Blogoholica: 360 Deals, iTunes, Nimbit, Radio & Lefsetz VS Simmons
If you follow me on Twitter you might have gotten word that I cleaned out my blogroll over the weekend. Between two new huge jobs and my computer taking a dirt nap, it was the last thing on my mind. Luckily a few weekend hours on the couch and I sifted through 5,000 feeds to bring you some cool stuff to check out.
Take your time checking out these resources – there’s a lot of stuff to take in at once, I know. Grab a few beers and open the notepad, and I promise you’ll have an information hangover when you’re done!
Music Think Tank has opened it’s doors to new writers, with the best of the bunch being promoted to their main blog. The first AWESOME piece I came across deals with setting up a 360 deal for your band. If you’re really serious about launching a successful career in music, you’re going to at some point need to bring on financial and business partners, unless you some how strike it rich on your own and can afford the thousands of dollars it costs to book a big tour. Knowing how to share the profits with those legally is a first step in that direction.
The next was a post from Ariel Hyatt which I remember catching on her Twitter a few weeks back regarding how to maximize iTunes to help promote you. Since I’m not a hard-core iTunes user (I just started using an iPod a few months back!) these tips are sure to open up your eyes into how the iTunes community works and how to gain some traction.
There’s a million ways to sell your digital downloads on the net, whether it’s iTunes or Snocap or other distribution services. I’m a big fan of doing it on your own using WordPress and the E-Commerce plugin, but for non tech-savvy users you might want to check out Nimbit. Easily embedd download stores anywhere on the web with their widgets and keep all the profits.
If you’ve never heard of Tumblr, in a nutshell its a cross between a hosted blogging service and Twitter, and is rather popular with a number of people, including music fans. It’s a great way to easily post mp3′s up for new music, so I’m sure any musician would be interested in checking out the best music tumblogs thanks to our friends at Mashable.
For a few years I’ve been slowly (read: very slowly) teaching myself guitar, and am going to finally start playing on a regular basis very soon. I’ve been on a lot of tutorial blogs’ radar recently and really dig the stuff from Music Radar. Here’s a brief intro to how to play some songs from the recent Kings of Leon release, Only By The Night.
For my techie peoples out there who work with WordPress, you probably update or hack WordPress themes just like I have done in the past – live on a website or dummy site somewhere. Luckily, the folks over at Six Revisions have provided us with info on XAMP, which lets you install a dummy server in Windows to let you build and design your own WordPress themes locally without needing to upload files to the web.
I’ve been following the Buzzsonic blog for awhile and am just downright jealous of some of the excellent content coming from it – here are two posts which I’ve wanted to tackle here for quite some time and they beat me to the punch! First, some wonderful tips on getting your music heard and licensed for TV and film and then a monster of a resource in penetrating the radio…good luck!
If you haven’t heard me drop Bob Lefsetz’ name before, you haven’t been reading my blog. His newsletter is one I keep a keen eye on, mostly because he’s got some great ideas on where and what a band should be thinking about through all the smoke and mirrors of the business. His ideas and values clash with those of Mr. Kiss himself Gene Simmons, and the two duel in this recent public panel at the Canadian Music Week.
