Ah well, s'pose it was inevitable...Got to go Video....

Promoting music online is getting more and more sophisticated, and, nowadays, there's a wide variety of ways, means and opportunity for the committed music publicist to get attention for their music....video is one of those ways and means. Personally, I've tried to put it off, for quite a while, simply because I haven't had a great deal of time to play about with unfamiliar stuff in recent months, but, it was inevitable, and the time has finally come for me to start getting involved in video production...

Now, I'm no Spielberg, so there won't be any movie awards for me, but, I'm a musician, not a cinematographer, so I'm not losing any sleep over that... no, I'm interested in finding out, as I go along, what I can do, on a real low budget, to draw attention to my music, so I'm going to start using video. Oh, I expect to get better at video making, once I've mastered the basics, so that's what I'm going to do, master the basics. When I've done that, you'll see me, in all my potential Oscar winning glory, right in front of you, on the silver screen, well, almost, nearly, sorta silver, if you get my drift.

So, here goes with the first stab at a pretty basic effort... a sort of InZaneCountry commercial, based on a simple slide show video. It's kind of setting out my stall, giving a flavour of what I'm about musically....I enjoyed making it, it literally took a few minutes to and I think, maybe, I've gotten the bug, and I'm actually looking forward to being a little more creative over the next few weeks. So, you might like to watch this 58 second video, and, then watch this space...because, fairly soon, there'll be more, next time featuring some songs from the InZaneCountry album, 'FairyTale' ....

OMD's - that's what I was talking about

There is, of course, absolutely nothing wrong with posting music, or interacting, in any way, with OMD's. I do it myself..my music is all over the internet, Myspace.com, Soundclick.com, EzFolk.com, iSound.com, etc...where would we be without these places on the internet to promote our music? Further, some OMD websites offer exceptional facilities for the Independant Artist, and a number of them offer terrific additional, and, very useful advice on many aspects of songwriting, recording, music production and music marketing. No, I'm not advocating that OMD's are ignored or ruled out of anyone's online activities.. Actually, I'm all in favour of OMD's. What I am most definitely saying, however, is that you need to be aware that an OMD's primary objective is 'Income Generation', so, inevitably, your objectives and ambitions are actually secondary, in most cases, except in so far as your satisfaction with a particular OMD is likely to keep your activity centred on it. That's reasonably important to an OMD, because your music, and your activity on the OMD website, attracts visitors..in turn, large numbers of visitors provide the impetus driving an OMD's online status upward, upward in terms of attracting clients, who provide them with revenue and investment.. a classic, though, simple example of which, is advertising revenue...The higher a websites 'hit rate' is, the more attractive it is to advertising clients, looking to gain the attention of a particular visitor demographic...advertising, however, is the simplest, and, actually, in many ways, the least sophisticated income stream for an OMD to develop...

What I'm doing with all this, and I'm sure you were wondering, is simply setting down the obvious, though rarely thought about, aspects of Marketing and Promotion of music on the internet through OMD websites..rarely thought about by the Independent Artist, who is so deeply immersed, as they are, in the hurly burly everyday business of creating and perfecting original music recordings...

More in a little while...

Further musings on Online Music Distributors (OMD's)

'Why is there is so much investment in OMD websites by their proprietors?' was something of a rhetorical question. That there was no flood of answers on incoming postcards, came as no great surprise to me, so, as you might have guessd, I was already primed to answer the question, myself. Here, is the hardly astonishing truth. Income Generation - that is the simple two word answer. Cynical, you might say, but one thing I have discovered, in my short life, is that while genuine altruism does exist, it is not a naturally abundant resource on this planet of ours. We certainly can't expect to find it any more frequently on the internet than we do in our daily lives...

There are a number of different ways that OMD's generate income. I'm not going to provide a list, let alone an exhaustive one, of ways in which OMD's do this, because the thrust of this post is not about the detail of OMD financial aims and imperitives, but to make the general point that OMD's are not in the generosity business. No, they are simply 'in business', and, before you misunderstand me, I am happy to say that my view is that it is okay to be 'in business', it's absolutely fine, and fair enough, for OMD's, or anyone else...I have no complaint about that, whatsoever. I simply want to make the point that OMD's are following a business strategy when they provide facilities for Indie Musicians and encourage their use of the facilities they provide...So, my fellow Indie Musician, by all means, use the facilities OMD's provide, and derive as much benefit from them as you can, but be aware... be aware that the online music business is a business, and you are contributing to the success of your favoured OMD's, whenever you create a 'Band Page', whenever you upload your music, whenever you post in a forum, listen to music, review or comment on a fellow 'Artist', indeed, whenever you interact in any way with an OMD website...

More to come...

Internet Marketing of Music

Bandwidth costs money. It doesn't matter who you are, your bandwidth is costing, and that's indisputable. So, why are there so many Online Music Distribution websites, out there, willing to host Independant Music and let it eat up bandwidth, all day long, for free? I ask this question because I am genuinely puzzled by some aspects of this 'Internet', this relatively recent phenomenon... Now, I am willing to accept that some people love music to the degree that they want to help it along it's way, and if they happen to have a dollar or two, and some spare capacity on a server, they might want to host their own music, and maybe some friends' music, to spread it around a bit, to a new audience. That's fair enough. But, there are literally hundreds of these websites...many offering superb facilities, in order to make musicians rich and famous, a 'star', all for free, and promising not to ask for a dime when they become one...

Now, because Indie Musicians, in their own perception, are nearly all 'stars in training', and, generally, have little money, the idea that someone might help them make a lot of it, and help them get that elusive 'Record Deal', is very appealing. And, of course, it's also well known that the Internet is the best and easiest way to reach untold millions of sympathetic ears, all of which belong to people who are as anxious to spend their money on your music as you are to take it... So, the Musical hopefuls and wannabe's flock to these Online Music Distributors websites, and upload their music and their band or personal propaganda like crazy.

What no one has told these apprentice Mettalica's, and it doesn't seem to have occurred to many of them spontaneously, is that, mostly, the people frequenting these OMD websites are other apprentice musicians, as anxious as they are to promote their wares...in other words, they are all promoting more to each other than to a more beneficial and receptive audience.

So, to return to my original question..why is there so much investement in these OMD websites? What do the proprietors get out of it? Answers on a postcard...