How will Google Wave impact online Music?

Google showed a preview of Wave at Google I/O last month. A few of my friends were able to attend the event, but I was only able to watch the video playback of the Google Wave rollout. The key takeaway I would describe for the technology is “Real Time”.  Real time chat; it displays as you type (no waiting to type into a chat window and hot ‘enter’). Real time spelling correction is context sensitive.  If you can integrate Google Voice into the Google Wave framework, you’d have a powerful Unified Communications platform, but that would be the topic of another blog on another site entirely. Google rolled out the technology partly to encourage developers to begin creating gadgets and robots. A gadget is a program application similar to a facebook application.  A music player or video player would be good examples of gadgets.  A robot could be an automated conversation participant (like a character in a game).

So how will Google Wave impact the way we socialize around Music? To hypothesize around the possibilities, focus on ‘real time’. I would imagine that someone will create an internet radio or internet video widget that would allow real time chat among the listening audience. Imagine a fan page for a popular artist with over a million fans pre-announcing the release of a new single exclusively on a Google Wave-powered fan page? Do you think this would instantly draw the fan base over to a waves-powered social media site? I do. This would be a very good test of the platform’s scalability. Imagine a hundred thousand fans furiously typing away “Love the new song!” and similar messages all at the same time. Will it scale? It likely will. Google’s app engine technology allows for multiple processors in a cloud computing environment.

Google Wave could also be a viable platform for social media game development. So take the previous example and take it a step further adding some robots. Imagine playing a virtual reality game that you 1^st must reach the end of the game to play the newest music video release of your favorite recording artist. Follow the clues. What was the lyric from the 2^nd song in the 1^st album that opens that the door to the final stage of the game? Imagine the buzz created on the social media web site(s) that will have fans teaming up to solve the problem. What? The game new I was playing from the SF bay area and I just stumbled across two tickets to the next concert in my area? Fans chasing Avatars of the recording artists for a free poster? The possibilities are endless.  Could Google Wave be the basis of a social media and gaming platform that could seriously undo MySpace and possibly even Facebook? The potential is there. It will be very interesting to watch the Google Wave story unfold. It could significantly change the way fans socialize around music on the internet.

PHAME for fame?

I attended a Facebook Developer Garage event in SF a month ago. Andreas Weigend, former Chief Scientist of Amazon.com, articulates a PHAME methodology for optimizing results from social data: 

Problem -> Hypothesis -> Action -> Metrics -> Experiments

This would be an excellent model to apply to:

• Social Media Marketing of bands/artists
• Application Development (Music player apps for example)
• Social Media Marketing in general.

So for example, for promoting an artist or a band, one might utilize the PHAME model to engage in a number of marketing activities. For example, one “P” problem might be ‘how to bring new fans to our myspace site and get more plays’. An “H” Hypothesis might be ‘Using a Myspace friend add automation tool could be an effective and not too costly way to get new fans’. “A” Action might be “Google search on ‘Myspace friend automation’ and select one of these tools to purchase and use (sparingly … so as to not overdo it with ‘friend adds per day’). “M” Metrics – track friends requests resulting in acceptance vs total requests, track number of song plays before and after. Track increase in song purchases (if applicable). “E” Experiment: What are the results like? Any new ideas surface from results so far. Can we add more fan requests per day without getting banned? Should we drop back on friend requests per day? Checking out some of the new fans playlists, is there a similarity in their musical taste to our songs? Are there features or adjustments in the automation tool we have not fully explored that might make a difference? 

The point is that there is no ‘set in stone rule’ that is going to magically work for everyone. In fact,  some musicians might be turned off by the idea of using an automation tool as just ‘being another spammer’. Or maybe your band gigs and tours enough that you are doing fine with building a fan base by more traditional means. You may have your own PHAME experiments to do (YouTube Video? Last.FM ? Use crowd source funding for next recording session using http://www.sellaband.com/ ?)

What should you try next?  There may be many ideas. Start with one. Use the PHAME model. Measure results and tweak the experiment if needed. Have some fun doing it.

10 cents a song is pretty tempting

Amidst the myriad of web based song player options out there right now, I’m very tempted to start using Lala regularly.  The “new thing” about this player is you have an option to purchase “web plays” of a song for 10 cents each. Of course, you may also purchase MP3s to download at a reasonable price, which is pretty standard for most players.

How many of you bought an an entire CD 5 years ago and found you were hitting the “skip” button on half the songs to get to your favorites ? Buying individual songs/MP3s saves you from that problem. Fast forward 5 years. How many of you have purchased lots of individual songs/MP3s and find you are skipping those now as well or moving them to a 3rd tier playlist rotation? Buying a “web play” of a song for 10 cents may be just the thing for you.

10 cents a song is like a “bookmark price”. For the price of a cappuccino, you could spend several hours checking out artists, playlists, recommendations, etc. and purchase 25-30 songs (web play only).  They are then yours to stream as often as you like.  Try them out for awhile. If they really ‘stick’ and stand up to your criteria and taste for a “full purchase” after a few plays through, great, buy them. If they don’t ‘stick’, maybe they are still good enough (like most of your collection) for a few plays once in awhile even if  they just aren’t “absolutely must have on my iPod” selections. Then don’t buy these particular songs. Instead, listen to the web streamed versions to your hearts content.

According to a recent techcrunch post, there will be a Lala iPhone player app coming soon. Stay tuned. This may be a game changer in the music player space.

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.

______________________________________________

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/

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?

LinkedIn Groups

I joined several LinkedIn groups intitally with the purpose of announcing the MySpace Playlist Power app and describing it’s potental as a toll for fan-based viral promotion. I did this before I started this blog. These are the 2 Music Industry LinkedIn groups I joined:

Music & Marketing - 4,790 members 

Music and Entertainment Professionals - 18,165

I’m still waiting to be accepted by the moderator of the Music & Marketing group (as of 1 week later). I was added within 1 day to the Music Entertainment Professionals group.  Seeing how many members this group had, I was thinking that if even 1% of the members checked out the Playlist Power app, I might see a significant number of app adds on our app stats page. The number of adds we were now getting from MySpace “recently popular” pages was slowing due to the volume of new apps being added daily moving our app from page 1 to the 2nd and then 3rd page. I posted to the group. I saw no discernable volume in new users adding our app. How could I even track if this was having an effect? Maybe if I create a blog (this blog), I can create more interest and start tracking some web metrics ?

Deciding this is what I would do, I also decided that my new blog might also be of interest to LinkedIn groups related to  Social Media Marketing. I also joined these LinkedIn groups:

eMarketing Association Network

Innovative Marketing, PR, Sales, Word-of-Mouth & Buzz Innovators

Social Media Marketing

I figured that as long as I’m going to blog, I might as well measure where my blog hits were coming from. I have no idea of how effective a post of ones blog to a LinkedIn group is.  I’ll get some idea of interest in my blog topic from two industry group types.

Social Media Marketing in Music

Welcome. This is a blog for musicians, internet marketers, application developers and music industry professionals looking for insights, tips and tricks to leverage social media tools and web services to market your music and your brand more effectively. This blog intially started as a weblog of my social media marketing efforts for a MySpace application called Playlist Power launched on February 22, 2009 at WeekendApps-OpenSocial. Playlist Power was  a MySpace playlist sharing application allowing MySpace users to share Music playlists with friends.

In the 1st part of this blog (under the category “Marketing-Product“), I cover ideas I had and things I learned while executing elements of a marketing campaign for the ‘Playlist Power’ MySpace app.

Several weeks into this blog, I found that my blog interests became more about the larger topic of Social Media Marketing in Music, so on March 10th, I changed the title of this blog and expanded it’s scope.

Read More

Music Social Media

Social Media Music

MySpace and Music and Playlist and Viral and Social Media Marketing and MySpace and Facebook and LinkedIn, but especially MySpace or Music and Musicians and Bands and sometimes Record Labels would all be keywords to search for.