The Publicity Hound’s Blog  

Here we go again with social networking, but I work with a client who is a musician and author. She has a wonderful page on MySpace.com at http://www.myspace.com/celticharpmusic. These are the people you should be targeting.
Start up a MySpace page and target it towards musicians as there is a place there just for bands and musicians.

Talk with music teachers and look at school curriculi and see how your site can dovetail with their needs. Perhaps collaborative song writing would make a really good class project for their music classes? Then promote, using a list of fabulous points for how you can help them meet their teaching goals, to all the school music teachers you can find.

I am the author of “Open Your Heart with Singing: Mastering Life through the Love of Song.” I am also a vocalist and amateur songwriter. I am very gratefult to have found out about your site. I have some contacts in the music industry, and will promote your site and idea—it’s great!

I would suggest some collaboration with other website owners in the music biz. There are lots of directories that have free music listings, also myspace.com is a great place to market your site. Lots of musicians there.

If you’d like more ideas I can come up with some. I think this is a much needed service for songwriters.

Happy Singing!
Jules Kennedy

It looks like you are looking for a lot of young music talent since you are seeking members as young as 13 to join. My suggestion is that you establish a music scholarship and then you send details on this scholarship to as many school districts as you can in the country. If possible, try to distribute the scholarship program to music directors, chorus directors, etc. within various school systems.

By offering the opportunity to apply and possible earn a music scholarship through your Web site, (and it doesn’t need to be a lot of money – $500-$1,000 is a lot of money to any young person going to college/arts-music school), I think if you do it right you will drive a lot of young, aspiring musicians/singers to your site. Don’t forget to include private schools as well.

Hi Kevin:

Create a clever contest around the theme of your site so that you can brand it. School will be opening up again…so, perhaps you can write a press release announcing this contest tied into this event…it can be a silly contest that will get the reporters excited to cover it. They love those.

Send the press release to radio stations to make the contest announcement to their listening audience. You can even make it an annual contest.

Grab 2-3 music buddies and brainstorm…get crazy. Remember: No Ideas Left Behind. No matter how wacky. Good luck & keep us posted!

Buy a national ad on Craigslist in the musician’s section. I believe there are similar services on MySpace classified ads and Backpage.

Create profiles for your network on other popular networks – MySpace, Facebook, PureVolume. Network with songwriting circles – many local circles have profiles. Also network with open mic profiles, bands, venues, etc.

Hold a contest for the best song(s) of a particular genre or around a theme, and feature them on the other profiles.

Contact college and public radio stations – perhaps you could arrange to have a contest announced, and the winner’s songs played on the station.

There are many magazines for amateur digital musicians. Have you sent press releases to them?

Also check out Squidoo. Make pages about Tune Rooms, their contests, winning bands, digital music techniques, etc.

Just a few ideas off the top of my head!

Don’t forget entertainment reporters who cover local bands; school music teachers; local recording studio owners. My local paper has a weekly column by a high school student.

Research similar success stories, contact those musicians and ask them for an endorsement – for example, I know that Tegan and Sarah wrote their album by sending tapes through the mail while at different colleges. There’s probably many other examples – do some googling.

Reach out to your local music industry professionals, introduce them to the concept, hold an event or showcase.

Hit up the music blogs – Pitchfork, Tiny Mix Tapes, Oh My Rockness

Reach out to college freshmen – did their high school band break up when they went to different colleges? Perhaps your service will allow them to keep the band together!

Write articles in your field of expertise and then “place” them on some of the scores of websites which catalog such articles for use by other sites. That has been invaluable to my SEO effort.

Jonathan Bernstein
President
Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc.

Kevin, how about starting a Facebook group for musicians and songwriters?

Also see “Do-it-yourself PRfor Songwriters, Musicians and Bands on a Budget” at http://tinyurl.com/mqsug“

Offer an incentive for musicians to TELL other musicians about your site. Giev them a free upgrade, or something. Work of mouth is the best advertising their is… catch the wave!

I’d recommend being active on several yahoo groups, including Derek Siver’s musicthoughts. Connect with musicians directly on these groups and forums and invite them to review your site. Note: They won’t visit it if they think you are selling something, but they’ll visit it if you tell them the premise of your site and ask for their kind opinions.

But for me, as a musician, I don’t feel like spending all of my time in front of a computer. Here’s what has helped me see a significant increase in visitors to my website: I hired a virtual assistant to blog information about my website all over the Internet. Getting steady traffic to your website requires a constant online presence. (Christine Buffaloe, who commented above, is my virtual assistant and a gem).

Hope this helps. Feel free to connect with me via email from my website.

Anne
Celtic Harp Music by Anne Roos
http://www.celticharpmusic.com
“Beautiful Music!”-United Airlines Inflight Music Service
Author of “The Musician’s Guide to Brides” published by Hal Leonard Books

I checked your site out and I think its great. Live Live Magazine(www.livelivemagazine.com) is a just published entertainment ezine (July 18,2008) and we are all about getting new music and up and coming bands to the public. I cover alot of big bands to try and draw attention to smaller ones. Conact me maybe we can do a exchange of information? http://www.bthompson@livelivemagazine.com