Music Promo Tips Blog
& Music Biz News
Do you have some music marketing and promotion business
news that you think musicians should know about? If so, submit your music promotion news.
It Can Happen to You! - Internet Wedding Fraud
I'm miserable right now, and $2500 poorer. My band was the subject of internet fraud.
So rather than totally wallow in my own misery, I want to educate you on how it happened and how You can avoid this same problem. Because Your band may be next.
In September, we go an email for a wedding gig. They found us through our Celtic weddings website. It was a little difficult for Andrew to work out the details with the folks getting "married". But we negotiated payment--$1500. And we would drive to Oklahoma.
We ask for a non-refundable 50% up front. So we waited and contacted and followed up with them to get payment. Finally they sent a check... for $2500. Then they called and told us their accountant sent the wrong amount. Could we send them the back the difference?
Sure, once the check clears. But before that happened. They canceled the wedding. The mother-in-law had a heart attack. They were pissed. They asked if they could have back the non-refundable money. We agreed. And after three days, the check seemed to have cleared. And Andrew sent money back via a Moneygram.
Today, five business days after the initial deposit, the check bounced. A little research revealed this is a typical scam.
So what are the listens to be learned.
- Even in this day and age, it can take 7-10 days for a check to clear.
- NEVER send money back hastily. If they are that urgent to have their money, then tough luck.
- Even YOU can be scammed by something this stupid. So be on your guard. Lean on the side of caution to avoid losing big money.
Bard Marc Gunn of the Brobdingnagian Bards has helped 1000's of musicians save and make money with their musical groups through his monthly newsletter, Bards Crier Music Marketing and Promotion Ezine. Now you can get FREE "how-to" music marketing and promotion advice by visiting www.bardscrier.com. No time to visit the site? Subscribe to the Bards Crier Ezine for Free. Just email subscribe@bardscrier.com
--posted by Marc Gunn at Monday, October 22, 2007
Free republishing rights are available to all articles written by Marc Gunn. You can find a complete list of such music marketing articles here.
You must contact individual authors to get their permission to republish their articles.
No-Cost Teleclass with Marc Gunn
I'll be Julie Blake's guest for a one-hour conference call titled "Turbo-Charge Your Music Career with a Guerrilla Marketing Mindset." Should be an hour of power thinking.
That call will take place on Tuesday, Oct. 16, starting at 12 noon Central (CST). That's 1 PM Eastern and 10 AM Pacific. Register for the call here: www.getmusicsuccess.com/GuerrillaMindset.html
Then on Tuesday, Oct. 23, I'll host a "Find Your Riches in Music Niches" teleclass. My guest will be savvy Austin music maverick Marc Gunn (www.marcgunn.com), who is a master of online marketing and finding gold in the strangest musical places. Find out the true story behind his hilarious "Irish Drinking Songs for Cat Lovers" CD.
Joining us will be Shannyn Kelly of the Limeybirds (www.limeybirds.com), who turned a funny musical idea into a lucrative franchise.
This call is part of my Indie Music Marketing Insiders Club teleclass series. You can join us on the live call, but you have to be a member to access the MP3 download of this and all previous teleclasses. Learn more at www.MusicMarketingInsiders.com
Here are the call-in details for Tuesday, Oct. 23: Starting time: 9 PM Eastern (8 PM Central, 6 PM Pacific)
Dial-in number: 1-218-339-7800 (a Minnesota number)
Access code: (enter this number when prompted) 37251
There's no cost to access the call. Only your regular long distance charges will apply. The number of participants is limited, so call in near the top of the hour to make sure you get in.
Check the www.TheBuzzFactor.com home page for more details and a registration link soon.
--posted by Marc Gunn at Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Free republishing rights are available to all articles written by Marc Gunn. You can find a complete list of such music marketing articles here.
You must contact individual authors to get their permission to republish their articles.
Why You Want to Surprise the Hell Out of Your Fans
A few days ago, I surprised the Hell out of one of my fans using a cool internet tool called Technorati. This site allows you to see what people are saying about you in their blogs. But why do you want to surprise the Hell out of your fans?
You see, guerrilla music marketing is about getting your music to potential fans aggressively and at low cost. One way to do that is to build a viral buzz around your band such that people talk about you without you having to tell them to talk about you. Great music may do that. But great music combined with a great experience Wget your fans talking.
As a fan myself, my favorite bands are those I know or those that give me a story to tell. My favorite Celtic rock group is Black 47. Why? It's not just because they offer a powerful, unique contribution to the genre. They were like musical legends when I first emailed them to tell them how much I loved their music. But I became a fan and started telling my friends about them when Larry Kirwan, the lead singer of Black 47, emailed me back.
Now, that was exceptional! I was able to connect with the band in a personal way. How many times as a publisher and DJ have I emailed other groups and never received an email from their manager or publicist, let alone one of the band members? However, Larry Kirwan did and this is the zillionth time I've told that story.
The cheapest and most effective way of marketing your music is by not doing it at all. Rather, it's by getting other people to do it for you.
Technorati gives me the opportunity to provide a similiar exceptional experience. I don't spam myspace fans with irrelevant comments about my latest CD or how cool I am. Instead, I use Technorati to tell me where people are already talking about me or listening to my music. I post a comment and nearly every time I do, I give my fans a pleasant surprise. They email me back saying, "Wow! I can't believe you commented in MY blog. I love your music... etc, etc, etc."
That's an experience that they will remember. No longer am I just like every other band... untouchable and impersonal. I'm the guy from the Brobdingnagian Bards that they Talked to, that they Know, that took a personal interest in their life.
So the next time, someone asks for cool Celtic bands, they're gonna say, "Have you heard of the Brobdingnagian Bards?! They're awesome!" Then they'll tell the story of how we met online.
That is viral marketing power. You will earn new fans without any extra work on your part. And as a huge added bonus, you get to make some great new friends and have a fun time doing it. What can be better that than that?
Marc Gunn, Bard of the Brobdingnagian Bards has helped 1000's of musicians save and make money with their musical groups through his monthly newsletter, Bards Crier Music Marketing and Promotion Ezine. Now you can get FREE "how-to" music marketing and promotion advice by visiting www.bardscrier.com. No time to visit the site? Subscribe to the Bards Crier Ezine for Free. Just email subscribe@bardscrier.comLabels: fan marketing, guerrilla music marketing
--posted by Marc Gunn at Sunday, May 13, 2007
Free republishing rights are available to all articles written by Marc Gunn. You can find a complete list of such music marketing articles here.
You must contact individual authors to get their permission to republish their articles.
How to Surprise the Hell Out of Your Fans
"Holy Crap! You found me!"
That was the latest comment I got when I posted a "thank you" in a fan's Livejournal. She had just finished writing a praise-filled post about how cool my Irish Drinking Songs for Cat Lovers CD was, when I appeared... just two hours after she wrote it!
That's not the first time I have blown away fans by personally responding to a blog that they would never have expected me to respond to. So what's the deal? Am I mind-reader?
Yup! They call me Mind-Reading Marc. Okay, not really. In fact, I found Technorati a long time ago. It allows me to track what people are saying about me and my websites in their blogs.
Any music marketer worth half their weight knows that tracking the results of a campaign are essential to the success of their marketing. Technorati works with blogs or any RSS feed. You enter a word or URL and it scans those feeds. Then it comes back with the results. And it also tells you how long ago they posted the information.
Thanks to this amazing site, I learned that David Meerman Scott posted a thank you to me after finishing his New Rules of Marketing & PR. I learned that Pink Mermaid used the chorus for one of my songs in a list of quotes about forgiveness. And I got a great review and feature by AssociatedContent regarding my latest CD, Irish Drinking Songs: The Cat Lovers Companion.
Of course, I also read how a fan loved my original CD so much that she posted a link to it in her blog and got a HUGE surprise when I commented and said, "thanks!" Guess that is not too bad a tool for helping you to market your music and surprise the hell out of your fans.
Bard Marc Gunn of the Brobdingnagian Bards has helped 1000's of musicians save and make money with their musical groups through his monthly newsletter, Bards Crier Music Marketing and Promotion Ezine. Now you can get FREE "how-to" music marketing and promotion advice by visiting www.bardscrier.com. No time to visit the site? Subscribe to the Bards Crier Ezine for Free. Just email subscribe@bardscrier.comLabels: fan marketing, music marketing
--posted by Marc Gunn at Friday, May 11, 2007
Free republishing rights are available to all articles written by Marc Gunn. You can find a complete list of such music marketing articles here.
You must contact individual authors to get their permission to republish their articles.
How to Earn Good Will in the Music Business
Now that's one way to get someone's attention.
I got an email from Mousie on Myspace. She has an independent website where she reviews bands that she thinks are Must Hear bands. This month, she picked my band, the Brobdingnagian Bards.
What struck me about this was when I went to her DeathSong website I saw a band at the top of the page called Lourds. I immediately thought they were the band that did the review. I went to the Lourds website, listened and liked the songs, and started to write about them when I realized my error. They had nothing to do with the review.
That got me wondering why bands don't write reviews? I started publishing the Celtic MP3s Music Magazine in 2000 and as a result, do a search for 'Celtic music' and you'll find my name and the Brobdingnagian Bards somewhere at the top of the search engines. So why not write band reviews yourself and post them on your website?
Or if you're too lazy to do that, hire someone to write them for you. For as little as $5-15 a pop, you could hire a ghost writer to write the reviews.
All you need do is post the reviews in a blog with a link back to your website. Pick bands that are similar to your own, and you'll earn quality traffic from fans who will probably like your music. Drop the band an email and maybe they'll either return the favor or at least add a link to your review for even more traffic.
Worst case scenario, you send a little good will towards bands that you enjoy. The music business could always use a little more good will. So start writing.
Bard Marc Gunn of the Brobdingnagian Bards has helped 1000's of musicians save and make money with their musical groups through his monthly newsletter, Bards Crier Music Marketing and Promotion Ezine. Now you can get FREE "how-to" music marketing and promotion advice by visiting www.bardscrier.com. No time to visit the site? Subscribe to the Bards Crier Ezine for Free. Just email subscribe@bardscrier.com
--posted by Marc Gunn at Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Free republishing rights are available to all articles written by Marc Gunn. You can find a complete list of such music marketing articles here.
You must contact individual authors to get their permission to republish their articles.
Don't Lose Your Domain Name!
by Marc Gunn
That always shocks me. I was composing the shownotes for my Irish & Celtic Music Podcast, checking URLs. One of the bands in this week's show had a domain that was no longer functional. It expired two months ago and was about to be released to the public. Fortunately, I knew her and gave her a call.
She had no idea the domain was ending, but since her band broke up she didn't think it worthwhile to keep the domain running. As she said, "Well, I have the CDBaby page, and a lot of folks are using myspace URLs."
Tis true, tis true. But for everyone who lived through the heyday of MP3.com, you should know never to trust an external domain for your promotion. Myspace.com is a great site. But will it be around in five years? Who knows?
Personally, I put no faith in that. I promote TheBards.net, MarcGunn.com, BardsCrier.com or whatever website I'm promoting. Myspace, SoundClick, even CDBaby are temporary. They could poof disappear any day, God forbid.
Fortunately, you can get domains these days for just $8.99 through sites like GoDaddy.com. Or if you're in my friend's predicament, you can Backorder the site for just $18.99, which means, once the domain becomes free from its current owner, you can re-take control of its ownership if you lost it.
The important thing is don't let this happen to you. You never know when you will need that URL once again. So register your URL and keep it forever.
Bard Marc Gunn of the Brobdingnagian Bards has helped 1000's of musicians save and make money with their musical groups through his monthly newsletter, Bards Crier Music Marketing and Promotion Ezine. Now you can get FREE "how-to" music marketing and promotion advice by visiting www.bardscrier.com. No time to visit the site? Subscribe to the Bards Crier Ezine for Free. Just email subscribe@bardscrier.com
--posted by Marc Gunn at Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Free republishing rights are available to all articles written by Marc Gunn. You can find a complete list of such music marketing articles here.
You must contact individual authors to get their permission to republish their articles.
Challenging the Status Quo
by Peter Spellman
Someone once said, "Remember that the great wise men of the past held no respect for today's conventions, and neither will the great men of the future." If you desire to improve your world - or even your own situation - then creativity will help you do so. The status quo and creativity are incompatible. Creativity and innovation always walk hand in hand.
When singer Elvis Presley died, he left everything in a trust for Lisa Marie, his young daughter. Soon, however his estate was in terrible shape. In 1997, Lisa Marie's mother, Priscilla became a co-executor of the trust and found that if she didn't do something, and quickly, the estate was on the road to ruin.
During his lifetime, Elvis received less then half of what he earned. Colonel Tom Parker, his manager, had a contract that took 50 percent of everything right off the top. That and a lifestyle of free spending, meant that Elvis often found himself strapped for cash. Several years before he died, Elvis sold off the rights to most of his recordings to raise money. Consequently, his estate receives no royalties from his music, even though Elvis recordings earned more revenue for RCA than any other artist even after 25 years after his death. Add to that a huge inheritance tax imposed by the government, and an empty mansion, Graceland gobbling up money through taxes and upkeep, and you can imagine how bleak the situation looked.
Priscilla Presley was not about to allow her daughter inheritance to be eaten away - but how do you earn income from Elvis' estate without Elvis? Whenever he needed money, he would simple perform at another concert, make another album, or appear in another movie. Priscilla started to think creatively. First, she took the little remaining cash from the estate and invested it into Graceland. Rather than selling it, she opened it to the pubic as a tourist attraction. It was a great risk, but it paid off. Just thirty eight days after it opened in 1982, it earned back its investment.
Next, she severed ties with Tom Parker so that 50 percent of the estate's earnings would not continue being funneled to him. Finally, Priscilla began to treat Elvis as a brand, She even promoted legislation in Tennessee to make his likeness intellectual property, which would belong to his estate.
By using creative thinking, Priscilla Presley turned what looked like an impossible situation into a business empire that earns tens of millions of dollars each year. People speculate that Lisa Marie Presley's net worth today exceeds $250 million. Without the creative thinking that shattered the status quo, it likely would have been nothing.
---
Excerpted from the e-letter, "Music Biz Insight: Power Reading for Busy Music Professionals" by Peter Spellman, Music Business Solutions.Labels: Inspiration, Peter Spellman
--posted by Marc Gunn at Friday, April 13, 2007
Free republishing rights are available to all articles written by Marc Gunn. You can find a complete list of such music marketing articles here.
You must contact individual authors to get their permission to republish their articles.
Attention MySpace Music Spammers
I just saw an email from a music marketer publicizing the latest MySpace spammer. Ye know, this program will post a comment on every MySpace page that meet certain keywords and and have high page rankings. Ooo! Sounds tempting doesn't it?
It is. I can't deny, I've thought about using MySpace spamming programs. But I can't get my head around the idea that it is STILL SPAM! And no one likes spam. You just piss people off.
Like for me, I just closed off all HTML comments in my profile because I was getting 2-3 spammers a day with some stupid promo tool. I'm just sick of it!
Like I said, I understand the temptation, but does it really do any good? If you spam someone, are they really going to buy more music from you? Will they see your advertisement about your upcoming gig and say, "Ooo! I bette go buy that album."
The answer is YES! Rather yes, a few of them will. Maybe one in 10,000 IF You're Lucky! Meanwhile, you piss off the MySpace page owner, and you alienate other people who don't appreciate your spammy message either.
So what's the alternative?
Keep it simple. Keep it personal. Keep it relevant to the webpage you're on. Only then are you truly gonna build up quality relationships that will truly yield good money!
Bard Marc Gunn of the Brobdingnagian Bards has helped 1000's of musicians save and make money with their musical groups through his monthly newsletter, Bards Crier Music Marketing and Promotion Ezine. Now you can get FREE "how-to" music marketing and promotion advice by visiting www.bardscrier.com. No time to visit the site? Subscribe to the Bards Crier Ezine for Free. Just email subscribe@bardscrier.comLabels: music marketing, myspace
|
Lack of Education Will Cost Your Band Dearly
Subscribe to The Bards Crier to learn how to successfully promote your unsigned band's music. Your musical success depends on it.
ACT NOW, while it is still FREE!
More Blogs
· Bob Baker's Indie Music Promotion Blog
· Joe Taylor Jr. Spinme
· Music Business
· Radio Marketing Nexus
· Seth's Blog
· Bob Bly Copywriter
· Diary of a Music Marketing Mad-Man
· Movie & TV News
· Irish Music CD Reviews
· Serendipity Cinema
My Blogs
· Free Music Downloads Blog
· Free Music Blog
· Life's Free Gifts
· Cat Music Blog
· Celtic Music Magazine
· The Bards Tales
· Marc's Poetry Blog
· Pub Songs Podcast
|
