Getting A Record Label Deal: Musician’s Guide

15-Jul-2020 By Leave a Comment

(Post Via Michele Enoch) One of the most important things that artists look for when starting out is a record label. A label is very important to many artists and they always aspire to get one. A record label deal is a great thing to have but is not always needed. This article will start with what labels help out with and then list ways to get a label and how to do things on your own.

Record Labels:

Labels help with so many things. They help you pay for things such as tours, merchandise, and recording. They also help with creating shows and other performers to work with. Labels also help with distribution and marketing. They do a lot of the business side so you don’t have to.

YouTube:

YouTube is a great way to get your music noticed. Record labels go there looking for what’s new and making waves. It shows a lot about you and your music. Live videos will show them how fans and people react to you as well as show your stage presence. Music videos show your artistic side and even what your songs are about. They’re easy to link to and easy to find.

Good Music:

Having good music will intrigue them. You want something that will stick with them and they won’t forget you. The more you make unforgettable music, the more likely they’ll want to check you out. It can’t just be good to you. It has to be good to everyone. Have honest friends listen to your music and tell you what they think about it. Have music that stands out and doesn’t sound like everything else out there. There are popular sounds out there, but you still want to stand out amongst those sounds.

Live Shows:

You never know who’s going to show up to a live show. Labels will sometimes send out their A&R people and sometimes they’ll just show up on their own terms. You can always go to music industry conferences, such as SXSW, or find a local venue that holds industry night shows. There will be some venues who have nights where people from the industry will show up to check out a new artist. Most of the time you will have to bring a significant amount of people in order to just play there.

Contacting Record Labels:

When contacting record labels, you want to make sure you are contacting the right label for you. You want to make sure the label is helping out other artists like yourself and working in the same genre. Always look over the website before sending anything in. It will show you a lot about the company. It will show you what kind of music they work with, who’s on their roster, and how to send your music to them. Every A&R person will have a way they want you to send in music. If it doesn’t say, send them a link to your Spotify, Bandcamp or SoundCloud.

If a record label doesn’t respond right away, don’t get give up hope. They are most likely busy with other artists sending in their music and plenty of other things their job requires them to do. After a week or two, you can send in a follow-up email to remind them that you are still out there. Be respectful and understanding when doing so.

Website:

Owning a website is always a great thing to have. It has everything in one place. Links to music, videos, social media, merchandise, and news. Labels will be able to go to one place to get everything they need. There are plenty of domain owning sites out there to help you, you just have to find the right one for you. Like everything, shop around before settling with just one.

Artwork:

Artwork can be anything, it just needs to catch the eye of the people you want. Come up with a logo that is pleasing, eye-catching, and shows what your music is about. It can be very basic or very extravagant. Photos are the next things you need. It can be artsy and help show things about you. Shows how you look and describes the music you produce. Filters help show more than what a basic photograph can.

Independent:

Record Labels are now looking for artists who can handle things on their own. They will be there to help you out, but only after you are signed. They want you to be able to do things on your own before signing and even after signing. You have to know how to get fans on your own, have some music already recorded, and how to handle things that come to your music. Shows how passionate you are about your music and that you don’t have to rely on others to get things done.

Build Relationships:

Relationships are the most important thing in any business. It builds a connection between yourself and the other person. Try to build one with anyone at the label. Be genuine about it. Talk to them about themselves and get to know them. They will be more willing to help you with what you need. Don’t assume they are going to help just because you are being friendly. That should be left up to them. Do this before sending in music, otherwise, it might not work out the right way. Follow them on social media accounts and strike up conversations with them about some of their posts. It may take a while, but it will be worth it in the end. If the company is near you, go in and try talking to them face to face. Keep going in and trying to talk to their A&R person and become friends with everyone in the office, including the receptionist. Sometimes connecting with the first person you see when walking in is the best.

Looking for the right record label takes time and patience. Make sure you are ready before looking for one and have all the details about what you are looking for and what they are looking for. Build relationships and connect with them. Have followers and music to send them. You want to make sure they stay interested and won’t forget you.

Networking and making friends is crucial and takes a lot of work and dedication. If you’re looking for a simpler way to join these networks, check out youbloom Connect and/ or sign up here: https://www.youbloom.com/artist-apply/ where you can get partnered to perform with other local artists, build a steady fan-base, and even get your band on the road. Whether you reach out or decide to do it alone, do yourself a favor: get out more and meet like-minded people. Many of them might not be your next musical partner in crime, but the worst that’ll happen is you’ll have more friends.

About the Author

Michele Enoch is a music business graduate from Musicians Institute who has managed and promoted bands for years. She is now working on her photography and helping performers advance in their careers. Her passion has always been music and she is exploring all aspects of the industry. Michele appreciates all kinds of music and seeing music in all kinds of environments. She enjoys crocheting hats and toys, reading and writing mystery and horror stories, taking pictures of everything she can, food from around the world, and adorable animals. She is always on the lookout for anything new and exciting.

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/

How to Promote Your Music on YouTube – And Keep your Subscribers (2018)

21-Jul-2018 By 3 Comments

Promoting your Music on YouTube

Promoting your Music on YouTube isn’t exactly revolutionary. In recent years, the content-sharing platform has beefed up its incentives for creatives looking to grow a subscriber-base and monetize their music. For the DIY musician, the challenge is rising above that seemingly infinite noise of YouTube content and its pesky algorithms. Here we’ll outline how to make your channel a hub of unstoppable, watchable content that the algorithm’s just can’t keep at bay.

Put Your Best-Flick Forward.

Nick Aslam – youbloomDublin Music Festival 2018

Have your best or newest music playing at the start of the page or readily clickable. A majority of viewers decide whether or not they’re going to subscribe to a channel in the first 30 seconds of scanning the page. If they’ve ended up on your page then that’s already a great start for you. But now you need to hook them. Have your newest release or most popular upload playing automatically as they enter your channel. That, or have a welcome video that immediately makes the page personable between you and the viewer.

Clear Call-To-Action

You don’t want it to be hard for your viewer to find more of what they like. At the start and end of videos, as well as throughout your profile, make your call-to-action easy to see, and simple to click. The Backlink channel with Brian Dean has a really useful tutorial that explain the “In and Outs” of creating an effective call-to-action as well as tips on all aspects of YouTube strategy. A call-to-action can be links to your other social media, website or BandCamp album. Also, end your videos with explicit calls-to-action for viewers to leave a comment. Anything that will provoke further engagement among viewers is key.

Keep it Consistent

Choosing a day and time of the week to consistently upload content will more likely gain you a consistent fan base. Followers are more reliable if they can rely on you to stick to an upload schedule.

You’ve most likely spent a lot of time developing your band or music to fit a certain style. You want the feelings fans associate with that style to transfer over into your YouTube page. Work on developing your page to mirror your music. This could mean creating a layout with video thumbnails and color schemes that match that of your album artwork.

No Returns Without Tags

The tags you choose to represent your videos with will be your first line of attack in ranking among the ocean of YouTube videos. You want to cast a wide net but you also want to be casting it in the right place. Tags are the primary source that YouTube algorithm’s use to place your video.

Peco – youbloomDublin Music Festival 2018

Your first tag should match the keyword you have chosen to represent your video and should also be included in the video title. If the video in question is your “Music Vlog at the Hollywood Bowl,” than an appropriate first keyword might be “Hollywood Bowl or “Music Vlog.” For your next view tags, use variations of that keyword. Perhaps “Gig Vlog,” “Vlog,” or “Hollywood Music.” For your final few tags, use general terms that encapsulate the big picture of your video: “live music” or “LA music scene.”

Another way to get your tags working for you is by using the same ones as other popular videos that are similar to your’s. Websites like TubeBuddy and vidIQ allow you to quickly check the tags of high ranking videos allowing you to slap on the same tags for a chance to show up beside them in a search.

Keep it Short Lengthy

This isn’t Twitter folks. 140 characters isn’t excessive. In fact, research has shown that writing longer descriptions for your videos actually helps your ranking. 100-200 word descriptions seems to be the sweet spot here. This is because the more specific you are, the more YouTube bots have to work with when sorting you for organic searches.

By the same logic, longer videos, usually 8-15 minutes long, rank better. Just by making longer content you are quickly increasing the chances that your video will get more watch time. So if you’re wondering how to turn that 3 and a half minute music video you’re premiering into ideal-length content, get creative. Add bonus content to the ends of your music videos; a behind-the-scenes feature or heartfelt message from you and your band to your followers serves two purposes. It gets that run-time up closer to the sweet spot and it humanizes you and your content, giving fans a connection to you and your band that would otherwise be lost in cut-and-dry music video.

Co-Market

The Burma – youbloomDublin Music Festival 2018

Many YouTubers rely on one another to promote their own channels. Teaming up with other artists, collaborating, or guest appearing in each others’ videos is mutually beneficial when both parties exchange niches of fans and followers. Websites like youbloomConnect make this co-marketing simple by matching you with compatible artists that suit your style and are based nearby. This makes collaboration seamless and if you end up finding a good match, youbloomConnect will even help you to set up gigs with the other artists. Check out our Connect Guide to learn more about everything youbloomConnect can do for artists.

Make this Space a Home

Finally, you want your channel to be more than a glorified playlist; that’s what SoundCloud is for. YouTube is the perfect platform to show your followers the minds behind the music and to establish a personal connection with subscribers. Feeling a relationship with a YouTuber promises a much higher return rate of loyal viewers between uploads. This can’t be done with a music video alone. Create band interviews, behind-the-scenes gig vlogs, or an informational video. And don’t forget to end each video with some specific call out to your viewers: “Leave a comment about your favorite part of that gig, what band we should collaborate with next,” etc.

Stay tuned or subscribe to the weekly youbloom Newsletter for our follow up article on promoting your music on YouTube. In our following post we’ll be getting into the nitty-gritty of perfecting your SEO score and how exactly you can beat the algorithm.