Get your act together! If you know you are good at making, programming, mixing, and mastering music, you need to shout out loud and let the world know about it. So here are a few simple guidelines that you can follow to get your music to reach places.
1. Produce kick-ass tracks
First, have at least three ‘good’ tracks produced. It will help do all the talking and marketing for your skill sets. So, make sure of what tracks you’re going to beam. Ensure the mixes are right and not shoddy, bathroom-recorded songs.
2. Register on a few music portals
Register yourself or your band on a few popular music portals where you can upload your music and share it with the world.
Here’s my list :
i. Reverbnation (Recommended)
I would recommend this site as it is loaded with a lot of features, and is a handy tool for the marketing and promotion of your music. Once established you can sell your tracks on itunes and other platforms, through their cost-effective distribution service.
ii Myspace
Its just about better now with their new interface and design. You need one account here since its one of the first and oldest music networking site.
iii.Bandcamp
If you’re looking for a non-jazzy, minimalist music profile, Bandcamp is the best. It has got a huge pool of artists who swear by this simple yet powerful music portal.
iv.Soundcloud
Commercially the most popular of all, it’s good to have an account here.
3. Get some social identity
You definitely would be on Facebook, now its time you created a Facebook page for your music. Here’s my list of must have social identities.
i. Facebook Page
– a must. With regular weekly updates you can reach out to your evolving fan base.
ii. Twitter
– a twitter account is good, but currently, in this cow land, we are not using it the way we are supposed to.The same applies to the Facebook page.
iii. Youtube
– get your small jamming videos online here. (Edit all that dopey scenes out…before letting it loose)
iv. Flickr
– good for sharing and uploading your pics online.
v. Blogger
– get started with blogging about you and your band on this veteran blogging platform.
Ok, now make sure you use a single unified username for all of the above sites; it’ll help you rank better on search engines when people come searching for you and your music.
By following these simple steps, you will not turn into the next internet music star, and you will not get your first live gig.
All you will get is random people stopping by, sniffing your profile, streaming a few seconds of your music, and moving on.
The online music profile and identity will ensure you have laid the foundation for your networking debut.
Psst: This series comes to you after a small Facebook chat with my ex-colleague who wanted to get into music production full-time and was seeking advice on how to make it big in Mumbai and in music. Hope this series helps you all too.