Passive Promotion

From the monthly archives:

November 2008

Don’t leave your promotion to the “experts”

November 30, 2008

It’s been nearly two weeks since I’ve written, but I’ve been steadily ticking items off my promo to-do list. Whether or not I’ve actually accomplished anything remains to be seen. You can expect all the gory details when the results are in. Speaking of the results being in (and of horrible segues), I was a [...]

Read the full article →

Indie promotion from a store’s perspective

November 20, 2008

As the owner of A Different Drum, I’ve spent a lot of years selling independent music – not only ADD’s own label releases, but CD’s from other indie labels and self-released artists from around the world. Some of those artists sell very well, even if they aren’t necessarily known as the “giants” of the electronic [...]

Read the full article →

You too need YouTube

November 19, 2008

Today marks the first in what I hope will be a long string of guest columns. The honor goes to my good friend Mark Nicholas, who records under the band name Cosmicity. We’ve both been releasing electronic pop CDs since the early ’90s, yet he’s managed to release three times as many as I have! [...]

Read the full article →

Should you send your CDs to AMG and Muze?

November 18, 2008

Imagine keeping track of every artist and record release in the history of recorded music. Two companies operating behind the scenes strive to do just that. You can make their lives easier by mailing in your CDs as soon as they arrive from replication. I’ll explain how to do it and why it’s in your [...]

Read the full article →

Streamline your promotion with Alexa

November 16, 2008

There are so many music web sites, publications, and radio stations that I could promote to them all day, every day, for the rest of my life, and never hit them all. Anyone can put up a web site at little to no cost, so they flicker in and out of existence at whim. Most [...]

Read the full article →

How to submit your CD info to Gracenote

November 15, 2008

Ever wonder how your computer knows the song titles when you insert an audio CD? The answer is more complicated than you might think. Ideally, that information would be written onto the disc itself, but the creators of the CD format weren’t so forward-thinking. CD-Text, a later development, does just that, but few players can [...]

Read the full article →

Pandora and the future of radio

November 13, 2008

Pandora Radio is a fun and unique way to discover your next favorite song. If you haven’t tried it before, you’re in for a treat (assuming you live in the United States – as of this writing, the music is only licensed for domestic play). Just go to pandora.com, type in the name of a [...]

Read the full article →

My CDs are here!

November 8, 2008

UPS showed up with my CDs last night around 6:00 pm. For the first time in my career, they look even better than I expected. Usually the silkscreened colors on the disc don’t quite match the printed colors on the insert, but I suppose black and white is easier to pull off. Maya’s drawings on [...]

Read the full article →

The power of a true fan

November 8, 2008

This morning I stumbled upon Amazon’s new SoundUnwound project, currently in beta. It aggregates artist and release information that anyone can edit. Their embedded YouTube widget on my artist page showed a number of videos, most likely the top matches from a “Color Theory” search. Since I don’t have any official videos, or even videos [...]

Read the full article →

Selling your music on CD Baby and Amazon

November 6, 2008

Today I added my new album to CD Baby and Amazon, which puts my music pretty much everywhere it needs to be. I’ll discuss each of them in turn. I’ve known Derek Sivers, the creator of CD Baby, for a dozen years now. I’ve always admired his outlook, creativity, and work ethic. Back when I [...]

Read the full article →