Category: Knowledge To Get Known

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Knowledge To Get Known

How to Promote Your Independent Music in 2021

Promote Your Independent Music

Music promotion has never been easier for independent artists. There’s a lot you can do to promote your music without selling your soul to a record label. Marketing is essential if you want to get your name out there and start making money from your music. So how can you start growing your fanbase? That’s exactly what we will cover in today’s post.

Music promotion on social media

Music promotion is much more than just sharing your songs on social media. Truth be told, you can’t create an engaging profile with just your releases themselves. Promotion on social media is all about building a story around your sound and engaging with your audience. People want to know the real you aside from your music.

Youtube

Youtube is completely free and with 2+ billion users it has become an important tool in the music industry. To start promoting you need to create a professional-looking Artist channel. From there you can upload anything from Music Videos, Live streams, Behind-the-scenes footage, and Q&As with your audience. The key is to have a mix of content that you can organize with different playlists.

You can also network with relevant Music channels by leaving comments on their tracks or videos. If they’re posting similar music and people are subscribing, you could get your music in front of thousands of potential fans.

Soundcloud

The biggest feature of Soundcloud is its unique perspective when it comes to comments. Using the waveform, you can let fans comment on various parts of tracks. This is a great way to engage with your audience and get valuable insights into what they like. Invite your fans to participate and giving you feedback! 

Using tags helps your tracks get in front of your target audience who digs your kind of music. You can also add a ‘buy’-link to your songs and direct your fans to where they can purchase your music. Or why not give them your best song for free? They are more likely to buy from you if they like you as an artist. 

Facebook

Unlike SoundCloud and Youtube, Facebook isn’t known for being a music platform. Think of it as a cross between your Youtube channel and personal website, and use it to advertise! If you post your music on SoundCloud and Youtube, post your tour dates on Facebook! Other great things to share on Facebook are promos, upcoming album releases, band news, contests, and giveaways. Facebook should act as a central hub and a one-stop shop for everything connected to your music.

Playlists on streaming platforms

The ability to access millions of songs at the tap of a touchscreen has made streaming services the new way of listening to music. Getting your music into popular playlists gives you the potential of getting your music in front of millions of fans.

Spotify

Spotify isn’t ideal for audience engagement (leave that to social media). However, their playlists are super-powerful when it comes to music promotion. Pitching your song to a playlist and get featured could give you thousands if not millions of listeners every month.

All you have to do is sign up for a ‘Spotify for Artists’ account and reach out to editors. You’ll find hundreds of playlists for different genres that are relevant to yours. There are 3 types of playlists available on Spotify:

  1. Editors playlists
  2. Algorithmic playlists
  3. Audience-generated playlists

To increase reach even further you should also create your own playlists with other artists. It helps a lot with engagement and encourages fans to think of you alongside other artists. The key to success is to get your music into as many playlists as possible to rack up listens. 

Apple Music

Promotion on Apple Music is very similar to Spotify and is derived mostly from playlists. The first thing to do is to sign up, claim your artist account, and get verified. Uploading your music is a lot trickier than Spotify. If you are a new artist you’ll need to work with music distribution services trusted by Apple, called ‘aggregators’. They will upload your music for a commission or percentage of royalties.

If you’ve been in the industry for a while, you can upload your own music to the platform. The threshold is pretty high since you’ll need to have at least 20 released albums, an International Standard Recording Code, and a Universal Product Code. 

Deezer

Deezer is a streaming service similar to Spotify and Apple Music. Without a label backing you, you’ll need help from a digital distributor to get your music uploaded. When having your masterpiece uploaded to Deezer, you can promote it across the platform by adding it to an existing playlist or by creating your own. You can also pay for a campaign and automatically get it on popular playlists that your potential audience love.

Conclusion

Every music fan has their service of choice, and if you’re not visible on all platforms, then you are potentially missing out on millions of fans! Spotify, Apple Music, Facebook, Deezer, and Soundcloud all have powerful features that you’ll need. Instead of choosing one platform, think of how they can work together and develop a strategy. Never forget to link everything cross-platform. When you’re uploading content, set a schedule and be consistent. An active channel is much more engaging and will attract more visitors.

Now it’s up to you. Get out there and start sharing your music! If you need help with any specifics, feel free to reach out to us at IndieBandGuru.

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Knowledge To Get Known News

SoundCloud Fan Powered Royalties Explained

*- guest post by Jeremy Bongiorno of StereoFrequencies.com

The introduction of music streaming services created a shaky landscape for independent artists. That landscape has been around for years now. If you’re anything like me, then trying to find ways to monetize your music has felt like an uphill battle against industry titans. In most cases, that’s not just a metaphor, it’s reality.

With that, one major company is looking to shake things up for musicians everywhere. On March 2nd, SoundCloud announced their new “fan-powered” royalty system. It’s set to roll out on April 1st. 

Since the announcement, the tabloids have been rife with updates on the program. The question remains: how exactly will this affect you and your music?

SoundCloud is looking to change the game by strengthening the relationship between artists and their fans. So, what does this new system mean? How does it work? How can it help you monetize your creations?

To better understand this new system, we need to learn how the current model works.

Out With The Old

For what seems like forever, top streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music have utilized a payout system that’s highly disproportionate to mega stars. 

All the money from advertisers, record labels, and fans gets pooled together in one big pot. From there, the revenue is distributed out to the artists with the most plays, and the most followers.

Now, this is somewhat how things have always worked in the music industry. Back in the day, The Rolling Stones were definitely raking in more cash than your local rock band. With the right amount of effort, that local rock band was still able to make a decent amount of money back then.

Nowadays, the digital age has introduced a plethora of competition. I mean, you can post one video on TikTok and you can become an overnight sensation. Even then, the biggest slice of the pie goes to artists with millions of plays per month.

None of this is meant to take away from those big time artists. They’ve put in the work and made a name for themselves. The industry itself simply has a model that isn’t as favorable to independent artists who want to carve out their own path.

In With The New

When you take a look at the new system, it almost seems to be too simple and easy to be true. That’s because it is. There are a few caveats to it, and we’ll get into that shortly. First, head on over to SoundCloud and check out their breakdown of the program in their own words.

Source: SoundCloud

Here’s the link: fanpoweredroyalties.com

Also, don’t forget to look over the FAQ page for answers to the most common questions about the program.

As you can see, there is a prerequisite for eligibility of the fan-powered royalty system. On top of that, there are a few factors that determine how much an artist actually gets paid. Let’s break those down a little bit more.

Artist Eligibility

Independent artists need to meet one determining rule to be eligible for fan-powered royalties. Drum roll please…

You need to subscribe to one of their higher tier programs. Here are the three programs you can sign up for to meet the requirements:

SoundCloud Premier ($12/month) 

Premier is basically SoundCloud’s monetization program for Pro Unlimited subscribers. If this is the route you decide to go, you’ll be notified when you’re eligible for royalties.

Repost by SoundCloud ($30/year) 

Repost is a music distribution service that SoundCloud has offered for a little while now. There are no eligibility requirements to monetize with Repost by SoundCloud. You are eligible for fan-powered royalties with this subscription. $30 a year equals out to be $2.50/month, so this is a great budget option.

Repost Select 

Repost Select is the next level of Repost. It’s attainable via application or invitation only. Select adds support from SoundCloud’s own account management team.

There’s a whole list of requirements for the Premier program as well. Most notably among them is the fact that you can’t monetize covers. All music must be your original creations. 

Also, there are a handful of countries that aren’t supported. Check out the SoundCloud Premier FAQ page for all the details.

How It All Works

SoundCloud states that they’ll pay royalties based on the span of time fans listen to a particular artist. The total amount of money generated by those fans is based on these three factors:

  1. How much the fan listens to that artist relative to all their listening time in a given month
  2. How many advertisements the fan has consumed
  3. Whether the fan has a paying subscription to SoundCloud Go+

From there, the amount of money you can make is dependent upon the number of fans you have and how much time they spend listening to your original music. 

So that’s the rundown of the fan-powered royalty program. Once you understand the necessary steps, it’s pretty easy to grasp.

The Long-Term Benefits

It’s been a long time since the industry has seen anything like this. Not only that, but it’s the first model of its kind to exist in the digital age of music. The best part is that it’s going to create a more equitable environment in the industry. Artists can have that feeling of financial control over their music again.

It’s not yet clear just how impactful this will be in terms of SoundCloud artists themselves. I can see some major benefits for musicians who already have a decent amount of plays and a loyal fan base. It can also be a great career tool for more established artists on SoundCloud.

The bigger impact I see is more of a ripple effect down the road.

Spotify has a newer program of their own where fans can send tips to their favorite artists. SoundCloud’s fan-powered royalty system digs a little deeper than that. That being said, I can only imagine that Spotify would want to follow suit and roll out their own version of SoundCloud’s system.

After that, things could snowball. Next thing you know, Apple has fan-powered royalties, then Pandora, maybe even Amazon. My point is that we’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg right now of just how big of a deal this is.

I mean, it’s every musician’s dream to make a living off of their music right? Well, this is sure to be a step in the right direction for independent artists to make that dream a reality.

We would love to hear your thoughts and share stories of any successes you see with the Soundcloud Fan Powered Royalty System. Keep in touch.

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Knowledge To Get Known

Tips on How to Write an Awesome Music Review

To make it clear, a music review is an assessment of a song or an album. One of the important points is the brevity of the review, do not forget about this. At school, most often, they ask for an essay-review, and teachers/editors have certain requirements for them, namely:

  • it should be creative work (understand as you want)
  • the considered (reviewed) work is often an occasion for reflection on the problems raised in the song or album
  • disclosure of the content of the work, with a simultaneous assessment of it.

If you want to find out how to include all these three points in one review, you need to get acquainted with some samples. You can order them on a writing service like GPA Labs. You will see how to write your music review creatively, analyze the problem raised, and evaluate a song or album properly. 

Now, let’s proceed to tips for writing a music review. 

  1. Stick to the review plan
  • Brief information about the song or album (title, singer or band, other basic information). For example, Waiting For The Sun is the third album by the California band The Doors. After its first great recordings, The Doors and Strange Days, this release has not escaped the fate of the notorious “third album syndrome”. However, in spite of everything, it is this album that is the unconditional must-have of the listening audience of that time.
  • Your response to the song/album. In other words, your impression.
  • Song or album analysis

– lyrics analysis

– melody analysis

– musical composition (not necessary)

  • Evaluation of the song or album (important to include your own evaluation)
  • The relevance of the issues raised in the song or album. Even if it seems that the album is not very relevant – think more. Most songwriters try to raise some problem and/or answers in their songs. But if you still did not find the interesting relevance for today, write about that too. Perhaps you will enter into an argument with the reader. That can be even more interesting.

It is important to include all points! But the main thing is that the review should be interesting.

  1. Do not retell the lyrics
  • There is no need to get carried away with retelling the lyrics. The editor can, absolutely, rightly by the way, consider the substitution of the analysis of the song or album by a simple retelling.
  1. Pay attention to the title of a song or album
  • Usually, it contains a lot of secret meaning, which becomes clear after singing a song or album. But “usually” does not mean “always.”
  1. Break down a song into parts
  • Is it possible to break a song into its component parts? Why? Why did the songwriter do this?
  1. Highlight what differs the work from others

It is worth mentioning the style once again. Try to highlight what makes this song or album different.

Write as if your reader has never heard this song or album. Consider what questions a person might have asked who has never heard this song. And do not forget about the five points of the review plan, which you must complete. 

Good luck and if you are looking for more analysis or potential publishing of your review writing, reach out to us at IndieBandGuru. We are always here to connect with other passionate music lovers like ourselves.

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Knowledge To Get Known

Take a Break To Move Your Music Career Forward

For musicians that are going all in and trying to make music their full time career, it can get frustrating. The thought that music would be a way out of the day job rat race was a fallacy. Musicians need to work even harder and put in more hours than the average 9 to 5’er. This is your business and everything you have must be put into it if you hope for any success.

This focused attention on a music career can lead to other problems though. Just like any job, burnout can set in quickly when the day to day work starts to become repetitive. This can be disastrous for a musician truly wanting to build a career for themselves. Here we will discuss some ways to break up the monotony and steer away from potential burnout, and continue down the path of a successful career in music.

Become a Gamer

Many artists, especially of the younger generation, have found an escape in gaming. We all grew up with some kind of gaming system around and playing random games became the norm. We can use this as a way to get our heads off of our music career for a little while. Whether it is a deep strategy game that requires a series of high-level tactics or just a mind numbing button masher, they both have their benefits. Having your mind go in a fantasy direction instead of always towards your music provides a relief that can be refreshing.

Become A Gambler

Back in the days of big bands getting on a tour bus to cross the country, gambling and in particular poker, became major ways to pass the time between shows. Stories have been told of fortunes won and loss between bandmates and roadies along dirt roads in the middle of the country. Playing these card games had become a right of passage for tour life. This has become even easier now with nz online casinos available wherever you are with the use of a laptop or even a mobile phone. Plus you no longer have to win the money off of your tourmates. You can now rake in winnings from gamblers on the other side of the world, leaving your money your tour is making among the people on the tour. 

Become a Bum

This heading may be a little off putting but sometimes it is ok to just do nothing. With all the time and mental energy we put into always working on our music or promoting it, exhaustion can set in. Sometimes we are best served by doing absolutely nothing for a little while to refresh our minds and let the creative juices start to flow again. Now understand that this nothing time needs to be limited but taking a day to do nothing can be the kick in the ass to get working again upon waking up the next day. 

Become A Hobbyist

When always working with your bandmates you start to live in eachothers brains and assimilate to doing the same things. This can be quite unhealthy. We each need to have our own unique pieces that make us different and make the band better as a whole. Take some time to enjoy a personal hobby. Whether it be crocheting, or analyzing crypto currency trends, we each find solace in our own hobbies. Take the time to separate yourself from music and do something you enjoy.

Conclusion

There are few professions harder on an individual than living the dream as a working musician. Make sure to give yourself some needed breaks so the joy of making music can flow. No one ever said it would be easy but setting up a plan to work hard and play hard can result in a most fulfilling life. Enjoy the ride and the music.

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Knowledge To Get Known

8 qualities all successful musicians possess

It’s no secret that the music industry is one of the most competitive industries in the world. There are so many talented musicians fighting to earn a place in the spotlight and dreaming of making it big one day. For many artists, that day never comes, while for others everything seems to just fall into place. 

If you’re one of those people whose love for music knows no bounds and you want to share your art with the rest of the world, you’re probably wondering what it takes to make it in the industry. The truth is, nothing ever comes easy when you’re a musician, not even for those who seem to hold a special recipe that propels them to the top. There’s no secret behind their success stories. There’s some God-given talent, a lot of hard work, and a few great qualities they’ve learned to nurture and develop over time. 

So, if you want to find out what qualities all accomplished musicians have in common, you’ve come to the right place. Hopefully, this will motivate you to adopt new habits and help you get one step closer to making your dreams come true. 

They set realistic goals 

Fantasizing about becoming a great musician one day and performing on the world’s greatest stages is perfectly fine as long as you don’t expect for it to happen overnight. Professional musicians know that the path to success is long and challenging and you can only reach an objective by putting one foot in front of the other and taking things one step at a time. They have big dreams, but they’re also grounded, they know how to set realistic goals and find viable strategies in order to turn them into reality. Success in the music world is as much about creativity as it is about making the right moves at the right moment. 

Hard work doesn’t scare them off

There are some who assume that being a musician is all fun and no work, when in reality the exact opposite happens. That’s probably because most people only see the final product, the exciting and glamorous side of it all, but they have no idea of the hard work musicians put in behind the scene. They have to juggle a million tasks and work from dusk till dawn to make things happen. And they don’t stop when times get rough. Instead, they find the motivation and power to push through and continue to work even harder than before. 

They’re masters at networking

Serious musicians know how important it is to have contacts in the right places. They have the talent and skills to thrive on their own, but that doesn’t mean they ignore the value of building a solid network. Meeting new people in the industry and establishing valuable relationships helps them seize opportunities that otherwise they might miss. From musicians and producers to managers and promoters, they have countless connections that can prove useful at some point. 

They find alternative ways to make money

Apart from being extremely creative when it comes to making music, they’re also creatives in other areas of their life as well. Smart musicians always find ways to stay afloat financially when their music doesn’t bring them enough money. Whether they put on street performances, teach music classes, promote other artists or run a side business, they’ll come up with ideas to generate money and supplement their income. Their minds are always busy looking for new opportunities to ensure financial stability while they’re pursuing their dreams. 

They take the good with the bad 

There are always two sides to a coin and that’s also true for the music industry. Accomplished musicians have the ability to wear many hats and take on different roles throughout their career, whether they like them or not. They’re willing to handle less creative tasks that bring them no pleasure, simply because somebody has to get them done. 

They’re artists, agents, managers, promoters, accountants, and many other things at the same time. They create music, organize schedules, plan tours, come up with marketing strategies, do the bookkeeping, look for the best insurance companies for their band, find sponsors, and so on. 

They know that practice makes perfect

Even musical prodigies have to practice every day to perfect their craft. No matter how talented you are, talent alone won’t get you anywhere without a lot of practice. Great musicians live by this rule and they enjoy practicing their skills day in and day out. What’s more, they don’t get stuck in a routine, wasting time on skills they already master. They take every opportunity to challenge themselves and improve those skills they’re not great at. 

They don’t cut corners 

True artists always stay true to themselves. There’s always going to be a lot of pressure from the outside to make a certain type of music that is popular with the public, to change your style, to keep up with industry trends etc. Do you think that real artists are willing to give up on their values and the qualities that make them who they are just to fit in and blend with the crowd? Absolutely not. Respected musicians always put authenticity above anything else. That’s what makes their music truly special and makes their art live on forever. 

They are persistent 

Standing out from the crowd in the music industry is no easy feat. But real artists are not scared of the competition and don’t back off at any given opportunity. Long working hours, lack of money, strong competitors, bad reviews, harsh comments are just some of the challenges they have to face and yet they don’t give up. Because music is what makes them tick, and nothing can stop them from achieving their goals. They’ve learned that if you want to make it in this world, you have to grow a thick skin and keep on going even when the odds are not in your favor.

If you are willing to stick to these proven qualities and put in the required hard work, a career in music can be yours.

If you need help with the plan or any piece of the process feel free to contact us at Indie Band Guru and we will help how we can.

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Knowledge To Get Known

4 Steps to Building Your Personal Music Brand

Building your brand as a musician is a key part to success. Every single person in the world is unique, so you might wonder what makes you special? 

The first thing to do is to figure out what is your passion. Do you have a special hidden talent? Once you’ll be clear about your passion, you will have to learn how to introduce yourself to the world. How you present yourself is key for making your audience love you. But people want to know what sets you apart from the crowd? 

Creating a visual identity for yourself – easy to say, but less easy to do. Creating a visual identity of yourself is quite overwhelming, as you have a lot to think about:

  • Website
  • Content
  • Social media
  • Headshots

However, you should keep it simple. It’s a golden rule still available, “less is more.” 

Creating your personal brand 

You can focus on creating your personal brand, or you can hire someone to do it for you. A visual identity involves a logo, website, and press materials. Make sure you discuss your passion with your designer, so he or she can include it into the overall look of your personal brand. Don’t feel bad if you don’t have enough cash to spend. You don’t need a degree in programming to create your personal brand.

There are many patterns available online, but ensure you stick to the elegant and modern fonts. Choose simple photos that look clear and professional. Don’t use too bright or too dark colors, as this will mess up the font. Don’t forget, less is more! Simple doesn’t mean boring. Think about your passion and be sure that it immediately giving people a clear idea of your visual identity. 

Define a target audience

Defining a target audience is one of the most important parts of being a musician. Do you feel like no one is listening to your songs whenever you post something on social media? There can be a number of reasons why this is happening. Have you ever thought about who is your target audience? Simply put: a business needs a customer, a musician needs fans. So, to build a target audience, one of the essential steps is to identify who are your fans. If music is what you do for a living, you’ll need to promote yourself more. 

One of the biggest mistakes that artists make is to try to appeal to everyone. You need to be very critical, yet mindful of who you are and what you are “selling”. You spent all this time to make great music, and now many people want to hear it, but it seems like it’s not appreciated enough. In fact, you’re always going to have people who will criticize and try to set you off. To save some quality time and money, you’ll need to exclude and ignore people who don’t appreciate you and your music. After all, if you focus on a specific community, you’re likely to find your real fans. 

Get inspired by artists you admire

Where do artists find inspiration? Finding motivation is part of an artist’s job. As a musician, you probably know how satisfying it is to share your emotions and experience with your fans. But this doesn’t happen every single time. If you’re waiting for the right moment to produce new projects, then you might have to wait for a long time. Learning how to remain positive and motivated as an artist is an important skill. It will help you increase your productivity and income, but also improve the quality of your work. Give yourself some time to learn how to stay motivated. But until then, here are some tips on how to remain positive:

  • Don’t do more than one thing a day – For example, building a music website is a big task. Break it into steps and get something done each day.
  • Remember what is your ultimate goal – Take a few minutes each day to reflect and look at where you are. 
  • If you want to be efficient, you’ll need to schedule the time for your songwriting sessions. It’s how you’ll remain efficient with your music.
  • Stay organized! It is a big aspect of remaining efficient. One way to keep everything in place is to make a list. Write down the things you need to get done as soon as possible so that you won’t forget something. You might need to immediately repair your stage backdrop, as some of the patches fell off. Don’t forget such important things and keep the quick fix tools available. Sugru glue from  https://sugru.com/ is a great thing to have in your toolbox before your next concert. 
  • Don’t compare yourself with others – most musicians have gone into a deep hole by discouraging and comparing themselves with others. You should learn how to enjoy your success and stop focusing on another artist’s success.
  • Get sleep – Sleeping is super important for 

Focus on all your social media accounts

Being a musician is tough. You’ve got a million things to do and not enough time to get them done. Staying in touch with your fans, promoting your latest songs, and even fighting for the attention of new fans. Since you are so busy, you need to find time to focus on your social media marketing. There are many ins and outs of social media for musicians: but why does it matter so much? 

Social media presence is undoubtedly the best method to grow your listeners.

Instagram just passed 1 billion active users and Facebook claims 2 billion daily active users. Now you may realize that your audience is likely linked to social media, no matter of your type. Optimizing your social media presence is a sign of professionalism. Having an original and well-organized profile lets your fans know that you care and respect them. 

With that being said, social media for musicians can be very important. The best thing is that you have a lot of creative ways of optimizing your profiles. But having a clean and enhanced profile is a top priority. 

The road to success can be tough. Define your goals, stick to your plan, and start playing your music. Be unique and soon you’ll have thousands of true fans.

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Knowledge To Get Known

Tips For Guitarists Going Into The Studio

You might have spent dozens of hours at home making demos but going into the studio is a whole other ballgame. 

Home recordings are forgiving, and demos are a little rough around the edges by design. Going into a real studio with a real engineer and producer is a gigantic step up, and you’ll be expected to perform at a much higher level. After all, this is going to be the final form for many of your songs – why not make them sound as good as possible, right?

Lucky for you, you’re not the first guitarist to go into the studio. You have decades of other people’s mistakes to learn from to give yourself the best chance to be the best thing on your band’s recording.

Here are our four biggest tips for making sure you’re the standout and not the sticking point when your band hits record.

Know what you want to sound like ahead of time

This is a mistake a lot of beginner bands make. You have the amp that your favorite guitarist plays, you have your pedal collection you’ve cobbled together, you go into the practice room and turn everything to 10 and figure the wall of noise sounds great!

Then you get into the studio and realize that when you listen to your tone under a microscope, it’s really not what you were going for. This is especially true for the guys with the big pedal boards, where things sound good with a huge wash of reverb, but once you dial it back to give everything space on a recording, you’re not hearing what you want.

Spend some time alone at home playing your parts at bedroom volume, and really focus on making sure the guitar tone (at bedroom volume) is what you would want on a record. Make sure the amp is going to give you the amp tone you want, make sure your pedals are what you need and in the right order (sites like KillerGuitarRigs.com have loads of info on pedal order and the like), make sure you’re selecting the right pickup for each part.

In short, go in there knowing exactly what your gear sounds like, take the time to dial it in on the day, and then focus on the performance.

Be open minded

The number one thing you need to do going into the studio is to be ready and open to change. Your band will have written the best song you can as a unit, and often going into the studio with a producer means getting an extra set of ears from someone whose job it is to make the song the best it can be. Sometimes that can mean minor changes, sometimes it can mean overhauling the song completely.

If you go into the studio with the opinion that your parts are set in stone, or that the song is finished, you’re going to become a barrier to the producer doing their job. Take every suggestion, roll with it, give it your best shot, and be ready to be pleasantly surprised as your song reaches its full potential.

Know Your Parts Inside Out

While it’s important to be open to change, it’s also important to be ready to give the best possible performance when the red light is on. Practicing with your band every night isn’t enough, you need to sit alone and practice your own parts until you can play them without even paying attention.

The real danger here is if you’re not confident in your parts, if they aren’t fluent under your fingers, you’ll get into the studio and get “red light fever”, where you psych yourself out and can’t play your parts to save your life. It’s a nerve-wracking experience, but it happens to everyone from time to time.

The best way to avoid this – know your parts so well that you don’t even have to think about them. That way, when the time comes, you can concentrate on the performance instead of trying to make sure you just get your parts right.

Get your gear in studio condition

The best thing you can do to make a session move along smoothly is to make sure all of your gear is ready for the scrutiny of the studio. What might sound “gloriously loose” live or in a practice room just sounds out of tune when you’re recording in the studio.

Make sure none of your pedals buzz, make sure your amp isn’t picking up the radio, make sure your guitar is set up by a professional and has no intonation issues or dead spots. 

Make sure you show up sounding good and ready to be the best thing on the record.

Conclusion – Have fun!

The key goal here is to eliminate as many distractions as possible so the studio can be a fun and creative time for your band. If all your gear is good, and you know your parts and sounds, all you have to do on the day is show up, be open minded, and focus on giving the best performance you possibly can. It’s your music, make it something to be proud of.

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Knowledge To Get Known

5 Ways Musicians Can Showcase Their Music with SEO

So you’ve taken the plunge to go digital. You’ve made an effort so that your music reaches more people now than ever before by setting up your music on the internet. While you’ve tasted success offline by creating quality singles and also enjoyed good airtime, the early returns from your website aren’t too encouraging.

In such a case, you need to work on your online presence and ensure that your music is reaching your fans. You need to make organic search work for you and your blog by employing simple SEO techniques. As a musician, you will then be able to reach out to your fans better and showcase your music to the desired wider audience. SEO or search engine optimization means making tweaks to your webpage so that you get more organic traffic to your site and you do well on the search engine results page.

Here, we will look at five ways you can use SEO to make your music blog a success:  

1.   Keywords and Meta Tags

Keyword research is one of the primary tasks you have to invest in while making SEO work to your advantage. You start by listing out your top keywords and phrases that people will use to find your online blog. With a bit of a research, you can come up with words that match your music genre, location, content, brand and band name.

Meta tags are ways to insert keywords on your pages. They form an important part of metadata that helps users find your website on the internet. Meta descriptions, which can range from 50-300 characters in length and give a brief summary of what your blog is about and is important in letting the search engine know the contents of your portal. Title tags are those titles that show up on search engines upon search. They are to be 50-70 characters long for SEO purposes. Headers are other types of titles that show up as article or content headings.

2.   Optimizing your site

Optimizing your site is all about providing the fans with a quality user experience. Plus, user experience has now become a major factor in Google’s new parameters of ranking of a website. To enhance this, you must check whether your site’s design is up to the mark, if it’s showing up properly on all kinds of devices and the speed is up to the mark for a smooth experience.

One of the things that you need to do for the success of your website and for its optimization is to reassess your web host provider. Figure out how much speed, customer care assistance and security support you require from your web host providers. To help you in this, platforms like Housing Foundry are quite capable and they reviewed the best hosts for Singapore.

(Source: Pixabay)

3.   Keep content updated

It is best to keep your website fresh and updated with the latest content. Display your most recent hits and albums. Ensure that all the internal pages are up to date with all the necessary links and keywords. This will prompt Google to crawl more to your website. As a musician you get to create unique content which caters to your kind of music. If you create content regarding the latest happenings in your music genre, concerts, album launches, it will help you keep your fans and website visitors engaged for long. Maintain a content calendar, track the developments and update on your site, that’s a steady cycle to start off with while managing your site.

4.   Back-linking

If your website is trustworthy, then it stands a good chance that Google will pick content from it for its related searches. However if your site is littered with marketing and branding links then it might work well for you SEO wise. One way to augment this to count the websites that link back to your site. The more external websites link your content on their portal, the better. The way you network with other music professionals and artists offline, the same way you can connect with them online and keep your backlink profile active on their blog and use links of other musicians that you’ve worked on your blog.

To take this to the next level, get active on social media and use YouTube, Facebook and Instagram to showcase your talent and have a section where you share the links of your social content to your webpage.

5.   Using analytics

One of the biggest advantages of using SEO is that it is easily measurable. Use Google analytics to learn from where your readers are joining, what kind of devices they are using to access your site, and at what time of the day they spend the most time on your blog. This will help you understand their mindset and accordingly enable you to put up relatable content. Also, you’ll be able to assess where Google ranks your website and figure out what’s still missing from your pages.

Overall, SEO helps you build a strong profile online to market and promote your originals online. It can help you build your fan base, get performance opportunities, and generate more revenue from your music.