Your music’s perfect? There’s nothing more to do? Then it’s time to start planning your explosive entrance onto the world scene. Think about who you are, what image your music projects, how you want to succeed? Do you want to be Bob Dylan or The Chemical Brothers? Both are massive superstar acts, but with totally different images and vibes. What’s yours?
Your music should go a long way to helping you get this central image focused in your mind, but get it right, because everything else in your arsenal of self promotion will take a lead from this primal idea. Of course it helps if you’re hugely outgoing with bulletproof confidence (because it will take shots, guaranteed), but there’s room for everyone.
Indie star Cat Power started out gigging with her back to the crowd because her stage fright was too bad to let her look at her audience. Recognise your strengths and capitalise upon them – it’s easier than pretending to be something you’re not.
A strong image will make people believe in you, want to buy into your look and associate themselves with you. A poor image makes you look uncool and unprofessional. Look at the hundreds of sloppy band websites and myspace pages out there – this is often your first contact with a new listener, if you want them to like you it’s worth making the effort. Care about that first impression, it shows you care about yourself and your fans.
We can’t really help you dream up your image, but there are some things on the RouteNote tools page that should help you actuate it: sites to help you build a good looking myspace profile, guides to setting up your own website and to building widgets to put on your own and your fans myspace pages and websites, places to get t-shirts made.
Courtney Holt, MTV’s chief of digital music, has told friends he will accept the job as MySpace Music’s new CEO, according to a source close to Holt.
His name is not yet on the dotted line, but Holt has given a verbal commitment to MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe, said a music industry source. MySpace Music is the newly launched digital music service formed by News Corp. and the four largest recording companies. The service will sell downloads of unprotected Mp3s and offer ad-supported streaming music.
“Anything can happen when there isn’t a signature, but it looks like he’s the new CEO,” said the music industry insider.
We have learnt that News Corp is trying to put together a joint venture for Myspace. This joint venture will be similar to their current video joint venture with NBC Universal. In other words the joint venture will be for content providers to place their music on the service and in return gain an equity share in the company. The companies involved would only consist of the four major labels, Universal, Sony BMG, Warner and EMI.
Im guessing the music will be DRM free but will have some sort of ad support or watermarking to it. Since the Myspace deal with Snocap there has been no real use of the 7 million bands on myspace to sell some music. Im sure if this was done properly there is a chance for the service to become a real challenge to Amazon and hopefully iTunes.
It has been reported over at Techcrunch that Imeem has purchased Snocap. Both Imeem and Snocap are partners of ours and for all of our artists nothing will change because of this acquisition. It has not yet been confirmed by Imeem if Snocap will still operate under their brand or whether it the Snocap technology and assets will be placed under the Imeem brand.
Stay tuned for more information as it becomes public.
