Musician’s Arsenal: Killer Apps, Tools & Sites – Turntable.fm
Turntable.fm, yet another new site for us to learn and love. At this point, Turntable.fm is all the rage. It has some 140,000 users already in its first month and appears to be picking up speed. Users sign into Turntable.fm with their facebook login, which makes it easy to find friends already using Turntable.fm. On my first visit, I was able to find several friends right away, chat with them and check out what music they are into right now. And while I initially thought this new platform was little more than a fun time waster, after getting in to it, it became apparent this is very powerful for the independent musician.
Turntable.fm works like this: You sign in and create your own playlist by adding songs Turntable.fm already has loaded in their database. If you can’t find the song you want, you can load any MP3 you want from your computer. This has raised a lot of legal concerns that Turntable.fm will have to address, but I’m a music marketer, not a lawyer, so lets move along with the marketing advice. Once you build your playlist, join a room and listen with others or create your own and start DJ-ing. If people like what you play, you’ll get points and fans. The more fans and points you get, the more popular you get and the more people listen to you.
How might an independent musician take advantage? I’m glad you asked. Here at Ariel Publicity we preach posting interesting and compelling content to get fans engaged with your social media profiles. This mean you can’t be overly self-promotional and hypey. In order to do this on Turntable.fm, it means creating a playlist that will get people to follow you. I recommend adding only a few of your own songs in this initial stage. Make sure the playlist you are building is complementary to your style of music.
Create a following and get people excited about the music you’re playing. If you can build a following and build your numbers, then you’ll have an engaged audience and you can begin to sprinkle more of your own music into the mix. Don’t overdo it though, make sure you temper how much original music you play. People are there to find new music, but they want to hear things they know and love too. That’s how you get a following.
Another idea would be to create events that you can invite people to on Turntable.fm. Get together with other bands you know and like, record some live songs, and invite all of your fans and their fans for a ‘concert’ on Turntable.fm. Promote the event on your social media profiles and see how many people you can get to show up.
You can have guest DJs drop in on the events as well. Make it fun and exciting. Create contests and giveaways in conjunction with the event. If you can get a lot of people to show up, you’ll most likely get other people interested just based on the number of listeners in your room.
Jump in now, while it’s early and easier to create a following. Early adopters have a chance to take advantage of this before Turntable.fm runs into any issues. It’s a great opportunity to introduce music lovers to your music and potentially create some new fans.
So sign in and take it for a spin (pun definitely intended). Let us know what you think. Are people open to hearing your original music? Is it hard or easy to create a following on Turntable.fm? Is this the next greatest social networking site? Have you been doing anything fun and original with this new platform?
After complete demolition and renovation of the old-minded business model in 2002, McBride pioneered Nettwerk into the digital age and beyond, utilizing crowd-sourcing and putting the fans in control, even allowing them to remix entire albums before they are released. It’s this progressive way of thinking that has led Nettwerk, whose exclusive client roster includes Avril Lavigne, Barenaked Ladies, Dido, Stereophonics, Sara McLachlan, Sum 41 and Jars of Clay, to count for over 80% of the company’s 2008 income from digital and alternative revenues.
Gatherings used to be centered around food and music but for a while music became somewhat elitist. You had to be some musical genius that was too cool and cared about nothing but the music or a wealthy socialite who could afford all the luxuries. Video games like Guitar Hero and the growing affordability of recoding programs and equipment have made music for everyone again. Remember that friend you dragged with you to a concert to show them how amazing that band was? As it turns out they loved them too and raved to their 20 friends who raved to their 20 friends and so on. Well now with the evolution of social media thanks to sites like Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, etc., the circle of friends has grown to 200 plus and by the end of the day with just the ease of a status update thousands of people have been reached.
The Indie Maximum Exposure List is Ariel Hyatt’s manifesto on how indie musicians can realistically profit from Web 2.0 & social media. 