Kilted Chaos http://kiltedchaos.com Marketing for Independent Bands, Artists & Movie Makers Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:45:54 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Music Marketing Service #Kiltfeed 03.12.10 http://kiltedchaos.com/music-marketing-service-kiltfeed/ http://kiltedchaos.com/music-marketing-service-kiltfeed/#comments Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:45:54 +0000 Andrew http://kiltedchaos.com/?p=1900

]]> http://kiltedchaos.com/music-marketing-service-kiltfeed/feed/ 0 There Are No Short Cuts http://kiltedchaos.com/there-are-no-short-cuts/ http://kiltedchaos.com/there-are-no-short-cuts/#comments Fri, 12 Mar 2010 01:19:28 +0000 Andrew http://kiltedchaos.com/?p=1885

Oh I’m sorry – you mean you joined a band ‘cos it looked cool: sex, drugs & rock and roll – win the label lottery and get a lifestyle in your twenties that other people never see in a lifetime.  Well go borrow a time machine and go back to the 70’s and 80’s because you’re fucked.

If you hadn’t noticed there are big changes happening in the world – the tsunami of optimism that Obama rode into the white house turned out to be a mild swell crashing into the entrenched self interests of the establishment.  Things haven’t gotten better – there are no new jobs, labels aren’t making money – A&R people don’t have coke budgets – aside from the Cola type and even the chicks are better educated and have greater self-esteem than you do.

Unless you happen to be “receiving” from a label exec that still has money – that dream is dead and gone – buried under two decades of excess and the same lack of foresight and responsibility that means that no-one I know has healthcare.

Excuse me – what’s that?  Oh – you’re a musician – what – you’ve studied your instrument – you’ve been writing poetry and song lyrics since you were 4.  You were borrowing dad’s old video camera and have been the family’s home movie maker since you first learned how to edit an audio track.  You and your mates practice 4 times a week and you already have 50 friends who will swear that you really do ROCK!

Then step right up – you couldn’t have been born at a better time.  Everything you need to create a life sustained by music is now in your grasp.  I’m sorry – but we don’t have the shotgun approach that will accelerate your career forward 20 years and have you playing to stadiums by the time you’re 25 – but – if you’re prepared to work at it – play and practice, tour constantly and love the hell out of what you do – then maybe, just maybe you’ll stand on stage and play for 500,000 people.  Wouldn’t that be absolutely fucking amazing! ;-)

]]> http://kiltedchaos.com/there-are-no-short-cuts/feed/ 4 Now Reading… http://kiltedchaos.com/now-reading/ http://kiltedchaos.com/now-reading/#comments Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:41:59 +0000 Alex http://kiltedchaos.com/?p=1823

Yes! Reading! A paperback book – how very old school of me huh? And a good read it is too – i’m only on chapter 3 at this point, but allready i’d recommend any new band or artist to go out there and buy a copy of this – it’s that good!

But I digress – my point is this: “Doing it yourself doesn’t mean doing it alone” (Direct Quote from Chapter 2, P19) Unless you’re really really rich, really really talented or really really lucky, you just don’t have time to do all the online marketing needed to get those fans buzzing (and even buying) about you, your band, your music and your live performances.  Not if you’ve got a full time day job, maybe a wife, maybe a family, friends, a social life – and just because you’re in a band, those other things are not any less important!

Instead, just like ever before, you need a strong “virtual road crew”, working behind the scenes on your Internet marketing, producing and promoting your content. But today – that’s a lot easier to get than before. no more of having to sign a long contract with an agent or god forbid, a label, only to get screwed on your big fat advance and make under 10 cents per piece of music sold. No – nowadays what you need is someone who “gets it” and not just that, can do the stuff that would take you 5-6 hours a week, in a couple or less, because they’re bloody good at what they do!

Sound like a business pitch? Well  - perhaps in a way it is, but more importantly its pointing you in the right direction. Sure we’d love to handle your online marketing, but we’ll still love everything you do if you do it yourself or work with someone else.  The simple fact is, now more than ever is a bloody great time to become a musician – recordings more affordable than ever before, getting product into the eyes and ears of your fans has never been easier and jeez – look at how many different sources you can use for free to get your talent out there now. You don’t need a label! If you can find some savvy tech people to handle your online branding and marketing and a manager that actually gets the changing face of the industry, new distribution and promotion models etc – you’ll do just fine!

Oh  - the one negative review I will give to this book is their guide to “Setting up a band website” Actually, the first 5 pointers are spot on (except we’re not listed on their web designers list ;)  But come on, telling you to keep the site light on information – that was fine when we were all using AOL, netscape and Dial up  -shit, even mobile phones have decent browsers and fast connection speeds now. No – put plenty of relevant content on there, and keep updating it as often as you can! And “upload your pages” – oh no, please stay away from HTML! not that there’s anything wrong with it as such, but putting your bands website into a solid CMS like Wordpress will cut down your website updating and maintenance time by hours! No more messing around in Dreamweaver trying to get divs etc to float right, etc etc etc – make Wordpress your website best friend!

]]> http://kiltedchaos.com/now-reading/feed/ 0 Oh if you must use Myspace …. http://kiltedchaos.com/oh-if-you-must-use-myspace/ http://kiltedchaos.com/oh-if-you-must-use-myspace/#comments Tue, 02 Mar 2010 18:07:11 +0000 Alex http://kiltedchaos.com/?p=1758

This is the only Myspace that I have, sir (By S.O.F.T)

Oh go on – get your band a myspace page! – even though I personally can’t stand the place – Myspace does remain a valuable, free asset for fan generation and is a great platform to be discovered on! Therefore ll give a quick heads up on the Myspace thing and why you should still use it as one part of your online presence.

In a matter on 20 minutes, we went in and created a very basic myspace presence, and populated it with some music – for the sake of this example, I used the Mixpod widget, but you could use the standard Myspace player, or just about any widget out there that lets you add tracks and then copy and paste the code into a Myspace Html Module.’

There’s plenty of facts and figures out there pointing to the fact that artist based Myspace pages are extremely good “collection points” for fan email addresses, to use for newsletters, etc – so incorporating whatever newsletter service you use into your page is another simple step that you should take. (Don’t have a  provider for email newsletters? We like MAILCHIMP ourselves – and they provide easy to copy and paste html code you can insert into a myspace html module)

Also, always bear this in mind – keep that myspace presence clean and simple. There’s limits to what you can actually do with your Social Media presences, whether Myspace or Facebook, or wherever – your personal website is the “VIP” room, it’s your central hub for all your marketing efforts, therefore, wherever possible make sure you have asome way of getting fans to go there, interact, comment on your blog posts, subscribe to your RSS feeds, watch more content, whatever!

Here’s a couple of good looking Myspace pages for your inspiration:

Frightened Rabbit –  nice, good links back to their record label, and i’m sure once they get their site up and running (Hey dudes! – you should have come to the Kilted Chaos guys ;) , they’ll have link goodness running back to that  -the header customization, and banner for the new album really catches the new fans eye and they also have a couple of different subscription options going on – clever lads!

Also – you just got to love the blurb on their page: “You are currently reading about Frightened Rabbit. They are a band who live in Glasgow and have done for some time. They record in bedrooms, cupboards and kitchens. Anyone can be in Frightened Rabbit. They have played some live shows in this city, but want to meet people from other cities, in order that they can come and blow into tubes when they play live. Lets keep pop music alive by getting it out of that dress and into a sweater.”

TYR – Obviously this is an example of just what could be done with a stellar graphic designer and some clever use of the HTML modules. talk about branding: Everything “above the fold” is spot on great images, really grabs your attention and introduces you to the band. Personally I would move the videos up somewhat, they’re kind of way down on the page – but it seems they’re using their Myspace page as their primary marketing vehicle – which, hey, is fine when your’e an established recording artist like they are – but when you’re starting out – you need something more than just Myspace!

Anyway, that’s just a couple of random samples to show what can be done with Myspace. We will be working hard on Drastic Jo’s Myspace page to demonstrate the kind of things outlined in this brief guide, and really show how a talented Indie artist can use MySpace as part of their overall marketing mix, as soon as we finish the page we’ll write a follow up post on it.  In the meantime please do feel free to visit Drastic Jo and enjoy her music  - wer’e super excited to be working with her on this massive rebranding and expect great things in the coming months from Ms Schneider

]]> http://kiltedchaos.com/oh-if-you-must-use-myspace/feed/ 0 The kilted Chaos Questionnaire http://kiltedchaos.com/the-kilted-chaos-questionnaire/ http://kiltedchaos.com/the-kilted-chaos-questionnaire/#comments Thu, 25 Feb 2010 00:36:33 +0000 Andrew http://kiltedchaos.com/?p=1764

1/ How many hours a week do you spend on your site?

2/ Why do you do this?

3/ Why should people come to your site?

4/ How do artists / bands get onto your site?

5/ What can a band / artist do to get featured on your site

6/ What are the top three trends you are seeing in the music business today?

7/ Where do you see your website in 1 and 3 years time?

8/ Random question.

 

Image: Macarena C.

]]> http://kiltedchaos.com/the-kilted-chaos-questionnaire/feed/ 0 7 Questions For Music Sites #Kiltfeed 02.24.10 http://kiltedchaos.com/7-questions-for-music-sites-kiltfeed-02-24-10/ http://kiltedchaos.com/7-questions-for-music-sites-kiltfeed-02-24-10/#comments Wed, 24 Feb 2010 19:31:06 +0000 Andrew http://kiltedchaos.com/?p=1760

]]> http://kiltedchaos.com/7-questions-for-music-sites-kiltfeed-02-24-10/feed/ 0 Marketing New Music Artists http://kiltedchaos.com/marketing-new-music-artists/ http://kiltedchaos.com/marketing-new-music-artists/#comments Fri, 19 Feb 2010 16:28:35 +0000 Andrew http://kiltedchaos.com/?p=1747

A couple of stories have popped up this week that has me reaching for my keyboard – the one with letters not notes.   Alex commented about Suzanne Vega’s move to Direct to Fan Marketing and DMN noted that Sade just moved half a million units, going gold in her first week.

Now I love both of these artists – The Queen & The Soldier & Your Love Is King are up there on my top 50 songs of all time (well – for this week anyway) – but there is a HUGE difference between these two legends and a new artist – say like Jody Schneider – who is just starting out.

Suzanne Vega and Sade had years of label development, marketing and promotion in order to establish a fan base.  Their music was introduced to the world decades ago in a record industry that looks nothing like the current music business.  The scarcity model makes huge sense if you’re Prince or Bowie or the above two artists, but at the beginning of your career the only person who notices that you’re not producing is your Mom.

As the music business becomes more and more tech dependant with artists getting involved in website design, digital audio, tweets and blog posts – let’s not forget the lessons of the last 10 years of online business.  Just because the big guys are set up in a certain way doesn’t mean you have to emulate them, in fact oftentimes adopting the same strategy can be detrimental. 

The beauty of the web and of being your own boss is that you can change your approach fairly quickly, you can use different strategies to reflect where you are in your career,  change the layout of your website, try different approaches to marketing and distribution.  Unlike traditional bricks and mortar businesses you don’t need a mason every time you want to change how you express yourself.

So – I’m stoked for Sade that a 10 year break from releasing music resulted in her existing fans picking up half a million copies, but – if you’re an Indie artist and you haven’t broken yet – I’d advise against this strategy.  If you want to keep quiet for the next decade – you go for it – the challenge of connecting to people who might dig your masterpiece will still be here waiting for you on your return.
 

]]> http://kiltedchaos.com/marketing-new-music-artists/feed/ 0 Cover your ass against the copyright police http://kiltedchaos.com/cover-your-ass-against-the-copyright-police/ http://kiltedchaos.com/cover-your-ass-against-the-copyright-police/#comments Fri, 19 Feb 2010 16:23:19 +0000 Alex http://kiltedchaos.com/?p=1741

In the light of Google closing down music blogs, AKA #musicblogocide2K10, I got to thinking about the ongoing question of how to “stay legal” on your blog – and a quick easy solution came to me: ADD THE LICENSE!

I think it's called Irony ....

Really, its simple. If your favorite band allows you to use a track on your blog, copy the communication that says “Hey it’s cool”, paste it into a simple text file and link to it at the end of the post! Simple! If you really want to get fancy you could code in a “Custom field ” into wordpress with specific coding for the license text size, etc.

But the bottom line is, regardless of whether your’e reviewing major label music or creative commons material, by adding that link to the end of the posts, you’re covering yourself against possible takedown requests by the DMCA. Also you’re giving a subtle message that “Hey i’m a credible and above board “citizen journalist” that bands, labels and fans alike can trust to use content in a responsible manner!”  Plus if the link is styled properly andf always uses the same 1-2 words, you can pretty much guarantee that it wont detract from the otherwise cool nature of your blog.

Here’s an example of how easy it is to add a fair use license to the bottom of your posts:
Use License

]]> http://kiltedchaos.com/cover-your-ass-against-the-copyright-police/feed/ 0 Quick food for thought http://kiltedchaos.com/quick-food-for-thought/ http://kiltedchaos.com/quick-food-for-thought/#comments Tue, 16 Feb 2010 19:11:39 +0000 Alex http://kiltedchaos.com/?p=1736

“I’m back to where I started from.

Taking names, making mailing lists…

It’s a relief not to have to deal with a record company,

and their A.D.D. attention spans.”

- Suzanne Vega in the New Yorker

AND:

The Mighty Mighty Bosstones move to subscription based fan marketing – and it works!

Two major artists, both trying innovative marketing moves to have more control of how they communicate with their fans…. Question is: How will you, the small unsigned artist view this? Do you carry on looking for that elusive record deal, or do you take a leaf out of the above mentioned artists book and talk WITH your fans and control your own destiny?

More later….

]]> http://kiltedchaos.com/quick-food-for-thought/feed/ 0 Free Chaos has a Winner http://kiltedchaos.com/free-chaos-has-a-winner/ http://kiltedchaos.com/free-chaos-has-a-winner/#comments Fri, 12 Feb 2010 19:13:41 +0000 Alex http://kiltedchaos.com/?p=1714

Jody Shneider

And that winner is: JODY SCHNEIDER – Follow her here on Twitter and her myspace page is here

We have some great things in mind for the website we’ll be starting work on soon. And we’ll be blogging a lot more about Jody’s work, and the entire creative process of how an artist gets that self managed website up and running.  In the meantime, while we scratch our collective heads and chill over the weekend, here’s a great little track from jody for you to enjoy:

]]> http://kiltedchaos.com/free-chaos-has-a-winner/feed/ 0