Not to be harsh but, really, this will not net you results. What will? Build real relationships with other musicians you admire. Play gigs with them if your compatible, comparable and on or near the same level in your careers. Or, share ideas. At the very least, get to know them first. Other musicians don't exist to promote you. Of course, we all appreciate it if you are a musician who likes our music and shares it with your fans. I share the music of musicians I like with my fans because I like them and not because I owe them one for liking my page. That's not what a fan is. And, trust me, you don't want fans who are only "fanning" you out of obligation. You want fans who truly admire your work. 

So, go ahead. Introduce yourself. Even invite musicians to listen to your work or tell them about your projects. That's awesome. But, the above...is just silly. 

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If you recently received a DM message from a record label A&R person asking you to submit your tracks for sync licensing via MCMA.com, you guessed it, scam. 

This is the message I received on Twitter:

Thx #FF! If you're interested in sending me your music or beats for placement consideration please send it through MCMA .com

It came from this account:

So, I checked into it. Signed up on the little free account thing. It looked harmless. I even uploaded a song. (Yeah, I know...stupid. But, the song is available all over the internet so I figured I wasn't risking a whole lot...hopefully). 

For a scam, they didn't really make it easy. I mean, the site was a b*tch to use. Very tempermental. Alarm bells started going off when I couldn't get a consistent response from links on the pages. Then, hunting for what it was really going to cost me made me realize I'd almost been had. First the site said, "free trial", then it said "8/ per month paid annually" then, it said "29.99/month" so you could contact the person who supposedly contacted you. What? 

I shudder to think, had they made it easier, they would already have my money.

So, back to that. 

A simple search on Twitter brought me to the real Teresa Whites:

Who, by the way, had been graciously tweeting to followers about the scam. No telling how many A&R reps they are misrepresenting. And, who knows how long it will be before this site gets shut down. Please, do a good deed and RT this blog or just let other musicians know not to fall for it. 

And, follow Teresa Whites. She's good people. :)

Laura Marie

"Making stupid mistakes so you don't have to"

HILARIOUS UPDATE:

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Gotta love it. Just got a spam message from a band. The subject line read: THIS IS NOT SPAM. The content: Check out my this that and the other thing. 

No. 

No, no, no, no, no.

I wish I could pop your nose with a newspaper. 

But, in case no one has explained it to you before, here it is.

The definition of SPAM as it applies to email/internet correspondence:

Any direct and unsolicited self promotive communication.

This includes, but is not limited to, sending emails to people who have not personally opted in or signed up on your email list or inquired about your services (exceptions would be close friends and family who "know you like that") and posting promotion without permission on someone's website, message board, fan page, wall, comment box, etc. 

Again, I'm not saying "Don't promote yourself". We have to and we can't all afford to buy ad space. I'm just saying, connect with people first. If you're desperate, even go so far as to ask people to help promote you. But, if you are going to spam people, know this, you will be shunned. 

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So, that's what they mean by "token opportunity" ...

Okay, so, does Sonicbids even bother to screen opportunities anymore? I just got an "opportunity" to pay to play in my inbox. One word: AFTON. If you are a musician who has spent any time promoting yourself via social networks, the name might be familiar. .

Out of morbid curiosity and to confirm my suspicions, I've actually talked to one of their reps on the phone. They want to "book you", have you sell tickets at $10 a pop, (you have to prebuy the tickets to guarantee at least 10 if I remember correctly) but, they can't tell you who else you will be playing with or in what order you'll be playing. Um, so, tell your fans to pay $10 bucks to see you who knows when with who knows who. And, you get the grand prize of being able to get a few bucks per ticket sale. Yeah...sure. MEH! 

There's plenty wrong with this deal and unsuspecting indies can certainly get hosed. Another has detailed the problem and I'll direct you to them if you want to read more. I'll just say, stay away from pay to play opportunities. You're better than that. And, if you aren't, you should be trying harder.

http://neverpaytoplay.com/Afton/&NP2Pafton.htm

Here is another GREAT blog if you want to avoid scams in addition to some great ideas on how to survive the music world. Rose Cora Perry doesn't hold back. She's a great one to follow: 

http://soyouwannabearockstar.blogspot.com/

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One sheet:

Thanks to Madalyn Sklar for posting this link on my Facebook page: http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/07/onesheet-is-about-me-for-bands/

Madalyn never fails to alert me to great stuff on the web for bands.  This time it's Onesheet. Founder of ArtistData, Brenden Mulligan (@bmull) , has created an easy way to compile all the info about your band into a beautifully simple, virtual onesheet. The beauty of it: you hardly have to do a thing.

It's like this:

1) Upload a background image

2) Connect your social networks by filling in the blank URLs

3) Save

Then:

You can customize color and position if you want to but, otherwise, you're done. It's all there! You don't have to update. It'll update itself. Sweet! Super easy. 

You know how everyone keeps saying that you need to maintain your Myspace profile because programmers and booking agents want a uniform place to find all your info? Yeah....beat this!

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My friend, producer and studio owner Mack Damon (Hollywood Studios), once said something to me that blew my mind. I'm going to paraphrase because the conversation took place a long time ago. But, it went something like this: There's three things you want anything to be: fast, inexpensive and awesome. Pick two. :)

Think about it. You can make something awesome and inexpensive but, chances are it's going to take you a while. You can have something fast and inexpensive but, I'm pretty sure it won't be that awesome. And you can have something fast and awesome but it's gonna cost you. I've found this to be true where almost anything is concerned. So, when it came to building my website, I knew I had to give this some thought. 

There's no doubt that I wanted an awesome website. That's one. Resources that I could allocate for it's construction were limited so, it had to be inexpensive. That's two. So, I was prepared for the fact that it was going to take a while. I either had to wait until I raised more money to hire someone or get to work researching and slowly constructing the website of my dreams. 

Lucky for me, this is where label owner Joe O'Brien (RatPakRecords.com) came in. He said, "Why don't you try Bandzoogle?" 

Here's a phrase I rarely use: O M G!

Inexpensive? Why, yes. I compared to other website building platforms for musicians and it's all that and the bag of gluten-free chips. We're talking features that include email, stats, fan clubs...plenty of space for music, you can run your own store. It has just about everything. Features: http://bandzoogle.com/features.cfm

Fast? Um...the easiest tools ever mean you can put up a website in no time. Try it. For FREE! Put something basic up and you can expand it later. 

Awesome? See what you think of my site. I did this in less than a week's time. They have some beautiful templates but I wanted a custom design. So, with a set of professional pictures by my friend and photographer Kimberly Scott and a photo editor for cutting pics to fit my design and creating graphics (I use Photoshop), here she is:  www.lauramariemusic.com

Well, the Reverbnation site builder is powered by Bandzoogle and I made the mistake of thinking both services would be identical.  They aren't. If you're in love with their store feature, you have to sign up directly through Bandzoogle to get it. The site builder through Reverbnation only allows you to use RN's store widget as your store. On the plus side, if the RN widgets will do for you, going through them will be a snap. 

A complaint I heard from another user was that they wished they could set metatags for individual pages to better optimize the site for search engines. I have to agree with that one. That would be pretty slick. 

So, here you go. They give you 30 days to try it out which, trust me, is plenty of time to see how easy it is. Click the button and 
you get 60 days instead of 30 by using the referral code: m6bb6f  

And, yes, now that I'm a customer, I also get a discount for referring you. But, spend some time using it and you'll see why I am referring every indie musician who wants a website upgrade to this site. 

If you can't afford your own web designer, Bandszoogle looks like the best bet to me.

Here are my favorite things about using it:

1) Easy to integrate with my social networking sites and blogs

2) I LOVE the built in store feature. 

3) I can go totally custom or I can use their templates and choose from a number of fonts. 

4) Customer service is fantastic! They are on it!

Some custom things I added:

1) A share button: http://www.addtoany.com

2) HTML code to feature both my blog feeds with the help of https://feedburner.google.com/

3) An ArtistData calendar 

4) An additional ReverbNation music player for the music page

5) Graphics and spacers (for my custom look) 

All other features were provided by Bandzoogle. Woo-hoo!

If you need help adding any of the custom features I added, let me know. I'll be happy to post a tutorial.

Let me know what you think?  - LM

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A word to bands: avoid adding your Facebook friends to groups without their permission or risk annoying them permanently. 

I simply don't understand it. They give people the option of creating groups and automatically adding their friends to these groups AND the default setting for is for friends to receive email on all postings to the group. NO!!!!

Now, you can go to "notifications" under your account settings and uncheck the box next to "adds you to a group". BUT, then you won't know when people add you to a group and that could be annoying down the road when you start receiving all the posts to the group or chat messages from the entire group. This has happened to me and it took me several minutes to figure out how to unsubscribe from the chat. 

Me: UNSUBSCRIBE!!!

Chat: DING! hey what's up DING! nothing much, how you doin' DING! What's going on this weekend DING! Love the new pics on the group page. <3 <3 <3 DING! DING!

Me: UNSUBSCRIBE!!!!

Here is how to UNSUBSCRIBE FROM GROUP CHATS: 

1) Go to the group page

2) Hit "edit settings" at the top of the page

3) Pick and choose what you want from here

You can also unsubscribe from the group by hitting the "leave group" link on the right hand column. Oh, and you see that "add friends to group" link there too? Leave it alone unless you know, without a shadow of a doubt, that your friends don't mind being a part of whatever group you are creating. I can say that there are only five groups I've been okay with people adding me to. Two were created by very close personal friends. Two are for organizations I fully support and the last was created by someone who asked my permission before adding me. 

If you have a different opinion of groups, please share it with me. I am clearly speaking from my own perspective here. What do you think of groups and/or people adding you to them? 

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Ok, so, in short:

Tunecore has upped their prices per album per year to $49. The reason? They say it will be better than paying for extras a la carte and they cite these 34 improvements. What I'd like to know is if it's worth it to you. You'll have to check out the list of improvements which include things like Apple Artist Ping pages, Tunecore charts and promotion services. 

I would also like to hear what you think of the comments left by other artists. There are several in support of a price increase. Or, maybe they are just grateful for the improvements. I don't know. But, what I do know is that CDBaby responded by offering 50% for musicians transferring from Tunecore to CDBaby: http://cdbabylovesyoumore.com/  

(Original story here on Digital Music News)

Yes, CDbaby is all about the little guy. It reminds me of how Lefsetz talks about record labels. Make a little bit off of a lot of people. I think it applies to most businesses in the internet era and, from the indie music perspective (or, at least the indies I'm hearing from), it seems like Tunecore is headed in the wrong direction. 

To be fair, it sounds like they spent some real money on these improvements hoping to their customers would benefit. Still, what did they think would happen? Surprising your customers with 150% cost increase? Ouch. 

 - LM

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This  is a quickie blog. I just want to sing the praises of one of the best indie music businesses out there. CDBABY!!!

Yes, with services like Bandcamp you can sell your CDs directly to your fans and that is wonderful. But, it also helps to have your stuff on the major download sites like iTunes because a lot of people just prefer buying from a big name. If you are an indie artist, you have to go through a music aggregator to get on iTunes and that's where CDbaby and services like Tunecore come in. Great for us! But, here's the problem. What if you or your band have the same name as another artist or band? Confusion in the store! (see pic below) The last thing you want to happen is to have all your hard advertising work go to waste when customers seek you out only to download someone else's music. It happens! 

I have this issue.

Now, I actually went to the trouble to have my name legally trademarked so, technically, I could start proceedings against the other artist to keep them from both selling CDs and performing under the name "Laura Marie". But that seems like a bit much, right? I don't really want it to come to that. But, as it turns out, for this issue, that won't be necessary. Yay! for both of us. 

Because my music is distributed to iTunes through CDBaby, all I had to do was call them up (just login to your account and hit "contact"). CDBaby customer service, as always, was super helpful and I was told that all they had to do was submit a ticket to have my works separated from the other Laura Marie in the iTunes store. For now, that's all I really wanted. 

They say I should be hearing from Apple within the week. I'll let you know how it goes. Just know that if you have the same problem, you have to contact the content provider that submitted your music to iTunes. Here is a list of all those approved by Apple for indie artists: MUSIC AGGREGATORS. They'll have to log in to your Apple artist account on your behalf and submit a ticket. If you are with CDBaby, just call them up and ask for Patrick. :)

Pass it on! This info could really help some artists set themselves apart. 

Sweet! - Laura Marie

P.S. I have a NEW WEBSITE and it's awesome. Check it out and let me know what you think. I'll be blogging about how easy it was to put together very soon...

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I love having other techie-nerds as friends... especially, when I don't have the time to navigate the ins and outs of the every-changing social networking system. After all, just when you have it all figured out, something will be updated, redesigned, reconfigured or done away with. All it takes is one trip out of town or a week with 4 or 5 gigs in a row and I'm lost. So, TGFM! Thank goodness for Madalyn!

If you don't already follow Madalyn Sklar, founder of the GoGirls organization (a worldwide network of female musicians) and both  SN4M.com (Social Networks 4 Musicians) and socialnetworksforbiz.com, what are you waiting for? If you go to any of the major music conferences, you may have already seen her on a panel giving out a wealth of info on how to promote your music online. She knows all the social networking tips and tricks and she stays on top up the trends. I'm telling you from experience, you can't have a conversation with her without learning something.

Madalyn recently invited me to view an e-class she gave on how to work with the new Facebook page design. I had already been working with it and thought I knew everything I needed to know. Wrong. Madalyn has adopted the motto "work smarter not harder" and, she helps you do just that. The following video gives us a sneak peek and explains some of the FB page changes and how to use them to our advantage. The e-class, which consists of 3 videos, is available here and includes a Q&A segment with her class attendees: http://www.socialnetworksforbiz.com/biz/video0311.htm

Madalyn is also available here:

 - Laura Marie

Next up: I build my new website using Bandzoogle.com. Let's see what happens...

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As mentioned in the previous blog "For the Indie Do-It-Yourself-er", ladies and gentlebands, SQUARE!

Square is a FREE app with a FREE card reader that allows you to accept credit card payments from your Apple IOS or Google Android device. Oh, yeah it does. 

I downloaded this app when I first read about it a few months back but, I never activated it because I was slightly suspicious of it. It wasn't until  Claude "Butch" Morgan stopped by my table at one of his events and said "Laura, you need to get one of these." that I decided to take a closer look. This thing is awesome. No charge for the app. No cost to sign up. No charge for the card reader. No recurring charges. You only pay a fee per transaction. If you have the card in hand and can swipe it it's 2.75% +15 cents. If you have to enter the credit card number in manually, it's 3.5% +15 cents. You can then text or email your customer their receipt right then and there. If you are worried about security, read this. 

Why accept credit cards at your shows? You will absolutely increase merch sales if you do. A lot of people don't like to carry a lot of cash when they go out and, when they have it, they are spending it on food and drink. It's all about making it "stupid easy" for the customer to buy. This'll do it for you. Sign up is really easy. All you have to do is give the pertinent info and verify your bank information and the money gets deposited into your account in a flash. 

Now all you have to do is be sure your device is charged before the show. :)

 -Laura Marie

P.S. Even Bob Lefsetz is blogging about it. If you don't know who Bob Lefsetz is, subscribe to his blog to get a brutally honest take on the music industry. Sometimes the truth hurts but it can also set you free. So, fly my little broken birdies, FLY!

P.S.S Nerd Alert is a dot com!!!! As in: nerdalert4musicians.com and, follow the blog on Twitter: twitter.com/nerdalert4   

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I got curious and returned the call from San Rafael, CA. The caller said she was from ArtistPR.com. Here is the skinny:

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I've drawn a line...

On one side, people who agree that mass emailing people on Myspace is getting pretty pointless (and annoying). On the other side, people who get all offended that we think it's annoying. 

But, it's not about who is right and who is wrong. It's about what's effective. And, I get it. I mean, if this kind of mass emailing is working for you and it's translating into tons of people at your shows and sales galore, then, well...I stand corrected. I know that Myspace has been a very effective tool for many musicians. It's helped me too. And, it's still important to some radio promoters who say they prefer to listen to bands via Myspace because they always know exactly where to find the music. I just wonder how often they read your emails when they are addressed "Dear, fan". 

To be fair, it's not Myspace's fault that I have to wade through pages of mass emails from bands to get to one person who is actually trying to reach me personally. It's just that there is no way for me to make a connection this way. So, I'll put my energy elsewhere and into places where I can better connect with people. 

But, maybe your goal or experience is different. Maybe you'd like to get as high a number of "followers" as you possibly can. Perhaps you've heard of all the people who got picked up by record labels and handed all their dreams simply because they had huge numbers. Name them. And, are you sure? I'm willing to bet that most of them did more work for longer than you think they did before they hit it big. Sure, there might be a handful who sprang to fame "overnight" but, of all the millions of musicians out there, do you really want to go with a strategy that equates to getting struck by a bolt of lightning. Believe me, plenty of people want to sell you on the idea that big numbers are your goal. (They are usually the ones selling you a program on how to boost your numbers). I guess I just want to sell you on the idea that good music is your goal. And, I don't want anyone to lead you astray. 

Think about all the hugely successful musicians who made it because they were simply awesome and don't stress. Be awesome. The numbers may come slowly at first but, I believe, if you are consistently putting out great music and genuinely connecting with fans, the numbers will follow. Keep the momentum going and they'll eventually snowball. Have a strong online presence but don't put your cart before your horse. 

So, anyway, I sent the blog out in a mass email to Myspace. Subject line: Can we all agree this is stupid?

Hypocritical? Absolutely. But, I couldn't resist. Since I don't regularly send out mass emails on Myspace about my music, I thought I'd give it a try with my blog and see how many people agreed with me or even bothered to read it. I mean, maybe I was totally off base and missing a gold mine of dedicated followers! I needed to find out. The results were completely mixed. I was actually thinking that everyone that is still active on Myspace would disagree. That was not the case. It was a mixed bag. Several musicians agreed. A couple called me out on the irony of using a mass email to point out the ridiculousness of a mass email. A few were really upset with me and, to my delight, some did just what they always do. Here you go:

See the full gallery on Posterous

And, this says so very, very much:

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The ridiculousness of adding a bunch of people on Myspace and then treating them like your loyal fans is what has made Myspace a joke. Of all the emails you received from bands on Myspace, how many of them are from bands or musicians that you actually know and like? Chances are, if you're a band, you're probably treating all of them like your loyal fans too. If I didn't know better, I know I would. Why? Because I don't add people on Myspace. Haven't in a long time. After I reached so many 1000 friends, Myspace automatically removed my right to approve friend requests and just adds them to my list. The only exception, I believe, is for those who are running paid 'add' campaigns. I have to manually approve those and, for the most part, I don't. Initially, I did this so that I could safely assume that people adding me were fans. But, I can't assume that at all. They add me and, in the backasswardsness of it all, I'm considered their  fan. 

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The following are helpful tools I presented to Elite members of the GoGirls in one of our "secret" meetings at Folk Alliance in Memphis this year. This is a list. It is only a list. If you need further help or have questions about any of these, please post in the comments below. I'll share my experience as best I can.

These are just some great places to start if you don't have a team around you and are working on a limited budget. And, yes, you should have your own ".com". A Facebook fan page will not suffice. And, if you are a band and have a Facebook profile and are using it as a fan page...stop it. Now. Please. 

Helpful Tools for Indie Artist

Easy and affordable DIY websites: Hostbaby.com and Bandzoogle.com

Both sites now have customizable templates that are affordable and allow you to update your pages and sell your music with very little hassle.

Most affordable iPhone app (and Droid to come…): getsoundaround.com

Now owned and also available through Reverbnation.com. Price cannot be beat!

Update all your social networks at once: Hootsuite and Ping 

Both of these services allow you to update your social networking sites and FACEBOOK FAN PAGES from your computer and both have iPhone apps for your convenience.

Landing pages for your Facebook fan page: Rootmusic.com and FanBridge.com 

Social Networks 4 Musicians has a sweet deal for custom pages but, if you have some DIY skills check out Rootmusic. And, if you are already using FanBridge, they've made it easy for you. 

DIY CD Sales: Bandcamp.com, Tunecore.com and CDBaby.com 

There are benefits to each. If you haven’t checked them out, do it now.

Credit Card sales at your shows: CdBaby.com and Square iPhone app 

Securely swipe credit cards on your iPhone and get direct deposits or get the affordable swiper through your CDBaby.com account.

Get your music on the radio: Airplaydirect.com

Get professional and beautiful download cards: Dropcards.com

Get royalties: Soundexchange.com (lengthy application but, do it. If your music is streaming anywhere online, you could have money waiting for you)

Get songs licensed: Pumpaudio.com (They are pretty selective about the music they choose so, be prepared with professional quality recordings of songs as well as instrumental versions. Some people hate the terms so be sure to read them over carefully. All I know is that I’ve received some pretty nice checks without having to shop my songs on my own.)

 J

  -Laura Marie

Up Next:

Bands: Social Networking No-No's #2

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Don't get me wrong. I still have issues with Sonicbids. The biggest one being that (yes, to belabor the point) THEY BLOODY WELL OWN ARTISTDATA AND THEY STILL WON'T IMPORT GIG DATES TO THEIR SITE! Yeah....ridiculous. 

But, that's not what I'm on about today. I'm on about the new "tokens". If you are a Sonicbids member you get tokens to submit to a certain number of opportunities for no added fee (apart from your membership) as spelled out in a blog by founder and CEO Panos Panay. Now, here's something positive that Sonicbids is doing for artists. Whether or not it keeps members from flocking to other services that don't charge membership fees to submit to opportunities remains to be seen. But, I do think its smart that they limited the amount of tokens per artist so that the people offering opportunities do not get inundated with submissions from some who shouldn't be submitting to the opportunity in the first place. As a performer, you have to be selective about how you use the tokens. And, if you don't use them, you lose them.

Now, there's still the matter of whether opportunities are legit... 

I mean, I've submitted to some only to find out that event organizers do not have their act together. My advice is to thoroughly research the opportunity before you submit. Checking the ratings and comments on Sonicbids is not enough because, I believe, promoters are not exactly background checked. Though, I could be wrong about that. In any case, go to the organizers website, google the event or opportunity and, if you don't belong to an online music community, seek one out so that you can ask questions of fellow members. We need to help each other out here. Here are some of the organizations I belong to. Yes, it means I have a lot of email but, it also means I have someone to turn to for answers which saves me time, money and grief. 

Folk Alliance

Americana Music Association

CDBaby.org

Grammy365 (in my opinion, not the easiest site to navigate for info)

And for the ladies:

GoGirlsMusic.com (only one member of your group needs to be female for membership but anyone can sign up for the newsletter)

Indiegrrl

There are more out there. Post links in the comments if you belong to a helpful forum. 

 - Laura Marie

Next up:

Helpful Tools for Indie Artists

The info I gave to Elite members of the GoGirls at Folk Alliance International 2011. 

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It's not just you. The app is exhibiting all sorts of random issues. As of today (though, for the last couple of days), I can't upload pics from my app or check email. Ah well, this too shall pass.

Meanwhile, happy Valentine's day or not. Either way: be love.

I'm on the road to Memphis to attend International Folk Alliance and we will be broadcasting live from the GoGirls room starting Wednesday. Live webcasts are a great tool for indie musicians. I'll let you know how it works or you can check it out here:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/gogirlsmusic

And the schedule:

http://www.gogirlsmusic.com/fa11/

All my best,

Laura Marie
(sent via mobile)

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Right now, they just let it loose..you can upgrade your FB page. Features include:

• linking your Facebook page to your Twitter account directly (only FB to Twitter and not Twitter to FB)
• latest pictures you've tagged your fan page in at the top (only pics you've tagged and not ones your fans have tagged - you're still in control here) 
• you can use the page as YOU. Meaning, you can interact from your personal profile and GET THIS when you do, you will see all the notifications for updates, likes, comments etc. FINALLY...some feedback from the page. AND, you no longer have to compulsively check your page to see if people have posted anything or responded to your posts. You can set notificiations.  Woo-hoo!
• When you use it as YOU, you can also set a filter on your wall for postings from fans. 

Oh, this is nice, very nice. Can't wait to see how it develops. Do it now! Or, go to your fan page and take the tour to see how it works then do it. Notice some of the differences here (locations of pics, recommended pages, navigation):

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But seriously, if you haven't heard, Sonicbids is catching up to what's cool and hip these days so, I don't want to give them too much crap about it. They've done an awesome thing here allowing their users to sync their Sonicbids account with Facebook and allowing calendar dates and status messages to be synced with Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and Pure Volume. That is, if you are one of the artists that still inputs all your data into Sonicbids in the first place. Which leads me to the biggest WTH? ever: They still don't import your dates from ArtistData even though THEY OWN ARTISTDATA!!! AAAARG! (Ok, I'm done) And, it seems that the "calendar updates" only apply to Pure Volume and the rest (FB, Myspace, Twitter) get status updates whenever you post a show with day-of-show postings to Twitter only. All of these things you've likely set up through other avenues already (ArtistData and Reverbnation) so, the best thing I can say about this is that it's a huge leap forward for those artists who, for some reason, have not tried any other service but Sonicbids. 

Now, about the Sonicbids/Facebook artist profile page. A few things can be confusing so, let me give you a heads up:

1) If you are going to use this feature, be sure you've logged into your Sonicbids account and under "content" unmarked the box that would allow people to download your audio files for free. Unless, you want to give your music away for free. Then, let 'er rip!

and

2) There seem to be two customization pages. One is on Sonicbids and is self explanatory. Nothing complicated or fancy here. It is what it is and it's easy enough to use. The second is when you go to the application on your Facebook edit page and sync it up. I only got there once and it asked me to upload a profile photo (as if it was re-creating my fan page from scratch) which, once uploaded, never changed anything. Meaning, I uploaded a new profile pic for nothing because there is no existing page that has it. It also invited me to share the page, invite friends, etc. etc. Once I navigated away from the page, I never found it again. Weird.

Bells and whistles:

You've got a custom banner, you can lock some content so that only people who like your page can see it (Note: this only locks them out of the Sonicbids tab, so, if you have your music, videos and pics on another tab, it doesn't do much for you.), you have pics, videos, calendar (if you have that in the Sonicbids database) and a twitter stream. Plus, share and follow links. Comments are empty until someone comments directly on the Sonicbids/Facebook tab. Not bad. Not bad at all. Though, I can't see a lot of people switching to this if they already make use of other apps unless they really, really want the "lock out until liked" feature. You can actually code that yourself with custom pages but most people don't want to go to the trouble. 

Here is what it looked like when I used it: 

See it at work here!

So, again, if you are a faithful and exclusive Sonicbids user, this is good news for you. If you want an easy way to "lock until like" your FB content, this is an option.

You be the judge. Let me know what you think.

 - LM

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In no particular order, really. There are many. But, in the interest of time and space, I'm going to attack them as they come up and their was an onslaught this weekend so, here goes: 

No-No Number 1:

Putting people on your email list who have not given you permission to do so. 

Here are a list of reasons you might think give you permission to put someone on your email list. 

1) You are related

2) You went to school or work together

3) You met at a show

4) You have their business card

5) You are connected via social networks 

6) They bought a CD or complimented your music

7) You went to the same conference and your email was listed in the directory

8) You belong to the same club or organization

9) You like their music and think they might be interested in yours

10) You, at one time, corresponded via email about something (who knows what) and they are in your address book. 

If you think these are valid reasons to put someone on your e-mail newsletter list, sorry, wrong. The only one that comes close would be # 6 IF they bought your CD online. But, no. The most appropriate thing would be a follow up email thanking them for their purchase and giving them the option to opt into your list but not actually putting them on it until you have their say so.

"But, then my list won't be as big!" No, no it won't but, your list is best when it's targeted to your most loyal fans and even they won't read everything you put out. And, it's not just an issue of quality over quantity, it's an issue of not getting into that dreaded SPAM ZONE. I can't tell you the number of bands...um... AND BUSINESSES...who put me on their list without permission and now, the biggest thing I remember about them is that they are annoying. Hey, as a musician, if someone labels me as annoying I want it to be because they honestly gave me a shot and found me annoying, then decided to opt out. :)

"WTH? Who died and made you Ms. Manners?" No one, really, as far as I know. I say this as a musician and as a fan of musicians whose mailing lists I'm already purposely on. You do yourself NO FAVORS by putting people on your list who never asked to be there. It works against you. There is so much spam out there that I can't imagine anyone opening up an unsolicited email each day, week or month from a band they know nothing about and saying, "Who's this? Well, that was thoughtful!". Trust me, you already have people who opted onto your lists who 1) delete your email as soon as they see it, 2) want to opt out but know you well and don't want to hurt your feelings 3) forgot that they opted in at all and will mark you as spam next time your email is in their inbox 4) opted in for whatever you were giving away for free to signup but don't really care what you're up to.  

So, what are your options: ASK! If someone compliments your music at a show or anywhere say, "Can I put you on the list so I can keep in touch?", "Can I put you on the list so you'll be eligible for free giveaways?" or "Get on the email list so I can let you know when I'm playing near you!" Ask people to sign up at your shows, make it easy for them to do so in person and online (Yeah, yeah, Margaret...I know what you're thinking  --  Sometimes, even I forget), then,  email them asap with a 'welcome to the list email' so they don't forget they opted in. 

Recap!

The guideline: The word "YES" or "Put me on your list!" to any of the above offers to put someone on your list. 

The goal: STAY OUT OF THE SPAM ZONE

For the love of Daphne, please repost this for bands and businesses. 

Next blog up: Accepting credit cards for merch sales! It just got easier ;-)

 - LM

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