Marketing Your Music To The Masses!

This post may seem a little redundant to some of my professional musician friends out there but for others it may really help you get on your way.

There are many different things you can and should be doing to market you or your band’s music to the masses in the world. If you’re serious about your music and I am assuming you are then you need to take the necessary steps to prove it and let the world know as well. I have listed a few of the best ways below.

Branding Your Name

One of the most important things you can do is let everybody know who you are. Get T-shirts, buttons, flags, pens, hats and any other marketing devices you can think of made to distribute at your live shows. It’s great if you can sell them but if you can afford to then give them away. It will pay you back in huge sums later on just by the free advertising alone.

Distribute Your Demo

If you don’t currently have a demo you need to get one cut fast. Make sure it’s done as professional as possible. You don’t want your fans to hear hurried sloppy work. Regardless if it’s MP3, MP4 or on CD it needs to be of excellent quality. I would strongly recommend putting only your best song or few songs forward. These are the ones that people will remember. Make sure it’s your strongest song 1st followed by the next strongest and so on. Once you have them together and ready to go then start distributing your demo to anybody who will listen. I would also recommend using local radio and Internet stations that except unsigned Indie music. There are many of them out there. Send it to a radio station in every state in the country if possible and maybe even some overseas. Not all of them will play it but you are increasing your odds by sending to as many as possible.

Practice and Play Out Often

Live concerts are the absolute best for promoting your music. Have killer shows and get your audience involved. Play as many local clubs and venues as you can. If possible get out on the road also. Travel to different states and cities if your schedule and budget allows it. Just remember that word of mouth is the best or worst advertising you can get so make sure you stay practiced. You want to always give the audience the best show of their lives.

Secure and Keep an Up To Date Press Kit

This will include your demo, artist or band photos, press clippings, venue list, contact info, artist or band bio and things of that nature. Keep it all together and professionally done and organized. You never know who is paying attention! You may stumble across a record producer, talent scout or record label at any point in time.

Start and Promote a Website

If you don’t already have a website then start one today. With the amount of people browsing the Internet for new music these days this is absolutely essential in your quest for marketing to the masses. There are many different web hosting companies out there that will allow you to set up a website for free. It can get a bit technical and time consuming to do this but if you have the experience and the know how do it yourself. If not then hire somebody to do it for you. It will pay huge dividends in the end. Your fans must be able to find you on the net. Once the website is up and running make sure it is optimized for search engines so it draws as much free traffic as possible. Then plaster your website everywhere you go and on your t-shirts, buttons and all other marketing devices.

Get a Free Optimized Link at Modern Day Peasants.

Our site recently added a free optimized link to artist and band websites all over the world. Search engine optimization involves having as many links pointing to your website as possible. If you already have your website set up you can get a link pointing towards it for free here. Your website will enjoy highly optimized website traffic for life at no cost to you!

Do all these things properly and you will definitley be marketing your music to the masses. With a little luck and a little talent on your part you and your band will be well on the way to stardom.

Best wishes!

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How To Get Your Music Heard On A Small Budget

When speaking of getting your music out there and you aren’t independently wealthy, to put it bluntly, you do whatever you have to do! Get your music in front of anybody you possibly can. This includes doing current shows for local fans to help spread the word, cutting a single on CD for submission to local radio markets, building and marketing a look for you as an artist or your band ,  and networking on the computer and anywhere else that the law will allow.

It will take all of the efforts above and then some. Make sure you have quite a bit of stamina and a “I’m going all the way no matter what” attitude. If you want something bad enough there will be nothing big enough to stop you from getting it.

Regardless if you’re trying to become a Super Star or just want to sell a few songs to some movie or television producers, start today by sitting down and planning out a budget. It will take a little money but you know what they always say, “It takes money to make money”. This is a very true statement. Unless you happen to be the friend of a music producer’s son or something along those lines it doesn’t matter if you can sing like Madonna or play the guitar like Eric Clapton, you don’t get in that easy. It will involve some dedication and work but in the end it will be worth it won’t it.

If you have some songs put together and haven’t cut them on CD then do so. Record them to mp3 and whatever other latest music transfer files are available. Why is this important? You need to have a means to display your music to the world easily and quickly! Go to some of the online music submission facilities and start putting your mp3′s out there for them to hear. Get an EPK (Electronic Press Kit) fast. This is a promotional tool used for online promotion. You can pay a professional promoter to set one up for you or you can build one yourself and save money if you are tech savvy. It includes photos, history, a few current songs, listed website for you or your band, any news releases or articles written about you, booked events, labels if you have one, etc. The EPK should be stored on your computer so you can send it out immediately if you need to.

Before you place recorded songs on your EPK, make sure they are of good quality. Think of your EPK as the “modern day demo”. When the person at the other end listening to your music hits “play” then it better be of good quality or they won’t be listening very long. Think about it….how long do you want to listen to a song that has garble and feedback and other noises in it. I’ll bet not very long! So if this means you have to go and get your songs professionally recorded then do so if you can afford it. You could also record your music on your own with a good multi track recorder and burn the songs straight to CD or mp3 by yourself. This will be a less expensive way to go but you will need to learn how to operate your multi track unit well.

Again, once you have your music (the most satisfying to you) on CD and mp3 format start sending it out via the Internet. You can use venue’s such as Sonicbids, Taxi, Myspace, Ourstage, etc. There are plenty of them online just make sure that you do your research before dealing with any company. Also make sure your music is copyrighted before you present it to the whole world. You never know, you just might have some stuff that is so good that people may try to steal it.

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Quartet X2 Music Studio

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Web Hosting For Business

Article by:  Akinori Furukoshi

www.thatswise.com

If your web site is sitting on your hard drive, it won’t do you one bit of good or make you any money. You have to publish your web site. You have to look for a host. A host puts your site on the web, so your web site is available for web surfers 24 hours a day 7 days a week. But choosing the right host is a little tricky. Learn from my painful and costly mistakes, and pick the right host for yourself.

Free hosting
I started with a free hosting service. I thought, “Why do I have to pay when I could get it for free.” Right? Wrong!! Their server was down periodically, once a week or so. One day, it became inaccessible. I couldn’t see my web site, I couldn’t log into my account. No support was available. About 6 month later, the server sent me an e-mail which said they had shut down the business. The worse thing was I didn’t have any backup. The server had had an online html editing tool. Earlier I had logged onto my account and edited my site, so all my files were in their computer. Unfortunately, I never made my own back up file. When that host was gone, my web site was gone too.

Cheap hosting
I got a little smarter. I picked a cheap hosting service. I thought again, “Why do I have pay more when I could get it cheaper?” Right? Not really. It was OK at the beginning. All of my web pages were able to be downloaded in 8 seconds with a 56k modem. Once in a while it slowed down. Sometimes it took more than a minute to download! Then once in a while became almost every time. When I started considering switching the host, I got an e-mail that said they would shut down the business. This time I got the notice a month prior to the shutdown. Again, I had to find another hosting service. Finally, I decided to pay extra for reliability. Since then, I don’t have to worry about my site is up or down. A reliable host definitely takes your headache away.

Domain name
My hosting mistakes ended up not being all mistakes I made. I also didn’t have my own domain name. My domain name read www.freehost/myname or myname.freehost.com. My plan had been when I made a little money, I would buy my own domain name. Then I would redirect visitors from my free-host domain name. That plan didn’t work. Every time my host shut down, I had to promote a new URL. I lost all previous visitors. They had no way to find out what my new URL was. I wasted time and the money I had to spent on promoting the URL. If I had bought my own domain, I could have kept my previous visitors at least when my host shut down. On top of that problem, I learned that web surfers can tell you are using free hosting service from the URL you have. Having folks know you are using a free hosting service makes it very difficult to earn credibility, and credibility is THE key to making sales in syberspace.

You don’t have to buy the latest equipment and spend beaucoup money on every top-notch service, but do pay for your domain name and a good hosting service at least. You can’t afford cheap stuff. Really!

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Acoustic Version MP3 Of "Missed A Few Years" With Lyrics

Missed A Few Years

Acoustic  Version By: Dan Waggoner

People often ask to hear some of my music. Sometimes I am reserved about it. Sometimes I am not. This one is special to me so I hope some of you enjoy it.

We Missed A Few Years MP3 (1)

Copyright (2008) Dan Waggoner

This song was written for my sweet wife Heather who stands with me thru all good, bad or otherwise. I try to tell her how I wish we had met 10 years earlier. Don’t get me wrong. I am happy we’re together now! I just wish I could have known her a bunch sooner. I am truly a lucky person. She is my all.

I bought my Prize Silver Burst Epiphone Les Paul Custom Guitar from these guys and I cherish it.. Great Sounding Guitar!

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