Blog Moving...

I've decided to combine this blog and PLUGOLA's corporate blog into one. I can't remember what I was thinking when I set-up two separate blogs for virtually the same thing, but I finally came to my senses. So, from now on all future posts will be located on our one and only blog, Plugola, Inc.

Of course, we will cover site news, tutorials, promo tips for musicians and even affiliate tips for our "plugging" members. This also means more updates. Plus, it's much easier on the eyes.

I've already begun posting, so please join us over there from now on:
Plugola, Inc.

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.

Indie Music Web 2.0 Platforms Compared

While doing my daily scanning through Twitter today, I ran across a few tweets pointing out a small comparison chart of three web 2.0 music sites. Why only the three, I'm not sure since, there are plenty more than that, and listed within Listio's directory, as well.

I've also been running into a lot industry feedback on PLUGOLA, such as, "You're in a crowded market" or "it's just another indie music web site". Although that may be true, I believe this is causing a lot of the features that makes PLUGO.LA stand-out to be overlooked. Not only that, but it's tough for musicians these days to find what's best for them with all this new technology being thrown at them. So, I put together a little comparison chart of my own.

Please keep in mind that, this chart is only comparing Plugola's features against some of the other digital music distribution websites, based around some sort of community and independent musicians. I tried to remain unbiased as possible, so if you think I missed something important, or you think I made a mistake, please leave me a comment.

How to plug your music on Twitter

First, I should say, if you're not yet using Twitter to network with your fans and to promote yourself, you should sign-up and see what it can do for you. I didn't get it at first, either. I would think to myself, "So, what's the big deal?" I read an article suggesting to embrace Twitter in order to understand it. I embraced it and learned what a powerful networking tool it really is, and with a lot of potential to be so much more. Now, I'm not going to explain the basics of Twitter since there are already about a million articles out there on that topic, but I am going to explain a neat little service that you can combine with PLUGOLA's coupon system to market your music.

One of the cool things about twitter is that it has an open API, which basically means developers and tech geeks have free range to build whatever service they would like around Twitter's service. It seems almost daily a new Twitter (App) Application is introduced. Some of them are very useful while others are just for fun. One such useful and FREE app PLUGOLA musicians can use is, TwtQpon, which is a coupon/discount tool that can be distributed to your fans and followers on Twitter. Let me explain how you can make this work to market your music.

One of PLUGOLA's many features is offering it's musicians the option to make selected tracks available for free download. After one or more tracks are selected for "Promo", each musician is given their own coupon code. Once this coupon code is redeemed by one of your fans, your promo tracks will be available for free download to them. I go into further detail about our coupon system HERE. So, once you have your coupon code from PLUGOLA, head over to TwtQpon and enter the required info including your coupon code, the link to the sign-up page, customize the text and any images, click on the "create" button and voila! You have your own online marketing system ready to be announced to your fans on Twitter.

I purposely left out the nitty-gritty details about marketing your music, because that is completely up to you. If you're not sure where to begin; start-off with selecting one or two of your stronger pieces, or perhaps one with most mass appeal, and offer that/those tracks as "Promo" or free. Think of it as giving your fans a sample of what they will get if they decide to purchase/download more of your tracks, or even what they can expect when you play live.

Remember, you can use your PLUGOLA coupon code to promote your tunes, anywhere. I just thought this would be a fun and easy way to try it out. Be sure to follow PLUGOLA on Twitter. We can be found @ Twitter.com/plugola

'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.

Registration Confirmation Emails

As some of you may have already experienced, some of our automatic email messages, where new members must confirm their registration, are not making it to your inbox. It seems on most free email services (hotmail, yahoo, gmail, etc.), these confirmation emails are going directly into your junk/bulk folders. This is not a new issue, but an old one we thought was fixed. However, we're currently working on the problem and I've been activating any new members manually.

If you have nay questions or concerns, please be sure to contact us.

UPDATE: (1/12/09) I'm pretty sure we have finally fixed the registration confirmation mail issue(s). Our testing has shown that free email services (and, of course, personal email clients) are now accepting our messages. We will not know 100% until new members confirm their new membership to PLUGOLA. Please let us know if you have any problems.

Music Videos for the Indie Artist

These days it's becoming more and more important for independent artists to have their own music video(s). It wasn't until recent years that having a produced video to promote your music did indie artists much good, besides maybe for the late Sunday night cable access viewers; much less affordable without some sort of record label money behind you. As I'm sure you already know, all that has changed. Technology has allowed us to cheaply and easily(somewhat) shoot, produce and distribute your music videos to thousands of potential fans.

Over at KnowTheMusicBiz.com, Caroline Bottomley posted a good article on some good ways to get started putting together your own music video. Read her article HERE.

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.

PLUGOLA Feedback Forum

We wanted to be sure to let you know that, PLUGOLA now has added a better way to communicate your feedback and/or comments to support. It's not configured into the site yet, but it IS live if you have any ideas, bug fixes, constructive criticisms that you like to relay to us. You should not have any problem noticing the feedback section when it is finished with configuration, but for now please feel free to get started with your comments to support in our Feedback Forums.

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.

PLUGOLA Soft Beta Launch

The day has finally arrived! PLUGOLA has begun a soft launch for public beta. We have been developing and testing for many months now, and we are finally ready for you to give it a shot.

Registration and membership to PLUGOLA is free for everyone, and besides a few minutes of your time, giving us a test run will cost you nothing. In fact, there's a pretty good chance you will MAKE money.

You should be able to find any answers to questions you may have on the site, but to answer a few questions you may have up-front:

• registration/membership is completely free & there are no hidden fees to anyone. However, we do take a fee of only 18% of your total download sales. This is the lowest percentage (or highest artist payout) in the industry. We plan to balance our costs with (minimal) outside advertising. This will help keep payouts to artists higher and costs to music fans lower.
  

• By uploading your content, you're only giving us permission to digitally distribute your content and NOT any ownership rights of any kind. Plus, all your content is non-exclusive with our website; meaning you may upload/sell the same content to/on any other website, or however you see fit.

• We pay you for all your sales from the past month, after 30 days, if your total earnings reach $25 or more.

• "Plugging" feature allows other members/fans who have already purchased your music/videos an opportunity to help you distribute & sell this same content, at your approval. By default, your "affiliates"/fans will receive and incentive of 5% of the download price, but you may set this percentage to whatever you like.

• You control pretty much everything. You set the prices, your band's image, you choose the content available for "plugging" or promo, even who can promote you and who can not.

• We have both online and offline free promotional tools. These include; an embeddable digital music store you can include on any web page and 'free download' coupons you can hand-out to your fans at live events.
  

• Your personal media player/digital store can easily be embedded on any web page, including your own site, MySpace & other social networks. Plus, registered Plugola members can buy directly inside your player, without ever leaving the page. Of course, anyone can listen/view content in player.

• How artists are displayed on the site is based on a user activity algorithm. Of course, members (both 'artists' & 'fans') with the most activity, ranks higher. It can't be cheated by hit bots, proxy servers, etc.

If you have any more questions you can probably find the answers at the links listed below, or please feel free to contact us directly.

Main Page:
PLUGOLA (www.plugo.la)
Sales/Distro Agreement:
http://www.plugo.la/index.php/home/pages/sales
Artist Terms:
http://www.plugo.la/index.php/home/pages/upload_terms
General FAQ:
http://www.plugo.la/index.php/home/pages/faq

I hope you & your band finds this useful. We hope to see your stuff uploaded.

We are testing the site now

I just wanted to let the public know that we are finishing with our own initial testing on Plugola. We still have many things to do with the site, but we are currently seeking motivated musicians sign up and assist with BETA testing. Please register and be the first to set the stage.

Welcome to Plugola's Blog

After close to a year since we began this project, we are finally completing 'Phase One' in the development of the PLUGOLA music community and marketplace. This means that within the next few days, some musicians we have contacted will be creating their profile and uploading content. After some initial testing, we will begin inviting users to register.

PLUGO.LA isn't exactly open to the public quite yet, but we will be in need for beta testers very soon. If you are interested in being a part of this process, please check back for updates very soon. Or, you may sign-up now, but please keep in mind that most content available is for testing purposes and that no processing is being made. If you would like to go route; registration is free for everyone, there's no commitments and it only takes a few minutes to register.