Once a year I dedicate this blog to promote Jivewired exclusively. Today is that day. Please pardon the interruption.
I get this question all the time.
"Why do I need a Jivewired Digital One Sheet if I have no plans to submit for festivals or gig opportunities?"
We’ll start with something you definitely shouldn’t do: fall for schemes, traps and trumped up A&R companies. Thankfully, there’s a rule of thumb for staying out of hot water: if you’re trying to buy fame, you’re probably doing it wrong.
This covers everything from “pay-to-play” licensing deals to those incessant SEO companies that spam and populate Twitter. Don’t buy this stuff. Don't even consider it. They are all scams, one way or another – with very few exceptions.
The music industry has been rife with scams for a long time and the digital space is no different. So be careful. If something is too good to be true, it probably is.
Other Resources:How to Detect and Avoid Music Scams and Scams in the Music Business.
Remember, you are in music to make money right? Even if your goal is to simply break even, you need to make some money to avoid drowning in debt. The best way to do that is to market yourself. Short of hiring a publicist, depending on the limited viewership of your Facebook page or doing things the old-fashioned, hard cop way, a Jivewired Digital One Sheet is one of the best DIY platforms available, and at a minimum cost, to create powerful direct marketing campaigns that create a broader fan base and help drive revenues back to you.
If your band's press releases, fact sheets and promotional photos are available in hard copy only, you're signaling to the industry that you still have one foot stuck in the 20th century. You're also making it harder for talent buyers to learn about your band and your music. As an industry, we are accustomed to electronic press kits that we can view and download. What's nice about the Jivewired Digital One Sheet is that we take the standard EPK and re-format it so that no navigation is necessary. It's all on one sheet, and about all a user has to do to access all of your electronic media is scroll up and down.
A Jivewired Digital One Sheet is more convenient for you, too. No more printing and organizing reams of pages and "snail-mailing" them along with a CD and/or DVD to talent buyers, festival curators and electronic media. When you're ready to announce new music, tours or premier events, it's quick and easy to update your Jivwired Digital One Sheet and make the news available online immediately.
And, in the unfortunate circumstance that your band splits up or changes it's name, Jivewired makes it very simple for you: instead of creating and paying for an entirely new press kit, just log in and change your band name and your customized URL.
It takes one second.
Here are some of the benefits of your Jivewired Digital One Sheet:
- We use search engine optimization (SEO) keywords. Like all good web copy, it's vital to use SEO keywords in your press releases and other social media content to improve the search-engine ranking of your online one sheets.
- Think video. Many media Web sites post video clips that relate to news stories and other content. If you offer a product or service that lends itself to a demonstration video, consider adding video to your EPK. The next iteration of Jivewired will prominently display your lead video in the cover section (read: top) of you digital one sheet. Video sells today and is more important than your bio and resume. Lead with a great video - it's the best way to get noticed.
- We make it easy for talent buyers and journalists to find what they need. Our one sheets are listed by relevant category with a quick link to each section. Check out some of our sample one sheets. If your one sheet is current and dynamic, it will represent you perfectly. A Jivewired Digital One Sheet is an everlasting press release. Today's market is all about content. Keep it up to date and make it a visually enhanced, powerful marketing tool.
- We announce your new and updated one sheets to the media. When you're ready to unveil a new Jivewired Digital site or page, make sure to e-mail the URL to your media contacts. A quick note: Avoid sending your EPK as an e-mail attachment in pdf or document form unless a journalist requests it. E-mails with attachments can wind up in spam folders and never seen by the intended recipients. A Difference Maker: A great way to market your band with your Jivewired Digital One Sheet: Put it on a Flash Drive and send it out to whomever needs to see it. Jivewired is great for promotion because it provides all your media on one, easy-to-navigate sheet. Talent buyers, promotional staff, label reps, radio programmers and print and video media love it because it requires no navigation. At events like trade shows and music festivals, where talent reps and industry media who aren't on your list might show up, consider making your Jivewired Digital One Sheet available to the media on a USB thumb drive.
- What you can do additionally: Hard copy can help at a trade shows and festivals. If you're introducing new music or videos, supplement your Jivewired Digital One Sheet by providing the media with hard copies of those products. It will allow talent buyers journalists to quickly get up-to-speed on your new material while they're away from their laptops. A hard copy also comes in handy for reporters on the road when they find themselves stuck in places without Internet access.
What separates us from other Electronic Press Kit companies?
- A more dynamic and aesthetically appealing representation of your media
- We use better than CD quality playback sound for digital music files and we accept uploads up to 22MB in file size.
- Ease of use: The Jivewired Digital One Sheet takes less than 30-minutes to complete and mere seconds to update.
- We allow unlimited high resolution photographs, as well as unlimited high quality digital audio uploads and unlimited high definition video uploads (via YouTube and Vimeo) on your Jivewired profile.
- Our personal touch: Jivewired helps market your profile via the most popular social media sites and right here on this blog.
- We seek to find more than just gig and festival opportunities for your band. As a model, we also seek ways to drive revenues back to you through Jivewired industry affiliates.
THIS WEEK'S TOP FIVE LIST
Five things you should NEVER pay for in the music industry:
1. Twitter and Facebook Followers -- There’s a lot of grey area here. A host of different companies offer tools and services which offer to automatically add Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook followers. Strictly speaking, most aren’t scams. But are they worth your money? Yes and no. Most of the people who will end up following you are not interested in listening to your music. They’re just playing the same game you are: trying to fake the appearance of having a following. In Twitter instances, however, because they have governed limits, purchasing followers does allow you to expand your footprint and reach in instances where you otherwise might be limited. Simply you need followers to follow more people. Just use this tactic wisely. No one is going to believe that you have hundreds if thousands of "fans" if the quality of your music or your promotional campaign does not warrant that number.
2. To Access Music Industry Contact Details -- Some companies will offer to sell you important industry contact information The rule of thumb is this: anybody who wants to be made available to be contacted by you will have that information readily and easily available online. I don't know one single person who will only make that available for a premium. If you purchase this information, someone is just doing the work on your behalf and you will be no closer to landing a gig at Lollapalooza than you were without shelling out hard earned cash under that pretense. There are a few industry guides published every year to which labels submit their contact information for this very purpose. These books can be handy to have, and you can relax knowing that (most) of the people listed in the book have opted in and specified their desired contact method. Still, most of the information you need is still available for free online.
3. To Play A Show -- Unless we are talking about a tour buy-on, this is generally a bad idea. Some festival submission opportunities will generally charge a fee as a way of controlling submissions. This is acceptable and for the record Jivewired hopes to implement a platform that refunds submission fees in instances where bands are not selected, except in the cases of non-for-profit organizations. Do understand that if you are at the stage of your career where you are still trying to build an audience, you may not get paid to play in some instances. Weigh those options carefully, and try to supplement that through merchandise sales and heavy foot promotion.
4. To Get A Track On A Comp -- Buying your way onto a comp is a pretty common scenario, and it's not good. You should especially be wary of small companies with no track record who ask you to shell out to be on a CD they're putting out.
5. To Get Advice -- I know that there are some legitimate music industry consultants out there that do charge for their services. I know some very smart, knowledgable people do music industry consultancy for a fee and give their clients great advice about how the industry works. The flipside of this is that there are many, many consultants out there who charge musicians an hourly rate for the privilege of receiving basic or bad advice. This is not money well spent, and it could send you down the wrong road in terms of reaching your goal.
Before you pay for the services of a music consultant, find out what you can about their background and their past clients. Look for someone who can motivate you while being realistic, and above all else, look for an honest price. It would be silly to divert money from, say, promotion to paying for these services. A great thing to look for is a consultant who can offer you advice while doing something tangible for your career, like a manager or a PR person you can call on for advice. That way you're getting more bang for your buck as this person isn't merely supervising but is actually invested in your career.
We do offer consultation services. But we combine PR with booking and management advice and we never take a percentage of your revenues. In most cases, we ask for a small fee upfront for a short six-month, no obligation term and then charge a little more to extend the service if you are happy with the results.
THIS WEEK'S FACEBOOK FRIENDS
Are you an aspiring musician? Upload a performance video at http://www.LandTheBigGig.com/ by Noon ET on May 13 and you could win your share of $50,000 in cash and prizes! Fan-voted finalists will win a trip to Milwaukee to perform at Summerfest on Thursday, June 27 and their chance to take home the top prize.
Fans and contest entrants are encouraged to visit LandTheBigGig.com for updates and follow Land the Big Gig on Facebook and Twitter. Tell them Mike from Jivewired sent you, please and thank you!
Presented by Robert Haack Diamonds and Tap Milwaukee, Land the Big Gig's producing sponsors are Boucher Automotive, University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee, Mountain Dew Kickstart, and 94.5 The Lake. Southwest Airlines is the official airline partner of Land the Big Gig.
VIDEO OF THE DAY
New Love by Sassparilla
ABOUT THE MONDAY MIX
The Monday Mix airs from 12:00PM to 5:30PM CDT each Monday and is designed to help you get through that brutal after-lunch, energy-sucking span that kicks off every work week. This particular show will be a mix of old, deep album cuts and new indie music with a lot of genre crossover. No Adele. Sorry.
What else does The Monday Mix do? Well, it helps you discover new indie music by combining some really great under the radar tracks with more established songs that were, once in fact, under the radar as well. The hope here is that the culture shock of discovering your next favorite band won't be so enormously imposing if we surround the new stuff with some of your old, familiar friends.
Jivewired supports independent musicians by paying royalties for airplay on Jivewired Radio. Please help us support indie artists by listening to our station and by purchasing indie music. Thank you.
The links on the radio player will give you download options if you really dig on the music and some of the songs are offered for free.
To listen, just press play on the radio widget to the right or use this link to open in a new window that will allow you to listen when you navigate away from this page:
Launch Jivewired Radio
MONDAY MIX PLAYLIST FOR 04.22.2013
01. Little Too Late by Nicki Bluhm & The Gamblers
02. Dark Horse by Laura Marie
03. Before We Run by Yo La Tengo
04. Space Jazz (Dust Up Version) by Spindrift
05. Dreams I'll Never See by Molly Hatchet
06. Already There by The Dustin PittsleyBand
07. Come Downstairs & Say Hello by Guster
08. Shine by Star Anna & The laughing Dogs
09. Mayor Of Simpleton by XTC
10. Laid by James
11. Bulls#!t by Well Hung Heart
12. Take It Off by The Donnas
13. Sex by The 1975
14. Busted Up by The Replacements
15. Sorry About Last Night by Wally Dogger
16. Waitin' by Caitlin Rose
17. Cut My Strings by Kree Woods
18. Stranger by Lovebettie
19. Sunday by Jet West
20. In Your Way by Bobby Long
21. Everything You Took by Lee Bains III & The Gloryfires
22. Nightfall by Hollis Brown
23. Gone, Long Gone by Left On Red
24. Combat Baby by Metric
25. Beyond The Grey Sky by 311
26. If You Only Could by Donna The Buffalo
27. Let Me Get Down by The Quick & Easy Boys
28. Uh Oh by Super Water Sympathy
29. Dixie Brothers by Bear Ceuse
30. The Pursuit Of Happiness by Ben Sollee
31. Whirring by The Joy Formidable
32. Devil by Well Hung Heart
33. North Side Gal by JD McPherson
34. Charmer by Aimee Mann
35. Hipster Kids/Sexy Beards by Dr. Pants
36. Dear Madum Barnum by XTC
37. All The Way In by Sassparilla
38. Jagged by The Old 97s
39. Sex & Candy by Marcy Playground
40. I'm Writing A Novel by Father John Misty
41. Without You by Jesse Aycock
42. Home by Phil Phillips
43. God Put A Smile Upon Your Face by Coldplay
44. March Of Fools by Gram Rabbit
45. Santa Cruz by Foreign Talks
46. Only For You by Heartless Bastards
47. Milwaukee Man by Hugh Bob & The Hustle
48. Girl Like You by Russell Stafford
49. Simple Beauty by The Jane Carrey Band
50. Drunk In The Day by Wally Dogger
51. Lazy Eye by Silversun Pickups
52. Hold That Thought by Ben Folds Five
53. Everyone's Alone by Josh Doyle
54. Entertainment by Phoenix
55. We The Common by Thao & The Get Down Stay Down
56. Sun by Two Door Cinema Club
57. Electric by Luscious Jackson
58. In The Dark by The Iveys
59. Miranda by The Imperial
60. Big Love by Matthew E. White
61. Meet Me Where The Crows Don't Fly by Water Tower Bucket Boys
62. Headlines by Shannon Labrie
63. Everything Is Embarrassing by Sky Ferreira
64. Wrapped Around Her Finger by Mikey Ohlin
65. Just A Ride by Jem
66. I'd Rather Die by Fiawna Forte
67. Drinkin' by Holly Williams
68. Ramblin' On My Mind by Left Lane Cruiser
69. Ivy Covered House by Ducktails
70. California by Hydra Melody
71. Do You Realize?? by The Flaming Lips
72. Cold October by Escondido
73. 32 Flavors by Alana Davis
74. Careening Catalog Immemorial by Frontier Ruckus
75. Hoka Hey by The Outer Vibe
76. Spoon by Cibo Matto
77. Curtains Drawn by Crown Point
78. Atonement by Kilto Take
79. Body & Soul by Goldenboy
80. Electric Daisy Violin by Lindsey Stirling
81. Float On by Jennie Arnau
82. Home by Marc Broussard
83. The Travels Of Frederick Tolls Part 1 by McDougall
84. Friends by Uncle Mingo