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% [?]

So, you’ve decided to create a blog on MySpace – one of the single most effective ways to draw an audience to your profile. Before you get started, it is important that you know exactly what seven things you can do to ensure that crowd shows up though – otherwise, you will be left scratching your head at the lack of views: Continue Reading

Popularity: 27% [?]

I usually limit myself to a post a day, but I couldn’t wait to point out this post titled “Study: Blogs Trump MySpace for Selling Music” by Mack Collier over at mpdailyfix.com.

He’s talking about this study from NYU’s Stern School of Business that found blogging has a positive impact on the success of a CD release – more than the number of friends you have on your MySpace profile.

This is something I’ve been saying for a while. It’s why I dedicated a section of my eBook, The Ultimate Guide to Promoting Your Music Online, to introducing the concept of blogging for music promotion.

HypeBot has reported on this as well. As they point out:

“According to the study, if 40 or more blog posts were made before an album’s release sales ended up being three to four times times the average for both indie and major releases. If blog posts crossed 250, album sales rose to six times the average regardless of label.”

Of course, major labels still have success using traditional methods, but this goes to show that it’s possible to get serious results by embracing the world of Web 2.0.

If you haven’t jumped on board social marketing to support your music marketing yet, you’re missing out! Download a FREE preview of The Ultimate Guide to Promoting Your Music Online today, surf this blog, and gain an advantage in your music promotion strategy before the others catch on!

Popularity: 13% [?]

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% [?]

The Internet is so chock full of music in this day and age that you can literally find it just about anywhere. There are social networking sites devoted to music sharing, dozens of different personal radio station websites, and long listings of review and trend setting websites that people use to find and obtain music. With so many different methods and so many different bands, it is no wonder that people use this vast array of different tools to unlock their favorite new bands. Continue Reading

Popularity: 17% [?]