How Do I Promote My Indie Music?

zZounds offers the widest selection of name-brand insruments at guaranteed lowest prices. You can purchase over 125,000 different products from their website 24 hours a day. Check it out!

Exciting Features!
The VOX Heritage Collection

The amps used by The Beatles!!

Your search for the Holy Grail of VOX tone ends here. To commemorate the 50th Anniversary of VOX guitar amplifiers, Vox introduces the latest in the new Heritage Collection range of hand-wired amplifiers - the AC30H2. Rather than just a typical reissue where a vintage amp is dusted off and copied, this amplifier, like the others in the Heritage Collection, transports you through the golden age of VOX tone, combining the prized EF86 preamp channel of 1958 with the 1963 Top Boost channel all in one amplifier. Add in some modern tone shaping control enhancements and the result is perhaps the finest VOX amplifier in the company's 50 year history.

--> It's free. Always.

--> And you can use it to promote yourself, your music, your band, or whatever else you wish to promote.

--> You can make an interactive, Web 2.0 webpage in about 10 minutes (these are called "lenses")

--> The philosophy behind the site is collaborative.

Now although it's free, and relatively easy to get started, it's great to have help in making sense of everything you can do with the site.

I've been learning how to use this site a lot faster with the help of Bob The Teacher. You can find Bob here: SquidooSecrets

Bob really knows what he's talking about.

He's had a lens hit #1 on the site, was picked for Lens of the day a couple of times, and was even highlighted in the New York Times for his expertise in a really weird topic.

With Bob's help, I'm learning how to take this free service and use it for affiliate marketing, list building, expertise branding, and promoting my business.

Would that help you out, too?

You can check out SquidooSecrets first for free -- and see if it's the kind of thing you'd like to pursue.

Download a 1-hour interview of Bob, hosted by internet marketing expert Paulie Sabol. (You won't believe how much content is on this one interview alone!) Then, after you've listened to it and built your first lens, let me know about it!

This is really great stuff. Grab your membership now and unleash the power of Web 2.0. You'll be amazed at how quickly you can learn the advanced strategies of this site with Bob's help.

SquidooSecrets

The Indie Bible lists THOUSANDS of places where you can get your music REVIEWED and your songs PLAYED on the radio. ALL genres of music are covered!

The contacts listed are music reviewers and radio personalities from around the world that will listen to your music, and if they like it, will present it to their readers and listeners. The Indie Bible shows you where to promote your music, regardless of your musical style, and will save you MONTHS of valuable time!

The Indie Bible is over 330 pages and contains:

4000 publications from around the world that will REVIEW your CD!
3200 radio stations from around the world that will PLAY your songs!
500 vendors and services that will help you to SELL your music!
200 sites where you can UPLOAD your band's music files!
500 useful resources to help PROMOTE your band!
Over 50 articles that will help your career to MOVE forward rapidly! Authors include Tim Sweeney, Daylle Deanna Schwartz, Jeri Goldstein, Brian Austin Whitney, Derek Sivers, Diane Rapaport, Janet Fisher, Jodi Krangle, Lord Litter and many more!

This is a great article to get things rolling. I did not write it, Bob Baker did. So be sure to visit his website (link at end of article). It's well worth it.

Attracting more fans. Admit it, that's what music marketing is all about - getting more people to come to your shows and buy your CDs. And hopefully, getting a lot more people to do those
things.

Why else do you work so hard to travel and play as many places as you can? For what other reason do you meticulously write and record songs? I don't
believe the reason is so you can practice and keep up your chops in obscurity. It's not because you want to impress influential managers or A&R people. You work hard because you know you have something of value to offer ... and you want to reach as many people as possible with your music.

Marketing is the thing that helps you reach that goal. But marketing is also a subject that confuses a lot of musicians. Songwriters and band members the
world over know they need to promote themselves. But many don't know where to start, much less know how to continue effectively.

Does this describe you? Do you ever feel like you're spinning your wheels, not sure exactly what you should be doing next to market yourself? If so, this would be a good time to cover some basic marketing concepts for independent musicians.

The VFW Hall Principle

Let's say you went to an average U.S. city (such as Kansas City or Denver) and you rounded up 1,000 people and gathered them in a giant VFW hall. These
1,000 folks would be randomly chosen and made up of people from all ages, genders and backgrounds. Next, you'd distribute information about your act to
these people and play tracks from your new CD for them.

After this direct exposure, what are the chances that one person out of those thousand would be attracted to your music and identity enough to buy your CD or come to your next show? Most musicians, regardless of what style they play, should feel pretty confident about being able to win over at least one new fan from this group of 1,000. That's a
one-tenth of one percent conversion rate.

Now let's multiply that formula by the entire U.S. population of 285 million people. One-tenth of one percent would be 285,000 people. Mind-boggling, isn't it? That would be enough fans to make
you a bonafide star.

Next, switch gears and consider how major labels market themselves. They select and promote acts that they feel have the potential to appeal to 10 or
more of those same 1,000 people. Then the labels spend millions of dollars in what I call shotgun advertising. They spray their marketing message over a targeted chunk of the population (which
often amounts to many millions of people), knowing well that only a small percentage will be interested enough to respond and become fans. Sometimes, this widespread tactic works well enough
to sell lots of CDs and concert tickets - but it's very expensive.

As an independent artist, you can't afford that type of marketing campaign. But you know those potential fans are out there, and you know that you can be successful by connecting with far fewer people than a major label requires. It's just that your ideal fans haven't found out about you yet - and you're not quite sure how to find them.

What's a frustrated musician to do?

The answer: You must find creative, low-cost ways to go directly to those one-in-a-thousand fans. Don't waste your time and money promoting yourself
to people who will most likely never embrace your music.

Here are four steps to take to reach new
fans:

1. Define Your Distinct Musical Identity

You must have a firm grasp on what your music is about. And you must be able to define it clearly and quickly. What are your strongest musical traits?
What sets you apart from other acts? What attitude or social statement do you make? Being a generic rock, pop or hip-hop act won't cut it. Dig deeper and discover your unique identity. When you
do finally reach some of those rare potential fans, don't lose them by not being clear about who you are.

2. Describe Your Ideal Fan

Once you have a handle on who you are musically, it's time to paint a clear picture of your ideal fan. Can you articulate how your fans dress, where they work, what TV shows they watch, what they
do for fun and who their favorite cultural heroes are? Observe the types of people who come to see you perform and note what they have in common? Knowing precisely who your fans are will dictate
what avenues you use to reach them and how you communicate your message once you do reach them.

3. List Ways to Get Access to Your Fans

Once you know exactly what type of music fan you're going after, start making a list of the various resources these specific people are attracted to. What magazines and newspapers do they read? Where do they hang out? What radio stations do they listen to? What retail outlets do they frequent? What web sites do they surf to? What e-mail
newsletters do they subscribe to? For example, if your fans are mostly Harley riders, go to a search engine like Google and start entering keywords related to motorcycles. Evaluate the search results
and compile a list of the many good sources you uncover.

4. Promote Your Music Through Targeted Channels

Armed with this targeted list of contacts, get busy! Send e-mail press releases to niche media outlets. Contact the webmasters and editors of appropriate publications. Post messages in specialized forums. Visit and interact via the web sites of similar-sounding bands. Contact organizations and charities related to your musical niche. In short, go to where your ideal fans are. And market yourself through these outlets relentlessly. Why waste time and money trying to promote to everyone ... when you can save money and be far more effective by going directly to those
valuable one-in-a-thousand fans?

Copyright 2003 by Bob Baker * TheBuzzFactor.com

This is Really Cool!

A brand NEW groundbreaking live music venue directory for any musician that plays live in the US or Canada!

What is it?

The Indie Venue Bible is a revolutionary live music venue directory that was created with the needs of the touring/live performing artist in mind. It lists over 26,000 venues and 2000 booking agents in the US and Canada.

You'll find thousands of coffee shops, restaurants, house concerts, theaters, clubs, halls, churches and book stores - any place you can land a gig!

And this is incredible - they went a step further and painstakingly researched which genres of music each of these venues feature. Then they "tagged" each listing with color-coded genre tags that apply to that venue. You can scroll through and easily spot your music style by color.

The same minds that put this great idea together also publish The Indie Bible that lists THOUSANDS of places where you can get your music REVIEWED and your songs PLAYED on the radio.

CHECK THEM OUT!!