Posted on September 1, 2009 - by Marilyn Roxie

Independent Musicians’ Tips: #1 – Establish Yourself Online

It should be noted that this ongoing series of tips are intended for the independent artists just getting started in getting their music out there, though there are some pointers that would probably benefit musicians at any level of success in the independent realm!

Tip #1 – Establish Yourself Online: Getting Your Own Music Profile / Website

The MySpace Music Profile:

The first place you want to have your music up is on a MySpace Music profile. Despite the fact that this is nowhere near the best, or classiest, way to have your music available, having a MySpace Music address has become an absolute essential for just about every band you can think of.

Preferably, you’ll want to get an address that reflects your artist/band name exactly (mine is http://myspace.com/marilynroxie), though if a user or another band has already taken what you have in mind, just add the words “official” to it, or used a shortened version/acronym of the full name. Now for your next tasks – even if you’ve already set up a MySpace profile, review these items!

- Picking genre descriptions: People seem be accepting of both accurate descriptors (Electronica / Ambient, Rock / Pop, and so on) as well as cheeky or off-the-wall picks (take Crystal Castles’ Thrash / Thrash / Thrash, for instance).

- Uploading photos: If you don’t have professional photos, don’t worry! – an ordinary film or cheap digital camera with effects and touch-ups from Picnik can work wonders.

- Filling out your Influences and Sounds Like: Don’t leave these blank! Fans like to know where you draw your inspiration and what reference points exist to compare your music with. Many artists use these spaces to embed YouTube videos and other widgets, but you can use the About Me section to do this.

- Uploading songs: I’d recommend at least three, which should be enough to allow someone to get a feel for your music – make sure that they are your best, and if you set the player to auto-play, it starts with your single or most favorable track for a good (or fantastic!) first impression.

- Writing a bio: This doesn’t have to be a long, boring section at all – mine is just a few paragraphs, and sums up what kind of music I make, where I’m from, what my inspirations are, and a condensed version of my recording and release history. Include also in About Me any YouTube videos, press quotes (newspapers / blogs), and any interactive widgets, links to buy merch (check out Big Cartel and Zazzle for getting started with an on-line shop) – whatever you think is important that fans would want access to!

- Site design: You don’t have to pay someone else to design your site – there are many ways to customize your profile that are easy to do yourself. This is what I used: http://myspace.nuclearcentury.com/

- Once you have a site design you’re pleased about and the above items filled out and uploaded to your satisfaction, now’s the time to start adding people and bands! I would recommend adding anyone involved with the band/your music, friends and family that you’d count as fans, and any of your favorite bands that accept add requests from bands, for starters. Wait until you have a few hundred friends/fans added until you pitch your material to other people out of the blue – no matter how good you are, no one wants to feel like they’re being spammed by a band, and they most likely won’t add you if it looks like you have an unfinished page and just a handful of adds. If, on the other hand, you have a page that suits your style, your best songs uploaded, and a fair amount of contacts, and you’ve checked out someone’s user page that seems like they’d like your music (because of their favorite artists listed or some other indicator), and when adding them you leave them a message like, “Hey (name)! We love your music taste (because of band x and band y), so we hope you’ll dig our sound too”, but, of course, less generic and more personalized, as that’s just an example.

- Everything else: It will be a few weeks before you find that you’ve really gotten going with your MySpace profile – you’ll want to make sure you have your live dates available, post blog entries and bulletins for new releases and other relevant announcements, and periodically add new photos, songs, and other needed elements.

Other Types of Music Profiles:
Though MySpace Music is the most popular place for bands to showcase their material, there are many other options out there. Apart from Last.fm (which I think is extremely important, Tip #2 will be all about this), the next most important places to have your music at are iLike and Imeem, though they are not at all essential. These two sites tend to attract casual music-browsers and, for some, are the first destinations for looking up a band’s music – you want to make sure that they find something! If you already have a Facebook profile, starting a Facebook music page for your band or solo project is a good idea, since you can then send a request to all your friends to Become a Fan, and this is another site you can update in the same way as your MySpace Music page.

Whether or not Twitter is essential is something that remains to be seen – it does tend to be effective in getting the word out about new releases and brief band updates. If having multiple sites to manage becomes cumbersome, you can always try Ping.fm, which you can add most of the popular types of account to, and update any one of them you like from Ping, without having to log-in to each one separately. I personally have Ping enabled for access to my Blogger, Wordpress, MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter accounts. From here, I’ve set MySpace, Twitter, and Facebook up as ‘micro-statuses’ – when I enter in something into the corresponding box, it updates all three at once with the same information! I can also choose to update any one of them separately, and there’s even an optional Firefox extension. Ping.fm has saved me loads of time!

There are many, many other options for getting your music out there, including ReverbNation, Virb, PureVolume, Stereofame, and Sonicbids. Though there are some bands that may have made important networking connections and gained fans through these sites, I would really recommend not spreading yourself too thin, and in the long run, it tends to pay off to simply be in just the type of places that successful, established bands already are. If you feel you must have a profile at any of the aforementioned sites, just go with one of them!

The Artist Website:
Setting up an artist website can be a lot of work – be sure that you feel that you have put out enough material and established at least a small, dedicated following before starting a project like this. That being said, it’s not as hard as you might think, either. Getting a .com website is quite easy these days – it’s $10 a year with Blogger and $15 a year with Wordpress. More convenient still, if you’re not bothered by the .blogspot.com and .wordpress.com extensions, they’re totally free! There are many website-building options that insist that you must pay a fee per-month for such-and-such amount of storage and features, and while this may be necessary for a website chock-full of uploads and content, for most bands, this is probably completely unnecessary, and setting up a truly useful, good-looking site doesn’t have to be such a costly burden.

Moonfruit: If you want to quickly build up a very professional-looking website in a matter of minutes, cost-free, Moonfruit is easily the best option out there. The design is flash-based and feature-packed, plus it is very easy to add and move around elements wherever you like on the page. For some examples of how lovely Moonfruit sites can be, check out VISIONBLURRED (a Manic Street Preachers + The Horrors link directory I set up in just one day!), Blackest Rainbow Records, and Jacob and Matthew (a band website) – you can see many more in Moonfruit’s About Us section. You can keep the .moonfruit.com extension for free (which sounds cool as it is!), or pay for a domain name and additional storage and features if you’d like.

Wordpress: For less-fancy, but still professional, site design, Wordpress is a good option. This is what I went with a few months ago when starting my own artist page: http://marilynroxie.com/ Going with Wordpress allows you to have separate pages (Bio, Discography, Pictures, and so on), as well as blog entries, subscribe-able by RSS. Since Blogger doesn’t allow for such pages, and only blog-style entries and sidebar material, I would really recommend going with Wordpress if you had to choose between the two, though Blogger is fine if you’re just using it as an updates page instead of as your home base.

Tumblr: Tumblr has gained wild ground in recent times, with 89%+ traffic in just the past 3 months according to Alexa. There are many different types of tumbleogs, from the personal (mine: neonsigh), to themed (A Future in Noise Music Videos), to music blogs (TwentyFourBit and Ears of the Beholder), and many other types of fun and professional sites. See also VOIDISM for an example of a fantastic music/art Tumblr site!

The advantages of Tumblr are that people can Like and Re-blog what you post (credit to the original Tumblr intact), helping to quickly spread the word about something, and you, in visual-centric way, a stark contrast to the brief, text-centric Twitter. Of course, you can also post audio, video, quotes, links, and text easily as well, though posts that tend to become the most attention are eye-catching visuals.

So there you have it! This was tip #1 in a continuing series, get yourself set up on-line, start gathering your fans and spreading the word about what you’re up to – the next tip is to be: #2: Get it Out There: Upload and Tag Everything on Last.fm.

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