Great video of artist Amber Rubarth talking about her experiences with giving away her music to her fans for free and the benefits that came from that.

Your image is just at important as your music. Especially in hip hop. Most people will try to determine what kind of music you make just from a glance of your pic. This is why you should give serious thought about the promotional pictures you send out with your music.

You can’t imagine some of the horrible pics artists send me to post on this blog. The above pic is a recreation, but a very mild example.  I get bad mobile phone pics in the bathroom, with their children, with their girlfriends, got one in the kitchen, driving in the car….you get my point. Blog and website owners put a lot into making sure their sites are visually appealing. Well, at least most of them do. And they don’t wont crappy pics detracting from that. Read the rest of this entry »

Some time ago I addressed some very irritating marketing tactics that artists were using on Twitter. The article was called 5 Very Bad Twitter Marketing Habits.  But equally irritating are tactics some Facebook users use to promote themselves or their music.  Here are some of the most annoying ones.

1. Event invitation spam.  This is at the top of my list of Facebook annoyances. Promoters repeatedly send RSVP notices about their events and they flood my inbox. You actually have to take time out to find the event and click that you won’t be attending or you’ll leave yourself vulnerable to repeated alerts. Sometimes you can’t tell who is even sending you these invites.

Any Facebook friends of mine that abuse this function get blocked. Some abusers don’t even take to the time to notice that they are inviting me to an event that’s not in my state. Most people are annoyed at this and I hope that Facebook comes up with a better way to stop this.  Over aggressive promotion is a sure way to turn a potential fan to a person who’s more than glad to leave your social network. Read the rest of this entry »

Don’t miss another opportunity to share your music or network with a good contact because you didn’t have your music or info on you. Way too often, I’ve checked my wallet to exchange info with a contact only to say, “Sorry, I don’t have any more business cards.” You can avoid mishaps like these by always having a few things with you. Here is a short list of them.

1. Business Cards: In this day of great technological advancements, this old school way of passing along your info is still the quickest and most effective. It’s a pain in the ass for me to write down your website and for you to tell me that your email address has an underscore in it. Save me the time and just put it all on your business card. Plus, business cards are cheap to purchase. Vistaprint will make you some for free if you’ll just pay for the shipping. Read the rest of this entry »

I felt the need to write this post because so many artists fail to send me music correctly.  This can be an annoyance to DJ’s, bloggers, podcasters, or anyone else on the receiving end of your delivery. You need to make the process of downloading and listening to your music require the least amount of effort.  If this becomes difficult for the receiver, you may very well miss an opportunity to have it heard. Here a are a few dos and don’ts to take note of when sending your music out. Read the rest of this entry »

This is good shit right here, homie! In this video, Tom Delonge of Blink 182 shares his thoughts  about putting your music out there for free and drops a lot of other gems that you should definitely put in to practice if you’re an independent artist.

spotted at hypebot

The concept for Tweet For A Track is pretty frickin’ dope.  It’s a free online tool that encourages your Twitter followers to spread download links to your music. The site allows you to tweet a free download link of your music to your Twitter followers. They can only download the music if they repost the link. Their followers must do the same if they wish to download it. …and so on…and so on. This can create great potential for your music to spread rapidly.

spotted at hypebot

There’s an effective networking practice that’s happening more with independent rock bands than with independent hip hop artists. This practice can be called “gig swapping”. It works like this: Artist A is a hot artist in his own town. So rather than getting another local artist to open up for him when he performs, he invites Artist B, from a nearby city, to open for him. Artist B is unknown in the region, thereby exposing him to a brand new audience. This favor is then returned to Artist A, sending him to Artist B’s city with the opportunity to connect with a different audience. This is a great way to build and expand your fanbase. A few things to note: Read the rest of this entry »

There are a lot of independent hip hop artists on Twitter that are wasting their time by using it ineffectively to promote and market themselves. Twitter is a great tool if used correctly, but it can be totally useless if not. Here are 5 Twitter marketing habits you should avoid.

1.  Sending me an @ reply with only a link to your music. If I don’t know you and you didn’t take the time to introduce yourself, I’m not going to waste my time clicking on your link.  It’s spam and it’s annoying.

2.  Letting 3rd party sites use your account so send out automated tweets. Twitter users sign up to some 3rd party sites that help them increase their number of followers.  These sites then send out tweets promoting their site through the user’s account.  Disable that shit!  It annoying when a dozen twitter users have the same promotional message being tweeted out. Don’t let companies spam through your account. Read the rest of this entry »

Mike Masnick of Floor64 and TechDirt, in this very informative video, talks about the state of the music industry and gives various examples of independent artists who have found ways become successful by developing strong connections with their fans.