FanDistro's Blog

Have you ever asked your family and friends to listen to your music and all you get is something like “It sounds good” or “I like it”?  These types of responses can get frustration when you’re looking for real honest feedback.   As artists, we want to know what listeners think of the song structure, sound quality and performance and we want to know if they would buy our music or go see a live show.

I recently read an excellent piece on Passive Promotion about this service called Audiokite that has real listeners listen to your song, rate it in a number of categories, give you their comments and then sends you a link to a robust report of how you did and how your song compares to the Audiokite average.  I was intrigued enough to give it a try and here is what I found.

The site was simple and easy to use.  There are a number of standard reports to choose from as well as custom reports that you can create.   The standard reports range from 50 - 300 listeners. With a custom report, you can have up to 500 people listen to your music.  You can also target most of the reports to listeners that indicate they enjoy a particular genre.  I chose the Coffee Shop report which gave me 100 verified listerners that listened for at least 40 seconds.   

So two days later and my report was ready.  I was thoroughly impressed by the information provided and the layout of the report.  

The main categories covered in the report were:

General Rating

Commercial Viability

Sync Licensing

Song Elements

Song Average Comparison (Your song vs. Billboard top 100 vs Audiokite Average)

Demographics

Location Map

Listener Sentiment

Free Response to “What did you Like or Dislike about this song” 

I found the General Rating, Song Elements and Free Response categories the most helpful.

The General Rating is a high-level rating (1-10) of how the listener felt about the song.  One listener gave me a 1, 25 listerners gave me a 7 and 10 listeners gave me a 10.  My General Rating average was 6.9/10 which is a little better than the AudioKite average of 6.2.   

The Song Element ratings I found valuable as well.  Each listener gave me a rating on:

Instrumental Performance

Beat (Drums & Bass)

Song Structure

Sound Quality

Song & Band Name 

This it the exact kind of specific feedback I’ve been wanting, especially Sound Quality because I mix my own music. 

The Free Response is probably the most helpful because you get the listeners actual thoughts.    

The comments ranged from mediocre like: 

“"Its nothing to spectacular but it isn't bad either."  

And

"The intro was long and kind of boring...but it got better."

to more detail:

"What a swingy, fun, confused track. The groove is pretty instantly gratifying, but the keyboard in the noodling bridge is so high in the mix that it ventures into the point of grating. This song stops a creative movement or two shy of excellence. I definitely want to hear more. I have a feeling, surely based on the effortless execution of this song, that this is not their strongest work, but with some rewriting and tinkering I bet it could be."

to constructive with detail:

"Love the sound of the drum track, how it sounds like it was recorded in an empty room or something, great beat too. It may be a little too forward in the mix for my tastes, and the bass guitar needs to come to the front a bit more. The song itself is neat though, I dig it"

To positive!

"This is a terrific instrumental. They don't make 'em like this anymore, but apparently someone does."

The other cool thing about this service is you can select whether a song is in progress or not so you can get a feeler for how new songs are going to go over before you finish them!  I  plan to use Audiokite for my current, as well as future releases. This could get addicting!

Here’s what Michael Penfield, FanDistro’s Founder, had to say about his report….”I had been hoping a service like Audiokite would come along for years. I was skeptical that the service would provide much real, usable feedback (thinking back to the days of Garageband.com), but when my report came in, it was clear that real music fans listened to my band’s songs and provided (mostly quality) feedback. This service would be great for testing song versions, selecting tracks to put together as an album, or just for hearing from strangers. I’m a fan and plan to use Audiokite on my current music project.”

Get 30% off any 100-listener or higher report by using this discount code: AK-FANDISTRO

Indie artists are on the endangered species list. Today it’s harder than ever for artists to support their songwriting, recording, performance, and development. Fewer sales, more music giveaways, and digital fans who have never been to a performance increasingly define the environment. We have a solution: FanDistro has created a new revenue stream for artists. We are now aligning brands with artists where a brand supports an artist's Fan Engagement Campaign in what we call a Brand-backed Crowdsourced Marketing Campaign.

In a Brand-backed Crowdsourced Marketing Campaign, brands pay artists and get a presence on the artist's FanDistro campaign page and are included in campaign-related communications. Brand-backed Crowdsourced Marketing Campaigns typically last 3 months and payments range from several hundred to thousands of dollars depending on the size of the artist's fan base and how engaged their fans are.

If you're interested in being contacted about Brand-backed Crowdsourced Marketing Campaign opportunities then login to our site and fill in your Facebook URL so we can grab some basic information from your page.   We will then contact you when opportunities come up that fit your profile.

Fans love it when they connect with an artist.  They also love it when an artist gives them something!   Fans remember these connections and support these types of artist relationships for a long time through downloads, merch purchases and going to shows.  The FanDistro Gift Platform is a great tool to help foster fan relationships. 

The FanDistro Gift Platform takes the idea of getting a free download in exchange for a page like or email address and amplifies it.   With our platform artists can give gifts like album cover wallpaper, tablature, skype chats, tee shirts, exclusive live performance videos (more on this later) or basically any other type of gift.  Fans get the gifts by Sharing music and getting X-number of friends to Share music or Favorite songs.  The platform provides an extremely engaging experience for fans.  We track everything for the artist so all they have to do is set up the gifts they think their fans will want.   There is no limit on the number of the gifts an artist can set up and the platform is free for a limited time. 

Visit our recently updated home page for more information on how to use our gift platform to captivate existing fans and to get new fans.

With FanDistro and Google Hangouts on Air artists can offer their fans an opportunity to earn a live Google Hangout performance.  Fans earn the live performance gift/reward by getting X number of friends to share or favorite their music on FanDistro.   When someone shares or favorites a song on FanDistro artists will get their email address.  

Cool right? But how do you set up a Google Hangout Performance?  And what about the sound quality?

Google Hangouts on Air have a studio mode setting that enhances the audio for a pretty solid listening experience. We have put together this guide to help you get started.  We’re assuming you have an audio interface, necessary mics & a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW).   

The first thing you need to do is to connect your G+ account to your YouTube account.  If you haven’t done this already, sign in to your Google+ page as its owner or manager, start a Hangout On Air, and follow the instructions.  For more information click here .

Next you need to get your audio into the Google Hangout.  If you’re on a mac download sunflower  to route the audio from your DAW into the Google Hangout.

Audio set up:

Route your mic signals into your audio interface,

Get your levels set and mixed in your DAW,

Route the Audio output of your DAW to Sunflower

In the Sunflower settings select your DAW

Now start a hangout and direct your audio into it:

Start your Hangout on Air by going here and clicking the  “Start Hangout on Air” button

Enter the Title of your hangout and in the Audience box delete “Public” - so you will only share the link with people you invite into the hangout.  

Invite the fans you want into the hangout. Click Share. Click Start Hangout,

When the hangout opens click the Settings Cog and change the following:

Set the audio input to Sunflower,

Change audio mode from Voice to Studio,

Click Broadcast,

Ask your fans to mute their mics,

Have fun!

If you run into latency issues try tweaking the buffer size of sunflower and your DAW down to the lowest option your system can handle.

Obviously each DAW, audio interface and mic setup will vary with each artist so here are a few links to other articles written on the topic in the event you run into any issues.

Hangouts On Air common questions David Santy's Set up Guide

If you have any other setups you want to share.  Please post them in a comment below.

Davidge, otherwise known as Neil Davidge, is a veritable musical Renaissance man—you might recognize his name from the soundtrack to Halo 4, if you’re into that sort of thing, or, more likely, from his pioneering producing work with his fellow Brits in Massive Attack. Though he’s composed and produced plenty of records over the years, Slo Light is Davidge’s solo debut. Slo Light provides exactly the level of clean, sophisticated production and composition you’d expect from a master record producer—it’s orchestral electronica that transports you into a dark, swirling world of futuristic synths and classical strings.

The album begins with the title track, featuring Stephonik Youth, with spare percussion, hazy effects, and eerie synth notes drenched in reverb and artful distortion. Smooth keys steal in like a lullaby, falling in descending melodies below slow, delicate vocals. A heavy, pulsing bass simmers below, giving the track an ominous edge, as it morphs from a welcoming, soporific atmosphere into something more evocative of a horror flick, where layers and loops of repeating vocals fade into a swell of strings. But then it returns to its original tone, orchestral violins reaching higher and higher into almost piercingly operatic crescendos before sinking back into the hovering, buzzing bass. The complex structure of “Slo Light” almost becomes a narrative, with its own plot arc, climax, and dénouement—a mark of Davidge’s skillful composition.

“Home From Home” (feat. Low Roar) and “That Fever” (feat. Claire Tchaikowski) also show off Davidge’s ability to build electronica tracks with a rare depth and attention to detail. The elegiac piano on “Home From Home” starts off melancholy and brooding, much slower and more gentle than the album’s other tracks. It’s a slow burner, starting off minimalistically with only keys and vocals, then adding echoing beats, looming synths, and muted, staccato strings that morph into a big, epic sound, where waves of synths and vibrato violins worthy of any classical symphony threaten to overwhelm you. “That Fever” also indulges an orchestral inclination, adding strings to its dreamy, otherworldly atmosphere of smooth melodies and Tchaikowski’s sultry crooning, and “Sleepwalking” builds slowly on a rich, moody piano melody, delving into a darker, haunting dream world.

But not all of the album drifts into the ethereal and nebulous. “Gallant Foxes” (feat. Cate Le Bon) takes Le Bon’s seductively smooth soprano vocals and throws them against a slick bass and upbeat percussion, with some airy synths thrown in for good measure. A percussive, rapid-fire beat, heavy bass, and techno-synths accompany smoky vocals from Karima Francis on “How Was Your Day,” and “They Won’t Know” and “Zero One Zero” (both featuring Stephonik Youth) forego the elegant trappings of earlier tracks for a more traditional electro beat with a pounding bass and a krautrock edge. “Riot Pictures” (feat. Sandi Shaw) walks the middle ground between the album’s two extremes: though at times it throws off violins and cellos for an industrial sound, it always returns to a melodic core, centered on Shaw’s lush, thick vocals.

Slo Light evokes a sonic atmosphere that transports you into an otherworldly place, fusing the ethereal effects, industrial beats, and techno synths of modern electronica with elements of a classical symphony. It’s not an easy combination, but Davidge excels at making this time-traveling pairing sound perfectly natural, using his skills as a composer and producer to create a masterfully mixed, conceptually creative album that pushes the boundaries of what we think of as today’s electronica. Though Davidge has mostly worked behind the scenes in the past, helping other artists with their own music, Slo Light proves he belongs in the spotlight too.

- Reviewed by Charlee Redman

Charlee Redman works for a small publishing company in Pennsylvania and writes about music for mxdwn.

This short article was written by Marcus Taylor, a musician & multi-award winning marketer. In 2013, Marcus won Midem's award for 'Young Visionary of the Year'.

Various studies predict that we see between 1,000–5,000 marketing messages each day depending on where we live.  

Our brain categorises similar things together (a process known as Gestalt). Because most marketing messages are similar, we categorise them as one.

Imagine that each shape represents a marketing message by a band.

Which one is the most memorable?

What about now?

  The point is, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a black circle or an orange hexagon. What matters is what’s different. The thing that is different is the thing that catches our attention, and the thing we remember.

  Virtually every successful artist was a black dot among orange hexagons. 

Lady Gaga – a female singer that wears dresses made of meat.

Eminem – a white rapper in the 90s.

KISS – heavy monster-like make up & outfits.

Nicki Minaj – a female fast-flow rapper singing in British Cockney

Mumford & Sons – modern double bass, banjo, and acoustic music

   Paradoxically, if your music or messaging is similar to Mumford and Sons, you’re not a black dot among orange hexagons. You’re a black dot among black dots. This is why you will not replicate their success.

Compare the Market, Starbucks, and the Harlem Shake knew this 

Compare the Market did this with their ‘compare the meerkat’ ad. They succeeded. When Go Compare and all the other insurance comparison websites copied them, theirs didn’t work as well. 

Startbucks did this with their festive coffees. When all the other coffee shops copied theirs didn’t work as well.

The original Harlem Shake video did this. When all of the businesses copied it, theirs didn’t work as well.

  Because of how our brains categorise information, the more of a similar thing we see, the less impact each additional thing has.

The lesson here is be the shepherd, not the sheep.

   Are you a black dot or an orange hexagon?

Consider everything you do as a band, and how much of it is also done by every other band.

Most bands release music on a CD.

Most bands say “check out our music”.

Most bands send demos and emails to get gigs. 

What if you released your music engraved on a weird object to be played on a vinyl player? Or in a printed book with a story and links to download music at different parts of the story?

What if you said “most people don’t like our music, but if you like X, Y, and Z, you might have found your favourite new artist”. Or “We create music because we believe X, Y, Z.  Read our story here – if you like why we do what we do, you may like our music”. 

What if instead of emails and demos you sent handwritten notes? What if you contacted gig promoters by turning up to their event nights and introducing yourself? What if you sent them a gift first?

  The opposite of the norm is usually where the biggest opportunities lie. What are you doing that opposes the norm?

Distrogr.am is a new way for artists to make money from their music. Distrogr.am syncs music to tagged Instagram and flickr images creating a slick animated slide show.  Artists or fans can create a Distrogram within minutes and then share their creation with their networks.  Artists can set up personalized rewards for fans that get FanDistro thumbsUPs for their Distrograms. When a FanDistro thumbsUP is given the artist gets the fans email address.  Artists earn 60% of advertising revenues generated from Distrograms created to their music.  

Gathering images for a Distrogram is easy and can be done by doing the following:

Enter a word in the search box to search Instagram images with that hashtag. Type f# before the word to search flickr e.g. f#surfing pulls images with the tag "surfing" from flickr

Enter your own flickr gallery or public gallery images by entering the gallery URL into the search box.  You can also use a flickr set URL

Type ‘iLike’ in the search box to gather Instagram images you have liked.

You can reorder or remove images and search as many times as you need to.  Once you are satisfied with your Distrogr.am click the red Distro button to save and share your creation with your friends or fans.

Check out this one created by Michael Meinhart of Socionic

OR

Make Music Visual with our newly released Distrogr.am!  Sync tagged Instagram or flickr images, Instagram images you have liked or flickr galleries to music.   Here is a short video demonstrating how it easy it is to make one that you can then share with your fans or friends.

Never before have independent artists had so many channels through which to get their music out there and make a large-scale impact without an "in" inside the music biz. Between making your music, planning campaigns, working with different platforms and social media simultaneously, and also making ends meet, you can easily lose your focus and your way. This article offers some good tips for indie artists regarding email promotion - the old school method that still cuts it - and band merchandise - from designing to moving it with maximum effect and fan satisfaction. 

Email: the tried and tested old-timer In the age of Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and whatnot, many of us forget about the power of email. It certainly lost a lot of its cool factor as social media exploded onto the scene, but it it still remains the most personal and focused way of reaching your fans, one-on-one. Tweets and status updates are important for your web presence, but remember that they are your way of shooting a general message to the world; they are impersonal. So, use social media to let the world know you are out there, and go for email to make a connection.  Pick the right service for you You don't need to be a PR guru in order to create and run a great email marketing campaign. There is a host of services which let you design your own email promo and monitor its success and progress. They offer analytics of various complexity, Facebook and YouTube communications management, and a host of other little things to help you run a tight promo ship. Our two favourite services are Fanbridge and MailChimp. We like MailChimp a little better because of its completely free option when you have up to 2,000 followers - an ideal place for young acts to start. It also offers more hands-on information through its blog.  Give them something true Adding self-promotion to the already versatile and heavy mix of tasks indie acts face certainly seems daunting. You will often find yourself envious of bands with record and promotion deals who are pampered by professional PR teams. Forget it! If you have read any label's newsletter or email promo ever, you have surely noticed one thing: it all sounds the same, and it gives close to zero insight into any of the artists it promotes. It aims to boost the sales of the latest album only. It's drudge 99% of the time. As an indie artist, you find yourself at the unique advantage of speaking for yourself - use it! Give your fans insight into your creative process; send them a lyric which will later appear on the album and tell them how you wrote it; set up a simple poll and ask fans to vote on your album's title based on the song material you have already shared with them. In short, lift the veil and let people in. There is no middle man in your communication with fans here; shorten the distance further! Bypass the traps In email marketing, the biggest stat is your "open rate", or how many recipients actually open your message. There are a few rules which help you increase that rate. The first things you need to think about are the sender and the subject which your fans will see. Make the sender address and name as personal as possible - include your own name as well as your act's, if possible. There is nothing worse than receiving an email from "promo" or "sales" @(yourbandsdomain.com).  Then there's the subject - the make-or-break point of your email effort. MailChimp offers you a great rundown on best email practices. Here's the rub: Avoid habits which will land you in the spam folder like excessive exclamation marks, sloppy HTML, or excessive promise (e.g., "dream opportunity", "once in a lifetime chance", etc.).  Keep the subject line short (50 characters or less) and concrete (add a location, date, or any other fixed reference point). Vary your newsletter subjects throughout the campaign. Open rates usually take a dive after the second or third email, and re-sending identical newsletter heads will crash your promo effort for sure. Sweeten the deal with some merchandise Once you've improved your popularity online, it's time to give your audience something material, too. There is nothing more impressive than a cool band T-shirt, unique and designed by you. We recommend using a service like Dizzyjam to create your merchandise, as they're designed specifically for artists (opposed to other services like Zazzle or Vistaprint, which are not).

Here at FanDistro, we offer you a great scheme which integrates marketing and fan base growth through merchandise: every time your fans share and recommend your song, we send them one of your T's. It empowers the people who appreciate your art to do more for it, and it helps charity, too. Read more about it here. Tips and tricks on effective T-shirt design Apart from being a musician, a marketer, and a blogger, as an indie artist you have to dabble in fashion and T-shirt design, too. Again, see this not as more burden but as an opportunity to make your true self be seen. Images stay with people just as long as sounds - oftentimes even longer! This is your chance to make an impact, and if you follow these simple tips, you are likely to create a lasting impression. First off, remember that less is often more, just like in music. A shirt cluttered with colours, fonts, and symbols will likely be confusing and ineffective. Think of classic shirts like The Who's victory salute imprinted with the Union Jack or Metallica's band name over a relatively monochrome cemetery, promoting Master of Puppets. Make your band's name and logo the centerpiece of the design, and build in little or no extra features for maximum impact.  Colour is the next important feature to consider, and there are no clear rules here apart from ensuring good contrast and colour agreement. Your musical style will likely show you the way. If you're on the heavy side, black cloth and Gothic fonts definitely come to mind. Whatever you pick, make sure it reflects your music and your band's nature just as the rest of your marketing campaign does.  When you have the design, don't try to cut corners on quality. Get the best base T-shirts and the best printer you can possibly afford. Make sure fans are proud to wear your shirt!

Whether you are relatively established, or just starting out, marketing is a vitally important aspect of a band's day-to-day operations. For the vast majority of bands, the best place for marketing is the internet and, despite the rise of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, email and newsletter marketing remains one of the top ways to promote your band's music online. The benefits of email and newsletter marketing include the ability to reach a wide range of people easily, and to build a community of people with a genuine interest in the band's music.

However, it is important for musicians to realise that email and newsletter marketing involves more than just spamming the inboxes of as many people as possible. In actual fact, this form of marketing can require a lot of work. For a band to expand their fanbase and truly maximise their audience, it is important for them to research mailing list providers, obey certain marketing etiquette, learn the most successful marketing strategies and become as creative with their marketing as they are with their music. Yet, despite the amount of work involved, the rewards of a successful email and newsletter marketing campaign completely justify the effort involved. Newsletters can help to advertise live shows, promote new music or ensure that the band remains fresh in the minds of its fans. This is the reason why many of the most successful bands in the world, like Nine Inch Nails and Panic! At The Disco, continue to use this method of marketing, even after achieving huge success. Choosing the Right Mailing List Provider After deciding to start a newsletter, the first major choice to make is which mailing list provider to use. This is an important decision for many reasons, not least because switching provider down the line can be a major hassle. For bands who are just starting out, the decision often comes down to choosing between FanBridge or MailChimp, two of the best-suited providers for band marketing. Both services are useful for bands who are just starting out and for more established musicians, but each have different pros and cons. FanBridge is a service which is specifically aimed at musicians. The service is free for up to 400 emails a month, making it useful for bands just starting out, although the free service lacks customisation options and analytics. As your fanbase grows, you can upgrade to the paid services. The Silver price plan is $19.99 a month and allows for 20,000 email sends per month. The different pricing strategies are tiered from there, with the Platinum service costing $129.99 a month. MailChimp, on the other hand, offers a range of customisation features and is perhaps better suited for long-term use as well. The service is free if you have less than 2,000 subscribers and allows up to 12,000 emails to be sent per month. This means a band can send six emails a month to a fanbase of 2,000 people, for free. By the time a band has more than 2,000 subscribers, they will likely be making enough money to justify the paid options, which start at $30 a month for unlimited emails to 2,500 subscribers. Collecting Email Addresses After choosing a mailing list provider, the next thing your band needs to do is collect email addresses for the newsletter. The best approach to this, contrary to popular belief, is not to just spam as many email addresses as possible. Generally, people will not open emails unless they have an interest in the subject and people will become annoyed if they receive unwanted emails. It is, therefore, best to target existing fans and to create an incentive for signing up to the newsletter. "What you need to do is this - give your music away as high-quality DRM-free MP3s. Collect people's email info in exchange (which means having the infrastructure to do so) and start building your database of potential customers," explained Trent Reznor, of Nine Inch Nails. "Then, offer a variety of premium packages for sale and make them limited editions / scarce goods." Many bands promote their newsletter on their website or social media accounts and make it clear that subscribers will get exclusive content. From here, subscribers will hear music and discuss it with friends, or talk about it online, which will hopefully encourage new subscribers. This method of gathering emails ensures that you are targeting your content towards people who are actually interested. The incentives you offer will also ensure that people continue to open the emails you send, which is essential when it comes to promoting tours and albums. Additional Newsletter Tips Research into email and newsletter marketing has uncovered a number of interesting trends about the type of content which works best, the ways to increase the amount of people who open your emails and about the campaigns which have proven successful in the past. It is important for bands to gain a basic understanding of what does and does not work, in order to avoid the pitfalls of email marketing and to maximise what the band gains from the marketing campaign. One common problem with band marketing is that the content of emails tends to be overly promotional. While the purpose of the newsletter is to promote, it is important that your newsletters do not to come across as solely promotional, or readers will start to feel like they are not involved or valued. The bands who use newsletters to the greatest effect try to include their readers in the emails. Panic! At The Disco, for instance, found success by leaving clues about future projects. Other bands operate polls, or run Q&A sessions. Finally, first impressions do count. The first thing readers will see is your email subject line and this will ultimately decide whether or not a subscriber opens it. Research has found that short, snappy subject lines of 50 characters or less tend to result in higher email open rates. If possible, it is best to avoid using obvious promotional words, like "Free" or "Reminder". Finally, do not re-use a subject line for multiple emails, as people will assume the content is also recycled.

Having spent countless hours rehearsing, recording, fine tuning and tweaking individual audio stems, you now have a CD ready to sell. Be it single, EP or album, digital download or physical item in store, you need to promote your finely crafted piece of music in order to sell it.

Though there are literally dozens of social media platforms and channels to use, these are just a few of those which may help you promote your music. Facebook & Twitter If you don’t have an account or fan page for your band, create one now. These two forms of social media are arguably the most important and have incredible reach. Start on Facebook by inviting friends and family to like your page. Interact with users, share news and highlights from your tours or rehearsal sessions. Then switch over to Twitter and follow other bands. Build up a network of like-minded people and potential fans and whip them up into a frenzy about upcoming releases. By the time you have a new single ready to release, fans will be chomping at the bit to get hold of it. YouTube & Vimeo Do you have a music video? Then share it on YouTube. In a world where consumers are constantly fed music mixed with images, it can only be helpful to join the throng. If you don’t have a professionally produced video, why not produce a podcast, or interview in the meantime? Something to expose your band and your music to another audience. Instagram Many people think that Instagram is just an online photo album, but this is just not true. Instagram is an interactive library of the world’s most interesting photos, music and videos. Get your band on Instagram as quickly as possible and start posting music videos and pictures. Had an exciting, breakthrough rehearsal? Take pictures of your triumphant band members and post them to your cork board. Images and videos can be shared across the site, and beyond into Facebook and Twitter, meaning that you can link your accounts from other social media sites to ensure full coverage of all your different fan bases. BandPage Once known as RootMusic, this site offers bands a means to share music, tour dates and news with fans and other musicians. Never underestimate the power of good relations with other bands. Share some tour dates and album releases of theirs and they’ll do the same for you; exposing your band and name to their own fans. Better yet, fans, musicians, producers and partners can all use BandPage, making this site one of the best to extend your reach towards the contacts needed for more gigs, CD production deals and ultimately, more success. Bands In Town Bringing it back to a more local level, Bands In Town can help you organise release and tour dates in your home town. It’s free to join and integrates fully with that key social media site; Facebook. Link your Bands In Town details to your Facebook fan page and allow fans to RSVP to gigs via either platform. You can even use the special packages function to allow fans to buy tickets or music through Facebook or directly through Bands In Town. Woobox Create contests, sweepstakes and coupons for the ultimate marketing tool. If sales are lagging, create a discount coupon to draw in more sales, or open a contest on Facebook for tickets to your upcoming gig.

    Finally, FanDistro.com

Encourage fans to share your music with others by offering them rewards and the chance to help a charity by doing so. Not only do thy get the satisfaction of new and exciting music by word-of-mouth – one of the most effective means of promotion around – but they get the feel-good vibe of helping a charity in need. You can learn more about FanDistro here.

After conquering the local scene, you're likely to be looking for ways to expand your audience. Associating with local good causes and arts event is one way to get exposure without having to pay out for advertising and marketing. If you volunteer to perform at key events, you're likely to get heavily promoted as part of the general marketing, and all you'll have to do is turn up and perform to get exposure to new audiences and potentially influential people. You might also get to start up your network of other artists with those working with the event.

Networking with other musicians is a good way to get yourself known in the industry. Many groups and artists improve their reach by associating with successful artists, whether socially or as support acts. Your ability to connect with other artists might be hampered by the gigs and contacts you already have, however, and that's where new media approaches can come to the rescue. Despite its ubiquity in modern life, there's nothing much that the Internet can do for you in terms of your musical ability. What the Internet can do for you, however, is increase the numbers of those fans, and let many more people have access to your music. It can also let you form networks of influential people who you may not otherwise have been able to reach.  Making sure that you have a good Internet presence is a must, so set up your own website. It might only consist of a single page, but be sure to include clips of any videos, some good visuals and some all-important sample tracks. Then, make sure it's well linked to social media platforms. Choose your URL with care. It should be memorable, but not too long or prone to typing errors. Simplicity is good in terms of design too. Too much Flash trickery or an excess of add-ons can slow your site down and discourage fans from staying long enough to benefit from the news and tracks available. You could do worse than having a dedicated Twitter account for your act, too. Although it can tricky to tweet frequently enough to gain a large following at first, once you're being mentioned by others in their tweets, retweeting can spread the word more quickly, as can sharing music industry news and events and details of upcoming gigs. A Facebook fan page is also a good idea, particularly if you have some decent photos to post.  You could take a leaf from the global marketers' book and harness the power of viral publicity to do this work for you. Several sites exist to help you do exactly this with minimal effort on your part. FanDistro.com lets you reward your loyal fans for sharing your music, encouraging them to do the work of utilising social media for you, for example, while sites like Woobox allow you to let them join in the creativity with social media competitions.  Prizes will attract many people, but free tracks are probably the most effective way of spreading the word about your music. If someone likes the music you make, they'll share it with others, and sample tracks are the new mix tapes in terms of social sharing of music. Once you've connected with your prospective fans online, be sure to respond to them personally wherever possible. This is one of the reasons Twitter is useful, as a quick tweet is often easier than replying to an email or Facebook mention. But however you choose to do it, keep it real and answer personally where possible. If you do get so many new fans that personal replies are impossible, don't send out blanket CC replies and hope no-one notices. Make a general audience post thanking everyone on your chosen platform, and see if you can provide some new freebies or promotional material as a tangible gesture. Remember, it's not just gaining audience share that counts - it's keeping it!

Over the course of the last decade, social networking sites like Facebook have emerged as one of the best ways for artists to promote their music online and expand their fanbase. By making effective use of social media, bands now have the ability to reach a wide range of people, throughout the world, without the need to splash out on an expensive advertising campaign. 

After setting up your band's facebook page, there are several steps you can take to increase the number of 'likes' the page receives and, therefore, expand your audience. 1. Post Your Music It seems obvious, but posting your band's music on your Facebook page is the best way to gain new fans, because it gives people the opportunity to hear, and become familiar with, the music your band plays. If they like what they hear, they will want to hear more in the future and they will be more likely to share your music with their friends. SoundCloud and other similar services are a good way to showcase new music, although videos of the band performing are perhaps even better, as they give people the ability to see the individual members of the band, bringing the band and their fans closer together. While additional content on your band's Facebook page, like pictures, will always be welcome, the primary purpose of the page is to promote the band and the best way to do that is to make it as easy as possible to hear your band's music.

2. Make Use of External Tools Although your page exists on Facebook, your promotion of the page does not need to be limited to Facebook alone. There are a number of external tools you can use to generate more 'likes' for your page and, therefore, a bigger audience for your music. FanDistro is one of many tools that can be used for this. After uploading a song to FanDistro, you can then promote your song to your existing fanbase. Each fan is given a unique URL, which they can subsequently use to share the song with their friends.  When someone purchases the song using that fan's URL, 20% of the sale is sent to a charity in the fan's name. Fans also have opportunities to receive free extras like merchandise, thereby giving them an incentive to share your music. We've seen campaigns on FanDistro that have, on average, turned each fan into 19.5 new ones. Other tools which can prove useful for generating 'likes' on Facebook include BandPage, an application which allows you to customise your Facebook page, and Bands In Town, a leading concert discovery app.

3. Link People To The Page In order to further build your fanbase, try to direct as many people to your page as possible. If your band has an official website, or a Twitter account, make sure they have a link to the Facebook page on them. It may also be worthwhile to send a link to the page to all of the friends on your personal Facebook account and encourage them to share it as well. Although many may choose not to, a few people can make a difference. Each friend who posts the link could be advertising the page to hundreds of their friends, who would otherwise be beyond your reach.

4. Try Not To Over-Do It One of the most common mistakes made with social media advertising is a tendency to over-do it. While it is crucial to increase awareness of your band and remain active on Facebook, there is a fine line between keeping people up-to-date and annoying them with persistent posting. If you annoy people too much, they may 'unlike' the page, at which point it becomes completely counter-productive. Try to keep your Facebook posts down to important updates and limit them to a couple a day. Sometimes, it is important to realise that 'less is more'.

So you've got a Facebook page up and running for your music, and perhaps you've got a few thousand likes. The problem is that it seems as if no one is seeing or engaging with your updates. This is a common problem that we hear from many artists on FanDistro, so we decided to put this post together with our advice.

According to various experiments, Facebook page updates typically reach between 10-25% of the page's audiences. This largely depends on how engaged the page's fans are, and the quality of the update.

When it comes to getting more engagement on Facebook, you essentially have two choices: to pay for extra exposure or to naturally boost your 'edgerank' by continually posting better updates . Let's first take a deeper look at EdgeRank.

What is EdgeRank?

EdgeRank is an algorithm used by Facebook to determine what information is seen by the user in their newsfeed. Put simply, it's the algorithm that determines whether you see updates from a page or friend in your newsfeed or not. It's based on a calculation of three variables.

1. Affinity

What is your relationship with the viewing user? If it is a close relationship, the likelihood of your story appearing on their news feed is high. Bonding with your user therefore is a must to increase the score in this area. In terms of how this applies to artists, if a fan is regularly visiting your page and liking / commenting on your posts, the EdgeRank algorithm is more likely to display your posts to them.

2. Weight

There are many different types of posts you can make. Short posts, long posts, photographic posts, video posts, status updates and sharing link posts. They all carry a certain 'weight'. The higher the weight of the content, the higher the score will be; and therefore increased likelihood that your post will appear on their newsfeed.

In our experience, image & video posts tend to get the most engagement for artists, while sharing link posts tend to get the most clicks (but not likes / comments). 

3. Time Decay

The older your post is, the lower the value it holds and therefore, disappears from a users' newsfeed. It is in your interests to keep posts fresh and up to date. Should you need to re-iterate points, a fresh post with accompanying photo or video is better than bumping an old post.

So what can you do to ensure some high scores across the board? Here are some tips to get you started:

Check Your Settings

A simple mistake here can alter the chances of success for your page exponentially. If your page settings aren't set correctly, users will not be able to interact with you. Be sure to enable posts and messages to all relevant demographics.

Show Your Personality

Readers of any group love to interact. It makes them feel like they are part of the ride. Be sure to personalise your posts. Give likers a chance to get to know the real you. By intimating interaction, you will be increasing the likelihood of your posts appearing on their newsfeed; therefore reaching a larger audience.

Be sure to respond to comments. Posting a status update and never replying to any comments is a mistake many artists make. People like to talk to other humans, not robots. Technology has not advanced so far that we still like the human touch. Keep it real and natural and you won't go too far wrong.

Maximise Weekend Exposure

Whilst posting regularly is a must, the most important posts that you would like to be shared are better kept for the weekends. Those lazy days where people can relax and unwind after a busy week at work are the days where they are more likely to be scouring their newsfeed and groups on Facebook for updates. Plan your most desired posts with precision. Ensure they are content rich, engaging and thoroughly entertaining to ensure maximum potential of sharers.

Create Engaging Content

Humour and personalisation backed up by thoroughly engaging content is a must if you want to maximise those shares. An example of how to successfully do this can be found below. Skreamer are a FanDistro artist who have gone from 6,000 to over 20,000 likes in the space of a few weeks, largely through being exceptional in how they use Facebook.

Visit their Facebook page and note the interaction with their fans, showing pictures of where they have been, what they are doing and the troubles they are facing along the way. Everyone loves a story and Skreamer are not shy at telling theirs. Fully uncensored chat ensues as likes creep up the scale. This band has certainly got the gist of it.

Use Competitions to Increase Shares

Another way to get more likes and shares is to run a competition. No correct answers are required; it is simply a case of how many shares a user can get for your chosen post. We like to use Woobox.com for this as there are so many different ways that you can run competitions with your fans.

Our friends at EmuBands, a digital music distribution site that offers a one-time only fee for distribution, have kindly offered all FanDistro artists £10 / $15 off your first release. This means that you can get your single up on iTunes + all of these stores for a one-time fee of just £14.95 (about $22.50) down from £24.95. Alternatively, you can upload an EP or album for just £24.95 or £39.95.

Music videos have been a popular way for both established and up and coming artists to promote their videos for many years now. The Internet, and especially YouTube, has made this quicker and easier to do than ever before, however you still need to make sure that your video will get both discovered and shared. Below are 9 ways to promote your music using video.

1. Get it on YouTube From being little heard of outside of South Korea, PSY rocketed to fame all over the world after finding YouTube success with Gangnam Style. Whilst expecting to repeat his success is a little ambitious, it really highlights the power of sharing via social media. YouTube videos are so easy to share, through the site itself as well as a variety of other social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and Google+, bringing your music straight to the screen of people who may have never discovered it otherwise. 2. Make it worth sharing Whilst some video is better than no video, the more likely people are to share it, the more people will discover it. It doesn’t need to be funny, or have Hollywood level production values to be a success; it just has to be memorable and provoke a strong emotional reaction in the people who watch it. If the video involves a live performance, make sure the sound quality is up to scratch, otherwise your attempt to promote your music using video could backfire. If the song is good enough and memorable enough on its own, don’t go too overboard with the video and let the music do the talking. 3. Capture your audience If your song or video starts off boring, the chances are that most people won’t bother sticking around to the end, let alone share it. If the song is particularly long, consider doing a shorter edit that could be used to promote the full length video.  4. Make as many videos as possible If somebody finds your music video, you want them to be able to find more of your music as easily as possible. The more they like you, the more likely they are to share your videos, buy your albums and come to your gigs. If you don’t have time to make multiple music videos, put some of your songs to a simple background, for example your album cover or a slideshow of photos. 5. Make it easy to find There are so many videos on YouTube, music and otherwise, that finding exactly what you are looking for can be a challenge. Make sure that any videos that you post online are optimised for searches, with correct spellings, and repeat key words in the title of the video, the description and the tag. Setting up your own channel on YouTube will enable you to cross-promote your music videos. If somebody finds one, they can easily find another this way. 6. Make it easy to find out more about you Think about how somebody will find out more about your music once they have watched your video. Use the comments section to give as much information about your music as possible. Be sure to include a link back to your website, and consider using annotations during the video, or adding a few seconds to the end of your video to promote your website. 7. Don’t be afraid to promote yourself Use your own social media accounts to promote your music videos. The chances are several of your friends and family will be intrigued enough to click on the links you post, and some may even share these on further. The more views and ratings a video has, the more likely people are to click on it and have a watch and listen. This is probably the easiest way of gaining some initial hits. 8. Find people to promote your music video There are many ways of recruiting people to promote your video. Ask your friends and family to share it for you, and considering using websites such as Fiverr, where people will promote it for you in exchange for a small fee. Find similar musicians who are willing to cross-promote videos with you. 9. Think outside of YouTube Whilst YouTube may be the most popular, there are numerous other video sharing websites available to use. Get your video on as many platforms as possible. Vimeo is becoming increasingly popular, and has a great community, with forums which allow you to chat to other users and cross-promote each other’s videos.