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Music On The Web
These notes arise out of an excellent, dare I say, inspiring, workshop that Darren Mullan (pictured) gave for SCALA in February 2007. Darren is a producer at Quentin Eyers Music (FOOM sponsor) as well as a FOOM judge. His topic was "Marketing your songs online: Using Myspace and other online facilities for your songwriting advantage."
Darren's enthusiasm for online marketing was stimulated last year after one of the singer/songwriters he recorded and produced constructed a Myspace Music page with 4 of her songs included for online listening. Darren says that within 4 weeks his client was contacted by a Sydney-based manager who wanted to manage her. This person manages a number of "big names" in the Australian music industry and Darren felt that this clearly demonstrates the potential of online marketing of songs and online networking possibilities. The following are notes mainly derived from Darren's talk with some other relevant information that has come to my attention since the workshop. Myspace musicYou can sign up for a Myspace page. It's free. If you want to be able to put your own songs on your page make sure you sign up for Myspace Music not just a Myspace page. The latter asks for details like birthday, schools attended and so on, so if you see that when you sign up you're in the wrong bit of Myspace! Another clue is that in Myspace Music you're asked to nominate your category of music (so people searching, theoretically, can find you by genre), details of your "band" and your status - signed, unsigned, independent, your record company name.Myspace Music allows you to upload up to 4 of your own songs which people can listen to and (if you give permission) download them. You can also upload a video and photos and have links to other websites that you might have (eg your "official" website). You can have text on your page describing what you do and you can start a blog and let anyone look at it or just restrict it to your "friends". "Friends" are the networking part of myspace. You can ask other people with myspace pages to be your friends and vice versa. You can refuse to have them as a friend and vice versa. Your "friends" are listed on your page and often these amount to advertisements for their own myspace page as can your listing on their site. Third party websites can provide alternative backgrounds, text, colour schemes and images that you can incorporate on your myspace page or, if you're good at coding, you can drop in your own text, colours, images etc. Some myspace pages are very sophisticated, some quite basic. A number of our performing members already have Myspace Music pages. Myspace might not be for everyone but it's been embraced so readily by so many people in the music industry that it's an additional tool, some would say a necessary tool, to getting yourself and your music "out there". Myspace is not just a collection of independent, unsigned artists seeking a deal (or whatever). There's a surprising number of producers (like Darren), managers, recording studios, record companies and other music professionals and organisations with myspace pages. Remember too, though, that, as in most things in life, there may be sharks, charlatans and "undesirables" as well. Just be careful who you embrace as a "friend"!!! Soundclick etcIn addition to Myspace Music, Darren also mentioned Soundclick which also allows you to upload up to four of your songs. You can then link to your Soundclick page from your Myspace page so that anyone visiting can listen to up to 8 of your songs online. Soundclick offers two signup categories, Listeners and Artists/Bands. The latter offers:
Other online options for uploading songs in Australia include TripleJ unearthed and (in South Australia) Music SA which has local artists' songs online (in WMV format so if you're using a Mac you'll need the free Flip4Mac plugin for QuickTime) and undoubtedly there are others as well. iTribe etcSome people at Darren's workshop felt that free downloads were all very well but what about pay-to-download options like iTribe, iTunes and many others? iTribe is a locally based provider of pay to download songs. It's been mentioned in previous newsletters and David Robinson (who has one of his own songs available for download) wrote a comprehensive article about the signup process in the previous SCALA News - see iTribe, Therefore I Am.... You can listen to tracks before you buy on iTribe which also offers iTribe radio - random plays of songs on offer.iTunes, CDBaby and TunecoreMany people are interested in how to get their songs onto arguably the best know provider - iTunes. Fortunately, in the preparation of this article I discovered that Australian MacWorld for March 2007 has an article on exactly that topic! The two easiest ways are through CDBaby or Tunecore. Both methods of sign-up involve paying some up-front money and you will also need a barcode (or universal product code) and mastered tracks and artwork. The article in MacWorld suggests that CDBaby is probably the better option if you have a finished album, TuneCore if you have mastered tracks but you're not as interested in manufacturing an album. Both offer you the option of signing for other providers besides iTunes. A couple of our members have their songs on iTunes. Maybe we can encourage them to relate their experience of digital downloading and online marketing. One of them said to me "…and you actually get cheques! Which is nice."ISRCsDarren had one other hugely important piece of advice to offer everyone at his workshop. He suggested that if you are going to put tracks online either as free downloads or on pay-to download sites, then you should get an ISRC for each track.ISRC? I hear you ask. What's that? The International Standard Recording Code (ISRC) has been around since the early eighties. It's a code that is digitally added to a recording usually at the mastering stage (although I found that my computer's Nero CD burning program has provision for inserting ISRCs). An ISRC is essentially a digital fingerprint for a track. In Australia ARIA is the Standards body that issues ISRCs. ISRCs are free but you have to maintain the paperwork associated with them. The ISRC indicates ownership details of individual tracks. For example, if someone downloads a track that has an underlying ISRC it's possible to trace any future uses of that recording (provided it stays in the digital domain). So, imagine this scenario: a person who downloads your track then sends it to a friend who then sends it to another friend who has a friend who wants to use that recording or contact the singer but somewhere in that chain your name and the name of the song got lost and no-one remembered to bookmark your site (or, more likely, they have so many bookmarks that they don't know where to begin to look). If that track has an ISRC then the owner of the song can be traced. That's good for future royalty payments to you too! Notice that an ISRC is unique for each recording. If you have recorded for release 10 different versions of the same song (remember the Stairway To Heaven covers album?) then each distinct recording has a different ISRC. Further details of ISRCs are available on the ARIA ISRC page where you will find a very informative 31 page Handbook in pdf format available for download. Clearly, as non-digital formats like cassette and vinyl fade away, ISRCs make sense in a digital recording age. Darren said that some Recording and Mastering studios won't allow a track to leave their premises without an ISRC being added to the subcode. Thanks to Darren Mullan for a very informative, up to the minute, workshop. Incredibly, although he was talking solely about online matters Darren did it all without a computer on hand (although he did show us a few printouts of Myspace Music pages). Copyright © Robert Childs 2007 Adapted from Music on the Web and ISRCs by Robert Childs SCALA News # 109 (January/February/March 2007) NOTE: since this article was published Darren Mullan has suggested checking out isound.com as another alternative to Myspace Music. Darren's comments on isound are: "Similar to Myspace but is mainly focused on Artists, Listeners and Record companies. This is also free like myspace, but for a fee ($10 US per month) you can become a "LOUD" artist and have up to 99 MP3's for sale as well as being available to be added to the "Listeners" online radio listings. Very cool and a great way to get in the face of the record labels. Your fee per month is all you pay. You get all the $ for your sales without giving them a slice!"
Darren Mullan official website
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