While working on Santana’s Trumpeter, Bill Ortiz’s upcoming Website using the www.fourfour.com Band Website CMS I had to create a few pages to showcase his music. Featuring his latest release was easy to-do by using the built-in “Store” and music player widget in the CMS. But then I had to create two pages to feature “Live with Santana” and another entitled “As a Guest Artist” and upload a number of one-minutes samples of music he has played on including Toni Toni Toni, Luce, Rebeca Mauleon, and Joyce Cooling just to name a few. After considering a custom hack of the Yahoo Media Player, and a couple others, I landed on Soundcloud.com .
The new feature to reach out to your Facebook, Twitter, and Gmail contacts is pretty nifty to get the word out that you are on Soundcloud. Also the Social functionality is tops, you simply click anywhere on the time-line of the sound file and you can leave a comment, after logging in at Soundcloud of course. The widgets are up-to-date looking in presentation and easy to use. For free accounts, if I have this correct, you have a limit of minutes of audio ( 120mins ) you can upload, but there are no limits on outbound streaming. The site has other “fee based” options to be able to share audio with others. Check it out here.
This is some serious cool-factor. Below is the “standard” Soundcloud widget I made for my band. I would show you Bill’s widget but you will have to wait until we launch his new site. The Premium widgets look great and come with their Premium services. BTW, you can upload multiple songs into one widget. You can also embed these nifty widgets on Facebook via the Soundcloud Player Facebook App.
Oh Myspace! The new bottomless pit of indie music. Some say right now Myspace is dead/dying and that you could say “My house is on fire” via Myspace…and your house would indeed burn down. And of course the all-knowing bloggers saying “Myspace, where bands go to die.” Ok we went from #4 to #11 most visited Website on the Web? What Comscore? Ok, but then again we have a lot of artists with huge followings and music players that show plays in the millions. No matter how they got these numbers is not our debate today, my fine furry friends, maybe they used some “Friend Adder” software or simply jacked-up the numbers via other devious ways; who cares. We are talking about music, fans, and the artists/managements’ valuable time. For many Myspace is still very much alive and kicking. We just don’t want to live there. And for all intents and purposes we are talking about simple DIY design. Here at 5th Beatle Dot Net we are talking about setting up your Social Media platform so the conversation can start, and continue.
One good random example is the Hawaiian “Sublime-esque” band “Pepper.” I hear these cats do well out there. A modest following on Myspace. 25 million plays to date. 181,000 friends. This looks to be authentic fan engagement. And a great example of a Myspace page that didn’t break the band’s pocket book. Let’s look at the components of this page:
Header – Great “not too fancy” graphic head at the top advertising that a new CD is available
Show Calendar
Music Player with 10 songs including some remixes
Mailing List collector widget
Image links to Facebook Fan Page and iLike page
Embedded flyers selling Merchandise
Links to all 6 CD’s on iTunes
Twitter feed
Top friends visible (some are choosing to hide friends these days with “hide codes”)
44000 non-html comments posted (no huge embedded images from fans or spammers, no mafia wars invites)
So I imagine this is a pretty much post it and leave it page, basically well done and probably doesn’t take too much time for the artist/management to maintain what fan engagement arrives through this “channel”. Ok, enough Pepper let’s move on.
The all important HEADER:
Some visual excitement is needed in my opinion on an artists Myspace page. With my group “Life Love Misery,” I went for a really basic header as I had no budget to hire one of the best companies I have come across that do custom Myspace pages. I hear the CSS capabilities of manipulating Myspace pages are pretty open for developers but of course you have to know how to code CSS. I myself have some intermediate experience with html, php, java, and now as I hacked this myself…CSS. I simply took a Myspace Layout CSS template and hacked the shit out of it until I got this page. It was a pain in the ass in the beginning, but now I’m essentially finding the coolest pages from the hottest bands (or at least ones spending money on their Myspace pages) and copying the CSS between the style and style/ tags and bingo monkey see monkey do, no cheesy Thomason Myspace Editor made pages.
And just for a reality check. OK? Ready? Not everyone cares, nor believes that Myspace is even a concern within their Social Media Marketing for Music Campaign.
Let’s take double-awesome indie artist troubadour John Vanderslice for an example; “Everything is better at http://www.johnvanderslice.com.” He simply wants all Myspace traffic to go directly to his Homepage; he is saying just skip it all together is my impression. Seven songs (including a cover of Radiohead’s “Karma Police”) and tour dates. That is all. He simply had someone manipulate the CSS to hide everything else. Even friending is disabled and hidden. That is a statement. Go John!
But then we have the “other camp.” If you are with that other camp or “on the fence” like me I have to say I am thoroughly impressed with the work of Outloud Marketing. I recall some reasonable prices from $200-500 and up for a good page. Sure there are probably more companies like this, but I found these peoples first. Look at some of their work:
Man Like Machine – I really, really like this page, especially the header with “add to friends” at the very top. Cambria Detken – Another nice header, though order of top nav under header should be (in Western culture anyhoos): *Website*Twitter*Facebook*YouTube* in my own opinion, of course.
Simply put, the best and most effective way for fan engagement on Myspace is to not live on the thing and:
1) Answer “friend request” with clever and unique comment graphics on fans page or personal notes back to select fans. My graphics guy (also my engineer / bass guru) did these for me in one “sitting.’
MySpace Comment Section Banner - order CD!
Anyways you get the idea, I have 5 of them right now, the idea was to use various banners for the specific “campaigns.”
I have:
a) Rocking! Thanks for add!
b) Order CD at Homepage
c) Order CD at Cdbaby.com
d) Available at iTunes now!
e) T-Shirts
f) We can easily make more for whatever the case may be…
Moral of the story is to get the fan back to a purchase point, or at least a value point, i.e. “Free song for your e-mail address and zip code.” TopSpin Media does a good job providing technology to mount on a homepage with “value add” / unique merchandise offers i.e. “Fan Packs” available at an artist’s Homepage.
1-2 KO!!!! Good luck! Figure out a way to quickly do your biz on Myspace and get out fast. Drive it all home or to a value point.
Don’t have time for these shenanigans?? I may be of some assistance if I am available. Let’s continue this conversation if need be.
Most of the information on this site is painstakingly formatted in this PDF file below so you can print it on white paper with easy to read black text. Or you can print for FREE by subscribing to the RSS feed at the top of the page, and also be in tune with any and all updates. Try Google Reader, its’ pretty cool. Also many hyperlinks will take you into the Web and show you the examples given. In some cases better then the Website! Ha!
Ebook – ” Web and Social Media Presence for Music Marketing and Fan Engagement” by Todd Tate - Take it for free!
Posted 1 year, 1 month ago at 12:16 pm. Add a comment
