1 RootMusic Player for Facebook:
Rootmusic is the maker behind the nifty and professional music players on almost every popular bands Facebook page. What you might not know is that this widget is free. You can upgrade to the premium version for just $1.99 a month but with the recent upgrades, its not even necessary. The features you get are being able to play all your songs on your profile, you can enter in your show dates, and even provide a nice list of YouTube videos. Why is this important to use? It is now the standard in the industry, people look for this tab, its what they land on when they are new to your music, so it is essentially their first impression. If you don't have this, then you are not playing with the big boys.2 ArtistData:
ArtistData.com is more than just a tool to use when you're sick of posting events to every social media site you are on. It actually gives you the option to publish your events to local media outlets. When you live in a town with very little news and events, this could generate a whole story about your band, I've seen it done. In bigger cities you'll want to be listed in all the major event calendars and ArtistData will do that for you.3 NoiseTrade.com:
NoiseTrade is a widget you can use to give away your music in return for an email address. You can give as many or as few songs as you want and it is open to anyone so people can share the link with their friends. Other nice feature in this widget is that you can receive "Tips" from fans that go right into your band Paypal Account. The more you offer for songs the more likely someone is to tip you for the gift you've given them.4 Zazzle.com:
One of the biggest things bands have problems budgeting for is merch. Ordering tshirts has to be done in bulk, same with just about anything else. Zazzle has you covered though, through this site you design your tshirt, hoodies, hats, bags, etc., and people buy them one at a time. The profit margin is lower but pay out is guarenteed. No up front costs, no need to store and organize inventory, and all the billing is taken care of internally. Sure they costs more than the tshirts you could be selling but think of it as a way to save up money to buy a stock pile of your own, and use the sales information to see what design sells best. Market research and fundraising at the same time!4 Broadtexter.com:
Sometimes Facebook events are not enough. We all have those nights where we felt like there was some place to be that we can't remember. Well remind fans that its your show via a text message. Don't let them forget ever again. This service is free and actually sorts out your phone numbers via geographical locations. So if you are on tour, and have a show in California, you can send a text from your phone and use a special "code" and the message will be sent only to those fans in California, or of course you can send it to everyone. Beware though, despite fans signing up for this, over texting your fans could annoy them. Use it sparingly but use it.5 Make Your Own Digital Drop Cards:
I'm sure you've seen or at least heard of the little business cards people can buy at shows that when they get home they can go online and download an album. If you were to go to a site that offers this service you are generally going to pay about $58 for maybe 100 cards if you are lucky. Sure its a good deal in comparison to physical copies of CDs but why pay when you can do something similar for free. Bandzoogle.com offers this technology for free if you have a paid membership (Bandzoogle is a generic webpage builder designed specifically for bands). If you want to do the research and have a little html knowledge you can find free shopping cart templates and embed them into your website and create coupon codes to print on a card. What I like to do is a little bit more simple. Create a page on your website that is password protected, if you don't know how to do this, use wixx.com and create page there, just follow the directions. Simply put your album cover image on the page and some text saying click here for download. Create a hyperlink that goes straight to the zip file on your server of the album. It will immediately start downloading to their computer. They can share the card with friends or reuse it themselves but that just means your music is being exposed. I recommend printing these out as busienss cards with a Word template and including an expiration date so that you can avoid the password being leaked to too many people.6 Ditch the Web designer fees, use free Wixx:
Wixx.com is an amazing Flash based point and drop web development site. You can pay for a premium membership that gets rid of the small "made with Wixx" ad at the very bottom and offers SEO and a direct link, but until you have the money to invest in a "real" site, this is better than nothing. With this you can create a nice electronic press kit, play your music on the site, offer RSS feeds, a calendar, just about everything and more that you can by paying a web designer. It doesn't take long, get the most computer savvy member of the band and the most artist one to sit in front of the computer for five hours and I guarentee you'll have a spiffy page all set up. Then just do some redirect coding on your index page and send all your fans to the Wixx page. However if you do decide to go with a designer I recomment Putz Web Design over at www.putzwd.com They have a graphic designer on staff utilize many common content management systems so that you don't have to keep paying out money to have edits done to your site. Also along with the theme of this, they are cheap and have in the past did back end deals meaning they will take a share of sales/revenue generated by the website if they see potential in that form of payment. When you love what you do its easier to make deals that aren't financially driven. Check them out. Tell them this blog sent you!7 YouTube Account:
We all have them, we all watch the videos, so why does your band not have one? Because you are stupid. Videos are some of the most shared items on the web, no one got famous over night from a blog post, or a tweet, its all about the videos! Sick Puppies, heard of them? Did you know they got their break from a "free hugs video" that some one posted with their music playing? Free Hugs! Those stupid videos we all get giddy happy thoughts watching because some dude has a sign saying free hugs and gives people hugs. Thats what broke Sick Puppies. Then of course the notorious Ok Go video of them jamming out on treadmills. These videos are made with little to no money and posted on YouTube for free, then went viral. There are no rules saying a pop punk band from Appleton, Wisconsin can't do the same. Also use YouTube videos for updating fans, video tape your tour, take the camera to the recording studio, or just put lyrics to a song up. Great way to expose your music, not to mention now all accounts can be monetized. That means you get paid to have an ad on the video. Its slow to make money but get enough views and you just paid for tour with five minutes of work uploading videos. So ask yourself, why not?Good Luck and let me know of any success stories you have with any of these methods or others.
