When you promote your band online, you are no longer limited by the fans in your hometown. The internet gives you the power to reach music fans on the other side of the world, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. "There's no reason to just think nationally anymore," says Valencia Wood website developer for Giga Glaze,"There's tons of fans out there who would love to hear your stuff. Anybody can be a star in this internet age."
If you don't have a way for web surfers to hear your music online yet, then you need to move fast. Your fans are waiting, so check out the following tips:
YourBand.com
Get a real website address that you own. A company like GoDaddy.com can get YourBandName.com for under $10 for a year. Search even deeper online, and you can find even cheaper rates. Having your own domain name makes it easy for people to find you without a long URL address or unwanted advertising.
Web Style
Get a one-stop shop web designer to get your online point across. He or she should be able to design a great site, help you choose a web host for your domain, and update future information as needed. "Before you hire a web designer, ask for references, and to see samples of his or her work," says Bob Baker, author of Guerrilla Music Marketing, "Hopefully the designer can show you active online sites, as opposed to speculative offline experiments. Show the designer other sites that appeal to you. You certainly want to ask the web designer for suggestions, but the site must ooze your personality and style." Surf the net for ideas and don't hesitate to contact the designers with the style you like.
Email Newsletter
In addition to having an online spot where fans can hang out, you can also go to them. Keep in touch via an email newsletter, also known as an ezine. "An artist's goal should never to be to reach a certain number of hits on the web site," continues Baker, "It should be to establish ongoing relationships with a growing number of fans. Place a sign up form on every web page of your site, and give them a compelling reason to sign up. Once you have a database of people interested in your music, you can communicate with them by email on a regular basis. When a fan has given you permission to contact him or her about your musical activities, it puts you in control of the relationship. A web site without an email component is a crap shoot."
Toot Your Horn
Get other sites to work for you by building online relationships with fans, as well as other artists. Get a blog, and update it often. Visit other blogs and leave comments. Find music Sites that will review your music for free, and link fans back to your home site, where they can join your email list. "Go to a search engine like Google and type in keywords related to your music or the names of popular artists similar to you," says Baker. "You'll have to wade through a lot of unusable stuff, but you'll find many sites that review the kind of music you perform."
Ka-Ching!
Have music samples that can be streamed quickly and whet the appetite. As soon as your music is ready to sell, make it available online for your fans to buy. PayPal.com makes it easy to sell merchandise on your site via secured credit card servers. Online music retailers like CDBaby.com specialize in selling all types of indie music online. These hub sites are helpful since fans interested in hearing new music in your style can also find you there. "It's encouraging to see 500 orders a day come in here, "says CD Baby Founder, Derek Sivers, "They're usually for CDs that people hadn't heard hours before."
Carla Lynne Hall is a musician and music marketing consultant based in New York City. Her mission is to make music and share her knowledge with other musicians. As a musician, she has released three CDs on her own label, and has toured the world as a singer/songwriter, and professional vocalist. In addition, she also has spent a number of years behind the scenes in the music industry, in publishing, management, publicity, and radio promotion.
Carla has given indie music lectures at many venues, including ASCAP, Songwriter's Hall of Fame, The Indie Music Forum, and Philadelphia Music Conference. As well as being the former music business columnist for Vibe Magazine, Carla has written articles for http://www.musicdish.com/ and other publications around the world, and is the author of The DIY Guide to the Music Biz and Twitter for Musicians. Carla blogs about the life of the indie musician at http://rockstarlifelessons.com/
Promote your band, build your fanbase, and sell your music!
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