Myspace has been waning as of late and the musicians favourite had looked like it might completely capitulate to Facebook. Myspace has made a few recent attempts at holding on to their share of the market and one of these has been the introduction of their new 3.0 profile. Here’s a list of it’s main selling points:

• Cleaner, more simple look
• Dozens of new themes
• Create your own header
• Easier navigation with all your stuff in one place
• Your profile design on photo, video and other pages
• Plus, artists can upload more songs and feature up to 25 on your profile

So on the face of it, it certainly looks good, though there are some negative comments that myspace is becoming more like Facebook. Apparently there is no obligation to upgrade and myspace even provide instructions for downgrading if you don’t like the new profile.

Below is the first in a series of websites using the popular and easy to use “WordPress” system. The first i video goes from a raw hosing account to an operational website in about 10 minutes.

Future videos will cover changing the theme, adding pages & blog posts and a few other thing s that would make the system work as a band website.

1. Get lots of friends and invite them all. Get every band member to get a facebook account and do the same. It is also possible to re-invite people who didn’t respond the last time; but make sure to leave a good healthy period of time between re-invites and try not to re-invite too often overall. Having to say no again to the same invite as you already declined last week is probably going to be annoying.
2. Put a link on your homepage or better still a Facebook fanbox. ( it’s good to get these into your sidebar/header/footer so they appear on all pages of your website) Read the rest of this entry

Below is a selection of sites that you can add your band to in one respect or another. It is just for starters and by no means exhaustive and more will be added over time. If you notice a glaring omissions then please feel free to just comment with the URL below and it will be added to this list eventually.

• Reverbnation
• Bandcamp Read the rest of this entry

This is the first post in a series called “Upload your music”. We will examine several sites that can be used to host your music or other ways to “add your band” so you can evaluate which spot(s) work best for you.

Bandcamp.com

Bandcamp.com is not very typical of music upload/sharing/social networking sites. Many of the sites we’ll be examining follow some similar patterns; for example: most sites allow listeners have their own profiles, rank “Favourite” artists, create Read the rest of this entry

After posting the link to  “100 Resources for DIY musicians” I came across something similar from the Reverbnation camp – “The Indie Band Survival Guide”.  I’ve only briefly looked at it but I notice that Derek Sivers (from CDBaby) gave it a thumbs up so it probably is well worth reading. ( and yes … once again it’s free )

The Indie Band Survival Guide

This article from Guardian about recent developments between Irish Music Rights Organisation (IMRO) and a couple of Irish Blogs who offer free downloads of music ( with full permission from artists) touches on a potentially large problem for the emerging DIY music area. According to IMRO, the artists who have mandated them to collect royalties don’t have permission to give their music away to “free legal music” blogs for promotional purposes.  To add my own question to that I wonder whether IMRO and other performance rights organisation might try ( if they wanted to take this to the limit ) to even charge musicians for having a music player on their own websites.

Read the article here … Irish Music Blogs Under Attack

Greg Rollett from Gen-Y Rock Stars compiled his original “100 Social Media Resources for Musicians” in late 2008 an he has recently brought out a new version called “100 Resources For DIY Musicians”. It’s quite literally an unmissable resource and if you haven’t already read it then it’s definitely worth studying. There is a lot of info in here so don’t try to digest it all in one sitting, pick a couple of things that would work for you and make them work.

Click this link to download or read 100 Resources For DIY Musicians for free.

Info page is here.

If you are a musician then it’s a good idea to start writing a blog. It’s pretty easy (and cheap) to get started and if you are sensible with your planning then you can blog in such a way that it doesn’t take up too much time, energy or head-space and can actually even be fun.  Of course the main reason that you should start blogging as a musician is to engage your fans, whether that means Read the rest of this entry

If you are in a position to spend some money on a website then it’s probably better to do so. Quality band websites need not cost a lot, especially if they are kept simple; however the world is full of musicians who for whatever reason can’t afford to pay for a professionally designed website, so here (in no particular order) are 4 totally free ideas and 1 not exactly free idea for a band website. Read the rest of this entry