Social Media for Musicians Part I: Developing your songs

There has never been a better time to be a musician! A career in music nowadays is being revolutionized by all the resources available online. Digital technology revolutionized the music creation process, and now it's revolutionizing how artists are marketed, how fan bases are established, how music is distributed, and how music is sold.

There is so much of their destiny an individual musician or band can now control. At their fingertips are tools and resources that allows musicians to promote themselves in ways that, in the past, required the backing of a large record label, a publicist, a manager, a webmaster, a marketing professionals, concert promoter, rich uncles, and more!

In part one of my series on Social Media for Musicians, I'm going to explore some of the most popular Social Networking and music publishing sites. I'll explain how musicians should leverage them to build their careers.

I've organized a number of social networking tools and resources into the following categories...

Part 1 - Developing your Songs
Interact with target audiences and fellow musicians to post songs in various stages of development to get insightful feedback on how to improve it.

Part 2 - Building your Fan Base
Whether you envision your fan base to be local or worldwide, these everyday social networking sites can serve the musician quite well. The trick is to set 'em up properly, and make them work hard for you and your band.

Part 3 - Publishing & Exposure
Upload your music so it can be heard and accessed by your target audience and fan base.

Part 4 - Selling your Music
Yes...you can have your tunes selling right along side of greats such as Bob Dylan, Count Basie, Bob Marley, Snoop Dogg or whoever. In the online world...YOU own your distribution channel.

Part 5 - Finding Musicians and Putting Together a Band
Sometimes you need a little help from your friends, what if your musician friend can't make it to a gig or just charges too much? Well, fear not...quickly finding other musicians to create a band, collaborate with, lay down some tracks, or to just hang out with, is so much easier nowadays. (Remember the days of posting those "Bass Player wanted" flyers in the music store?)

Let's get started with social networking sites for developing your songs....

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Part I - Developing your Songs

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GarageBand.com [www.garageband.com]

Screenshot from www.garageband.com/artist/yearoftheriver

Key Features:
+ Band Profile
+ Newsletter
+ Event Listing
+ Fan Listings
+ Song Upload

General Review:
This is an ideal way for you to refine your tunes before publishing to other sites. You get the opportunity to receive reviews from other musicians on your songs and mixes. Garageband.com works on the premise that you are submitting your song into a contest.

Ease of Use:
The site interface is a bit dated, busy and a bit hard to navigate. It IS a feature rich site, but unfortunately, it's boxy layout, small fonts give it an old school feel. The site is still confined to a 1024x758 layout that does not take advantage of the full width of the screen.

Fees:
It's basically free if you complete 15 reviews of other artist's songs, then you get a free entry for your song. Of course you can bypass that process by paying the $18US entry fee. But do the reviews, get involved...it's fun! Garageband also links in nicely with iLike (it's actually owned by iLike) which will be beneficial for when you set up your Facebook page and also when you want to sell your music.

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Soundcloud [www.soundcloud.com]

Screenshot from www.soundcloud.com/yearoftheriver

Key Features:
+ Artist Profile
+ Stats (see how you are doing)
+ Player Widget (to embed onto your site)
+ Badges (for directing users to your profile)
+ DropBox (for uploading tracks)

General Review:
Soundcloud was created by a few innovative musician/developers out in Berlin. It started out mainly as a site for uploading music and allowing other musicians to provide comments. This is still it's main function, but they also have a social media aspect to it where you can build a community of "followers" and find artists you like are interested in and can "follow."

The "killer app" here is the Soundcloud player widget. When you upload your MP3s you can grab the code and embed the widget on your website or on your Facebook page. All that and a real elegant website interface.

Sample Player (Just a Few More Minutes - Mark DiSciullo):




Ease of Use:
The designers of this site provide the user with a fresh, graphical interface. It's a stark contrast to sites like Reverbnation and Garageband. The flow is nice. Tasks such as uploading songs, joining groups, following other musicians, and building a following are all very intuitive. It also has a unique way of leaving comments on your song, you do it right on the audio waveform. All the tools you need are easy to find and use.

Fees:
I was lucky enough to get in on the Beta phase so my cost were minimal. There is a free account available (info at the bottom of their page) that will allow 5 song uploads a month, ability to place their player widget on your site (best part!), and some basic stats. There are also PRO accounts that will allow for more uploads and a greater degree of interactions with other Soundcloud community users. The basic (PRO light) will run you $12US a month or $140 a year and for the power user (PRO MAX) is as high as $85US a month or $855US a year. Pretty much out of reach for most of us trying to get established. I highly recommend the free account for the player widget alone!

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Next Post: Part II - Building your Fan Base

The Songwriting Process

The song ideas are always floating around the sky seeking out a writer. A songwriter needs to be prepared to grab 'em out of the air wherever they're lucky enough to be in the right spot at the right time.

But what do you do now that you've come up with a great idea for a song and want to turn it into something?

Here's a few things I discovered along the way about the songwriting process. One concept that continues to help me out the most was realizing that there are two main phases of the songwriting process, the initial creative rush and the editing phase.

Phase One: The Creative Rush
Always be ready for a song. You never know when one will find you! Keep small notebooks handy. Keep one in the car, in your laptop bag, by your bed. When and where ever your mind wonders. Be ready for it!

I have a Google Documents account which allows me to access my directory of documents from any computer that has internet access. Plus, no fear of loosing your ideas due to a hard drive crash!

Develop a simple song structure for your idea
Once you have an idea or hook that's motivating you, jot it down. Then, before writing any more lyrics, create a basic song structure or outline. Simply describe what you want to have happen in each verse. Then focus your writing around that outline. It's like setting a goal for each verse. You can get as creative as you want with each verse, but in the end, it needs to convey to the listener the "goal" you set in your outline.

For example your outline could be as simple as this:




Simple as that. Now you have some structure to write within. Of course, this can always change...it often does. This is your guidepost to remind you of what you wanted to achieve in each verse, as well as the entire song, when you get into the editing phase.

Check in on your old ideas from time to time
Finally, don't forget to go back and read your old ideas from time to time too that you've captured in your notebooks! You never know what might spark a new song.


Phase Two: Editing
After the initial idea is captured and you feel it's worth pursuing, You most often will enter into the editing phase for your song. Get your idea and outline into a document on a computer and save it in a safe place. Again, Google Documents to is a huge help in this case. Edit when you feel like it, from any machine.

Often editing can be a very tedious process. But to me, I enjoy it. The thrill of constantly massaging the flow and wordsmithing sometimes can be very therapeutic, especially when you have an idea that you feel you really passionate about expressing. But sometimes the more you work an idea, the less you feel you are accomplishing. If you feel you are not making progress, don't be afraid to move away from it before it turns into something you are not happy with.

Don't become too sentimental to any idea
If it's not working, drop it. Move on to another idea for a while. I find so much joy in returning back to an idea, even years later, and approaching it with new perspectives and new life experiences.

"Mark Twain was quoted talking about his writing process, he mentioned that he always stopped writing for the day at the peak of his inspiration, as opposed to writing until the ideas were no longer flowing. The reason for this was, it was so much easier to pick up the next day from a previous high point, then to try and start digging out from an uninspired low spot."

Set it to music
Once I have a good grasp of the concept and where I want to go with it, I try to match it up to a chord progression, just enough to capture the right mood and feel. Sometimes the process of picking up your instrument helps move the songwriting process along further. Sometimes even switching instruments sparks more creativity. Switch from guitar to piano, or vice versa. The different chord structures help you look at your song from different perspectives.

Listen to your idea
Do a rough recording of your initial song idea before you get to far and listen to it. Critique it and go back and make your edits.

I'll capture rough musical ideas in Garage Band which I use as my "audio sketchpad." This is a great tool to capture ideas without any commitments. If I have more complex rhythm ideas or more complex song structures, I'll move into my studio where I can start blending in a rhythm track (bass & drums) in ProTools to help move the song further along.

How do I know my song is working?
I do have one rule before I start the final recording process...the song has to hold up completely with just vocals and an acoustic guitar before I start making the commitment to lay down the final tracks. It proves to me that the song is "real"



What's your songwriting process?