Writing Song Lyrics Right

12-Jun-2020 By 1 Comment

As musical styles progress and change with the times, one thing is for certain, writing song lyrics continues to play a vital part in what sets artists from being good to be considered great. So for those of you currently in a creative drought, here is some advice from a few of the greats.

Jimi Hendrix on Artistic Liberties with the Facts

“Imagination is the key to my lyrics. The rest is painted with a little science fiction.”

–Jimi Hendrix

Many artists pigeonhole themselves by believing that every word written must be 100% accurate to their lives and story they are telling. Of course, speaking from your own personal experiences is vital in creating meaningful music. But the point is to get your message across in the best way possible. Sometimes, this might involve a little science fiction.

Dolly Parton on Throwing Yourself into the Process

“It’s therapy. It’s fun. It’s creative. I love getting on a big writing binge and staying up a couple days working on song and knowing at the end of those two or three days that I’ve created something that was never in the world before.”

–Dolly Parton

If this is your passion, don’t be afraid to throw yourself into your work. The stories of artists writing a hit song in 5 minutes’ time, on a napkin, in an airport is incredible! But most great songs come from hard work, dedication, and focus from the artist. This mean sitting down and wrestling with a song until it feels right.

John Mayer on Speaking Your Own Truth

“I hope that what it comes down to at the end of the day is that people believe that I believe what I’m singing. It comes down to being believable.”

–John Mayer

Authenticity is key in songwriting and producing. This may seem strange since the first piece of advice was to stretch the truth in the songwriting process. Don’t be confused, there is a difference between writing a nonfiction story to produce a personal truth, and writing a meaningless song for the sake of staying on trend. Be true to your artistic endeavors and creative process because the song will thus come across genuine to the listeners.

Now go on and be inspired to create and then when it comes time to perform, remember to Sign up as an artist today and get the chance to connect with your fans and other artists to grow not only your fan base but your connections in the industry.

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5 Tips To Optimise Your Musician’s Website Using SEO

25-May-2020 By Leave a Comment

Via Gloria Kopp

Optimizing your musician’s website is integral in this day and age. As an artist, you might have spent the majority of your time making and perfecting your talent, recording an album, sourcing the artwork, and trying to get your name out there into the big wide world.

Of course, one of the best ways to do this is by creating your own website, a task that’s now easier than ever. However, getting your website up to the top of the search engine results page is a whole other ball game.

Today, SEO plays such an important role in all kinds of website of all industries and businesses, organisations and artists needs to pay attention to their SEO ranking to ensure their music gets in front of their fans.

To give you a helping hand when it comes to SEO for your musician’s website, here are three tips to remember when designing or updating your website ensuring that your music is discovered by the masses

Conduct Research

Before you start designing or updating your website, carry out research, so you know what you’re competing with. You’ll also be able to see what kind of websites your competition has as well as information on what works best when trying to reach out to your fans.

Of course, you’ll have your own style and ‘brand’, but if you don’t fit into a certain niche, you won’t be able to appeal to it. You can also conduct research on how to boost your SEO ranking using tried and tested techniques. Some of the best places to look include Moz, a leading SEO organisation and Portent, an SEO-related blog.

Communicate Properly

Every single page on your website matters. Whether it’s your blog page where you share info on what you’re up to, your ‘about us’ page which gives your fans a bit of history and tells them your story up till now, all the way through to your album descriptions on your online store.

Whenever your site has written text, read through it and make sure it’s perfect. This is called editing. Of course, writing may not be your main strength so you can always enlist help from professional writers from services such as Boom Essays, or brush up your knowledge using blogs like State of Writing.

Use Perfect Content

Google will judge your website based on the quality of your content. It’s all about giving your fans the best experience possible when they visit your site.

This means you’ll need to go through and check all your existing content as well as checking any content you ever upload in the future to ensure that it’s perfect.

This means looking out for spelling, punctuation and grammar. If you don’t trust your own editing and proofreading skills, you can always use a professional writing tool that can do it on your behalf, such as Academadvisor or UK Writings.

Use SEO Tools

One of the best ways to boost your website’s SEO ranking is by using tools that were designed to save you the time and effort. These tools are perfect if you’re not an SEO genius and will automatically tell you what you can be improving on.

For example, tools like SEM Rush is a website where you can simply input your website address, and it will start to list out all the errors and things you can fix with your website.

Furthermore, tools like Ahrefs are ideal for seeing where all your user traffic is coming from as well as your competitor bands or artists to see what techniques they are using on their website.

Content, Content, Content

I can’t stress enough how important the content of your website is. There’s a special knack for writing search engine optimised content and it can take years to master the techniques as well as continuous effort to stay up to date with the latest trends.

Of course, the chances are that you haven’t got time to do all this which is why it’s highly recommended to use a professional copywriting service, such as Essay Roo or Academized to create it on your behalf. They’ll be able to create all your album descriptions, your about us page, your contact page and any other pages you may have.

If you’re writing your content yourself, one of the main things to remember is the length of your content has a direct impact on your SEO ranking. You can’t just write 300 words here and there. You need to provide real valuable information to your readers. To start with, aim for 1,000 words or above. You can track this using tools such as Easy Word Count.

If you’re looking for ways to get your music and presence in front of a larger audience and to the top of the search engine results pages, considering your SEO should be your first point of call. Obviously, a lot goes into fully-optimising a website, but by following these tips and tricks, you’ll be able to get yourself off to the best start.

Author’s bio:

Gloria Kopp is a content writer and an online marketing specialist Big Assignments writing service. She regularly contributes columns to Engadget and Australian Help. Gloria is a paper writer at Revieweal blog where she shares her reviews with students and educators.

youbloom is a platform that helps you as an artist to grow, sign up here and find out more: https://www.youbloom.com/artist-apply/

After a Brief Hiatus, Griffin Anthony to Release New Album, Refuge

22-Feb-2018 By Leave a Comment

Griffin Anthony, after taking a brief break from touring, is releasing his first full-length album since 2015’s, “Making of A Man”.

The album is set to be released this summer on Big Eye Records. During Anthony’s hiatus he has composed film scores for the Woodstock Film Festival selected documentary, Catskill Park and HBO’s I Wanna See You and Call to Action, amongst others.

“Scoring was invaluable to my evolution as a songwriter”

“Scoring was invaluable to my evolution as a songwriter”,says Anthony, “but I grew to miss writing the stories that I wanted to tell.”

Since scoring music for various films, Anthony became anxious to get in the studio and return to his first love, writing songs connecting to people emotionally. His new album, Refuge, was recorded at the Bomb Shelter in East Nashville with producer Jon Estes (Kesha, John Paul White, Steelism), in collaboration with Andirja Tokic (Alabama Shakes, Margo Price, Langehorn Slim).

Truly returning to his musical roots, Anthony recorded Refuge live to two–inch tape. He completed the recording of the album over 6 days in October 2017. Given the opportunity to listen to Anthony’s new album prior to his release and sitting down with him at his home in Ridgefield, CT, Anthony went into depth over his thoughts on his new music and how it is different from his previous works.

“I just aimed to write songs you can trust,” Anthony said. “I took a bigger swing on this record. The tunes have some heavier themes.” Never preachy or fussy, Anthony’s unwavering vocals and pointed lyrics deliver on the nine-song LP. Starkly more nuanced than his previous work, Refuge, offers character-driven narratives ripe with perspective and humility that sneak up and grab you by the throat. This album is a return home for Anthony and provides a hopeful feel through risk.

“From time to time, we all have to take great risks in order to find safety. These songs explore the risks, failures, and steps towards finding our safe-haven.”

Refuge is set to be released later this summer.

https://open.spotify.com/user/griffinanthonyofficial/playlist/1moQbmpMfjpPHP2FiQruaS?si=fpuhIAjpRWakuplEJ-wHMQ

Author’s bio: Gabe Crawford has been a music and vinyl enthusiasts for over 20 years. Although originally from Oklahoma, he currently resides in New York with his 1200 vinyl albums.

5 Tips To Optimise Your Musician’s Website Using SEO

22-Oct-2017 By 4 Comments

As a musician, you might have spent the majority of your time making and perfecting your talent, recording an album, sourcing the artwork and trying to get your name out there into the big wide world.

Conduct Research

Communicate Properly

Use Perfect Content

Google will judge your website based on the quality of your content. It’s all about giving your fans the best experience possible when they visit your site.

This means you’ll need to go through and check all your existing content as well as checking any content you ever upload in the future to ensure that it’s perfect.

This means looking out for spelling, punctuation and your grammar. If you don’t trust your own editing and proofreading skills, you can always use a professional writing tool that can do it on your behalf, such as Academadvisor or UK Writings.

Use SEO Tools

For example, tools like SEM Rush is a website where you can simply input your website address, and it will start to list out all the errors and things you can fix with your website.

Furthermore, tools like Ahrefs are ideal for seeing where all your user traffic is coming from as well as your competitor bands or artists to see what techniques they are using on their website.

Content, Content, Content

Author’s bio:

youbloom | HEADROOM #1: Featured Artists from the Los Angeles 2015 Music Festival

22-Oct-2015 By 1 Comment

Welcome back to the HEADROOM! The only place on the web where music freaks such as yourselves can get acquainted with unsigned bands before they hit the stages of the youbloomLA 2015 Music Festival.

Here at HEADROOM, we take pride in our poking and prodding abilities. We’re bona. fide. gossip merchants, born at your great auntie Joan’s kitchen phone and raised by one too many Q&A pages in rock’n’roll magazines.

We like the dirt. The skinny. The real weird stuff.

And we make one heck of a great cup of tea.

It’s no secret that rock bands – and musicians of all genres, really – have no shortage of strange and positively indecent stories to tell. I mean, the people, the places, the…the… hairstyles!

It’s…scandalous altogether.

So pull up a chair, really, honey, it’s no trouble. And just wait til you hear this…

We asked artists to tell us about the first experiences they had with music (hey, we all have to start somewhere). Here’s what a few of them had to say:

“My first experience with playing music was in the after school band program at my elementary school in Tacoma, WA. I played the flute. I remember the magic feeling of learning my first song and playing it with the other band musicians. I’m sure we sounded terrible; all us seven year olds blowing away on our horns. But to me it sounded like the best noise in the world.” – Cooper, (bass & vox, The Ultra Violent Rays)

Mirror, mirror, on the wall: who’s the noirest of them all? The Ultra Violent Rays aren’t exactly violent, but they do craft a masterful, cold sultry sound that promises something hot-blooded despite being surrounded by a kind of endless chill. Lovingly produced, carefully communicated electro-class for the space rogue in all of us. For fans of: Joy Division, Gary Numan, Patti Smith

“My first experience was the result of a worn out bearing in our washing machine when I was a kid. Every time it went into the spin cycle it produced ethereal poly-rhythms I only recognized years later when I heard Fela Kuti and Ginger Baker. Eventually the damn thing just broke, but by that time I had discovered Slayer.” – Jim Priest, (singer/songwriter/storyteller)

Hypnotic acoustic guitar meets wrong side of the tracks storytelling, leading us down a dark alley of spoken-word intrigue; it’s tangible, like a newspaper headline – we wonder where it all went wrong. Jagged harmonicas tear in, reminding us that we’re only listeners, but we’re involved, affected all the same. Jim Priest is not to be missed. For fans of: Tom Waits, Loudoun Wainwright III, Sage Francis

“When I was younger, I had older cousins who listened to super heavy music, and it was crazy to me! Up to that point I’d only heard music that was on the radio. I probably didn’t exactly “get it” because I was too young, but I think even on a subconscious level I had a switch go off that there was a whole world of different music out there that wasn’t mainstream. That’s probably when music “discovery” started for me. I actually went in search of different music that excited me instead of just listening to whatever was available or on the radio and MTV.” – Eric Rickey (vox & songwriter, Rabid Young)

Dreamy and wistful yet energetic and soulful electro-indie made in Vegas, baby. Expect to be filled with a nostalgia for a time and place you were never part of. Impressive stuff when a band can do that. For fans of: Imagine Dragons (kind of), Grouplove, eighties guy/gal duos

“I was introduced to music when I was a freshman in high school. I moved into a lower income complex where I (made) friend from Little Rock, Arkansas, who was very passionate about poetry and music. I had a karaoke machine in my bedroom that we would put cassette tapes into and record ourselves singing. Eventually this grew into songwriting for us and we recorded a track called “The Anthem”. I continued to pursue music throughout high school until it became my main career goal.” – Anthony Greene (sick rhymes, Prada Gino)

Sincere prose is woven through thoughtfully chosen samples and surprisingly sultry and classy beats. Belongs on a list of the top intellectual rappers in the game. Hometown Chicago oughtta be proud. For fans of: Kid Cudi, Illogic, Eyedea & Abilities

“My first conscious experience with music was at three; my dad used to drive a lot to every place me and my little brother needed to be, and when we went to the playground or preschool he’d play some cassettes from Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Queen or The Beatles (I cared more for Transformers at the time). We were exposed to lots of music, and sometimes went “off the road”. At age 10, someone gave us a Spice Girls tape, and as soon as we pressed play, my dad turned off the radio and gave me my own first tape, Kiss, Alive 4. From then on it’s been nothing but rock and roll.” – Julián (lead vox & guitar, RendeR)

All the way from Chile, with commercial sensibility coming out of their eyeballs, RendeR are polished, tight, and they know their genre like nobody’s business. Headbangers welcome. *Heads up! It’s in Spanish. For fans of: Frequency 54, Underwhelmed, Staind

*Please note: at this time, individual showtimes and venues have not all been confirmed. We’ll update this blog as soon as they are!