Bigfoot’s Lookin’ for Bernie

A while back I wrote a blog entry titled “Can you get your song on someone else’s blog?”.  Obviously, having a YouTube video that has viral properties that get lots of links from friends on social media networks like Facebook could help do that.  That’s how I discovered the song  “Here comes another Bubble” by the Richter Scales in the first place. But probably even more important than getting on someone else’s blog would be to have a video that has viral properties.

What would make a music video viral?

1. Humor – everyone likes sharing a video that makes them laugh.

2. Outrageous – although sometimes distasteful (and hopefully faked or simulated) a headline like OZZY BITES HEAD OFF BAT! will grab a lot of attention.

3. High Tech/ Novelty – iPhone App by Smule: Ocarina [Stairway] video (YouTube) has over 500,000 plays and a 4 ½ star rating.

So if you are an unknown band or recording artist looking for new fans, how can you capitalize on ideas like these to get your YouTube video seen and heard?

Humor

Pick something topical and newsworthy and keep it short. If you have a gift for comedic writing and can turn around a song in 1 or 2 days, imagine the number of plays you could get if Jon Stewart played your song on The Daily Show. That should be your goal. How you will get your song noticed and chosen, I don’t know. Surely Jon Stewart has writers and producers. Check Wikipedia. However, even if your song is not picked to be featured on the Daily Show, if it really makes people laugh, surely it has the potential to spread virally as a YouTube video. Post it to YouTube and show it to some Facebook friends. If it’s funny, your friends will share it with other friends. They will share it with their friends… and so on. Keep in mind, producing a video is not easy. If you have a great song and shoddy video production, it will fall flat. Use stills. Use PowerPoint. Think “How would Ken Burns shoot this”? Look at the Video by the Richter Scales I featured in my post “Can you get your song on someone else’s blog?”

Notice the credits at the end ? The last thing you want is to create a truly viral video that you have to pull because of copyright infringement or legal issues.

Outrageous

The now defunct Weekly World News had a very long run as a supermarket tabloid and should be your inspiration if you need to create a headline grabbing song title. Buy Bat Boy Lives!: The WEEKLY WORLD NEWS Guide to Politics, Culture, Celebrities, Alien Abductions, and the Mutant Freaks that Shape Our World (Paperback) on Amazon as your resource. Nothing more needs to be said. Consider this your “bible” for outrageous headlines or, in this case, song titles.

High Tech/ Novelty

If you can associate your song with the latest high tech buzz related to Music, you could quite easily reach new fans with a YouTube video. Certainly Smule will be coming up with other instruments that will even surpass their success with the Ocarina  iPhone app. See if you can sign up be a Smule Beta tester (if you and your band mates own an iPhone or iPod touch). You can sign up for the Beta trial of “Leaf Trombone”. Read the agreement, though. You have to promise not to release your YouTube video until Smule releases the product. Would one of your songs benefit from a horn section? Maybe a “Leaf Trombone” horn section is your answer.

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Here is an idea for a song and YouTube video that combines all of the above…

Song title:”Bigfoot’s lookin’ for Bernie”

Storyboard: Bigfoot comes out of hiding to find Bernie Madoff after losing most of his savings. Bernie Madoff escapes to the woods and “Bernie Madoff sightings” become the stuff of legend and tabloid news for a few months. Bigfoot ends up managing a successful (and legitimately run) Hedge fund. Bernie eventually gets caught and goes to jail. Since Bigfoot makes a fortune as a hedge fund manager and no longer has hard feelings, Bigfoot visits Bernie in jail. The song ends with an iPhone Leaf Trombone duet played by Bigfoot and Bernie.

If you choose to write this song and create the YouTube video, please include me in your song credits. After all, I just came up with the idea. Don’t forget to show a link to your band’s website in your video. After all, that is the whole point of doing all this work … getting fame, new fans, and brand awareness for your band.  If it’s good, who knows, maybe you could get it played on The Daily Show.

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May 2, 2009 Update:

A friend advised me of this useful URL if anyone was seriously considering adding Bigfoot” to thier music video.  http://www.livingsasquatch.com/

962,631 Facebook fans vs 199,240 Myspace friends

Radiohead has 962,631 Facebook fans versus 199,240 MySpace friends (today’s count). Think about this for a minute. Without a music player app that can store a playlist, Facebook has nearly 5 times the number of fans on the www.facebook.com/radiohead page than the number of Radiohead friends on www.myspace.com/radiohead. I do not claim to know why, but here are some thoughts.

1. Demographics. It just may be that the demographic for Radiohead’s fan base uses Facebook more than they use Myspace.

2. Visibility of the facebook wall. I joined the Radiohead fan page and this fact went up on my wall. I’m not sure that if I became a “friend” of Radiohead in MySpace any of my friends would know.  If I see one of my friends joining something on Facebook and it looks interesting to me, I will usually click on it to find out more. So Facebook has “social networking” virality

There are things I like about Facebook and and there are things I like about MySpace. If I find a new artist I like, I will invariably check out their MySpace page before I do anything else. I often look at “Friends” of a particualr MySpace artist and check out their music too. It’s nice to be able to sample entire songs (and now videos). I much prefer this to listening to 30 seconds in iTunes or other music commerce sites. YouTube videos might be a next choice. Th artist’s website might be a next choice as well.

Facebook is where I will typically see Videos that someone else likes enough to post a comment about. I have added links to videos on my Facebook wall I think my friends might enjoy.

Atlantic Records: Connecting Fans with Bands by Eric Snowden (on Adobe TV)

I was researching the Adobe site to learn more about the Flex platform and I stumbled across this presentation by Eric Snowden discussing what Atlantic Records is doing to promote their artists via Social Media networks and web pages. Even if you have no interest in developing a Flex application, this presentation will give you many ideas to think about if you are promoting a band or artist (or if you are a band or artist promoting yourself). I will likely blog about some of these topics further, but I wanted to share the link now, in case it’s a few days before I am able to comment further.

Atlantic Records: Connecting Fans with Bands by Eric Snowden

You may possibly need to install Adobe Media Player 1st to watch this. If you are interested in HDTV streaming to PCs and MACs, you’ll want to download Adobe Media Player anyway.

HD Video web services

If  you make a music video and link to it on your own MySpace page, will it reach many new viewers that are not already familiar with your Music ?
I recently read a CNET post on Which HD video Web service is the best? . Looking at some of the offerings, I wondered if bands/artists might be able to gain new viewers by creating videos and uploading to these sites rather than simply posting or linking to their videos from their MySpace page. For example, there is a Music and Entertainment category in blip.tv, but I found very few music videos there to watch. This allowed a few artists previously unknown to me to have me see their videos. Being an “early adopter” of a technology may have advantages. Here is a video on blip.tv of Padraig Rushe playing “Mo Bhréag Aisling” at The Zodiac Sessions open mic night, Dublin, Ireland.

http://blip.tv/file/1866260/

After seeing/hearing this video, I checked out Padraig Rushes MySpace page (which he provided in the description text of the video).

Update:  Padraig Rushe’s debut CD “Greyworld” is now available on iTunes.  I predict a “Best New Artist” Grammy nomination if some Saturday Night Live host picks him for the Music Act in 2009 and he gets the exposure he deserves.

Leave your room and meet new people

The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.  ~  Carl Jung

Social interaction via the internet will only get you so far. I would highly recommend leaving your room and finding events or meetups to meet real people in real time.  Meetup.com and Facebook groups are a good place to start. If you don’t find a group that looks interesting, why not start one yourself? I live in the SF Bay area so my problem is not “finding an event to go to”, my problem is sometimes “choosing which event to go to”.

Here is a chain of events that led me to doing my blog right now:

1. I joined Meetup.com, found Silicon Valley New Technology meetup to attend in Palo Alto.

2. Went to Silicon Valley New Technology meetup in Palo Alto and heard about Weekend Apps Feb 20-24. Signed up.

3. Did the Weekend Apps event February 20-22. Wrote my 1st blog entry on the Weekend Apps blog. Decided to blog about my teams app Playlist Power as part of marketing strategy for promoting the app.

4. This is my 15th blog posting about 2 weeks.

5. There are now about 5 other distinct active sidechain activities resulting from my doing step 1 above and I’ve met about 20 new people as a result.  My world is much larger.

Can you get your song on someone elses blog ?

It’s easy to promote your own song on your own blog or your own MySpace page. Video’s are probably going to be easier to circulate, especially if they are humorous. The song “Here Comes Another Bubble v 1.1″ by the Richter Scales just earned a place on this blog.

 

Also, thank you to Chris Cinelli for posting this on Facebook where I saw it.

CDs – Facebook app

When I 1st joined facebook, one of my friends had an application that displays what music he is listening to. I actually thought this was a pretty cool facebook app. That is, I thought it was a cool app until I got my friends list up to about 20-25. Then the CD app became one of the prime delivery mechanisms responsible for TMI (Too Much Information). I like the concept of the app. I like to see what others might be listening too and maybe check out a new artist. The question is “How can one balance the utility of an application without delivering such a volume that you consider moving the friend to your ignore list?”

Here is the application link:
http://stanford.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2419261583

It has over 4,600 active users.

My feature enhancement suggestion would be this:
Have the feature track ‘listened to CDs’ but not post every CD played. Instead, allow the owner to throttle ratio of CDs displayed to 1/3 or 1/4 or 1/5 (as an example). Track ‘CDs listened to’ to favor posting a new CD never played. Allow post recipients to choose to see the entire list or CD’s your friend played that day by clicking on the wall post.

I would then likely click on the friends CD post to see what he or she has been playing.

The choice I seem to have now is to either put the friend in the ignore list or to block the CD application.

Poll: How much time do you spend self-promoting your music?

New “Music Self Promotion” Group on MySpace

I just added this group on MySpace.

http://groups.myspace.com/musicselfpromotion

Description:

This is an open forum for discussion of what is working for you, what is working for others, what is not working … and a general place to share ideas.  How are you selling your music? How are you reaching new fans? Anything working for you that is “viral” (i.e. your fan base growing without you having to “work it”). Are you looking to ‘get signed’, or are you wanting to ‘go it alone’ and remain independent? How is MySpace, Facebook, and other social media changing the way you market yourself? Do you have a website outside of MySpace? Are you being streamed on internet radio? Which ones are getting you new fans?

Creating this Blog

I’ve had a few ideas for blogs in the past few weeks but had yet to actually start a blog. It is one of the newer skills anyone in Marketing should be learning. Something that will look good on my resume. This topic here, Social Media Marketing of ‘Playlist Power’, looks like a good place to start. Very focused on a topic. Something I can learn the ropes while I create it. Also, at least for the moment, I am very energized to write about this topic having come from the Weekend Apps event with a mission to see what I can do to increase Playlist Power app uptake. I chose WordPress as it seems to be one of a few blogging tools that are readily adopted and my blog post from the Weekend Apps blog used WordPress. After a week of blogging and learning about adding links, tags, media, categories, appearance, and more, I’m now fairly comfortable with WordPress features. I thought about checking a book out of the library to help me get started with WordPress but they were all checked out, with one person already reserving a copy when one was returned. A side benefit is that, with the HTML view, I can copy bits of my blog in html (i.e. parts with ‘links’) and copy them into my MySpace messages and forum posts.  Although the WordPress features provide ample WYSIWYG visual editing features, it is nice to be able to switch over to HTML and copy code for pasting in MySpace.

I probably will buy a book on WordPress before I start a longer, more involved blog. I’m not quite sure about using ‘pages’ yet to organize the blog. I did figure out ‘categories’ somewhat. Still, even though there is likely a lot more to learn, the WordPress features are mostly pretty easy to use for anyone like myself looking to get started blogging.

After a week of blogging, I think I have enough of a story to tell to post a link to my blog on the LinkedIn groups I joined.