How to Promote Your Music in 2012

A couple of decades ago it was unlikely an aspiring musician would get the opportunity to record their own music. If you were in a band and wanted to record a proper sounding album you would need to be signed to a record label which would pay for the advance for you to make an album. The advances in digital recording in the last decade have it made it possible for musicians with even a modest budget and proper skills to make something that may be worth listening to. Although, it's great that musicians now have the ability the record in the privacy of their own homes it has saturated the market with an excess of music on the internet that would take endless hours to sift through. Luckily, if you have recorded something worth listening to their maybe a couple of ways you can rise above the masses and get your music heard.

1.Streaming music services

This day and age more and more people are subscribing to different online streaming music services like Spotify, MOG, and Pandora. A lot of musicians might not know that submitting your music to these online services is usually a very straight forward process. For example, in order to submit your music to Spotify you would have to license your music through an artist aggregator like CD baby or to Ditto. Services like this also make it possible to submit to other digital services like Itunes or Amazon at the same time. The process for submitting your music can vary for each streaming services but from what I have researched I haven't found one that is to hard to accomplish.

2.Social Media

If you haven't already it is integral that you join as many social media outlets as possible. Everyone knows about Facebook and Twitter but there are other sources as well like Pinterest, Bebo, Netlog that could be a valuable way to promote your music. There are lots of interesting ways you can market your music through social media.Think outside of the box so people can get interested and involved with your music. For example, bring a video camera in the recording sessions of your band making a new album, then post the videos on YouTube and then go on Facebook to tell all your friends about it.

3. Radio Stations

Don't forget about the power of radio stations. The good news is that are a lot of small independent radio stations on the internet that you can submit your music to. Services like shoutcast and live365 have thousands of radio stations that you can try to submit your music to. You obviously want to submit to stations that cater to your genre and have a decent amount of listeners. Sirius radio has over 20 million subscribers so make sure you submit your music to them.

4. Soundcloud

If you haven't heard of Soundcloud yet you need to start taking advantages of these services. Soundcloud is a service that dedicated to letting people distribute and listen to sound files. It is unique in that it lets artists have their own distinctive URL which they can then embed on their own website. It is also very easy to integrate with Facebook and Twitter. If you are a paid member you are granted more hosting space and can distribute to more groups.

5.Get reviewed

Hopefully, other people will appreciate your music as much as you do. That's why it important to submit your music to different magazines and websites.A good review on a popular website like "pitchfork" can catapult a band from playing local bars to being on a national tour. Tiny mix tapes, drowned in sound, and the a.v. club are just a couple of places you should be submitting your music to.

Mobile Marketing or Balance Sheet Liquidation - What Do You Need?

If your in business today there is no doubt that you have been bombarded with new tools or ways to push your wares on unsuspecting consumers. You probably have 3 or more social media profiles each with their own "way to work the system", a collection of handouts screaming how keywords are so important, or maybe you even have a few seminars under your belt that you had to travel across the country for.

It's most likely that these tools do have a place in today's connected world, it really is important to be found and available in as many places as possible, but what most of these techniques fail to focus on is your actual physical store, you know the place where people actually come to buy things!

These tools do a great job of getting your name out there but when it all boils down, how many people are sitting at their desk asking to be sold something? Does it really make sense to you?

Research and experience has shown that consumers who walk into a store are 20-60% more likely to buy (depending on the type of retailer), compare that just 1-3% for an online store. In other words it's most beneficial to get people in the store then make sure they see everything that you have for sale.

Using a properly configured mobile strategy you should be able to organize the information based on where a consumer is and provide him value that he can immediately use.

Unfortunately many digital marketing agencies simply do not have the tools or resources to deploy a location based marketing system.

A properly optimized system should allow you to designate specific content, offers, sales, or opportunities for each one of your locations. This allows you some freedoms that you never have been able to enjoy before.

Each location has it's own inventory and assets carried on your balance sheets. Lets say you have 5000 TVs with a price of $300 each. You would have 1.5 million in assets. Now as time goes on new technology comes out that replaces the older technology. In many cases you'll need to discount the inventory to liquidate the stock. A 10% discount would mean that you lost 150 thousand dollars. The question is, how many TVs could you have sold during the time t if more people knew the offer was there?

Perhaps your inventory has a much shorter expiration date like a grocery store where you only have a few weeks or less to sell the product, in this case speed is the most important part of the equation. You want to give every consumer who walks into your store every opportunity to see every offer you have for them.

The real problem is that a consumer may walk into your store but do they "see" everything that they want or could use? Today's smart phone saturation allows the online and offline worlds to "blur" together for the first time.

A location based mobile marketing campaign can help your business run more effectively, will eliminate waste, and will ensure that you have control over local inventory.

How Can Young Music Composers Enhance Skills Through Music Forums?

Internet serves as the best tool to gain insight into several things. Just like you can conduct research for your school project online, you can also get lots of information about the entertainment industry, religion, finance, politics and everything that you read and watch through other mediums of communication. The music industry does not lag behind in this race and you can see a visibly stunning amount of literature and resources available at music forums to help the aspiring musicians.

These music forums are administered under the guidance of some of the best musicians who are willing to help out the budding musicians to create innovative music. The best part of these music forums is that young musicians from all parts of the world can participate and share their knowledge and art with others. Music is discussed and improvised together by the young musicians and established musicians to create a stimulating piece of music. The recognized musicians also help these budding musicians by providing resources like vocal software and hardware that smartens up the music completely.

In these music forums, the young musicians can find lots of useful tips, resources, and ideas from other artists who have established themselves through such forums. Besides these resources, the musicians get the chance to become actively involved in the music community and get great insight into several music genres. Also, since these communities serve musicians from all parts of the world, there is a great way to gain insight about the heritage of music of other countries. For example, the folk music has recently been a source of inspiration for many musicians and they have composed inspirational music, amalgamating the folk and urban music in their albums.

Also, there is a lot of competition going on in the music industry, which is an encouraging element for many aspiring musicians who want to make it big soon. The established musicians at the music forums provide opportunities to these young and talented musicians to build careers in the music industry.

While making the most of the music forums, the musicians should keep in mind certain things. Firstly, they should use these forums as a creative tool and a platform to learn new things. They should seek out ways to learn by interacting with other musicians and seniors. And most importantly, they should not cause any harm to the forum and its resources and other musicians at the forum. The discussions should be free of spam and useless posts, whereas the musicians should keep their profiles and posts informative, well-organized and uncluttered so it is easy to go through them.