We’re kicking off a partnership with Rhapsody

We’re excited to announce today that we’re launching a major integration with Rhapsody.

Rhapsody will now send targeted emails and notifications to listeners based on their preferences, which includes direct links to purchase limited-edition, VIP BandPage Experiences. Fans that have recently streamed or purchased specific artists will get instant access to the Experiences.

We’re making it possible for musicians to reach their fans in new ways and create a sustainable living. And this the single newest — and most exciting — way for musicians to generate revenue through targeting on streaming platforms like Rhapsody. When we reach fans in moments where they are truly and deeply focused on that artist, we see conversions happen. One summer tour shattered expectations when the artists made $100,000 in just 48 hours selling VIP Meet-and-Greet Packages.

Rhapsody is kicking off our partnership by exclusively marketing several Experiences directly to fans of artists, like Third Eye Blind, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Rozzi Crane, Brandon Boyd (Incubus), Parliament and more. Fans who have purchased or streamed the artist’s music in the last month will receive emails or direct messaging regarding these offers.

One of the first bands to be involved in the integration is Third Eye Blind, who are offering fans VIP Ticket Packages, which includes: a ticket to the show; access to part of the band’s sound check where they will play new songs; meet-and-greet session after sound check; one t-shirt from the merch booth and one signed setlist after the show.

Stephan Jenkins, Third Eye Blind frontman has said, “The partnership with Rhapsody provides the perfect context for our most dedicated fans to discover our VIP Experiences…at a moment when they are totally focused on the band.”

This partnership represents the first phase of our integration with Rhapsody — future integrations will feature tour dates, bios, photos and more. Coming on the heels of our partnerships with Xbox Music and VEVO, we’re thrilled to continue providing artists with a central profile to reach their fans, allowing them to increase engagement and revenue. Much more in the works. Stay tuned!

BandPage Partners With Ning To Help Musicians Build Fan Communities

BandPage is pleased to welcome Ning.com to our growing family of Content Syndication Partners.  Used by artists like Linkin Park and Plain White T’s, Ning.com is a community-based platform that makes it easy for musicians to launch their very own social network site in the matter of minutes.

BandPage teamed up with Ning with a single goal in mind: to deliver a number of robust community site features to those musicians that are ready to go beyond Facebook, a static website or blog and let their biggest fans take center stage. Unlike other social platforms, Ning lets bands and fans connect, converse, and create content together through tools such as band- or fan-led blogs, forums, photo sections, and more.  Plus, Ning gives musicians complete ownership and control of their branded online communities where they can nurture, cultivate, and empower their loyal followers.

Our new BandPage/Ning integration makes it easy for you to pull all of your different social networks and properties together under one roof where fans can follow your various social feeds, stay up to date with your latest blog content as well as participate in fan forums with other fans.  And instead of building your site from scratch, any musicians with a BandPage Account can automatically shift and syncing their BandPage content with their Ning site using our “BandPage Connect” technology.  Connecting your BandPage account automatically syncs all of your BandPage content, including your music, tour dates, photos, videos and About info to your Ning-powered site.  You can then choose to alter the design of your site by uploading your own header and background images and making the necessary adjustments to the font and color.  It’s that simple.

For those of you who want to engage with their fans on a deeper level, you can take advantage of the power and flexibility of Ning 3.0 to add features and custom pages on the fly: fan photo section, individual band member blogs, a private street team forum, contests, and more.  Dada Life’s Ning-powered site, Dada Land, allows Citizens (fans) to climb the member ranks and become Dad Land Ambassadors by completing a certain number of missions. The possibilities are endless.

Our very own Chris Wiltsee, Sr. Director of Business Development, had this to say about our unique partnership, “bands want feature-rich flexible social networks and are eager to integrate their unique content into those networks. Ning is clearly striving to meet this need and BandPage is pleased to welcome Ning into its growing base of content partners.”

Check out just how easy it is to quickly incorporate your BandPage profile into your Ning social site in the video below and try it for free by going to www.ning.com/bandpage and clicking the BandPage Connect button.

Connect Your BandPage Content with Ning from Ning on Vimeo.

YouTube Playbook Guide (The Cliffs Notes)

Last week YouTube was nice enough to release a 40 page “creators guide” for musicians advising them on the best ways to leverage YouTube to build a loyal and engaged fan base.  In case you don’t have the time or energy to dig through all 40 pages we were kind enough to create our own bulleted list of what we considered to be some key takeaways.  For those of you who want to dig a little deeper, you can check out the rest of the guide here.  Enjoy!

Optimize for Better Discovery

1. Get Your Metadata Working for You:  First things first, don’t forget to lead with the song title, artist name [your name] and album title in the title of your video.  And be sure to include heavily searched terms as well.  If you have a famous guests on the song, be sure to include their name.  If you cover a song, be sure to include the name of the artist whose song you covered.  Remember, most people find music channels through search results, so optimizing your videos for discovery is key.

2. Tag Tag Tag: Tag as many terms that are relevant to your video as you can.  Use both general and specific key words.

3. Use An Intriguing Thumbnail:  Be sure to choose a thumbnail that is compelling.  You want people to want to know what is happening in your video so choose something that invites curiosity.

4. Descriptive Description: Take advantage of the real estate under video description to include calls to action like “click to buy here” or “view new video here.”  Be sure to include new album release date, up coming concert dates, links to socials, digital store, etc.

5. Take Advantage of Annotations: Annotations have a few important uses.  First, you can add annotations to your older videos to direct fans to your newest video.  Or you can add an annotation to a new video encouraging fans to check out your other videos so they can get to know you as an artists better.  On top of that, you can use annotations to promote your licensed merchandize directly in your videos.  Just don’t forget to leverage your top performing videos!

6. Choose a Layout that Meets Your Needs: A single channel layout makes it easy for you to target announcements to specific groups of fans and encourage fans to help shape your content.   A single channel layout will include all of your curated content, live performances and official videos on a single channel.  A multi-channel layout allows you to separate your content into different channels.  You can upload official music videos onto your main channel and your favorite music, live performances, funny videos, etc to a different one.  This makes it easy for your fans to find exactly what they are looking for.

Releasing an Album or Song

7. Not One but TWO Videos:  If you are going to use YouTube to release a new song, they highly recommend you create both a lyric and an official music video.  Lyric videos are easier to make and will help build buzz for when you do drop your official music video.  Lyric videos also help your fans connect with your music by getting them more acquainted with your message and words.  For many people, lyrics can make or break a song.

8. Leverage the Community: Get your fans to particpate in this intimate process with you.  Ask them for their feedback and thoughts on your song. Enourage them to comment, share and subscribe to your channel.  You can even ask them to create re-mixes or covers of your song and share them with you.

9. Use Data: Be sure to pay close attention to the regions that are driving the most traffic to your channel.  Examine your traffic sources.  Are there any specific blogs or sites that are driving a significant amount of traffic?   Use this data to help determine where to hold live events, interviews, reach out to the local press, etc.

Engage With Your Fans

10. Exclusive Perks: A great way to keep your fans engaged is to offer them exclusive perks.  Give your fans and subscribers first crack at new tracks, behind-the-scenes video clips or even concert tickets.  Leverage  annotations and/or your video descriptions to help promote them.

11. Q&A: YouTube recommends dedicating one day a month to holding a live Q&A or Google Hangout session with your fans.   Take questions, talk about new projects you’re working on and just hang out.   Your fans will appreciate the opportunity to spend quality time with you and you’ll continue to gain new YouTube followers in the process.  A win-win.

Promoting Your BandPage Experiences: Part 4 – Mailing List

Hey Musicians,

In this post we’ll cover how to promote your BandPage Experiences to your Superfans through your mailing list. To recap, we’ve been publishing a series of posts on different channels you can promote your Experiences through, and showcasing examples of how other successful musicians have done it. We are now approving submissions to join our BandPage Experiences closed beta – just log into your BandPage editor, choose the artist you want to submit and navigate to the BandPage Experiences tab on the left hand navigation.

Part 1: Facebook | Part 2: Twitter | Part 3: YouTube | Part 5: Word of Mouth

Your mailing list houses your most passionate fans – these are fans who want to hear from you and interact with you. Email your mailing list to tell them that they now have a chance to engage more deeply with you through BandPage Experiences.

Best Practices:

• Keep it short: People’s attention spans are short. Keep your email text short and sweet, and more fans will read through the whole thing.
• Give clear action steps: Tell your readers what to do next. If you’re promoting your BandPage Experiences, then action steps like “Buy them before they run out!” or “Check them out now” will point fans towards your goal of getting them to look at your Experiences page and buying an Experience.
• Track your emails: Use trackable links like bit.ly or shortURL so you can track and measure the amount of traffic you are generating with your post, and optimize your message based on performance.

An example from Ryan from Sleeping at Last is below. He keeps his tone genuine and lighthearted throughout his whole email to his fans. He describes each experience in detail, and gives the context behind them.

After he sent this email to his mailing list, his Experiences sold out and he had to add more. The takeaway is that as a musician, you should know where your strongest group of fans are – and it will differ for each artist.  In general, if you have a mailing list then it should contain your strongest fans who want to hear from you and deepen their relationship with you.

Thanks for reading this installment about promoting to your mailing list! Be sure to tune in for our next and final installment, promoting your Experiences through word-of-mouth.