George Howard

Get Your Fans To Your Website (S.E.O. 101)

This post is simply meant to be an introduction to search engine optimization (SEO) for artists. By no means is this a comprehensive explanation or analysis; it is simply a place to begin thinking. It’s important to understand the logic behind SEO before you begin trying to implement it.

For some reason, SEO sounds far more technical and complicated than it really is. It was probably coined by someone who wanted to make sure everyone else was too scared to even try it.

In my mind, SEO is not only about getting your page ranked highly in a google seach. It’s about creating a web experience that is enjoyable for your fans and profitable for you, the artist.

That cool tropical dart frog color scheme you chose for your MySpace page probably just sent several of your fans straight to the hospital.

And the crazy 4 minute intro animation you put as a splash page to your website either:

1. Wasted Someone’s Time
2. Crashed The Browser
3. Probably Both

Be simple.

If someone is interested enough to take their time to look at your website, the least you can do is make it easy for them. Be creative, not obnoxious.

When designing your site, keep in mind that search engines look for text and content. If you design a site in Flash, not only can’t users bookmark specific pages to come back to, search engines can’t SEE your animations and to them it looks like a pretty empty website.

Think a little bit like a marketer, and figure out how fans will try to find you. Google Analytics helps to solve that poblem and gives you the best information you can use to figure out how to tweak your site.

Google analytics can tell you where your visitors came from, how long they stayed, what page made them leave, what part of the world they are visiting from, what kind of computer they have, and much much more. Someday it might even be able to tell you what your visitors are wearing. Here’s hoping.

Google also provides some tools that help you experiment with different formats for your site. In their webmaster tool kit they even have an A/B feature which let’s you create two different layouts for a site. Google randomly picks one of the two to give to  users as they come and then keeps track of which one visitors stay on longer.

This is just scratching the surface. Whether you just remember to simply “tag” the content of your website or you want to play scientist and analyze 20 different graphs and charts, search engine optimization is essential.

Start learning about how to implement Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools into your site. Google is kind (and smart) enough to explain to you how they rank pages, and they give you tools to make it happen. Explanations about how to use these tools are on google, youtube, etc. If it still proves to be too much, tell your webmaster that you want these implemented into your website now.

Start searching around for hints. To start, here are 55 Quick SEO tips even your mother would love.

What kinds of SEO tools are you guys using? Leave some comments.

Bandcamp, the whole package?

Calling all independent artists!!! Bandcamp is here, have no fear! I think. 

For those of y’all who have not checked out bandcamp.mu, you’re missing out. Not only is this the sexiest place that I’ve seen where independent artists can call their music’s home, but it looks as if its not all bells and whistles. 

I’m not going to explain all of the fancy features in detail, Ethan Diamond’s screencast is wonderful and I encourage everyone to take the six minutes to watch it; you won’t be disappointed. In particular, the graphs that show the differing popularity between a band’s songs are nifty. Also, the ability to see where your music is being embedded by others provides bands with an invaluable resource as to where to target its customers.

Bandcamp looks so flawless and fun that it makes me want to create some music and start a band.

Ok, nothing is this great. Right? What are the downsides to this service? 

• Is this just a gorgeous, glorified Myspace? How will your band rise to the top of the clutter?
• There is still the problem of driving traffic to one’s bandcamp url once created.
• Will bandcamp be the “invisible fifth member” of the band that they claim they will be, or will they focus the majority of their efforts on the artists who are driving most of the sites traffic?
• Oh yea, you still need to create quality music.

What do y’all think?

-Lee Berg

Lala.com: 10 Cents For Unlimited Streaming

Lala.com is aiming to change the way we buy music online by doing to the Mp3 what the Mp3 did to the CD. The company, which initially launched as a CD trading website and which once pioneered a way to place music directly on to your iPod from the internet (it isnt allowed to doesn’t do that anymore), has shifted to a new model built around “web songs” and a catalogue consisting of licensed music from four major record labels and a variety of independents. In addition to providing the ability to purchase and download songs in standard digital formats, Lala.com will offer “web songs” for 10 cents a pop. What is a web song you ask? A web song is a digital version of a song that can only be accessed via the company’s website. Perfect if you don’t want to take up any space on your computer with all your music. Not so great if you want to take what you’ve bought with you. However, at that price, I can definitely see the appeal, especially if you spend a lot of time on a variety of different computers. One additional benefit is that hard drive failure, which are increasingly rare admittedly, will no longer cripple your library.

EDIT: Title changed due to unclear hyperbole.

-Brett C

Don't Be Like Canned Food.

Gone are the days when musicians had to create products that take the shape of the medium on which they are delivered. (latest release from The Cranberries?)

Albums had to be:

• Cylinders = 2-4 min
• 78 = 3-5 min
• LP = 30 min
• CD = 80 min
• radio friendly = 3-4 min
• etc

Stephan Jenkins of Third Eye Blind fame was the keynote speaker at the SanFran MusicTech conference this week. Jenkins proposed: “The album is an arbitrary concept. It’s not something that has to exist.” He sees new artistic freedom in being able to deliver songs singularly, with the option to package them later.

This may not be new news to anyone, but it is still a very relevant point for today’s musicians. In the same way artists are no longer confined to a delivery medium, they are no longer confined by a slow-moving, rigid, and mostly impermeable music business (with bad taste). Question what you have come to accept as the norm in the industry. As Peter Lubin said regarding major record labels, “…you should all turn your backs, and never pay them any mind, any more, ever again” (Artists House interview at Loyola University).

Stop thinking inside the box, or you will look like this:

The big whigs are out of touch with their customers. Todays’ artists need to take matters into their own hands because they are the closest to their audience and thus best able to serve them. And with so many new technologies today this is viable more than ever (if you have a well-thought out strategy).

However, the internet and digital technology has opened up the doors to every Joe Six Pack flooding the webs with his own terrible aluminum & gaseous compositions. (Music Industry 1962 vs 2006) It’s difficult to rise to the top when there is so much chatter.

Warren Buffet recently proposed in a television interview that there are three stages to good ideas

1. Innovation
2. Imitation
3. Idiots

And it doesn’t take too much imagination to apply this trajectory to everything that has happened in the music industry. Unfortunately, if you are frittering away your future on a friending frenzy (say it five times fast) on MySpace expecting to get noticed soon, you might be the idiot.

The music business is literally an open frontier right now. It looks very similar to this:

The angel of music manifest destiny is beckoning. Yes, it’s a scary, mostly barren landscape. There are some others people out there, but just because they make a herd doesn’t mean they know what they are doing or where they are going. They are all probably either imitators or idiots.

The artists rising above and getting noticed right now are the ones doing something new, doing something unexpected, doing something risky, being innovators.

—Andrew Goodrich

andrewsgoodrich@gmail.com