The IntoMusic.co.uk Ethos what makes an internet band successful?

We hope these things will help promote your music on the internet

The Internet is often described as a level playing field for musicians releasing their own music or smaller indie labels benefiting from the power of the web to market bands. However in reality many music download sites do very little but register an artist details and music. These are added to a vast collection of titles and a lot of good music gets lost in this vast vault of music. The ethos at www.intomusic.co.uk has always been to create a level playing field where the most recent Bands/Artist’s to join are listed first on the front page and 1st in the genre results. ‘Scouting For Girls’ who recently had a No.1 album in the UK charts, described our site in these words "Intomusic.co.uk has been absolutely fantastic for us".

This equality means everyone who joins gets equal exposure, no matter who they are. If the band is downloaded a lot they will rise in the ‘DownloadFilter Chart’ this shows the most popular artists and is shown prominently on the site. More weekly activity is shown in the charts. With a little effort it’s easier to get more exposure than on big sites like iTunes.

Over the last 4 years we’ve gained some understanding of why bands on the site do well and can hopefully give you some ideas on making the site work for you and play a small part in helping you to achieve your musical ambitions. I could probably go into much more depth, but here’s the gist of it in a nutshell.

Bands like ‘Scouting For Girls’, Comedian/Songwriter ‘Boothby Graffoe’ and girl vocal group ‘INVOCAL’ joined in 2005. So why did these three become the most successful groups on the site, in front of the likes of Bloc Party and Stereophonics? What can others learn from what they did, or didn’t do?.

Boothby Graffoe had already built cult following on the comedy circuit and his music is eccentric and different enough for people to feel motivated enough to want to own his recordings. He linked from his site directly to his intomusic.co.uk page for people to download songs. He also told people about the site through word of mouth and flyers. He then got a top place in the weekly charts and ‘DownloadFilter’ chart, giving him a massive amount of exposure on the site, so even more people experienced his music and eccentric vision for the first time.

Scouting For Girls at the time of writing it’s great to see this bands album is number 1 in the UK album charts, for the 2nd week running. This is almost a year after signing with a major label, but this was no overnight success. The seeds of their initial grass roots marketing started with intomusic back in 2005.

Beavering away in their home studio they released a number of EP’s the first being Part 1 of an EP entitled 'Hiking and Mountaineering' and which we described as a concept EP complete with booklet. Engaging people with the fan club they setup called the wolf cubs they sent out a 1 free home burned CD-R(E.P) with booklet to every member and offered more E.P’s from their shop and downloads direct from our shop. My favourite track ‘Keep On Walking’ was also offered as a free download from intomusic.co.uk. By making 1 track free people could hear a complete version of a song and decide if they liked it enough to want to download more and they did. There’s no barrier’s to getting the music out and heard by as many people as possible. By doing this actually they sold more downloads than any other unknown band on the site. They also mentioned when they were top of weekly charts and made exclusive tracks available keeping people up to date on the mailing list and on the front page of the site. The whole imagery and concept around the band was born already, the signing to record label was the final step which allowed them to ‘Keep On Walkin’ through the gates with both the financial cloat and contacts needed.

INVOCAL On the site we described them in these words "Original mix of girl group harmonies and acoustic jazzy style creating something different". "Take Care Fool" starts off slow and grows with a great, exotic sounding, gypsy violin solo. This uniqueness combined with direct links on their website to intomusic.co.uk and word of mouth through extensive live music nights was enough to get them to the 3rd spot in the download filter chart. Also the more tracks you have on the site the better.

Conclusions

All these groups have found their own voice and that has given them a stronger unique identity and something a bit different. They built up a fan base one fan at a time and kept releasing material and were persistent and relentless. They removed all barriers to getting their music heard.

If you’re not already doing some or all of these things, then your missing opportunities, I apologise if I’m stating the obvious –

Offline - Playing Live

1/ Announce on the microphone who you are at least twice, once at the beginning and once at the end of the set. You could do it three times at a push. This is such a wasted opportunity especially if you’re a support act. Don’t assume people know who you are or have looked at the line up for that night, even if they do, think how many times you have to ask someone their name who you meet socially to remember or hear their name from someone else, 3 or 4 depending on how good you are with names. That’s why you’re there to build a following. I know this sounds obvious but I’ve see it time and again, a wasted opportunity.

2/ Either mention your website or better still get someone to hand out fliers with a website where they can hear more, download tracks or buy CD’s.

3/ Get someone a friend or family member to go around with a book asking whether people would like to join the bands newsletter.

4/ If possible give away a promo CD with a few tracks on it.

5/ Group together with similar artists to offer a FREE sampler CD with a track from each artist, then give this out to people at gigs or friends of friends, promoters etc. If the CD has 10 artists on it and each artist gives out a CD, your magnifying your reach by 10 times and everyone is benefiting including the music lover.

Online

1/ Keep your website regularly updated with new music releases and fresh content.

2/ Link to your page on intomusic.co.uk

3/ Send out a newsletter but don’t bug people e.g every two weeks is fine, also make sure you have got their permission to send them weekly or monthly emails and give them the option opt out of the email.

4/ With social networking sites many band fall into the trap of adding friends who are other bands, Roy from ‘Scouting For Girls’ registered the band with myspace and asked my advice and I suggested seeking out people who were not in bands but who liked a similar kind of music and it seemed to work.

Radio

Although most radio is closed off to all but the major labels some radio stations do play unsigned music including and off the top of my head I’d recommend: Resonance FM, BBC6 music (Tom Robinson) and XFM (Hue Stevens)

All The Best and Good Luck,

Intomusic.co.uk