Sitting down to write those first mind-racking band descriptions and introductions on your profile can be very hard. It involves a great deal of thinking, planning, and usually a lot of collaboration with the rest of the band, your friends and family members for ideas and the “right” thing to say. But, rather than worry excessively about what you want to say, you should consider what people want to read about your band.

New Fans and Innate Curiosity

When a new fan visits your site, they likely have three questions in mind:

• What kind of music do you play?
• What are you and the other band-members like?
• How does this affect me?

MySpace provides plenty of space and prompts for you to provide information about what kind of music you play and what kind of band you are. You can upload tracks for them to listen to, list your major influences, and create a series of mini-profiles with information about your band’s members. However, the third question is one of the most important and must be addressed carefully in the descriptions you write.

You might notice that many bands write a very long, involved profile discussing who they are, where they came from and what they see in their music. Other bands simply post a concert calendar and a short bio of 200 words. While a profile that is too long will simply bore readers, one that is too short does not address the question of “how it affects them.”

To address this question, you must write less with the “goal” of your music in mind and more with the “substance”. What do you do that is different from other bands and how do you interact with your fans? Fans want to know that you are an active, fun band. If you know you are going to be traveling a lot and that you will update your blog, respond to fan messages, and listen to requests, write that into your profile. If you want to hear feedback on a track or have a cool idea that you want to run by a large group of people, do it in your profile.

By combining the basic marketing information that all bands include in their profile – origins, influences, and aspirations – with the basic, interactive information that your fans want to hear, you can ensure they know what you want them to know while feeling like stopping by you profile has a positive effect on them.

Popularity: 23% [?]

There are a lot of social networks online and more are created each and every day to compete in niches such as dating, pet owners, and sports fans. Knowing which ones will provide you with the resources and interaction you need to market your music is hard.

To help you get started in that process, here are ten of the best music oriented social networks currently on the Internet (that are not MySpace). If you are in a band, these are absolute must use sites for the promotion process. You should have accounts on as many as possible, at least to explore and test out their features. Continue Reading

Popularity: 100% [?]

Let’s face it – a MySpace profile with a few songs and a basic event calendar is just plain boring. It might draw in new friends, but if you don’t offer something more, will they stay on your friends list for very long? On the other end of the stick, if you blanket them with bulletin updates and comments on their profile, they might decide you are annoying and remove you just as easily. What is a band to do? Continue Reading

Popularity: 6% [?]

You think your picture looks pretty good, don’t you? That mid air dive from the stage during a recent show makes your band look hardcore enough to draw in the fans that you know will go to every show and wait rabidly for your next single.But, what about everyone else? The beauty of MySpace is that any band in any genre has the freedom and ability to take on fans of any age and background. No one falls into those easy little definitions anymore and neither should your band. So, why would you lock yourself into a specific image with your profile picture? Continue Reading

Popularity: 3% [?]

The Internet is a whole new world of promotional opportunities. Essentially everything you thought you knew about the business can be thrown out the window when you log into MySpace or any of a dozen other social networks to find new fans. Those bands that fail to make the essential adjustment are doomed to fail until they realize just how different everything is. For the rest of you, here are 5 essential tips that help you look beyond the basics of Music Marketing to find what you can really accomplish online. Continue Reading

Popularity: 10% [?]

Facebook has long been associated with the heavy rotation college crowd, those on-the-go, party going, paper writing teens and twenty-somethings who have enough time to spend in front of a computer socializing and are eager to absorb as much new cultural opportunities as possible.

Add to that a user-base that is growing two to three times faster than MySpace’s current database of young people, bands, and businesses and it makes sense that you might be considering branching out to a new social network to boost your fanbase. Continue Reading

Popularity: 3% [?]