(Sam Beauregarde in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory)

A good quote from one of my favorite movies – but in all seriousness, contracts are definitely not for suckers. They’re actually for professionals who want to be smart in protecting all parties involved in a business agreement. In the music world today all too often we forgo using contracts either because we’re unsure of what to put in them or are worried that suggesting the use of a contract could be detrimental to our relationship with a potential client or venue. In reality, I think you’ll find that most clients will take your contract suggestion as a testament to your professionalism – or they might even tell you they have a contract of their own that they’d like to use. For small gigs a contract may not be necessary, and you can make a decision about that on a case-by-case basis, but as a general rule of thumb: where there is real money involved, always use a contract to protect yourself.

Below you’ll find a list of items that you might consider including in your performance contract. Keep in mind that not all of these items will be present in ever contract you sign. For some performances simply the date, time, location and pay for a gig will be sufficient. You can cater each contract to fit the performance.

1. Title – you can call it a Performance Contract, a Performance Agreement, a Booking Agreement, an Engagement Contract – or some combination of these terms.
2. Date, Time, Location – easy right?
3. List Parties Involved – To save yourself writing the same name over and over, at the top of your contract consider writing after the client’s name, hereinafter ‘the client’ and after your group’s name, hereinafter ‘the performer’.
4. Compensation – Specifics here should include whether a deposit is needed before the performance, when the final payment will be made, how it will be made (for example who the check should be made out to) and of course for how much.
5. Performance Specifics – This means what type of music you’ll be providing, how long you will be performing for, as well as any planned set breaks.
6. Cancellation Policy – This is especially important for outdoor performances. For example, if the client cancels between 24 and 12 hours before the gig, the performer will get 50% of the fee. If the client cancels less than 12 hours before the gig, the performer will get 100% of the fee. Sometimes a client may want to put this under an “Act of God” category where no one is penalized should weather make a performance impossible.
7. Transportation, Lodging, Meals – Will the client be covering any of these costs? If so, list specifics. Never assume if you’re playing at a party that you can eat and drink with the guests. It’s always better to ask beforehand and be safe.
8. Ability to Sell Merchandise – In other words, can you sell your CD’s? Can you put out a merch table? It’s important to have this settled before the performance so there are no surprises.
9. Sound System – state whether or not the performance will be acoustic, and if not then who will be providing the sound system.
10. Signatures by Both Parties – The most important item on any contract. If the contract has not been signed by all parties involved, consider it null and void.

As stated above, you’ll find that various items on your contract will change from gig to gig. Sometimes you may need to add additional items at the client’s request – such as particular attire for the band, or an announcement about a sponsor at an event.

Because the formal tone of a contract can be difficult to grasp if you’re not familiar with writing contracts, below are a few websites that offer templates for performance contracts that will help you to get started in coming up with your own template for your performances. Also doing a Google search for “performance contract template” will yield many results.

PrintableContracts.com

SASK Music

Tractis Signatures

In conclusion, although it might be a bit uncomfortable at first, I encourage you to start using contracts with all of your clients where a decent amount of money is involved. Most musicians who use contracts religiously do so because they were completely screwed over at one time. Don’t wait for that to happen to you – start using them now and although you’ll most likely find that most of time you could have done the performance without the contract and been just fine – one of these days it will save you a real headache or a lot of money, or both.

I’d like to propose that, within the realm of the arts, there are four main types of themes that a successfully blog usually has (of course there are exceptions to this, but being someone who has looked at a LOT of blogs, I find that most fall into one of these four categories). After reading about these below, my hope is that you’ll know which one will work best for you – and how you can cater it to your own personal style and expertise.

#1: The “Giving Back” Blog

The purpose of this type of blog is just what it says: you feel that you have a lot of good information that other people might find useful, and you’re inclined to share it. Within this theme, your blog posts will above all else strive to education and empower your readers (kind of like this one). You’ll know this blog type is for you if you love the idea of writing articles and tutorials that will aim to help others help themselves.

Examples:

The Do-It-Yourself Musician’s Blog
“Moving your music forward.”

The Musician’s Way Blog
“Helping you become a successful musician.”

Musician Wages
“The community for working musicians.”

#2: The Listener’s Blog

Within the music community, another great idea for a blog is to provide listeners (music-educated or not) with information about artists and recordings. On a blog like this, you might post concert reviews, CD reviews, and information about upcoming shows and recordings.  If you’re going to start a listener’s blog, I would suggest that you narrow your focus as much as you can – for example, make it genre-specific such as being only about jazz, classical, or indie rock music. Another idea would be to make it an area-specific, for example you could write only about Brooklyn-based bands.

Examples:

The Brooklyn Vegan
“Music, Photos, & News from a Vegan in Brooklyn.”

Electro Jams
“We Love Electronic Music.”

Jazz Wrap
“Your source covering jazz and undiscovered music from around the globe.”

#3: The News Blog (aka “The Rant” blog)

This type of blog will aim to provide readers with news on a specific topic within the arts today. Additionally, this blog may lend itself to the author’s thoughts (or rants) on those articles, topics or issues. It’s not uncommon for someone who is running a news-centered blog to collect various news articles from all over the Internet, and then compile them on this more specifically themed blog. What is the advantage of doing this, you might ask? Well, let’s say hypothetically you are someone who’s interested in articles about jazz saxophone education. Needless to say there are probably a lot of articles written every week about jazz saxophone education, but most likely some of them are on jazz sites, some of them are on education sites, some of them are on saxophone sites, and some of them are on general news sites. By compiling articles from various sources – you’re putting everything your readers desire in one place. A news blog would be a good option for someone who is passionate about the current happenings in a specific field – and wouldn’t mind having somewhere to rant about them as well.

Example:

Blog Elbows
“News and Trends in Music Blogs”

#4: The “A Day in the Life” Blog

This blog theme is the closest one to the all-too-common smattering of ramblings that was mentioned in the first paragraph of this blog post. The “A Day in the Life” blog will provide a glimpse for readers into the daily life of you – but it must be specific to one area of your life, and there must be a theme within this theme. For example, if you are a freelance cartoon artist trying to make it in NYC you could call your blog “Doodlings: One cartoon artist’s attempt to making it in the big apple.” This works within the blog context because this person is writing about his or her life as it relates to both the hardships of living in NYC and trying to make it as a cartoon artist, rather than just life in general.

Example:

Chuck Dunbar’s Blog
“Studio Diary of an Artist”

I hope this blog post has giving you some insight into what kind of blog you would enjoy writing for and that readers of one kind or another would enjoy. I sincerely believe that all of us have something to say that others would find helpful or of interest – it’s just a matter of finding what that it for you.

1) Commit to posting once a day

Especially with the new Timeline format that all Facebook pages were transferred over to last month, if you aren’t posting regularly to your FB page, it’s going to look rather dismal.  But there’s a more important reason that you should be posting to your page daily. Perhaps you know this, but perhaps you need a reminder: posting is the key to both getting people visiting your page and to getting them sharing your page with others. Each time you post, that post goes out to the newsfeeds of all the people who have liked your page. When one of those people likes your post or shares it, that then gets posted to their newsfeeds. So do yourself a favor and commit to posting to your page once a day – it should yield a lot more activity on your page.

2) Expand your posting vocabulary

I think all of us have at one time run into the question: “what am I supposed to post on my page?” For our purposes here let’s pretend our page is for a band. The obvious reason to post would be if you have an upcoming performance. But there are countless other things you could post about: updates on a musical project you’re involved in, notes about a recent live show you saw, a new recording or someone else’s recording that you’ve been checking out – the list goes on and on. Try and think outside the box in terms of page post content. Once you realize you can post about much more than just gigs (or whatever the obvious thing to post about is for your page) – I think you’ll find that you actually have a lot to say. Just remember: whenever possible, try to make your posts relevant to the people who are seeing it.

3) Ask questions!

I remember when I first realized that to be a “great conversationalist” all I really had to do was ask good questions. And as a FB page owner, the same rule applies. Asking questions in your posts is the single best way to get people involved and to get them joining the conversation. What do you think of [fill-in-the-blank]? What has been your experience with [fill-in-the-blank]? Has anyone else ever felt like [fill-in-the-blank]? Start asking more questions and I guarantee you’ll start getting more comments.

4) Put some effort into your banner image

Let’s face it: Facebook doesn’t give us a whole lot of flexibility in how our FB page looks. With the new Timeline format, the main things we get are a big banner image that visitors see right at the top of the page, as well as a smaller image that gets displayed below. So I would encourage all of you to put some thought and effort into what you display in this banner – after all it’s your biggest (and perhaps only) opportunity to really personalize your page. One of my personal pet peeves is when I’m at someone’s FB page and I see that their banner is low-resolution (meaning you can see that the image is pixelated). To avoid this, make sure that your image is big enough to stretch across the whole banner. It needs to be at least around 900 pixels wide for it to be high-resolution when it displays onscreen. And if you’re feeling ambitious, try experimenting with adding text to your banner in a photo-editing program such as Photoshop.

The Continuum Facebook page

5) Take advantage of Facebook page apps

Apps for Facebook pages are a great to way to add media to your page and to get it synced with other areas your manage on the web. For example: if you have a blog, the RSS app can post a link to your FB page each time you finish a new blog post. The Twitter app can direct all your tweets to your FB page. There’s a Youtube app that will post any new videos you upload to your Youtube channel. FlickR user? There’s an app for that too – it will post on your FB page each time you upload new photos. This is just the beginning – there are several more apps that you can use to get creative about how you’re connecting with your FB fans. It would be a waste not to take advantage of these apps as they’re all available for free use and will most definitely garner more attention for your page.

I hope that you find these tips helpful and that they’ll make a difference for you in getting your FB page some more attention! As a bonus tip, may I suggest that you take advantage of the help section about Facebook pages on the official FB site. There is a lot of great information there that I suspect goes wholly unnoticed for the most part. Check that out here.

Favicons

An example of some favicons

First you’ll need to create the actual image file. You’ll want to generate an image that is 64 pixels in both height and width (64 x 64). You can use Adobe Photoshop or any image-editing program to create the image from scratch. Alternatively, if you are going to be creating your favicon from a pre-existing image, crop your photo (in the size of a square) into what you want your favicon to be, and then adjust the size so that the square shaped image is 64 pixels in height and width (usually you can select a square area by holding down shift while you select).

Once you have your image ready to go, visit www.favicon.co.uk for a free favicon generating service. Make sure the 64×64 circle is selected, and then click choose file and select your premade image. Then click generate favicon. Below, a preview of how your favicon will appear is shown. If you’d like to make adjustments to your image, then do so and repeat the previous steps. If you are happy with how your favicon looks, click Download Your Favicon Here. A file named “favicon.ico” will be saved to your computer. This is the file that you will upload to your site for it to appear next to your site title in a brower window.

A favicon generator at http://www.favicon.co.uk

Next you’ll need to upload this favicon.ico file to your website. It would be best to put it in the root directory of your website, so that the URL for the favicon will be www.yourdomain.com/favicon.ico. Placing this file in the root directory just means that the file is in the bottom-most location so there aren’t a lot of embedded folders like this: www.yourdomain.com/home/site/mysite/images/favicon.ico.

The last step is to paste some code into your site’s header to tell the browser where the favicon.ico file is located. Find your site’s header code (the code at the very top of the webpage), and somewhere between your <head> and </head> tags (and I would suggest directly below your <title> and </title> tags), paste this code:

<link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”http://www.yourdomain.com/favicon.ico” />

Paste this code (highlighted) into your site's code

Obviously, when you do this you will replace www.yourdomain.com with your actual website URL. If you put this code in your site’s header and upload your favicon.ico file to the root directory of your site – when you click refresh on your browser, your favicon should now be showing up right next to your site title. A note: not all browsers display favicons, but most do. Also, in my experience, Firefox takes a little time for the favicon to register, so if you’re a Firefox user I would suggest checking back in a few days and refreshing the site again. Good luck!

How can I get my own Wikipedia page?

Tip #1: Be Notable

What do I mean by “notable”? Again, there is a Wikipedia page for that – which I highly recommend you read as a first step. Basically, in being notable, you want your Wikipedia page to explain what you have done or what has happened to you in your career that is of interest, and more specifically – that can be backed up with evidence via a web link.

Tip #2: Have References

Have you ever noticed that on every Wikipedia page there are countless footnotes at the end of the article? These are references, and you’ll need them to stay published. Literally every sentence that you write needs to be backed up by some hard evidence – meaning a reputable online source. I would suggest compiling a list of all the places online that you can find a mention about your art (in a positive light of course). Think about awards you’ve won, appearances you’re made, or mentions that have been made about you in the press or on websites. Then, when you begin drafting your page entry, draw all of your content from these sources.

Tip #3: Think informational – not promotional

One of the tricks to this is that if administrators see that your page has clearly been written for promotional services, you’re going to get deleted very quickly. One idea would be to have someone else write your page about you, from an informational standpoint. They should imagine that they are writing an encyclopedia entry about you (which is after all, what they are doing) and not a promotional piece for a website.

Tip #4: Study other Wikipedia artist pages

As with anything in the arts, study and copy to learn. Before you start writing your page, browse and study a variety of Wikipedia pages for other independent artists. Pay attention to the tone of the writing and what kind of information is communicated. Then when you start writing yourself, try to emulate what you have seen – both in writing style and content. Here are a few good ones to get you started:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Mehldau

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_McFerrin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanza_Spalding

Tip #5: Check out Wikipedia’s help pages

Wikipedia offers some great resources to help you get started writing your first article. To view those, you’ll first need to create a Wikipedia account. To do this, visit Wikipedia.org and at the top right corner of the screen, click Create Account – and fill in the appropriate information. Once you’re logged in, in the left panel of links, click Toolbox, then underneath that Upload File. On this page, in the first paragraph it says to create a new article, please see the Article Wizard. Click Article Wizard, and on this page you will see a variety of links with information on doing your article right – definitely worth checking out before you begin.

Wikipedia offers help pages for composing articles - click to enlarge photo

Now that we’ve gone over some basic tips for writing your page, let’s get into a few of the nitty-gritty formatting details. Before we do, I’d like you to visit any artist Wikipedia page (here’s one) and at the top of the page, click the EDIT tab. When you click this, you will see the content on the page appear in “code view”, or in other words, how the article was written and submitted. Code view will show all the text of course – but in addition you will see a number of <tags>. We’re going to discuss what these tags mean and how you are going to use them when creating your own page.

A wikipedia artist page in EDIT view

Have you ever noticed that on the right hand side of any Wikipedia page, there is a floating box, sometimes with a photo included, that provides a summary of information on the person who’s page you’re viewing? We’ll call this your infobox, and the first thing you’ll need to include in your Wikipedia page is your artist info to tell the computer what will go in this infobox. To give you an idea, here’s the header info on Bobby McFerrin’s Wikipedia page:

{{Infobox musical artist

| name                = Bobby McFerrin

| image =  Bobby McFerrin 2011.jpg

| caption            = Bobby McFerrin in March 2011

| background          = solo_singer

| birth_name          = Robert McFerrin, Jr

| Born                = {{Birth date and age|mf=yes|1950|3|11|f=y}} [[Manhattan]], New York

| instrument          = Vocals, piano, bass guitar, [[clarinet]]

| genre               = [[Jazz]], [[Reggae]], [[World Music]], Classical Music

| occupation          = Musician<br />Songwriter<br />[[musical conductor|Conductor]]<br />[[Arrangement|Arranger]]<br />Producer

| years_active        = 1977–present

| label               = [[Manhattan Records]]<br>[[Blue Note Records]]<br>[[Elektra Records]]<br>[[Sony Classical]]

| associated_acts     = [[Chick Corea]]<br/>[[Herbie Hancock]]

| website                 = http://www.bobbymcferrin.com

}}

Words that are in [[double brackets]] are words that have their own Wikipedia page, so those brackets will automatically make those words into a link to that page. The code <br /> will put a line break in the text. Follow the format of Mr. McFerrin’s info, but plug in your information where appropriate. And keep in mind that you won’t necessarily need all of this info. It’s optional – although I would say the more you can provide the better.  You’ll see that other artists have far less lines in their infobox, while others have even more. How much you include in yours is up to you.

Bobby McFerrin's floating infobox on his Wikipedia page

I’ll bet you noticed that in Mr. McFerrin’s infobox, there’s an image and a caption for that image. You’ll want to upload a photograph for your page and include the file name here.  Wikipedia has pretty strict rules about image copyright, so make sure your image is one that you have permission from the photographer to use for this purpose.  To upload an image to Wikipedia, you must be an auto-confirmed user. This means that your account must be at least four days old, and also that you have made at least ten approved edits to various pages. However, if you’re not an auto-confirmed user, you can still upload a free image to Wikimedia Commons (bare with me, I know this gets a bit confusing). Click here to create a Wikimedia Commons account (it can’t be the same username as your Wikipedia account). Once you are logged into Wikimedia Commons, click upload filein the left panel and follow the prompts to upload and use your image.

The file uploader on Wikimedia Commons

Next you’ll want to start writing your article. As I said before, every sentence you write will need to be backed up by a reputable web resource. Here I’m going to show you how to embed those references into your article. One quick note: Don’t cite YouTube, Myspace, Facebook or a personal blog as a reference. It’s an easy way to get deleted.

I’ve created this dummy paragraph to show you how references work.

His song ‘The Best Song Ever’, from his debut album ‘The Hits’, was named “Song Of The Day” by [[Rolling Stone Magazine]] on 15th November 2007 who said it was “one of the best songs ever written.”<ref name=”Rolling Stone Song Of The Day”>{{cite web |url = http://www.rollingstonemagazine.com/article123 |title = Song of the Day: The Best Song Ever |publisher = [[Rolling Stone Magazine]] |date = 2007-11-15|accessdate = 2012-2-3 }}</ref>

As you can see, the first sentence is nothing special – although don’t forget to [[double bracket]] words that can link to their own Wikipedia page (Wikipedia will do that automatically as long as you put them in brackets). The important stuff starts when you see the opening of the <ref> tag. Just follow what’s shown above – and where appropriate, enter the name of your reference, the URL where you are citing from, the title of that URL (what shows up at the top of the browser window when you visit that page), the publisher, date, and the date you accessed this reference for your article. You’ll need to follow this format after every sentence or paragraph in your article.

To ensure that your references are included at the bottom of your article, you will need to include the following at the bottom of your article text:

==References==

{{Reflist}}

This code will tell Wikipedia to describe all the references you have embedded in your text—and where you put those ref tags in your article you will see only footnotes.

This leads me to sub-headings. Put your sub-headings ==between double equal signs like this== for them to show up in bold font and underlined as sub-headings (like I did with ==References== above). Examples of sub-headings might be Life, Career, or Discography.

And that’s about all there is to it. In short: gather links about yourself from the web, write each sentence or group of sentences to reflect one of those sources, cite references in all cases, and use the correct coding practices through your article. This should give you a good fighting chance. And keep in mind that many artists have their pages deleted one or even a few times before they get it right – so if your page is tagged for speedy deletion, try not to be too discouraged and whatever you do- don’t give up! Creating a Wikipedia page is not for the faint of heart – you’ll need to have a bit of patience to do it right and make it happen. But I think in the end you’ll find the reward will be worth your efforts.

Finally, don’t think about getting published or deleted as any sort of testament to whether or not you really are a notable artist. This is not about that. Think of it as more of a game. You’ve just got to figure out how to paint yourself in the right kind of light for the Wikipedia world. If you can do that, you’ll win the game.

First let me say that when we talk about “selling online” – we are really talking about two things. The first is offering people the choice to order a physical CD on their computer and then have it subsequently shipped to their home. This is an important option because many people, old fashioned as they might be, do still want a physical product in their hands (see my post The Phase-out of the Compact Disc for more on possible alternatives to CDs in the future). The second thing we mean by selling online is of course offering people the option to download our music digitally.

The way I see it, there are four ways you can accomplish this. They are: a) hiring a professional web person to set up a custom shop for you, b) using CDbaby, c) using Paypal, and d) using Bandcamp. Below I discuss each one of these methods in detail and provide you with both the pros and cons of each.

Option #1: Hire a web person to set up a custom shop for you

If you have the funds, this may be the way to go. But take heed: for a web person this is no small task and you will need to pay them accordingly (we are not talking about a $50 job here). I would suggest checking with a few different folks to compare rates. Just make sure they’re setting up your shop so that you get 100% of both physically and digital sales – otherwise I fear your investment will be a waste.

Pros:

• You can have it tailored to look and operate exactly how you’d like (according to the skill level of the person you’ve hired)
• You get 100% of sales (no third-party-services involved)

Cons:

• The most expensive option – but it might be worth it as you are not making any compromises in design or functionality and you’ll receive all the profit
• You will most likely have to pay someone each time you want to add new music to your shop

Option #2: Use CDbaby

We’ve all heard of CDbaby, and probably many of you are on it already (author included). CDbaby is an online service through which you can sell both physical discs and digital music. Physical discs will be sold through only the CDbaby website (for this you will have to mail them your CDs), while digital music will be distributed for sale on a variety of other sites as well including iTunes, Amazon, eMusic, Rhapsody, and many others. The bottom line with CDbaby is that it can’t hurt you any. It costs $9.95 to put a single track up for sale, or $39 for a full album. My advice to you: if you have a new album out, just spend the $39 and get it for sale digitally on CDbaby’s host of site partners. For more info or to sign up, visit CDbaby.com

Pros:

• User-friendly: it’s very easy to upload your music and fill in the necessary information, even for the computer-illiterate
• You’re getting bang for your buck. For $39 your album is for sale on a wide variety of sites indefinitely

Cons:

• CDbaby really takes a chunk of change. For sales made on the CDbaby site they take 25% of the selling price, and for sales made on other sites, CDbaby takes an additional 9% after the external site takes its cut (iTunes takes about 30% to give you a rough idea).
• You won’t have a shop directly on your website. You will have to post a link on your website which takes viewers to your page on the CDbaby website.
  

  A CD for sale on CDbaby

Option #3: Use Paypal

Paypal offers a free service called Website Payments Standard (WPS) which allows you to add “buy now” and “add to cart” buttons on your website for physical products you are selling. This would work if you have one or more CDs for sale on your site. Paypal provides you with snippets of code which you paste in to your site’s code and the buttons appear, allowing people to make purchases and the money will go directly to your Paypal account. To find out more or to sign up for these service, visit the Paypal website.

Pros:

• You get 100% of the selling price
• You are setting up shop ON your site – so you don’t have to direct site visitors to an external site

Cons:

• Requires a sense of adventure in that you have to navigate your site’s code somewhat to know where to paste your code snippets to enter your buy now or add to cart buttons.
• Paypal’s WPS does not currently offer a method for selling digital music – this option works only for selling physical products
  

  A Paypal payment page

Option #4: Use Bandcamp

Bandcamp is gaining popularity among independent musicians all the time, and it’s not hard to see why. It’s an online service that allows you the musician to set up your own page (yourname.bandcamp.com) on which you can have all your music for sale. Bandcamp will take 15% of all sales – and you can sell both digital and physical music through the Bandcamp page (for physical CD sales, you will be emailed the buyer’s mailing address and are responsible for getting them the CD). One neat service available on Bandcamp is you have the option of offering the buyer an immediate download of the tracks along with the purchase of their physical disc. Payments will got to a Paypal account. View Bandcamp FAQ or get signed up.

Pros:

• You can to some extent customize your Bandcamp page to match the look and feel of your website (this will be easier if you hire someone to create you a custom banner)
• You can sell both physical and digital music all in one place
• User friendly: you can easily upload your music/cover art/etc without being terribly computer savvy

Cons:

• Bandcamp takes 15% of sales (this could be a PRO depending on how you look at it – this is far less than most other services)
  

  A Bandcamp selling page

In Conclusion: When deciding which of these methods will work best for you, I encourage you to ask yourself: What am I selling? How do I want to sell it? What are my highest priorities in all of this? The best method for you will lie in these answers. I hope you have found this post helpful and I wish you the best of luck. Here’s to many, many online sales for all of us!

For my clients I optimize their gig calendar to have all (and only) the information they want – complete with links to both venue websites and Googlemaps for location/directions. However, if you’re not working with a web designer and are looking for a way to quickly embed a gig calendar on your website at no cost to you, ArtistData is probably the best way to go. While it won’t give you the flexibility or options that you’ll have in working with a professional, it will get your gigs on your website in a structured format that is easy for site visitors to understand. In this blog post, I will take you through the steps to set up an ArtistData gig calenda, and get it embedded on your website (NOTE: You must have a pre-existing website in order for this blog post to be helpful to you. Also NOTE: this calendar widget will not work with Flash-based websites).

The ArtistData Website

1. Sign up for an ArtistData account. Visit ArtistData.com and click the big green button that says IT’S FREE SIGN UP! (it’s hard to miss). On the next screen, click the first option (artist). On the next screen fill in the appropriate information and click SUBMIT. Now check the account of the email address you provided, and click the link they provide. Click the big green icon on that screen, log in with your email address and password, and you’re in!
2. You are now looking at your ArtistData dashboard. You’ve probably guessed that before embedding a calendar on your website, you’ll need to add some shows. We’ll do this by clicking on SHOWS in the navigational tabs and then clicking “Click here to enter your first show.”
3. The interface for entering shows is pretty self-explanatory. As you can see, it gives you the chance to provide lots of information about your show. Date, time, show type, show name, venue details, time zone, ticket price, age limit and even an option to upload a photo for the gig (optional) are available. Just make sure that the Publish Now? option is set to Yes before you click SAVE. Add as many gigs as you would like from this screen.
   

   Entering a show on ArtistData

4. Now that you’ve added some shows, it’s time to design your calendar. In the navigational tabs, click the last one that says TOOLS. On the next page, you’ll see a variety of tools you can use with your ArtistData account. You might find many of these useful, so it’s worth checking out at some point! But right now, scroll down until you see an icon that says “Calendar Widget” and click this. On the right hand side of the screen, there is a light blue box that says “Activate” – click this.
5. Now click the yellow box link on the right side of the screen that says “Customize.” From this screen you’ll be able to change the font type (only seven), size and color as well as the link color and page colors of your ArtistData calendar. You also can customize the message that will appear in the event that you have no shows (gasp!). Click on the Preview link at the bottom to get an idea of where each color is showing up and how things are looking. If you are not familiar with color hex-codes (six digits made up of letters and numbers that represent a specific color onscreen), you can choose to simply pick from the colors they provide you. However, if you feel the colors they provide are limited, click here to find the hex-code for virtually any color you could imagine.
   

   Customizing your ArtistData calendar widget

6. Once you are happy with how your calendar looks in Preview mode, click “Save Changes”. Here you see two bits of code that start with <iframe>. The first bit of code is for upcoming shows and the second bit of code is for past shows. It’s up to you whether you include past shows on your website or not.
7. Select and copy this code, and then paste it into the HTML code of your website wherever you would like it to appear. ArtistData says that when you first install Calendar Widget, it could take 15-30 minutes for it to appear, so keep that mind. After half an hour, your calendar should be appearing on your website just the way your customized it.
   

   An example of a website that uses the ArtistData calendar widget

8. If you are not happy with the size of your embedded calendar, look to the WIDTH and HEIGHT properties in the embed code that you copied and pasted. Default values are 300 in height and 500 in width but feel free to experiment with these to get just the size you’re looking for.

I hope this blog post has been helpful in showing you how to set up a gig calendar with ArtistData. While it’s not a perfect system and you may find it limiting at times, for what it is (a totally free and easy to use service) it really is a fantastic alternative when you are on a budget.

First I’d like to say, beware of businesses that offer SEO services and promise the world to you (such as a listing on the first page of a Google search within a week). There are two ways to optimize your website so it appears higher up in search engine results. One is ethical and the other is not. In the web world these are referred to as “white hat SEO” and “black hat SEO” (I’ll let you decide which is which). Black hat SEO uses tactics that attempt to fool search engines, such as adding huge amounts of hidden text to a page that contain your target keywords. The problem with these tactics is that Google is getting smarter all the time – and if Google at any time realizes what is going on, your site could be blacklisted and removed from their database.

So what does this so-called ethical way entail? In short, honestly building your target keywords and phrases into every level of your site – from your domain name and page content to your site files and title tags. Google lists the sites it deems most relevant to the keywords searched for. If you can make your site as relevant as possible to those words, you’re going to start seeing your site climbing the “Google ladder” as it were.

Below are seven (highly ethical) ways you can do some basic SEO for your website and improve your website’s search engine listings.

1)   Choose your Target Keywords Wisely

At the heart of any effort to optimize a site for search engines reside your target keywords. These are the words or phrases that, when searched for on Google or any other search engine, you want your website to show up for. Once you have chosen your target keywords, you’re going to incorporate them into every level of your site – so it’s important to get them right. Try not to choose words that are going to have extremely high competition (such as “musician” or “artist”) but rather try to pinpoint some phrases that will have less competition (such as “jazz drummer nyc” or “portrait painter nyc”). How do you know which words and phrases have more or less competition? Luckily, there is great free tool online that will allow you to find out just that. Google’s Keyword Tool allows you to enter keywords and phrases to see how many searches there are for that each month, and how high the competition is among other websites.

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

A common misconception about keywords is that you should only use single words. Phrases are great because you will have less competition in searches, and the people who do search for your phrase will be much more likely to actually be interested in your website, as it will be highly relevant to their search. I’m sure by now you’ve noticed that relevance is the keyword in all of this – no pun intended! Another tip: don’t use what Google calls stop words. These are words that Google thinks are irrelevant and therefore ignores. They are: And, A, The, In, On, Of, Be, I and Me. Avoid using these in your keywords as they will only slow down the search engine’s assessment of your site. And finally, limit your group of keywords and/or phrases to around five. Having too many will only dilute their weight on your webpage. The more you use your phrases on your site, the more power they will hold (within reason – use them too often and Google will deem your site spam, potentially withholding it from search results).

2)   Choose a Relevant Domain

Your domain name may hold the biggest weight when it comes to search engine results. This is why if your domain name is simply your full name, it is most likely guaranteed that when people do a search for your name, your site is going to come up first (that is, unless your name is Anna Smith or Joe Miller in which case you might have some competition). For artists, choosing your name for a domain is often a wise choice – but still, incorporating one of your keywords is something worth considering. I made my music site domain simply janellereichman.com, but I could have just as easily made it janellereichmansax.com or reichmansaxnyc.com for added punch with search engines.

3)   Use Meta Tags

Meta tags are bits of text within your site’s code that provide valuable information for search engines. I will list the three main Meta tags here and show you how to use them. And don’t forget, when using these tags – use your keywords! All Meta tags should be placed between the <head> and </head> tags at the top of your webpage’s code. I will provide snapshots below that show this.

The Title Tag

This tag allows you to enter what will be the title of your webpage and show up at the top of a user’s Internet browser window. Your title will be the text between <title> and </title>. To give you an idea, in the title tag for this site is “Continuum Web Design | Websites for Artists” (shown below). Notice how it uses web design, websites and artists – three of my lovely keywords. Below is a snapshot of this page’s code so you can see these tags in action.

The Meta Description Tag

This tag allows you to enter a short paragraph length description of your site’s contents. This description will show up in search engine results directly beneath your site’s title (mentioned above). This is also an excellent place to use your keywords.

The Meta Keywords Tag

Because of heavy overuse and abuse, this tag doesn’t hold the weight it once did – but it’s worth using nonetheless. The keywords tag is just that – a place for you to list your keywords and phrases. Separate your keywords/phrases with commas, and put it directly beneath the Meta description tag. Below is a snapshot of the Meta Description and Meta Keywords tags.

4)   Use Your Keywords in File Names

This means all site files – page files (such as about.html or gigs.html) and image files (does 38747203475.jpg sound familiar?). These are excellent places to use your keywords, so don’t miss out! For example, let’s say you are a flower shop owner. Instead of just about.html for the about page, why not make it about-flower-shop.html? No harm done, and you’ve just added relevance to your page for your designated keywords. Image files are another great way to use your keywords. Instead of nondescript image file names (such as the gobbledygook listed above), consider using image file names that relate to what the image is of – and then adding in one or a few of your keywords when appropriate and relevant.

5)   Use Image Alt Tags

Alt stands for alternate. Image alt tags provide viewers with alternate information about your image when, for whatever reason, the image cannot be displayed. Alt tags are important to use for accessibility reasons (those using screen readers will be missing out on crucial information if you have no alt tags for your images) and they can also help you with your SEO. Below is an example of an image file in a webpage.

<img src=”images/continuum-website.jpg” alt=”artist website” />

Src stands for source and tells the browser where to find the image (notice that the image file name uses one of my target keywords) and after alt in quotes, you can enter your alternate text – using even more of your keywords.

6)   Use Heading Tags

Heading tags range from <h1> to <h6> and are great places to put headings ranging in importance respectively. You would put your main heading and most important information within your <h1></h1> tags. Make sure that each page on your website has at least one <h1> tag and uses at least one or a few of your target keywords, as well as tells the viewer what is being communicated on that given page. Don’t use more than one or two <h1> tags on any one page or they will lose their value. Here’s an example of using a header tag:

<h1>Seven SEO Tips for Artists</h1>

7)   Get linked to!

What I mean by this is, the more links there are on the Internet that direct to your website, the better your search engine listing will be. This is because if many sites are linking to yours, Google will deem your site a relevant one. You can do some of this on your own site. Within your site, link from each page to other pages (this will already be true if you have any kind of a navigational bar in place).  Another way to do this would be to swap links with people you know – offer to them that you will link to their site if they link to yours. And finally, get your site listed on as many external sites as you can: directories, databases, etc. – anything you can think of. And again, beware of companies that aim to trick Google with link campaigns as they could really hurt you in the long run.

I hope this blog post has made SEO less of a mystery and has shown you some easy ways that you can improve your site’s search engine listing yourself. SEO doesn’t have to be rocket science – it’s just a matter of building your keywords naturally into your site’s contents – all of its contents.

On the one hand, cutting discs out of the album production process saves us a chunk of change. I spent around $1,500 for manufacturing of 1,000 discs of my latest CD via Discmakers. Cutting out the expense of creating physical discs could potentially free up money that could be better spent on recording at a better studio, promoting the CD or hiring a publicist.

On the other hand, there is the more important issue of live shows. I think we would all agree that the majority of physical disc sales happen at performances where listeners hear the music live and often are eager to take something home with them. It’s important to be able to offer something physical for sale at live performances, as there is definitely a market for this. If CDs are on the way out, what can we sell in its place?

One option is download cards. Through websites like Fizzkicks and Distrophonix, you can easily create download cards of your music. Cards can be made for one song, a few songs, an entire album, or even multiple albums. Each card is the size of a business card and has a unique code which the buyer will enter on the website provided in order to download their purchased tracks.

Another option is flash drives. Probably the most popular website for creating flash drives branded specially for your band is CF Gear. Through their site you can design what the drive will look like (and of course what will be inside it). CF Gear also offers the service of creating a user interface so that when buyers pop the drive into their computer, they don’t see merely a folder with files, but an actual interface with graphics and navigable buttons. I spoke with a musician this week whose band offers flash drives at their shows that contain all of their albums, and they sell them for $35 or so. Being able to purchase all of your music and put it in their pocket could potentially be very attractive to concert goers.

But solutions such as download cards and flash drives still don’t address what is lost when we lose the production of an actual disc – the visual and informative elements of the album packaging. Album artwork can provide a strong framework for setting up the listener’s state of mind when putting on an album for the first time. Striking original art for albums has become increasing popular with artists such as Grady McFerrin. Photographs and graphic images can undoubtedly heighten the listening experience and create more of a connection between musician and listener. I remember when I was a kid I would quite often look at the photographs or images provided in the packaging while listening to a cassette tape. I think this could still hold true if listeners are provided with some visual elements to connect the music to.

The other element that unfortunately gets lost when we buy music digitally is the liner notes and text provided by the artist or band. Any true music fan will tell you that liner notes are instrumental (no pun intended) in helping to understand the album, its making, and how it relates to other music in the industry today – thereby fostering a deeper appreciation of the music itself. Hearing what a fellow musician or music expert has to say about the album will add meaning to the listening experience for any music fan.  And while not all artists choose to provide personal commentary on their arrangements and compositions and on the music itself, it’s imperative that artists have this option. After all, what could add more meaning than hearing what the artist has to say about his or her own music?

So we’ve talked about potential replacements for CDs, and we’ve also talked about what these replacements lack. So what is the solution? How can we provide concert goers with a physical product with doesn’t contain a disc but does contain a way to receive our music digitally and also gives them a visual and textual representation of the music? I have two suggestions that I would like to offer.

The first is the idea of a small book (similar to a CD case/booklet) that contains all the information we want to provide such as liner notes, comments on the music by the artist, and potentially photographs or graphics – as well as a download code and a website URL where a person can download the music. This way the buyer walks away with the physical aspect of having purchased a CD, but without a CD itself. They can download their music digitally, but they still have the text and visuals that will add to their experience as a listener.

The second idea cuts out the physical element almost completely. Show goers would purchase a download card or flash drive, and along with the music files would come some sort of file that provides text and visuals that relate to the album. This could potentially be an elaborate file designed in Photoshop and then provided as a PDF for the buyer. Another spin on this would be to have a section on your website designed specially for album purchasers which they could enter only with a unique password given to them along with their purchase. This section of the site could have additional information about the making of the album, photographs, videos, or even lead sheets of some of the compositions. The exclusivity of this section could make it attractive to album buyers and encourage them to check it out.

I hope this post has given you some ideas for rethinking how you will sell your music in the future. As musicians, we all have to face the facts that CDs will most likely be obsolete some day, and we need to start thinking about ways in which we can sell our music without compromising what we are providing to listeners and how we are expressed as artists.

Spotify

I became curious just how much artists are making per play on Spotify. The answer is a bit depressing to say the least. Currently, independent artists make about half a cent per play on Spotify. This means that every 200 plays, they’ll be able to make a trip and order a single item off of the dollar menu at McDonald’s. A massive 100,000 plays would get them $500 – barely enough to cover the rent. This in and of itself is a great injustice – obviously musicians deserve to be getting paid for their work, especially independent artists who in many cases used the majority of their savings to get their albums recorded, manufactured and promoted.

Still, I’ve heard from musicians who claim that people initially found them on Spotify and then later became true fans – attending shows and purchasing physical or digital music, or other products. Perhaps if an artist’s music is on Spotify, they will end up reaching potential fans that otherwise would never have heard of them. But in the end will Spotify do more harm than good? What’s more important – that independent artists get what they deserve for every track they sell, or that as many people as possible hear their music in the first place?

For some, the author of this blog entry included, Spotify serves as a great platform for checking out music and deciding what music to purchase. It is in fact possible to listen to music off-line (non-streaming) on Spotify, but it’s not quite as easy as when you purchase music on iTunes and can drag it directly to your devices (iPhone, etc). I realize that being an independent musician myself, I am probably more conscious of where my money is going when it comes to buying music than is the average person. But speaking personally, as long as I’m purchasing the records I really dig and know I’m going to want to listen to more than once, my conscience lets me sleep at night.

I encourage you the reader to come to your own conclusions of what morally works for you. Just remember, as a purchaser of music, the best thing you can do for the artist is to purchase a CD at one of their shows. This means they’ll get every cent of what leaves your wallet. If you buy that same album on iTunes, the artist will get somewhere in the vicinity of 60% of what you’re paying, and if you stream it on Spotify – well, they’ll get virtually nothing at all. Something for all of us to keep in mind.