How to Promote Yourself Part 13: ReverbNation.com = WIDGETS!

REVERBNATION.COM - Widgets!! Widgets!! Widgets!! and MORE!

This site is great because you upload your tracks and they generate lovely little music playing widgets which can be placed on any website that takes html. These widgets not only play music, but they can also show your performance schedule, and allow people to sign up for your mailing list, link to your youtube videos and offer free song downloads. And anyone who likes your music can place the widget on their site if they want, thus giving you more exposure, while allowing you the power to change the widget if you want. Since my record [Chillodesiac Lounge, vol. 1: FEVER] has cover tunes which are against the MySpace policy, I can’t put them on my MySpace player. To get around this, I have a Reverb Nation widget on my MySpace page so people can listen to my whole record. I also went a long time with a widget on my main website, since it was so much easier than creating a player myself for my site. I also sometimes paste in a widget when I post a bulletin on MySpace, so people can hear the music, or on a blog post. This is a truly great resource, and it’s totally FREE. As this site is developing, they are partnering more with MySpace, and now you can rss your MySpace blog onto your reverbnation profile, as well as import your friend count to show as “fans” on your reverbnation widgets. You can also import your twitter status onto your reverbnation page. You can also make this you hub of your mailing list and even choose to do digital distribution through them. I still choose CD Baby because there is no annual fee.

Unfortunately BLOGGER doesn't allow you to embed these widgets in their blogs, but MySpace does. You can see ours on our myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/wwgroovecorp

[Hi all, Ellen here. I've decided to take a very long handout that I created for my college students and break it down into a series of blogs. This is a summary of what I know about promoting yourself and your music online. If you or someone you know is a self released artist who doesn't necessarily have a plan of action after the CDs are manufactured, subscribe to this blog and read the series. I'm breaking it down into bite sized portions. ]

Listen to the newest "When I Fall in Love" Sneak Peak.

Hey everyone,
We're printing a final mix of "When I Fall in Love" [ft. Ingrid DuMosch]. This is the UNMASTERED VERSION. Just a sneak peak of something on our next release.

http://www.reverbnation.com/tunepak/1641271

Thanks for caring.

WGC

How to Promote Yourself Part 12: Ping & Tiny URLs

PING.FM

I love ping! Why? Because it provides me with the opportunity to update my status on several websites all at once. I can either send an email or text message, or log onto their site and post a status update or mini-blog and they do the rest of the work. It shows up on Twitter, Linked In, Plaxo, MySpace, Reverb Nation etc. If I wanted to, I could also have it show up on my Facebook account, but I’ve chosen not to do that for the following reason. All of those except facebook are my “artist” profiles, and therefore, I keep my status updates on topics that I feel comfortable sharing with people I don’t know. I actually don’t even know who most of the people are who follow me on Twitter, though I suspect most of them want to sell me either porn or pharmaceuticals. Facebook on the other hand is much more personal, and my status updates are often more personal than I feel comfortable just putting “out there”. I still haven't figured out how to connect ping to update the status on our artist page at Facebook, but that's on my list.

Tiny URL dot COM [AND BIT.LY AND OW.LY] I have to put "dotCOM" or else it gets edited when I post this. And apparently you cannot type tiny and url without a space either. boo.

So now you’re on Amazon and iTunes, and you want to link to your pages from your YouTube pages, but they don’t allow html. Yet if you just put a url [http://www.whatever.com] in your text, that becomes its own link. Too bad your Amazon and iTunes urls are 4,563 characters each. That’s where ..-dot-com [or bit.ly, or ow.ly] can be of assistance. You can generate a much shorter alias url to use, and it even allows you the option of creating a custom alias url which is much shorter and easier on the eyes. So you paste in: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw_0_17?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-music&field-keywords=worldwide+groove+corporation&x=0&y=0&s prefix=worldwide+groove+corporation And they allow you to generate http://www.tiny url DOTcom/YOU-Amazon or whatever you type in for the text after the slash. Lovely. This is also helpful in putting a url in your status updates, though some services, like Twitter, automatically generate a shorter url on your behalf.

[Hi all, Ellen here. I've decided to take a very long handout that I created for my college students and break it down into a series of blogs. This is a summary of what I know about promoting yourself and your music online. If you or someone you know is a self released artist who doesn't necessarily have a plan of action after the CDs are manufactured, subscribe to this blog and read the series. I'm breaking it down into bite sized portions. ]

testing the new blog

Hi! I'm testing this blogging site to see if it's indeed better for importing via rss to other sites like Facebook and iLike etc.

The Pressure is on... 3AM blog by Ellen.

The pressure is on... 3AM blog by Ellen.
Category: Music

Hi everyone!
Man alive have we been busy. Not only are we in the process of trying to find some space to relocate [and fixing up the current space to sell], but also we are under a sudden and fast deadline to finish up some new downtempo tracks for the next release. I can't divulge certain details yet until things are finalized, but let's just say that our team is expanding and that's a great thing for getting the name Worldwide Groove Corporation out there.

It's funny, tonight we opened up all of the song files we have started, all at various stages of development. Some are practically finished, others are a 30 second snippet of an idea, and one so far exists only inside of my brain, but is fully complete nonetheless. So we are assessing which tracks we can possibly have finished within the next 2 weeks, and having to make some decisions accordingly.

Some of these decisions have to do with track names. We have a few instrumentals which, when Kurt opened the file and started programming them, quickly chose random names like "2AM", "Nectar", and "Daydream". But we need to think big picture and about the flavor of our project. So far we have "branded" our artist releases under the downtempo lounge category, reconstructing famous jazz standards into chillout tracks. So the cover titles are My Funny Valentine and Fever etc. We named our originals things like "Mimosa" and "Midnight in Venice". So if we want to thing of appropriate song titles, they need to seem to fit with that general mood, and also fit the song.

Another interesting thing is that on the first record, I personally had primarily begun the programming and production on the first 4 tracks, workshopping my ideas and giving Kurt a good sense of my vision until he was fully on board with the concept and interested in working more on it. But this time around, life is quite different. Not only do I have a preschooler to entertain all day long, but the gear has changed, and I'm not as equipped, nor do I have long stretches of time, to sit and noodle around with ideas. But this time, Kurt is the one beginning ideas on tracks, and I feel a bit awkward and out of control on things.

It's also been an interesting show to see the flavor of the tracks we have started. Kurt's tendency on these has been to go for the slow to mid tempo, plateau feeling, espionage sounding tracks. Which can be very cool on a project, however, we don't have a very strong representation of the more fun and quirky side of things, like we had with Tangerine and Fever [More Cowbell Remix] on the first project. Both of which were very much my influence. So, I'm lobbying for a greater swing over to the fun factor, and hoping to get some electro-kitsch elements happening.

The bottom line is, when we are working on a track, I ask myself "does this music make this room seem like a cooler place to be?" Or "would I enjoy having this as the back drop to a small social gathering?" If it doesn't lend itself to that emotionally, then we tweak it until it does. There's one track in particular that has some string parts on it, which are cool, but they are too tense and not emotionally consistent with our other tracks. It's those big picture perspectives that make a huge difference in a project.

OK, I need to try to get back to sleep. I just thought I'd take advantage of my insomnia tonight and blog a bit.

Ellen