100 social media resources for musicians

Gen-y Rock Stars | Next Gen Music Marketing | www.genyrockstars.com

Gen-Y Rock Stars Presents: 100 Ways For Musicians to Use Social Media for FREE

A free resource from Greg Rollett and Gen-Y Rock Stars This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Please feel free to use this work in a like situation and share with your band mates, friends and colleagues. All you have to do is site the credit back to us!


100 Ways for Musicians to Use Social Media for FREE About the 100 Resources: After giving a recent talk at a music conference on the Digital Music Generation, I came to realize something. No musicians have marketing budgets! They spend all their hard earned cash on getting their music recorded, but when it comes down to promotion and marketing, they would rather work harder than smarter. My suggestion would be to take your $5,000 budget and spend $1,000 on recording and $4,000 on promotion. However I am a realist, and know that you will still spend all your money on recording and beer money for after the show. Knowing this, I decided to give you this entire list for free and help your digital marketing right now and for the budgetary cost of TIME! Invest the time in your online marketing and networking and soon your budget will come into play and you can get some great services to help you take your music business to the next level. I hope that you enjoy and please pass this link to any of your musician friends; it will make a difference if you choose for it to. About Greg Rollett: Greg is a Social Media Marketer from Orlando, FL. He is the co-founder of Endagon Innovations, a Social Media firm bridging the gap between entertainment and technology. He has worked with clients from Disney and Coca-Cola to small indie bands, venues, managers, tours and more. He is an avid blogger and can be found writing and videoblogging at the below sites. He hosts consulting sessions, webinars and conferences to help bands use Social Media and the Internet to build a business. Greg is always speaking at events ranging from tech conferences to music festivals all across the country. Here’s to becoming a Gen-Y Rock Star! Greg Rollett Gen-Y Rock Stars and Endagon Innovations [email protected] www.genyrockstars.com http://gregrollett.blogspot.com


Social Networks and Communities www.myspace.com

Create your own micro site within the Myspace platform. Network with fans, bands, venues and celebrities. Upload songs, video, pictures, shows and more. Now with unlimited streaming and a music store.

www.new.facebook.com/Music – Band and music profiles are new to the site and are not easily promoted. Your fans need to find you and become “fans” of your page. The viral aspect of the site and the growing numbers along make the site worthwhile. Also look into groups and event listings.

www.purevolume.com - Music community and discovery site.

www.virb.com - Virb puts all of the things that make you you — photos, videos, blogs — in one place. So you can find friends (and friends can find you).


www.thesixtyone.com

A music adventure community where good music gets boosted up, and bad music disappears. I liken it as a Digg for music.

www.mog.com - Free music streaming, community journalism and the sharing of music, opinions and playlists

www.bebo.com - Bebo is a social media network where friends share their lives and explore great entertainment. Great for UK marketing. www.mp3.com - music community and discovery site for all genres.


www.playlist.com

Community built around playlists and the people who make them.

www.projectopus.com - a site dedicated to musicians and the fans who love them. http://rapspace.tv - a hip-hop community for artists and fans

www.ourstage.com - Community for sharing music, promoting music and networking with fans, bands and industry


www.fuzz.com

Connecting people who create and love music.

http://www.mixmatchmusic.com/

Place for fans to remix artists work and bands to make money from distributing that music


Micro Blogging Communities www.twitter.com

What are you doing in 140 characters or less, can also be used as a mobile marketing platform

www.pownce.com

Share links, mp3’s, videos and files with your friends

www.plurk.com – A social journal for your life


Streaming Sites and Communities www.imeem.com

imeem is a social network that enables users to discover, interact and express themselves with media, including music, video and photos, and form connections based on shared tastes and interests.

www.ilike.com - Over 30 million people use iLike to share music tastes and playlists, and to learn about new artists and concerts together. Your music may already be crawled on the site, you just need to claim it and get it on people’s playlists. These are the most popular music widget Facebook and a major player on Myspace and Bebo as well.

www.last.fm - Last.fm is a music service that learns what you love... Every track you play will tell your Last.fm profile something about what you like. It can connect you to other people who like what you like - and recommend songs from their music collections and yours too. www.pandora.com – Internet Radio based off of the music genome project. iPhone version makes discovering and purchasing songs even more accessible.


www.grooveshark.com

Grooveshark is a start-up music service from Gainesville, FL. They are attempting to do a few things. Legitimize P2P sharing, music discovery and revenue sharing. Upload your bands songs and when people buy them, you get paid. Even better, if your fans upload your music and someone buys them, you both get paid. Worth checking out for sure.

www.blip.fm

Like Twitter for songs. You can sync it with your Twitter account to let your followers know what you are listening to.


http://8tracks.com/

Share your mix and discover new music. Utilize bands that you like, sound like and share stages with. Create mixtapes and get people to start looking to you for new music discovery. Slipping in one or 2 of your own songs is great for promotion.

www.mixwit.com - create and share digital mixtapes

http://opentape.fm/ - make and host your own mixtape

http://favtape.com/ - create and play an instant mixtape of songs, iPhone optimized and pulls your songs rom Last.Fm and Pandora

http://opentape.com - a free, open-source package that lets you make and host your own mixtapes on the web. Upload songs (via web or FTP), reorder, rename, customize the style, and share what you like on other sites with an embeddable player.


http://www.stumbleaudio.com/

It’s like channel surfing for new music. Pays indie bands when their songs are played and discovered. Great music discovery tool for fans and a way to get your music found by surfers. Collaboration Sites www.indaba.com - a place for musicians to find one another, create and remix music, and showcase their work.

www.bojam.com - Recent TC50 presenter, BoJam is a Web-based sound studio that lets musicians practice playing music, find other musicians around the world to jam with, and lay down tracks together on the same song.

www.splicemusic.com - Mix and collaborate with musicians around the globe, mash-up with other artists and add your tunes to their common library


www.dopetracks.com

Hip-hop collaboration site for producers to meet MC’s, showcase tracks and network. Very easy to use.

www.kompoz.com

More music collaboration. Looking for a pianist, background vocal or guitar riff, this is the place. Also great for touring musicians looking for fill ins around the country.


Blogging Platforms www.blogger.com - free hosting solution, owned by Google, very easy to set-up and get going www.wordpress.com and www.wordpress.org

For a few bucks, go for the .org and host it on your own, although the free version is mighty powerful. www.livejournal.com – Free blogging platform and content management system. Forums http://www.knowthemusicbiz.com/index.php/COMMUNITY/ - community powered knowledge for the music business http://www.velvetrope.com/forums/ubbthreads.php - Music industry forum Blogs - Music www.hypebot.com - Best and most up to the minute coverage of the music industry written by Bruce Houghton www.skatterband.com/blog - Music marketing news, tips, reviews and interviews http://www.madalynsblog.com/ - music tips, strategies and motivation. Founder of the Go-Girls Network http://www.innerrhythm.org/blog/ - Music Marketing advice, eBooks and courses by Kavit Haria http://indiemusictech.com/ - Technology and new media affecting musicians and the music industry by Duncan Freeman http://www.musicthinktank.com/ - Collection of some of the best minds in the music industry talking out loud


http://blog.wired.com/music/ - The Listening Post from Wired Magazine features technology and the changing face of the music industry. http://www.evolvor.com/blog/ - Digital Music Marketing and Internet Promotion by Eric Hebert http://gregrollett.blogspot.com - Gen-Y, Music Marketing and Social Media written by yours truly http://www.audiblehype.com/ - DIY promotion for broke rappers http://newmusicstrategies.com/ - Just like the title says http://www.crazedhits.com/ - The music industry’s leading A&R site Blogs – Social Media and Marketing www.mashable.com

Social Networking news. The latest sites, updates, features and how it can benefit you. www.techcrunch.com - dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies. In addition to covering new companies, we profile existing companies that are making an impact (commercial and/or cultural) on the new web space. http://sethgodin.typepad.com/ - Marketing genius and author http://www.chrisbrogan.com/ - Social Media business strategies (check out his Social Media 101 Series of Posts)


www.problogger.net

Blog about blogging and making money blogging, there is none better Tools www.artistdata.com


Send your shows to all of your sites with one click of a button. Also syncs other data to make it easier to manage your online campaigns. www.tubemogul.com - Upload your videos on TubeMogul and have them sent to all of your video networks at once http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/

See what people are searching online and the volume of those searches. www.reverbnation.com

Suit of tools including street team manager, e-mail list generators, banners, music players and show widgets. 200,000+ musicians and counting! www.fanbridge.com - E-Mail List Management


www.bandmetrics.com

Super stats for bands. In private alpha testing right now, so sign up to become an early tester. www.google.com/alerts - Create alerts for keywords and get notified every time Google finds something new with that term, Great for seeing who is talking about you, when and where they did it and gives you a first chance to respond back. www.google.com/analytics


Site statistics, such as unique visitors, where they came from, how long they stayed, what they did and why they left. Very powerful stuff. www.search.twitter.com

Monitor terms on Twitter www.statcounter.com – Easy to use website stat tracker. Only tracks up to 500 visitors at a time, so if you have lots of traffic, look elsewhere. http://socialmention.com/ - Search a term and find out the latest results on blogs, social bookmarking sites, events, images and more Video Sites www.youtube.com - world’s largest video sharing community, a Google property www.viddler.com - video sharing community that allows for in video comments www.blip.tv - distribute your videos as podcasts to iTunes for free. Also has publicity and monetization features www.revver.com - video sharing site that allows you to take in ad revenue from your videos www.ustream.com - live streaming video site with real time chat www.google.com/video - google video hosting, great for search engine indexing www.video.yahoo.com - yahoo video hosting and sharing


www.animoto.com

Music videos from your pictures and images. They format your pictures to match the intensity of your music. Free accounts give you a 30 second video. Upgrade for longer songs and more features. http://uncutvideo.aol.com/Main.do - AOL Video http://www.metacafe.com/ - Video entertainment powered by the community http://www.vimeo.com/ - video sharing for you http://www.justin.tv/ - Life streaming site. Create your own channel and start communicating with your fans via video and chat in real time. Stream your shows live as well!


Mobile http://www.mofuse.com/

Create mobile websites, track your stats and get iPhone optimized. Works best if you have blog feeds running into it. Can be put on custom domain for free and host AdSense to make a few cents on advertising. www.textango.com - Let your fans buy your music via text message and it is charged to their cell phone bill www.flotones.com - Mobile media including ringtones and wall papers


http://mobisitegalore.com/

Build custom mobile websites. Add content pages, links, show calendars and more for free. Online Stores and Widgets (these generally take a % of the sale and work through PayPal) www.cartfly.com


Sell your merch, transaction through PayPal, paste the widget everywhere, they take 3% of the transaction. www.blastmymusic.com - Sell your MP3’s online with no fees on as many sites as you want. Track your stats and see the top sites selling your tunes. www.amiestreet.com - Amie Street is pioneering the concept of "social music retail." We've combined a digital music store with a social network focused entirely on discovering and buying new music. www.musicane.com - Sell your music and let your fans discover new music. www.nimbit.com

Sell CDs, DVDs, digital music, merch & eTickets...from one storefront...on any website...direct to your fans www.indistr.com - an independent distribution service, artist direct to the public, set your own prices and keep 75% of the sale. www.mtracks.com - part digital music marketplace, part music community. Download DRM-Free MP3s at reasonable prices, discover new music, or promote your own music.


www.jamendo.com

Upload your tracks and let discovering fans download your music for free, whiling keeping all of your rights. eBooks Word of Mouth Marketing Manual (PDF) 20 Things You Must Know About Music Online by Andrew Dubber (link) Music 2.0 by Gerd Leonhard (PDF) How To Call Attention to Your Music by Derek Sivers (of CD Baby fame) (link) How to Design a Winning and Profitable Music Business by Kavit Haria (link)


Widget Builders http://sproutbuilder.com/

Build web content in an easy to use, drag and drop flash platform. Plop your widgets anywhere www.widgetbox.com - make a widget in 3 easy steps from an RSS Feed, Flash code, HTML or Java code, web page or Google Gadget


Build Your Own Communities and Social Networks www.ning.com

Make your own social network to communicate and network with your fans http://lovdbyless.com/

Open source social network built on Rails (needs some customization work but it is free if you can find a geeky friend to pimp it out for you.

Documents

100 social media resources for musicians