VEVO vs Playing for Change

Looking at VEVO in the 1st hour of Dec 9th, 2009 … I have these thoughts:

• Nice quality video and excellent sound (as expected)
• HD coming in 2010 (why not now ?)
• Advertisements and a playlist from AT&T (a little disappointing)
• Blog claiming that Music Videos from the major labels will be on VEVO while user generated content will be on YouTube ( What will happen to MTV? )
• Content promoted is more of the same old “top artists”
• Share your favorite music on Social Networks (as expected)
• “Sign-up” link gets me “This Web page is not Available” (Ooops … or maybe 5,000 users are trying to create an account simultaneously?)
• Me … spending hours listening to Music Videos right now because of the new service offering? (not going to happen … no compelling new content to keep me interested)
• Me … writing a blog post about this (Of course, how could I not blog about this major launch)

Now, to put it in perspective, last week I watched a TV show on NPR about Playing for Change .

• After the TV show, I spent hours at my computer listening to and watching the videos. Stayed up too late.
• I posted a link on Facebook and joined the Playing for Change Fan page
• I was thoroughly engaged with the story behind it. The “largely unknown” but very talented musicians.
• I was not surprised to find Bono here (He seems to be everywhere … including the VEVO launch)
• Me … wondering how it is that we have missed such great music from so many people in so many places until now.
• Me … thinking “here is an expression of a truly inspired vision and the real power of social media to share it and make a difference “.

(n)ICE music

I’ve mentioned some unique and novel iPhone instruments from Smule in a previous post , but when I ran across the music and instruments of Norwegian percussionist and composer Terje Isungset, I thought that I simply have to share this. Terje crafts his own instruments from Norwegian natural elements such as arctic birch, granite, slate, sheep bells and even ice.  The sounds are pure arctic poetry. Is that gong tone coming from ice ?

Some links to Terje’s music  (listen with a decent set of headphones or multimedia speakers, not laptop speakers):

• Terje’s Myspace page
• Mondomix page entry (where I discovered this artist today)
• Terje’s web page

The music itself I would describe as ambient. I’m amazed by the tonal character of the sounds. The sparse simplicity of Terje’s compositions allows the natural beauty of the instruments speak. Not everyone has “ambient music” in their collection. If you don’t, you might give this artist a listen and consider adding some Terje Isungset music to your collection.

I suppose the connection to Social Media Marketing is that I’m writing about this in my blog and you might be amazed enough yourself to retweet or post a link to this on facebook. Or if you are a traditional instrumentalist or solo vocal instrumentalist, you might be interested enough to contact Terje to collaborate as some other artists have. Bring a warm coat.

SEO for Musicians

You are a musician. Why should you care about SEO? Good question.  

 If you don’t have a web page or a blog yet, bookmark this page and come back when you do. 

What is SEO?  SEO is the acronym for Search Engine Optimization. The goal is to make your web page or blog appear higher up in the list when someone does an Internet search.

 Assuming you are out in the world playing your music and someone likes what they hear and happens to vaguely remember your name (or your band’s name), they may try and look you up and find you. Will you show up on the 1st page of an Internet search and show up near the top?

First of all, your band name (or in some cases your name) is your brand. It should be easy to remember and easy to spell.  Search engines can probably help.  If a website is getting enough hits and I miss spell the search term, Google will usually help with a “Did you mean <search term spelled correctly goes here> “

I took the DM1 (Digital Music 1)  class at Mission College in 2008 to learn digital recording basics.  For our final project we recorded a music video. I really liked the music of the duo we recorded and wanted to look them up to see where they might be playing locally. Their name is “The Pernikoff Brothers“.  In fact, as I’m writing this I’m listening to  ”New Man” being played back as a HQ YouTube video.  Great song, great musicians, well recorded, a pleasure to listen to. I was there in the class when we recorded this and helped set up microphones for the session.  When I went to look them up a few weeks later, I had difficulty finding them. I was trying “Pernakov Brothers” and “Pernikov Brothers” with no luck. This was a few months ago. Now when I type in my miss spelled version of their name, I immediately come up with a link to their website, so Google can help all on it’s own if your site is getting enough hits and fans choose the link that gets you to their site.

However, if your name is hard to spell or is hard to  remember, you do not necessarily need to re-brand and change your name. All you really need is to have a song, YouTube video, or CD name that is unique and really easy to remember and your new fans can probably find you this way. This does not always work though. Again, Google will likely rout you to sites with the most traffic. For example, when I search on “YouTube New Man” to try and locate the Pernikoff Brothers YouTube video “New Man” , I’m finding numerous videos by people with the last name “Newman”. So in this case, Google’s spelling algorythm is misdirecting me elswhere to videos with numerous plays.

In terms of this blog, searching on “Social Media Marketing Music” did not intially display links to this blog. What really helped get me to a “page 1″ search result from a Google search was having my blog listed at blogcatalog. If you look over at the right hand side of my blog column (below the Tags), you will see several blog cataloging sites I have linked to. The effort expended to figure out how to do this is well worth it. Most of my site hits now come from blogcatalog where one reader who liked my blog gave it a “5 star” rating.  My blogcatalog listing shows up in a ”page 1″ search result from a Google search now.  Do I care that my actual website does not show up in the 1st page in Google search? No. People are finding me through the blogcatalog link and that’s what matters. People are finding me.

I should add that my previous post “Bigfoot’s Lookin’ for Bernie”  gives my blog a top Google rank on the search word combinations “Bigfoot Bernie”, “Bigfoot Madoff” and “Leaf Trombone Bigfoot” (… at least this is true for today). Again, unique words in a song title could give you similar results in fans locating one of your songs.

I won’t go into great detail about how to do SEO. There are numerous resources available. I would recommend looking at some of the “free sample lessons” available from the Lynda.com course  Search Engine Optimization with Richard Jenkins.  There is enough free playback content here to give you the basic idea of what SEO is about. Playing the topic “White Hat SEO”, Richard highlights some very usefull authority sites on the subject.

I’ll close this post with a video embed of “New Man” by the Pernikoff Brothers. Enjoy.

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/

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.

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.