Indie Music Resources

6.09.2008

New features on ReverbNation

My favorite site for music widgets has been ReverbNation. Now they offer artists the chance to add widgets from any site. Just go to Admin/Tools and click on Widgets. People can pick up the widgets from your artist page. All widget placements are then tracked. I've already added widgets from Eventful, Amie Street, YouTube, and RockYou.

On the "General" tab, under Artist Info you can now add links to multiple social networking sites including MySpace, FaceBook, iLike, PureVolume, Bebo, Imeem, Last.fm, Xanga, Virb, Hi5 and more.

Also under Admin/Tools is a new feature called Gig Finder. Search for gigs by Venue Name, location/distance, venues another artist has played at, or venues similar to another venue. Searching within 5 miles of Brooklyn gave me 77 pages of popular locations. One thing to watch out for though, venues are added by the performers for the most part. For instance "Jessi Robertson CD Release Party @ Rockwood" is not a venue, but you may find some similar entries on Gig Finder.

Track your show attendance by entering the approximate number of fans who came out to a show. Oh, did I mention they can import Twitter updates too?

ReverbNation is certainly one of my favorite sites. It may not drive traffic as much as MySpace, but the features keep coming.

3.18.2008

The Ultimate Link List: Jessi's Bookmarks

UPDATED 3/18/2007

I freely admit that I am a bit obsessive when it comes to bookmarking useful sites. So my compulsion will now be put to good use thanks to del.icio.us, the social bookmarking site. I am posting a list of links here, that reference all sorts of things, from hacking your MySpace template to local NY music organizations. I will also be adding to this soon with links to my many, many websites as well as some of my favorite local indie bands. I'll put this somewhere on the front page too. Happy surfing!

Jessi's links on del.icio.us

Music Resources

NY Resources

Reference and Advice

iSOUND Artist Blog
Indie Contact Newsletter
Now Form A Band

Loops and Samples

iZotope Vinyl - Authentic Lo-Fi Vinyl Simulation for Pro Tools, VST, MAS, Audio Unit, and DirectX audio applications
Macloops - Free Apple Loops and Free Garageband Loops for Apple Pro Logic
Garageband Loops - Download Apple Loops Drum Loops for Garageband

12.21.2007

SellaBand: Your Fans become your Investors

SellaBand is one of those things that makes you think, "How could I not know about this!" I don't know if it works, but the concept is BRILLIANT! Your fans become investors and contribute money, banking on a future return from you. When the artists reaches $50,000 they make a sweet, sweet album. 12 artists have done it so far. I haven't signed up yet, but I will. I think it's a concept worth trying.

11.02.2007

SNOCAP waives annual fee!

Great news today for those of us who have SNOCAP stores (also known as MySpace MyStore). SNOCAP announced today that they will waive the annual $30 maintenance fee. This make SNOCAP much more competitive, as it is only taking a portion of the download fee per song, rather than adding an additional fee on top of the download charges.

Categories: SNOCAP, Digital, Distribution, Download, MP3, MyStore

10.17.2007

iSound: 11 Ways to Promote your Music through your Website

I continue to be a huge fan of the iSound newsletter/blog, which is full of real world tips for independent artists. This month's article promises to be extremely useful. It focuses on 11 ways to maximize your promotion efforts through your band website. I'm sure these tips will apply to MySpace and other social networking sites as well:

"There once was a day when the only way to promote your music was by going downtown, printing off 500 postcards, licking 500 stamps and peeling 500 labels. Now in less than 5 minutes, artists can compose an email list of the 500 people and send it off with one click. Websites give people all over the world a central place to find band information. This was not possible a short while ago. With all the technology advances, artists must make the most of their resources and create a webpage that makes fans want to return to their site.

1. Show personality. A band’s or group’s website is their resource to show the world"

Read the rest of this article here.

iSound also offers profile pages for artists, with a pretty cool music player that can be added to other sites. Band and artist features include:

Basic artist accounts are free

Put your music anywhere on the internet with the portable player

Sell music downloads and keep 100% of the net profits

Instantly create a professional band/artist web site

Instantly sell mp3s as ringtones

Promote music to 1,000,000 music fans each month

Upload MP3's

10.05.2007

iLike: New Artist Dashboard

I've written about iLike before. Firstly, because I enjoy iLike's features as a music fan. Their partnership with GarageBand and FaceBook is brilliant. They've recently added a new feature called the Artist Dashboard. If you already have a GarageBand page, iLike automatically created a page for you on their site. You can search for your name and "claim" yourself. Otherwise, I am pretty sure that you will have to create a GarageBand page.

So, you have to go put up another page? You should be doing that anyway to promote yourself, so no complaints. Anyway, this will give you access to some very cool features:

Unlimited song uploads (choose streaming only, or give away downloads)
Fans get notified of local events and shows
iCast multimedia bulletins. You can send videos, pics, and messages from your phone via text
Stats on fan growth
Play counts for full uploaded songs (no count on samples)
Stats on how many people have added your songs to their iLike and FaceBook profiles, or dedicated one of your songs to someone

Someone has already dedicated one of my songs to someone. That is so cool! Hey, the little things excite me. You should definitely get involved. Go, now, do it!

10.04.2007

finetune: Find Music

finetune is a playlist site. You can type in an artist name and the site comes up with a playlist featuring that artist and similar artists. You can create your own playlist as well, and then embed it on your MySpace page. It also interacts with FaceBook. Overall, a pretty cool music playlist site.

6.09.2008

New features on ReverbNation

3.18.2008

The Ultimate Link List: Jessi's Bookmarks

Blogs

Tagging

Hacks and Templates

RSS Feeds

Widgets

Web Design Tools

Fonts

HTML

CSS

CSS - How To...

PHP

Site Planning

Color Schemes

Music Players

Image Management

Photo Sharing Sites

Photos & Images

Printing

Slideshows

Online Albums

Photoshop

Miscellaneous

Online File Storage

Website Templates

Music Resources

NYC Venues

Digital and Online Sales

Licensing

Promotion and PR

Polls

Tools and Widgets

Social Networking

Band Tour Trackers

Band Profiles

Collaborations

MySpace Hacks & Gens

Music Videos

Video (General)

Mashups, Mixes, Splicing

Share Music Recommendations and Tastes

Social Networking Tools

Events and Calendars

Charts