneficial to the artists, but as an artist, you cannot expect to make a large sum of money off of a market that doesn’t exist. A CD that sold for 16 dollars at one point after creation, production, packaging, shipping, and finally retail markup does not equate in today’s standards. You want to send the CD directly to someones PC in minutes, with decreased production costs and charge the same $16? Um, I don’t think so.

The music industry should look at Spotify as essentially free advertisement, that you can actually make a little bit of money from. This is especially true for artists who are under the radar, and need exposure that can be done through direct pays or from word of mouth through Spotify’s social aspect. Artists need to think about the live performance at its rawest as their main income. There is no market to sell $16 CD’s anymore, so don’t expect to make hand over fist with each CD you release.

Spotify

With all of that being said, Spotify does have one downfall. For popular artists who are dominating the number of plays, they should receive a little bit more of the profits since it is because of them that Spotify is able to have a successful business. There is no reason that a band who has just gotten off the ground should be paid the same percentage, when comparing to artists like Lady Gaga who attract millions of plays. Without the big names, many people would not be signing up to listen. For the smaller bands, it is better to look at this as an opportunity to be seen.

Spotify has definitely been generating some controversy over the inexpensive, seemingly all inclusive service of music. It is ultimately better for the consumer, than it is for the artist – but a better alternative than piracy. The music industry isn’t what it once was. Consumers can now have music faster, cheaper, and in large quantities. This isn’t exactly what musicians want to hear, but that is the reality. The internet has made things easier, and more affordable. Music is not independent from this, and therefore Spotify has made attempt to fix the problem of distribution and theft. Some people may think this is stealing, but the Record companies are making deals with Spotify. The artists are employees of the Record companies. Right now Spotify has the best business model. Our technology driven business era may change that fast, but everyone needs to understand that the same technology driven era has created Spotify out of necessity.

This article was written by Thomas Randall. Thomas likes to blog on the internet about music, web design, and other various internet related topics. He knows what it takes to get some buzz on the internet and helps to provide the best white hat SEO services.

“I’ve actually been doing stuff like that for a year,” Darren points out. “It began with me doing video blogs about making the record, and then I started using Morse code and sending out secret messages via Twitter. We then had a competition where there was a treasure hunt, and fans had to work out a code and find a password and enter a competition to be flown from anywhere in the world to London to hear the record for the first time ever. That happened, and we then put clues in bottles and hid them in Rome, New York, London and Sydney. Fans had to find them and they’d win a collector’s edition of the album, but when they combined the four clues it unlocked a part of the record – it’s a ten-minute video preview of all the music on the record. It’s been incredible, and it’s been a year-long journey to get to this point.”

Darren Hayes

Generally speaking, within the digital age it’s arguably more important to communicate with the fans and encourage their involvement. “I think it’s always been important,” the singer feels. “I just think it’s easier today with social media, but I’ve always embraced that. I used to go into IRC chatrooms and message on message boards back in the day, and 15-20 years on Twitter and Facebook are obviously the tools of today, and who knows what they’ll be next week. But yeah, it’s definitely important. I think it’s important to communicate really. I don’t come from a generation of performers where I feel like a celebrity, and I certainly don’t feel above my audience. I am a fan. I’m a fan of other artists, and I find it difficult to even refer to the people that buy my music as fans. I find it a bit degrading, except they know what I mean by that because I was the kid who waited outside Michael Jackson’s hotel for an autograph. I totally understand it, and I try to break down those walls a bit. That’s why I try to use social media to do that.”

Darren is the owner of a uStream account, a service whereby you can stream live videos to fans. “I’ve only just started video streaming actually – I enjoy it,” he admits. “To be honest nothing really beats the live show, but uStream’s great for people who live in places where you will probably never be able to get to. They get to see you live essentially, so I’m going to be doing more and more uStream stuff for sure.”

How effective has your foray into social media been Darren? “To be honest, I couldn’t tell you. I don’t know. All I know is… to be honest, I’ve only just really focused on my Facebook page six months ago; we went from 2,000 followers to 110,000 followers, and it’s just slowly grown over time. Twitter has been a similar thing; I started with one follower, and I think I’ve got about 45,000 or something. To me it’s not necessarily about an immediate spike, or about something that a marketing person would tell you – to me it’s just about having a presence there. For me, when I think of an artist… If I wanna check out their latest release, I’ll probably go to Twitter and YouTube. I’ll go to a separate YouTube page and then I’ll check out what they’re like on Twitter, and that’s a lot different to the way that I used to check out music, which is I’d just go to a record store and flick through albums.”

Until now, the reason behind signing up with Facebook has been to serve as a destination for your fans to keep up to date with the minute to minute happenings of your band and as a showcase for the mini battles that you’ve won. But Facebook’s f8 partnerships have opened up a whole new level of Facebook marketing, where offering your music through a Sonic Bids, Band Profile, or a non-partner Facebook App, despite the allure of the customizability, is no longer taking advantage of the social marketing “game” in Facebook.

Spotify on Facebook in ticker

If you’ve taken a look at the new Facebook ticker on the top right of the screen, you’ll notice your friend’s listening habits, courtesy of Spotify. Divert your eyes to the left navigation menu, below the category “APPS” and you’ll notice a permanent fixture titled, “Music.” Forget Pandora and Last.fm. Music has gone social – Facebook social.

Facebook's Music App

In theory, in a social world, users are inclined to listen to the music selected by their common denominator – namely their friends. You can see how Facebook Music has opened up an opportunity for listeners to be persuaded into listening to friend’s music tastes, instead of those of the automated machines that fuel Pandora and Last.fm.

But how this translates for musicians is that Spotify has gone from just another medium to publish your music, to THE medium for publishing your music. Prior to Facebook Music, unless you were spamming your friend’s walls with your music, you have the opportunity to capture the ears and attention of your listener’s friends.

Spotify’s Increasing User Base

Since the launch of Facebook music (and Spotify’s login changes that require a Facebook account to use the music service) according to Inside Facebook, Spotify has gained 1 million new monthly active Facebook users, up from their average of 3 million users per month. The increase in users makes it that much more necessary for your marketing arsenal.

How to get your music onto Spotify

If you’re looking to get your music up on Spotify, you can sign up for Tunecore’s music distribution service. But, as Information is Beautiful’s infographic, “How Much do Artists Earn Online“, shows, unless you’re seeing 4,053,110 plays per month of your Spotify tracks, which would earn you a minimum wage of $1,160 per month, don’t expect to be making a living using Spotify alone. Think of it as an investment into increasing your social presence.

Two Tips:

1. If you’re pitching your music to a particular blogger or journalist, sending them a link to your tracks on Spotify will guarantee that their network of friends will have access to your music, granted that the blogger or journalist does in fact listen to your music.
2. Create a custom Facebook landing page (using iFrames) that sends visitors to your Spotify tracks. As a result, upon their listening to your tracks, the news of your listener’s music choices – namely your music – will get published onto the listener’s wall and their friend’s tickers and music app.

Francis Bea is a New Yorker turned Chicago co-founder of Musefy.com (in development) and writes Musefy’s blog Musebox.

MySpace, bought by News Corp six years ago for $580 million and sold in June this year for $35 million, lost over half its users just this year – but it’s still 70 million people worldwide. And with a team of Mr. Dejewski, veteran of PepsiCo, and two unrevealed branding agencies, as well as Justin Timberlake in the role of a creative director, the company could finally offer something worthwhile to the musicians community.

Do you think MySpace has a chance to be resurrected?

Not much, according to results of this poll.

41% of those who voted think that the social network will never fix the damaged reputation, and 32% says although it might start making sense again, the website will never beat the likes of Soundcloud or Bandcamp. 22% of readers still think that it has chances to be properly resurrected and become huge, and 2% agrees that MySpace needs to fire Justin (ok, that was a silly joke).

What do you think about the potential of MySpace 3.0?

To grasp an idea about the impact of Google+ among the social media domination that is Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin, we can briefly take a look at Wordstream’s case study on incoming traffic from Google+. While Facebook remains the majority referrer of traffic to Wordstream’s blog, in the month that Google+ has been open for beta invites, Wordstream was surprised to learn that Google+ had overtaken Linkedin and trailed right behind Twitter. More specifically:

• 1st Place: Facebook with 47.26% of visitors
• 2nd Place: Twitter with 27.51% of visitors
• 3rd Place: Google+ with 15.42% of visitors
• 4th Place: LinkedIn with 9.81% of visitors

While Google Plus is showing signs of life, the functionalities that will rival Facebook pages have yet to take effect. For those companies and bands antsy to jump onto the social media platform, Google is slated to release an enterprise app (a competitor to Facebook Pages) for Google+ by the end of 2011. But don’t sign on with your band name just yet. Google will shut down accounts without your own real name.

In the meantime, while we’re waiting on Google Plus’s version of Facebook Pages, here are ten ways you can take advantage of Google+ under your own name, and as the face of your band.

1. Organize Your Circles

The first suggestion is a simple one. You’re given the opportunity to aggregate your fans into groups, called Google Circles. When you set up your account, set aside circles for your band mates, fans, publicity contacts, and business contacts. Remember to set the privacy parameters when creating a new status update, whether it’s intended for your friends and family or your fans.

(Strategy) VIP Circles: There are various benefits to interacting with your top fans, the very people that have gotten you to where you are today. You can find these fans by using Openbook and Social Mention as I outlined in an earlier Dotted post. To leverage this concept with Google+, I would suggest that you invite an inner circle of “VIPs” who would receive exclusive updates and offerings, that your non-VIP fans would otherwise not receive. You can limit this exclusive invite to an X number of fans, and publicize this with a contest or any strategy of your choosing. To take it a step further, you can sell your VIP slots as a subscription fee.

2. Twitter+Facebook=Google Plus Circles

The way I see the psychology behind adding users to your circles is best described as the marriage of Twitter and Facebook. Twitter is a community wherein following people you may not necessarily know is encouraged, while on the other hand, most people would only add a Facebook friend, if that individual is at the least, acquaintances. Google+ borrows from Twitter in enabling you to view news feeds from those you add to your circle (even if the users you add do not necessarily follow you back), while maintaining the security of keeping your private life from your business contacts, as you do with Facebook, by permitting you to specify the circles you’re willing to publicize an update or link to.

Those LOL Cats photos you like to share with your friends don’t necessarily have to reach your business contacts. So feel free to add the A&R that you met the other night or follow your favorite musician. They don’t have to see those crazy antics that you’d rather hide behind closed doors.

3. Extended Reach

While you’re reveling in the ability to share information with specific circles, you should know that Google+ offers criteria that allow you to post updates and links in your “Stream” to those that have you in their circles, even if you haven’t added them in your circle (called “Public”) plus your circle’s circles (called “Extended Circles”).

Google Plus Stream

4. Cold Commenting

The benefit of Twitter is that you’re able to reach out to just about anyone. Cold Tweeting is an accepted practice, which leads to forming impromptu professional relationships. Likewise, if you’ve added someone to your circle that you admire or would love to talk to, but they haven’t returned the favor, don’t fret. You’re able to comment on the updates and comments that they have made available to the public. Maybe one day with the right comment, you’ll finally be able to grab their attention.

Cold Tweet

5. Your “About” Page is SEO Friendly

You’ll notice something entitled, “Search Visibility” in the “About” tab of your profile. What this means is that your “About” page is search engine friendly. Fill out your profiles as descriptively as possible with keywords that will get you noticed by Google and ranked higher on their search results page. For example, in your “Introduction,” you may want to refer to your band as being similar to X and Y, or specify your genre. In turn, your Google Plus profile may appear in the search results for those queries that people search, which in this case would be bands X & Y, or your genre.

(FYI) Hyperlinks and URLs are a NO NO: When writing your “introduction” don’t use hyperlinks and .com URLs. Google ignores them in their search engine results page. For example:

Do not use links in intro (click image to enlarge)

6. Hangout With Fans

Facebook has attempted video chat, but it’s limited to a face to face interaction. On the other hand, Google+ encourages video chat with up to ten individuals at a time. “Hangout” is an opportunity for you spend time on chatting via webcam with nine of your fans (Google Hangout supports only ten individuals at a time). A perk to this application is Google’s utilization of Google Translate to allow for multi-language communication, which means that you can use this functionality to diversify your fan base internationally.

(Strategy) Win the Chance to Hangout: Leverage “Hangout” by holding contests. For example, the top nine fans who publicize your upcoming gig win thirty minutes of your time to “Hangout” with you and ask you anything you’d like.

7. Be Mindful of Your Top 3 Links

You’re able to add links to your “About” page. But before you add links and forget about them, stack what you believe are your best three links that exemplify your work, whether it’s your Facebook page, blog, Bandcamp or Myspace page. When your Google Plus profile shows up in Google’s search engine results page, only the links that you place at the top will appear under the excerpted introduction.

Top 3 links Google (click image to enlarge)

(Strategy) How to Choose Your Top 3 Links: As a gesture of love for those fans, bloggers, or A&aR scouts that stumble on your Google Plus profile, make your top three links the following:

1. Your personality (Twitter, Facebook, etc.)
2. Your music (Bandcamp, Myspace, etc.)
3. Your website (Blog, your own domain, Facebook, etc.)

8. Build a Discussion around Your Photos

Create discussions around photos, and make sure to upload them often. Google+ has its own photo page that aggregates all photos from your circles onto what resembles Google Images. A clean and user friendly interface for Google Photos, which sets comments off in its own chat bar to the right, encourages frequent commenting.

(Strategy) Marketing Your Gig via Google Photos: If you have an upcoming gig, share it on Google Photos by uploading a poster of the event, and build a discussion around that image. Google Photos is grounds for bored fans browsing their circles’ uploaded photos, which can result in them stumbling onto your poster.

Google Plus discussion via poster

9. Cross posting

It’s a pain to copy and paste your Google Plus posts onto Twitter and Facebook. Luckily, the guys over at Survival Guide for Idiots have written a comprehensive article on cross posting from G+.

10. Vanity URLs

Google doesn’t directly support vanity URLs just yet, but of course someone out there had the free time to be creating an entire app around this. Vanity URL providers are third party providers and have not been endorsed by Google. Really, it’s just a matter of time before vanity URLs will be offered for Google+. But if you can’t wait, you can jump aboard the bandwagon and show off your shiny new Google vanity URL, in a few quick and easy steps using these providers:

• http://dirpl.us/
• http://gplusnick.com/
• http://gplus.to/
• http://plus.ly/
• http://topl.us/

I personally prefer gplus.to or plus.ly for simplicity’s sake. I find it easier to remember plus.ly/francisybea than gplusnick.com/francisybea.

If You’re Not Seeing the Value in Google Plus…

With the potential for this new social media platform, it’s just a matter of time before Google+ becomes an essential tool in your social media marketing box. If you’re wondering about the potential, hop over to Chris Brogan’s article, “The Google Plus 50,” which should open your eyes to Google+’s benefits. On a final note, don’t forget to add a Google+ button to your blog.

You can find me on Google+ via plus.ly/francisybea and gplus.to/francisybea. Feel free to add me, and I will return the favor. If you don’t have invites yet, send me your email address via DM to @musefy or shoot me an email at francis@musefy.com.

Francis Bea is a New Yorker turned Chicago co-founder of Musefy.com (in development) and writes Musefy’s blog Musebox.

Fan of the Day

Social media is not just about creating a profile. The returning readers are the most important individuals in your pocket of fans, the ones who are most likely to tell their friends or re-Tweet your messages. If you have raving fans who are following your every social media footprint among the statistics that you’re consistently making an effort to increase, individually recognizing them is a compliment by both peers with shared interests, and of course by the band itself.

Aziatix discovered the popularity of this social media strategy and consistently feature a fan as the “Aziaddict of the Day” on their Facebook page. You can add a twist to this further, but asking your fans to re-Tweet or repost a specified message, and the individual with the most influence would be featured as the “Fan of the Week.”

Aziatix Contest

CD Giveaways

Giving away a CD is a common strategy that musicians with leftover EPs or LPs can afford to utilize. This is a simple strategy that is just as easily implementable whether you’re asking for re-Tweets, reposts, or clever reposts in return.

Eric Alper pursued a rather successful contest asking for re-Tweets by Sunday midnight for a chance to win a 2-CD giveaway. But remember, you will likely have at least a handful of international fans. You should be willing to shell out the extra money for international shipping.

CD Giveaway by @ThatEricAlper

Finders Keepers

The future of social media lies in the integration of the virtual social network with that of those IRL (in real life). For example, start ups like Meetup.com and Skillshare.com enable individuals to organize meet ups wherein people from niche virtual communities can meet face to face, sans webcam. But in a more short term and exciting music related endeavor, Donald Glover (yes he stars in Community, but he’s a talented rapper) and crew hid #IAMDONALD stickers in the city of his next gig. The task was to find the sticker, take a photograph of it, and Tweet the photo to @DonaldGlover (using yfrog.com). In return, the first person to photograph the sticker would win passes to his show.

Donald Glover Contest

By publicizing this mini contest on Twitter, Glover was able to keep his fans at the edge of their seats as he Tweeted hints in real time, while responding to the Tweets of struggling contestants.

Donald Glover contest: Twitter screenshot

You help me, I give you freebies

Can’t afford a street team? Why not ask your fans to lend you a hand. Of course, if they’re your fans and willing to brave the streets in the name of your band, they wouldn’t want anything but band freebies, which I am sure you have plenty of lying around your apartment. Add to that, you’re getting your fans into the physical promotion process, which thereby will encourage them to spread the word among their peers.

She Wants Revenge realized this opportunity and consequently established a way to promote themselves through the help of others. What are the benefits? Your fans will know the best places around their own town to post flyers and stickers, that you likely will not be aware of.

She Wants Revenge Facebook marketing strategy

Ask me anything, and you shall get an answer

Curiosity is a characteristic that drives productivity. More importantly, in social media, you’re seen as an expert, whether you talk about creating music or you’re discussing your own life. Q&A sessions are an effective way to have your fans interact with you, but more importantly, it’s a strategy to give back to your fans. Questions that you may encounter could range from generic questions about your influences and interests to technical questions about your gear or instruments.

!llmind of Smokey Robotic uses Formspring instead of Twitter for his Q&A platform to answer his fan’s pressing questions.

Illimind using Formspring

Let us know in the comments below if you’ve used a social media strategy that you have found to be successful.

Francis Bea is a New Yorker turned Chicago co-founder of Musefy.com (in development) and writes Musefy’s blog Musebox.

As a blogger, I like to ‘discover’ and profile musicians on my blog, Musebox. Admittedly, a number of blogs out there will work through the aforementioned traditional methods of press releases and other blogged material, which not only makes for a world of regurgitated press and music, but sometimes you may be lucky enough to catch the eye of a blogger, or even an A&M, PR company, manager or publication, by way of a freak accident. It happens, and it happens thanks to an online presence.

Wall Comments

Image credit: tell-me-cute-things on Tumblr

I frequent bands’ Facebook pages and on occasion witness friendly banter between bands. On one occasion I noticed a witty comment from a band mate on a fellow band’s wall, which I was perusing to determine if the band was of any interest to me. The comment was distracting (in a good way) and I felt obliged to click on the commenter’s band link. Upon doing so, I eventually fell in love with their story and their music, which thereby lead to an interview request.

Moral of the story: If you’re secretly desiring to garner some visibility on another band’s wall, don’t blatantly and shamelessly ask someone else’s fans to ‘Like’ you: it’s pointless in an age when our eyes have “learned” to glaze over in an instant to spam. Instead, drum up a witty public conversation and, who knows, you and the band could become more than just Facebook friends.

Social Profiles

You can’t help but be proud of the least expected discoveries that come via perusing social media profiles on a non-music related site like Couchsurfing.com. A band member was a couch surfing enthusiast, who dotted his profile with links to his band’s social media pages. Out of curiosity, since this particular musician and I shared a common interest, I felt obliged to listen to his music. That was undoubtedly the best thirty minutes that I’ve wasted.

Moral of the story: Have a profile on a fishing or dating site? Represent your band’s brand. You never know who will be looking at you.

Mistaken Identity

I had a particular band in mind that I wanted to check out thanks to a suggestion. I typically take to Google in such instances, whereby I’ll be idling away on the band’s Myspace, Soundcloud or Bandcamp pages. Expecting the searched band’s Myspace page upon clicking one of the top links, I soon realized that the Brooklyn band that I had intended to listen to was in fact another band of the same name and from the UK and proceeded to contact the band.

Image credit: KatB Photography on Tumblr

Moral of the story: Your web presence and ranking are just more than just numbers and strategies taken for granted. Your ranking on search engines should be of concern to you, particularly if your band name is similar to or like that of another band. Look into SEO practices to increase your web presence and rankings.

Feed Me Information

Videos are link bait. In other words, videos are more likely to be shared as a ‘hot topic’ than a band’s Facebook page. As a blogger, I admittedly keep open Facebook and Twitter to their feed pages knowing that my peers of friends and followers are sharing the most interesting links from the web. What tends to capture my attention? Video and images. I’ve had multiple instances when I’ve found and interviewed musicians thanks to a friend’s shared videos, whether it be from a music video or an artistic video utilizing appropriate background music, aggregated onto my own news feed.

Moral of the story: Visual media will grab the audience’s attention. Share something worth sharing or worth talking about by working with an aspiring videographer or painter.

But, at the end of the day what it boils down to is good music.

At the end of the day there are hundreds of thousands of musicians out there vying for the few rungs available on the musical ladder and only so many eyes and minds available to sift through the daunting wealth of information. Unfortunately, there are innumerable underappreciated and underrepresented musicians out there, desperate for press but facing stiff obstacles. Creating a social media profile and neglecting it is not enough. Try one of the aforementioned strategies and maybe one day you will garner your lucky break. But remember, what ultimately converts an audience into fans is the quality of your music.

Francis Bea is a New Yorker turned Chicago co-founder of Musefy.com (in development) and writes Musefy’s blog Musebox.

Some of the things you can and should do include:

• Build a complete profile. Be as specific as you can. Remember that this is a business network, so keep it professional. Be sure to include your website(s) and email address (for your connections only).
• Connect to your Facebook and Twitter. Be very careful with this. Linking your profile to your Facebook and Twitter accounts so you share your status updates means that all of your posts, regardless of their content, will appear on your page and on the pages of your connections. Keep it professional.
• Click on the ‘Groups’ tab and join a maximum of 50 discussion groups. Search for music-related groups, as well as other groups that interest you. There are some music industry groups that have 20,000+ members in them. There are groups for just songwriters, recording artists, producers etc. Be sure to search for local music-related groups, such as ‘Nashville Music Industry’, ‘LA Music Industry’, ‘Atlanta Music Industry’ etc. Also join the Indie Connect group!


Image credit: Coletivo Mambembe on Flickr

• Introduce yourself in each group. People will begin connecting with you as well.
• Start a discussion, ask a question or post an article. Get people to interact with you. You’ll be amazed at the level of expertise that is just there to help people.
• Connect with everyone on your mailing list (there’s a built-in tool for this). You want to make as many connections as possible. The reason you want to do this is that LinkedIn will only let you invite someone as a connection or send someone a message if:

1. You already know them;
2. You work or have worked with them;
3. You have done business together;
4. You are in a LinkedIn group with them (this is why you join a lot of groups and you pick ones with a lot of members);
5. You have their personal email address.

• Connect with me – http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/vinnyribas (Editor’s note: consider me as well!).
• Use the search feature to find music connections in your geographic area, or in the areas you are interested in. You can look people up by company, location, occupation and more. This is how you can find nightclub owners,managers,booking agents,other artists, songwriters, producers and more. Build relationships. Do not spam anyone. If you’re connecting with someone, have a reason for it.
• Connect with business professionals from all aspects of the music business worldwide. Again, build relationships.
• Get introduced to the people you want to meet. On the right side of each person’s profile page is a map of how many degrees separate you and that person. If you share a connection or are separated by 3 degrees or less, you can request an introduction. Be sure that you include a personal message to person you want to meet as to why you want to get to know them.
• Participate in the group discussions. This makes you someone who people want to get to know.
• Check out the job postings in the groups if that is what you are looking for. There are a lot of music industry jobs posted here!
• Follow companies that are important to you. Many companies post advice, news, promotions etc. Use the news to connect with people (e.g. congratulate someone on a promotion). This is also a great way to keep up to date on industry news.
• Start your own group(s). This can be for your fans, or a general industry group. The advantage to this is that you then have direct access to everyone who joins.
• Share interesting articles, web pages, blogs, news etc. that you come across elsewhere. Be sure that they are appropriate for the group you are posting in. Websites with ‘Share’ buttons often have a LinkedIn button. So, if you like an article in Indie Connect Magazine, please share it with your network!
• ‘Recommend’ people you know. You can give testimonials or recommendations to others. This helps them tremendously. Be honest and sincere. Don’t overdo it. You can also ask for recommendations from people you know.

Used properly, LinkedIn is potentially the most powerful tool in your business toolkit. Use it wisely and you can open almost any door that you want to all around the world!

© 2011 Vinny Ribas. Read the full article at IndieConnectMagazine.