SEO Basics for Musicians - Part 1 - Meta Data

I've been through literally thousands and thousands of band profiles and musician websites and I've noticed a lot of things that could make their presence better. However, most of them are not SE (search engine) friendly, making it harder for fans of the genre to discover the artist(s).

First, if you're not doing so already, consider targeting your music to directly to the people who are fans of the genre; your 'niche'. I know this sounds like a no-brainer, but for a lot of us it seems natural to present our music to as many people as possible. Don't let this fool you, though. Niche marketing/targeting is MUCH more effective. Instead of putting your music out on all the p2p networks hoping someone will discover you, try focusing on a much smaller group of hardcore fans of your genre. If anyone is going to care about your music, it will be the fans from this group. Obviously, you can't track down ever single fan, so it's best to optimize your site and profile pages for the search engines, so they can easily find you.

Now, there are many intricacies when optimizing a web page for the search engines, but here I'm going to give you the basics. Just following these simple suggestions will help your site/page rank higher in most search algorithms, as they change quite frequently. This is aimed at musicians, but really anyone can follow these tips.

Since these tips turned out to be WAY longer than I anticipated, I decided to break up these SEO tips into a couple posts.


Header Meta Data
If you have your own web site already, you or your webmaster should be able to control the header meta data. This is the most important part of SEO for any web page/site and probably the easiest, yet so many designers and developers leave this out or do it incorrectly.

Above, is a screen shot of the meta data area within your page's code. When a search engine spider crawls your site, this is more-or-less the first bit of information it will read. Based on this info, the SE spider will begin to categorize your site. Your title is considered most important, so it should be to the point and worded carefully. If your delta blues band was called, "Jimmy James & the Blue Flames"; you may word your title like, "Jimmy James & the Blue Flames - Down Home Delta Blues" It's pretty much a no-brainer, but definitely important.

Next in line is, the meta description (not keywords. they will be last). Again, it's fairly obvious what you should include here. However, you don't want to go crazy. Stick to one or two sentences describing your band and/or music. When writing your description, try to use as many of your keywords as possible while keeping it sensible. Also, be sure to include your act's name and genre. This will help the spiders compare to your title, so you want to keep the same topic.

Finally, your meta keywords. Why would keywords be last, you ask? It's of the least importance to SE spiders, but it's still needed. When a spider crawls the rest of your site, it will be able to understand the keywords just by the text, but we will cover that later. In your meta keywords, again you want to be sure to include your act's name and genres, as well as, anything else that's important to recognize your presence, but do NOT keyword 'stuff'. This means to repeat your keywords over and over, trying to gain advantage over other relevant web sites. The spiders WILL recognize this and penalize you, usually by dropping your rank, but sometimes a complete ban.

Unfortunately, on most profile pages you will not have control over this data. So you must make the best with what you do have control over. PLUGOLA has some built-in features that will automatically create some key meta data for you, upon profile creation.

Categories/Tags
One of the biggest mistakes I notice musicians making is not categorizing themselves by the correct genre. I know it's funny for a death metal band to classify themselves as "Chinese Pop", or vice-versa, but from a search/discovery standpoint, you're really doing yourself an injustice. When you're targeting a specialized fan base, you want to make it easy for them to find you. When the SE spider crawls your page, you want it to rank you in the search results for your genre, preferable on top. If you're in the wrong category, obviously genre fans will not be able to find you. I suggest you include your general genre (ie: rock, r&B, etc.) and your sub-genre (ie: crunk, nu-jazz, etc.). Be sure to include these same genres as keywords in your header meta info.

I'm sure you've been noticing more sites these days, using a 'tagging' feature for bookmarks, videos, photos, etc. I've always considered tags a sort of a cross between a 'category' and 'keyword'; an extra tool to note myself (and/or others) in a couple words what will be found upon clicking. Tagging your pages and content correctly is also essential in higher SE rankings.

Although these are only beginning steps to optimizing your profile page(s) and site, by following them you will already be ahead of most. They're also stepping stones to more SEO tips that will have you ranking higher no time, such as; revalency and link popularity. But I'll get to that in the next post.

'Plugging' and Sharing Your Favorites

One of the stand-out features of PLUGOLA is that artists can allow their fans to re-sell their music for a commission of the artists' choice. We call this, "Plugging". The concept behind this is to encourage fans to continue sharing the music they love by offering financial incentives, while in a controlled environment for the artist.

If you discover a great, new artist and you want to share a few of their tunes with your buddies; instead of just handing over their MP3s, why not ask those buddies to pitch-in and support the artist? Plus, you are to earn a commission, set by the artist, for every download you generate. If you buddies like those tunes, too, then they can turn around and share them the same way.


After you have downloaded your favorite track(s), you must login to your "Account". This is a double-login for security purposes. Not all artists allow their music to be plugged, but if they do you will see the "Plug" button in your downloads manager. By clicking on the "Plug" button, this will automatically send a "plug request" to the artist. In it's place it will say "Approval Pending". Once the artist approves this request, you will receive an approval message and it will automatically appear in your media player manager. If you decide you no longer want to plug a particular track, you can either click on 'disable' in your media player manager, or of course, you can always delete the track from your account completely. Just be sure to save the track to your computer before you delete it from your Account.

As an artist on PLUGOLA, you have the option to allow your music to be 'plugged' by your fans. If you decide to allow your fans as affiliates, all you must do is login to your 'Account' and select "Yes" next to each or any track you want to make available for plugging. Anytime one of your fans downloads those songs set to "yes", there will be an automatic option for them to choose or not. If a fan decides to plug any of your tracks, you will receive a request message to 'Approve' or 'Disapprove'. To a fan, a disapproval will result in their account saying the track(s) are "Not Available" for plugging.

By default, all affiliate commissions are set at %5 of artist earnings, per track. However, artists are free to change this percentage to whatever they would like at any time they want.

We believe this is a great interactive way for artists and fans to build relationships and work together with a common goal in mind, while everyone benefits.

Offline Music Marketing (our coupon system)

When we began to develop PLUGO.LA, and after a number of live shows, we noticed the lack of offline promotional tools available for artists to promote their digital music. When bands/musicians would play live CD samplers were passed-out to the crowd, or they would repeat their MySpace/homepage URL over the mic, and most only provided the option to buy one of their full-length CDs. This was not an effective way for them to market their music, especially when they're usually playing to a drunken crowd that probably will not remember who they were the next morning. Not to mention that fact that CDs are a quickly dying technology. That's when we came up with our coupon system.

As a member of PLUGOLA and as an artist, you no longer have to distribute CDs at live events, or continually announce your MySpace/homepage URL to your drunken audience. Once your music is uploaded to your PLUGOLA media player widget, you may select any track(s) to be available for a free download to your fans. Once selected, you are given an option to print coupons and cheaply and easily distribute these coupons to fans.



Each PLUGOLA artist is given their own randomly generated code that is automatically added to the coupon. With this code, your fans can come to your profile and download your pre-selected tracks for free. Not only will this help potential fans remember who you are and where to find you (coupon also contains your direct URL), but this will lessen the commitment to invest in a full CD and also give them an incentive to purchase more of your music/mp3s. The only cost to you is the paper to print your coupons on and some time to distribute them to your fans.

Your coupon code may also be used to distribute elsewhere, such as; magazine ads, fliers, swag or anything else. Feel free to be creative!

Giving Away Music for Free

I was asked by a musician the other day, after he took a look at PLUGOLA (www.plugo.la), "What do you think about musicians giving their music away for free?" I was a bit surprised by the question, at first. I mean, I know a handful of major acts, like, NIN and Radiohead, have found some success in giving away their music for free or letting their fans set their own price. And that's a terrific idea for these international acts to give back to the fans who support them. It's no doubt a move like that would boost their popularity and fan support. But would independent, DIY musicians benefit the same way?

Andrew Dubber, of NewMusicStrategies.com, claims an indie musician should give their music away for free to the millions, in order to attract a few thousand fans. His reason is because people crave it. Well, who doesn't want something for free, right? I know a few thousand fans sounds like a lot, and I'm sure you wouldn't deny them, but in reality that's a HORRIBLE return. If you want to spread your music by giving away free mp3s, a targeted marketing plan would bring you a much better return and much more dedicated fans. A few thousand fair-weather fans is great, but a hundred hardcore fans is better. It's your hardcore fans that will be the people telling their friends about you, buying your music/merchandise and going to your shows; while it's your fair-weather fans that will be downloading your free mp3s only.

Targeting your audience is far more effective for the long term success of your brand and earning potential. For example; if you were in a heavy metal band, giving away your free music to anyone else BUT heavy metal fans would probably not do much for your advancement. You want the type of fans that want more of you and will continue to seek and follow you. Cameron Mizell, of MusicianWages.com, has the right idea in the article on how to effectively promote your own music on Itunes.

...take a very narrow aim at a specific group of people, you’re going to find dedicated fans. This is the complete opposite of trying to get as much radio play as possible, or taking out an ad in the Sunday edition of the New York Times. Instead of trying to convert 0.5% of thousands or millions of people by throwing spaghetti on the wall, I’m trying to get a 50% conversion of 50 people, many times over by catering to their tastes. Those people are excited to discover my music and word spreads organically.

Even more so in the digital age, these are how people will find you online. Search engines, online directories, indexes, etc. all use the the basic algorithm of categorizing web sites/pages based on keywords or key subjects (genre, brand), so interested surfers are directed to the right place. You want to be at the top of these lists, so you must target your audience and show them the way to your music. When they arrive, give them a free taste of what they're looking for. If a potential new fan doesn't want to purchase anything from you today, be sure to give them a way to bookmark or remember how to find you in the future. Perhaps THIS is when a free download or two is in order.

These days there are so many online promotional opportunities for independent musicians it's almost overwhelming, I know. But with a little homework, you can learn which tools are available online and which will work best for you, and put together your own marketing campaign. Better yet, you can do it all for free without having to necessarily give away your music for free. Your time, effort and talent is worth something.

EDIT: Artist House Music explores deeper and suggests price points for your music.

How Much To Charge for Your Music

If you have already a member of PLUGOLA and uploaded your music or videos, you have noticed that we have allowed musicians to set their own prices for their music. We feel this feature will give musicians the option to market their music the way they see fit. We're not going to tell you how much you should be charging for your work; however, there are several factors you should figure in before settling on a price per download.

Most people are comfortable with, and accustomed to, the $.99 per track price. iTunes set the stage for this pricing, but there is nothing written in stone stating you must charge this price for your music. If you're cool with that price, that's fine; but you now have the freedom to charge more or less, according to what you and your fans' needs and demands may be.

Some things you should take into account (in no particular order):

• Are you distributing a high-quality recording? (we suggest at least 256kb bit rate)
• Does your work posses good production values? (pro or amateur)
• Is there currently a demand for your music?
• How much are your peers charging?
• What do your fans expect?
  
• Does it satisfy your own commitment and investment?
  

Also, please consider our cost structure when setting your own prices (You must charge a minimum of $.40 (forty cents) per track/video). %18 of sale is charged by Admin in order to cover our transaction fees and operating costs.

We are currently working on solutions to bring these annoying fees down, for it will benefit all of us. One of our goals as a community and a company is to keep costs our down in order to keep prices down for our members. But for now, please consider these circumstances and costs when setting your own prices. It may seem like your dealing with only pennies, but volume is the key.

Getting Started with PLUGOLA

I'm glad to see that some of you have taken the step and have begun to experience what PLUGOLA can do for you and your music. I know it's a bit slow at the moment, but we're just getting the ball rolling into public cyberspace. That doesn't mean you can't begin telling your fans and friends where to find your music.

After you have uploaded your MP3s and/or videos they will be available in your personal media player. By default, the player will only play 30 second clips of your songs/videos, to the public. You can change this to play full in your "Account" page. You control all your content from that page (ie: pricing, duration, plugging, etc.). Once you have configured your player, you're ready to begin digitally distributing your music.

There are several ways to begin spreading your music. For starters, you can send web traffic directly to your profile where your media player/store is always displayed. You are also given the option to customize your profile page anyway you see fit. To get your your shorter, direct link to your profile; just click on your profile photo. A small window will display with your contact info and you will find your link highlighted in red (see screen shot to right).


If you already have a profile or web site elsewhere and you would just like to use the media player/store to sell your MP3s/videos, that's ok. You can easily embed the PLUGOLA player on any web site or profile page that allows HTML (please check the 'terms' of web hosts or social networks to be sure you can use third party widgets). All you must do is click on the red "Get the code" button on your media player. Once the code is displayed, click the "Copy" button, then paste the code where you would like it displayed on your site. Your fans and other PLUGOLA members can listen/preview/purchase all within the player, itself; without leaving your website.

For your die-hard fans, and at your discretion, you may also allow your music and videos for "affiliation" (in your "Account" section), or better known as, "Plugging". Once someone purchases any of your content set to 'affiliation', they can request to re-sell, or "PLUG" your music to others. You can set their commission as an incentive to any percentage you feel is fair, and this is only possible by your approval.

These are just a few tips to help you get started using PLUGOLA to it's full potential. We will be posting more tips & tricks as we go along, so be sure to stay tuned or subscribe to be kept up-to-date.