Tagging Mp3's & A How To Guide On Submitting Them. (Musician Monday #6)

Last week was a busy week, so I am picking up where we left off on internet radio and submitting to stations, etc.� How To Create MP3s So Your Fans Will Always Find You Via The Indie Band Survival Guide Blog is a great reference that I recently ran across on how to properly tag your band's mp3 with your band name and song title. It also shows you how to add the meta data that will allow the digital interface to read your band and song title. These are very specific directions on how to do this and are beneficial for any musician to learn to do.

Music Nomad also passes on some excellent advice on how to submit your band's music to podcasts. In addition, it adds some sites that allow an artist to list their music for free, similar to other paid sites that allow the podcaster to download a quality, tagged mp3 of your band's music that is safe for podcasting. You can see that we use one of these free services on our website now: Official Website Of Ockum's Razor - Radio

60 Million Americans Listen To Internet Radio - Musician Monday #5

This is from the website Hypebot: According to a Bridge Ratings study of internet radio listeners, 60 Million Americans Listen To Internet Radio during an average week. 84% of those regularly listen to online simulcasts of terrestrial radio and 62% listen to net only stations. The study predicts that by 2015, 77 million Americans will be regular listeners of net radio, and by 2016 net-only radio and terrestrial simulcasts will have equal online listenerships.

Internet Radio Stations Play More Artists Than Broadcast Stations according to data supplied by Streamsurf, from a blog post by Audio4Cast. Internet Radio Stations Are the New Wave is a post from the New York Times.

What this means for the indie artist? It does not take a brain surgeon to figure out that this is a niche to jump aboard and take advantage of. However, I can tell you from personal experience that it is alot of work getting your work submitted and played, etc. However, I must mention a great resource that will help you right off the bat, as it did Ockum's Razor. If you are a rock, metal, or just plain brutal sounding band this is for you. (Please note that he is working on expanding genres and starting to add pop, etc.) Official Metal Castle has a blog with over a hundred stations and dj's for you to submit music to. All that you need to know is that you must follow the provided guidelines by that particular station or dj in doing so. This does not guarantee you will get played, but I know some are always on the hunt for new music. Make sure to have your song in MP3 format and tag it to their guidelines. For example, OckumsRazor__JigOfTheJuggernaut and this will quickly allow them to see what artist and what song title you are providing them. Happy submitting!

Becoming a web master in one easy to use browser! (M.M. #4)

(Musician Monday - Installment Four):

I remember the days of not being able to update our band's website, because of not having the knowledge on how to do it, well thanks to 'Bandzoogle' the playing field has been leveled. We just recently got the new website up and is still in the works, but we already have alot of content up and it was easy to do. Read excerpts from this post from a recent 'Hypebot' article below and you will quickly understand why this site was in the Music Connection's top 103 web sites for the music biz in 2009.

Bandzoogle is a new self-service web-site and marketing platform for musicians. "This is the first time musicians have been able to create a completely custom website, right in their web browser. No other musician web site builder offers this design flexibility." said Bandzoogle founder Chris Vinson. Integrated with Bandzoogle's site building tools is a free direct to fan marketing and sales platform, including email and mobile blasts, a no-fee music and merchandise store, blogs, podcasting, and fan clubs. Bandzoogle powered sites also automatically update social networks like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and detailed fan stats track the effectiveness of promotional campaigns. New features include: Full integration with ArtistData.com - In addition to Bandzoogle's existing tools integration with ArtistData enables members to easily post content to dozens more sites such as Last.FM, PureVolume, and Eventful. Mobile fan clubs - Send text message blasts to fans from within Bandzoogle. A new $9.95 per month Lite Plan includes a free .COM address. For more from this post visit the 'Hypebot' post by Bruce Houghton :

Bandzoogle Upgrades Web Site Builder And Music Marketing Platform - hypebot




*Click the image/link above and try it out for FREE right now!

Tips for Musicians to tap into Twitter. 'Musician Monday' Pt. Tres

Twitter has become a great source for short posts of media, or status updates, in the form of micro-blogging. The maximum allotted characters are one-hundred and forty. When I first set up twitter I went on google and did some searches on twitter, learned the lingo, then watched for how-to-guides. I found lots of great resources and I will touch on a few in this post. The first thing I did was follow some like-minded tweeters in the Saint Louis, MO. area and soon learned that, over time, some don't follow back. Twitter then introduced the twitter lists and I was even more confused on my approach. Once I got a small amount of followers going, I made sure to list our band on every twitter-directory site that I could find. Most of the twitter directories that we are on can be found on our list: @Ockumsrazor1/Resources For Musicians. (Now this list is dissolved into others, just google the keywords: twitter directories.) Also, another great site to be on that I must mention is Twibes. It is more than just your average directory site as it is also comprised of very comprehensive categories, lists and groups. Definitely worth the time and effort. Adam Loving, the site's administrator, is now beginning to offer a thorough webinar on how to do pretty much anything on twitter.


Another thing to keep in mind, being a band and all, is that you do not want to make it all about you and promoting your music act. There are numerous twitter-tip sites out there, but one relevant post that I found is as follows: 5 Things Every Band Should Know About Twitter. Tweeps like users that follow back and list them, etc. I like to also shout out all of our new followers to welcome them, etc. Re-tweeting others posts, use of hash tags, participating in 'Music Monday' and 'Follow Friday' will increase your chances of being followed. You will quickly notice how other tweeple perceive you, as to how they list you. There will be profiles that choose not to follow back. This is just a fact. I have even found that users purposely follow us to be shouted from our profile, getting them more exposure, then unfollowing. I just don't do it again for them. I have even found a way to address this problem too. I created a list just for this scenario, because of the fact that we follow back everyone and list them, plus shout them out. When time allows, I will block these people, so I don't have to waste time on following the same people or having them follow and then unfollow.
A good site that I use is Tweepi and it helps by doing bulk unfollows. However, twitter recently made them complicate the process of doing so, by making one manually click on each user not reciprocating your follow. Another thing to look for when trying this out is that if you have recently followed someone, make sure to give them a few days or so, in which to follow you back. Once you have allowed a window of time, you can see when each person's last tweet was and whatnot. Keep that in mind when on twitter following a person, as well. In addition, the best two twitter browsers that I personally enjoy were listed in our first 'Musician Monday' post. HootSuite and TweetDeck are good ways to keep up with not only twitter, but a couple of other social networking sites, as well. Last, but not least, when posting a link from twitter you want to use a url shortener. Some browsers may provide a shortener for you, however, I recommend that you use a site like bit.ly.


For those who have not seen our blog yet, I went back and added links to particular sites, and also added a link for you to email the post and also to share it on any social networking site of your choice for easy sharing. Stay sharp...

The Facebook Fan Page & How To Get Started.

For the second installment of 'Musician Monday' I thought it would be a good idea to touch on Facebook Fan Pages. If you missed last week's post on how to save alot of time on posting onto multiple sites, etc. You can view it in our blog archive, or scroll further down the page.

Lately I've gotten alot of people asking about how we got our facebook fanpage lay-out looking the way it does. When I first got on facebook, I had some old school friends wanting me to get on there, so I did. Then I decided to make a page for our band and quickly learned that it was not as easy as I thought. I was also spending some considerable time on Reverbnation at the same time and saw that you can make a fan page from there. (For more on ReverbNation, check out their blog by clicking link.) Since I had my own profile on facebook, I started the process and after a few tries I got it. The reason that it is important to have a fan page is that you can have an unlimited amount of fans that opt in, as opposed to a profile page that will only allow up to 5000 friends. Another excellent attribute about fan pages is that they allow FBML, also known as, Face Book Markup Language. It is an html-based language just for facebook.

Once I learned the above facts, I stumbled on two really helpful ladies that I have to mention and credit for their great resources. First is Madalyn Sklar from Social Networks For Musicians. She has some free tutorials on her site and also some more in-depth one's for a small fee. D.I.Y. musicians should be able to figure it out on your own and if you can't, her resources are affordable and worth the investment if you cannot do it yourself. Second is Ariel Publicity who has some great resources to make your facebook fan page pop, as she explains it. In addition, Reverbnation has been adding more resources for musicians recently, and those will help you too.
These three sites are a great place to start learning more of what you can do to build you own band's fan page. It will take some time to get there, but the end result is worth it!

Musician Monday (What is a musician to do?)

In an effort to try and expand this blog to more than just relevant updates on our music, etc. I have been thinking of extra ideas on possible segments to add. One that I think is a good idea is to share ideas on time savers and marketing techniques with other musicians. So, every Monday I plan to do a quick segment on something under this category. Hope you enjoy and please share your thoughts and comments below this blog post.

Social networking has become somewhat of a vital part in the life of a dedicated musician. The problem with this is one main factor. Time. Updating statuses, listing shows, promoting and all the other countless things that seem to pile up. Alot of musicians have simply relied on just their myspace site alone to network and get peeps to shows, etc. As you may or may not know, Facebook has become the new social network juggernaut and Myspace has declined in numbers and is more oriented towards music-lovers.In addition, their are countless existing and new social networks and music sites out there and seem to continually multiply everyday. Not to mention going out and promoting shows in person and getting yourself out there. What is a musician to do?

Out of following numerous online sources advice, being experimental and creative on my own. I have seemingly found a system that works for me. The first time-saver site that I came across is Ping.fm and it is great. There are many sites that you may already be on that you are unaware that you can update them all from one place. This is a great place to start. Notice everytime I send a ping out it gets listed on this blog. It gives little micro-blog updates on here every time I update a status, etc. from ping. I like it because it continues to add content on here, inbetween regular blog entries. Also, I have it synced to our fan page on Facebook. If you like this idea, you will need to use the facebook application NetworkedBlogs. From Ping.fm I can also update many other sites that are listed on our myspace site entitled The Razor's Edge. It is kind of a visual hub for our online presence. The link for that and the accompany page for facebook are on the right-side further down this blog.

A couple of others that we use are FanBridge and also ArtistData. I like fanbridge, first of all, because we already had one set-up. They recently added a FREE function to update Myspace, Facebook and Twitter accounts all at once. I use this inbetween pings or also for additional sites that I cannot send a ping from. Artistdata is another you need to check out. They are constantly adding new features and the beta version has recently been implemented. You can post a show and have that event synced to your Myspace and your Facebook and also have it sent to additional sites to announce your show and also remind peeps the day of show. You can update your statuses and both Artistdata and Fanbridge have other paid resources available. Last but not least, a few others that you may want to check out are Pixelpipe, Seesmic, HootSuite and TweetDeck. Pixelpipe allows you to update statuses, etc. but also you can upload a picture to multiple sites at once. Seesmic, which is now apart of Ping.fm too, is a downloadable browser in which you can utilize similiar to ping.fm but on a smaller scale. It is also like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck because these three are all used for Twitter and Facebook primarily. However, you can create columns to follow people's updates on twitter, facebook, etc. and the functions differ and range from showing twitter lists that you have made to using a column for following myspace updates, to seeing your comments and likes and also for sending them. One site even lets you follow your facebook fan page's posts. I hope that you spend a little time over the next week checking out these resources and be sure to have patience and take the time to get through set up. Just remember that you will be updating multiple sites and not just one, a mess up means that you will have to go into all the sites seperately and delete/re-do them manually. Utilize google if you have trouble with any of these sites, it can be your best friend online, at times. We hope you find this useful and remember, everyday sites are being standardized, this means even more benefits down the road! Stay sharp...