Things You Should Do: Youtube

well i'm gonna go ahead and bet there's not a single person reading this who doesn't know what youtube is. a lot of you probably already have accounts too, it's just something people do. well, good. a youtube account with videos of your music is somewhere between a decent and an incredible way to get exposure.

if you don't have one, start one now. they're free and even if you never use it, it's better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it, right?

my music account on youtube is available here (www.youtube.com/deadplant155). if you don't feel like checking that out, i have around 30,000 video views total, with three or four in the thousands. that's not that high by youtube standards, but it's a heck of a lot more people who've heard my songs than would have if i didn't have the account.

anywho. once you've got an account, what do you upload? well, video of your songs obviously. i upload both videos taken at shows and videos recorded in "the studio" (i.e. my garage). in the studio videos if you take the time you can get much better sound quality, but there's a quality the live videos have that i much prefer. you don't really wanna be one of the faceless multitude who upload videos of them in their bedrooms playing their favorite cover songs out of tune.

not that there's anything wrong with uploading cover songs, songs that people recognize are much more likely to get noticed on the tube and they can serve as a gateway to original content. there's also nothing wrong with recording in your room or your garage, just take a second to think about the camera angle, the lighting, the sound quality. try closing windows and doors to cut down on outside sound, get an external mic if you're using your computer to record, and turn on some lights. on digital video darkness doesn't look moody, it just looks grainy and distorted.

now this next tip is one i found out the hard way. don't upload a batch of twenty videos all at once. if you've got a dozen or so vids from a recent show, do maybe one a day for a few weeks. it's more likely that videos will get lost in the shuffle if you're uploading them in chunks. the other reason to spread it out is that while it's all well and good to upload fifty videos in a week, if you don't have any new content to offer after that for months on end, people will lose interest. a steady stream of content is much more important than just dropping a ton of videos all at once. it will bring in new views more consistently and it will keep your subscribers and repeat visitors happy as there's always something new to see.

this is actually a good overall tip, any online presence you maintain should be updated as regularly as possible. now i'm not saying you have to make a news post on your website or blog twice a day, but two or three times a month might be a good guideline to shoot for. if people check your website every day for a week and there's never anything new then they might not come back and you've just lost a potential fan.

one last thing about youtube. i don't actually know if this is helpful at all, but it's something i try to do to be polite. whenever i receive a comment on a video i reply to it personally. most of the time it's just a simple "thanks for taking the time to comment, i'm glad you like my video!" but if they ask me a question i'll do my best to answer it. i don't know if this gains me any views or if people maybe dont' even like it, but i feel like if they can take the time to let me know they like a video, then i can take the time to properly thank them. now, when you become infinitely more famous than me and start getting ten thousand views a day it'll become impossible to read let alone reply to every comment. i think it's an important part of indie music, however, to interact with your fan base and to be aware and appreciate of the fact that they're what's going to decide if you make it as a musician. respect your audience, it can't do anything but help you in the long run.

and that's about all i've got on youtube, hope that's a helpful post, thanks for reading, and good luck!

-loren

p.s. don't do any of that stupid youtube stuff like steal someone else's content or spam people or lie in your video's tags to try and increase your ranking in search results. that just pisses people off. seriously. don't do it.

managing fans, songs, all that jazz - reverbnation.com

ok, this post is concerning probably the most useful site i've discovered since i started playing music. reverbnation.com is an incredible band management site and is completely free. they will host your songs (no space limit), they host pictures, they provide a blog, they give you a tool to manage an e-mailing list and widgets for your website so that people can sign up to join it, they have a great show management system with a calendar and automatic maps, the list goes on. they offer so many services that i only take advantage of probably half of them, and it's still so much more than worth the time. not to mention free. did i mention it's free? 'cuz it is. it's free.

anywho, you head over to the site and hit "sign up" right? you're given the option to sign up as an artist, a fan, management, a label, or a venue. now i haven't signed up as anything but an artist, so that's what i'll talk to you about.

when you first login, you'll see a rather unremarkable profile page. the simple interface belies the power behind this site however, as you'll soon find. on the left side are "upload pic" and "edit profile" links, which are pretty self explanatory. to the right of where your picture will go is the music section, where songs you upload will show up. the top right corner of this section has the "upload song" link, and as i said before, there's no limit on how many songs you can upload, as long as each song is below 8 megabytes in size.

below this you'll find a row of tabs that control just about everything else about your profile, the blog section, photos section, the shows section (where you can add shows with directions, dates, and it'll automatically add them to a map!). i just think that's about the coolest thing ever.

the last part i wanna talk to you about is the little orange button directly above your music player. this buttons says "admin toolbox" on it and it's extremely powerful.

click it.

in here you'll have access to a suite of web based applications that will make your life a whole lot easier. at the top of the list is the one i use most, called "fanreach". this application allows you to add e-mail addresses to a list and enter information about each individual person such as age, gender, location, and when they joined the e-mailing list. it also has a rich text editor that has tools for hyperlinking and embedding images in case you're not too html savv. you can edit the look of the e-mail before you send it out, and you can choose whether to send it to your whole list or just to people in a certain location or of a certain age or who joined after a certain date. it's really really great, and in conjunction with the NEXT tool it's even better.

the other tools i use most in this toolbox are the widgets. these are handy little html based applications that you can add to your myspace, your website, your facebook, pretty much anywhere that lets you add html to a page and they'll do cool things! ok, so as an example, there's a "fan collector" widget that you can put on your website that's basically just a form to add their e-mail address to your mailing list. they have a widget that will display your upcoming shows, they even have a music player that you can embed on your website! the most versatile of all the widgets however combines all these options and adds a photo viewer and video player (did i mention you can link up videos on youtube with your songs on reverbnation?) all in one compact widget you can add to any page you desire!

since i joined this site i've gotten more use out of it than is believable for how easy to use and cheap (see:free) it is. i highly recommend it. this is especially useful if you don't have your own website, you can put just about everything you need on reverbnation.

thanks for reading, see you next time!

-loren