One of the dirtiest jobs in the DJ business is marketing and promotion. If you already have a big following, you could probably hire a publicist to do the promo grunt work for you. But how do you get a following without promotion? There’s the catch. Although DJing is good work if you can get it, it is still work. You’ve got to be your own hype man before you hit the big time. Luckily, the wonders of the modern world – technology and outsourcing – have your back. Read on to discover tools and services that will help you spice up your Facebook page, create a personal iPhone app with no coding required, and blast a press release to the music media masses.
PIMP OUT A FACEBOOK FAN PAGE
If you’ve seen those “Life Without People” specials on TV where all of the sudden humans disappear from the big cities, then you know what it’s like to be on MySpace right now. The years of infrastructure are still there, but without all the folks. On the TV show, no one knows where the people went; in real life we know they went to Facebook. But the lamentable fact for DJs and musicians is that fan pages on Facebook suck. RootMusic.com has changed all that with its BandPage Facebook app.
If you administrate a Facebook fan page, you can add the “BandPage” tab to your Facebook fan page and make it the default tab people arrive at when they visit your site. You still get your Wall, Info and other tabs, but your snazzy BandPage tab will be the first one they see.
With BandPage, RootMusic gives you a simple software editor that lets you add a SoundCloud player, a Bio Pane, and a nice calendar of events to your Facebook fan page. SoundCloud music plays uninterrupted while the fan explores photos, Wall posts or anything else on your page. The basic BandPage tab is free, but if you really want a suave page like the Snoop Dogg example shown above, BandPage Plus will cost you $1.99 a month, which gives you customized font and color settings, background images and a customizable banner image.
BandPage users also get a new URL for their Facebook page that looks like “http://www.listen.to/yourDJname” so you can better promote your site.
HOMEGROWN IPHONE APPS
Aren’t you tired of hearing about BT’s or Trent Reznor’s iPhone apps and resenting them for having the cash to employ a team of programming geeks? With NonLinear Software’s “AppOmator”, you can essentially be your own team of geeks without needing to take a web conferencing course on Xcode. Currently for Mac OS X only, AppOmator simplifies creating a basic iPhone app so that anyone who can handle Apple’s iPhoto or iMovie could do it.
Still in the early beta stages, AppOmator is fully functional; there are several dozens of its progeny already in the App Store. Although there are many more features to come, AppOmator can make an app with a splash page, menu pages with scrolling menus, RSS feeds or hyperlinks, videos and music (with or without photo slideshows). The software also handles uploading the finished product to the App Store, seeding it with keywords so people searching can find it, and taking screenshots for the App Store page. You don’t need an iPhone to make an app either; AppOmator simulates how the app will work, so you can test it before uploading it.
While AppOmator itself is free, to upload a finished app requires a one-time $50 upload fee for the person who builds the app with Xcode, and then $15 a month and 15% of your app sales for hosting. You can set the price of your app from free to as high as you like. NonLinear Software has promised support for iPad apps and iAds (revenue-creating ads embedded in your app) soon.
OUTSOURCE A PRESS RELEASE
Say you want to drum up some media attention for an event, tour, album or mix CD release etc, but you don’t know where to start. Paying a PR distribution agency to blast out a press release for you may be worthwhile for the time you save and attention you gain. Results are not guaranteed, but an agency’s media contacts mean you will have a leg up as far as delivering the news to the right people.
The service at Beatwire.com specializes in delivering press releases to targeted music editors at more than 10,000 newspapers, magazines, websites, radio stations and other outlets worldwide. They can distribute a press release you write yourself ($149.95 each) or have one of their professional publicists write it for you and then distribute it ($249.95 each). Beatwire also has a Superblast service that in addition to press release distribution, the company designs a custom HTML press release with your graphics and an embedded audio player for your music. Superblast costs $249.95 per release if you write it yourself, or $349.95 for a professionally written release.
There are quite a few competing services for sending out music-related press releases, with varying prices and services. For example, RapidPressRelease.com also distributes to labels, producers and DJs.
All play and no work makes a DJ go nowhere fast. Hustle a little harder, step up your promotion game, and you’ll thank yourself for it later.
Additional reading:
Self-Promotion for the Working DJ
https://soundcloud.com/james_beam/james-beam-german-deep-mix-0515
http://www.mixcloud.com/lowgun/dj-lowgun-massive-housedance-mix/
https://soundcloud.com/steven-pierce/steven-npierce-dream-stevens
https://www.reverbnation.com/djduxxx
http://soundcloud.com/bless-3/sets/my-music-my-life im from passaic new jersey , im a kid just chasing his dream of makin it and just hopefully , just hopefully ya can relate to my music , my pain , my joys, “my life” . . .
Check this out!
This is a nice article to brush up on… Check me out
Crunkmus-Scarface Tony Montana
Nice, nice and nice article. Lots of information and useful tools. Keep on going with the good job Ean.
Regards,
Regis – SoundShiver
self promotion you say?
why let me live a LINK nobody will click on right here
also try getting a spot on a web radio site like http://radio.myhouse-yourhouse.net/
The best djs I know as well as myself (the best dj ever) do it for the love of the music and realise there are to many people and not enough spots or money to go around. Some of the most popular djs in S.F. have two bit day jobs. Don’t pimp your friends into your fans. Get some money and throw a party.
SO HELPFUL! NICE TOPIC! THANKS DJTT!!!!!
[quote comment=”35134″]i use wristbands, something ppl can wear everyday :)[/quote]
Some of my ppl wear ankle bracelets every day!
i use wristbands, something ppl can wear everyday 🙂
my blog is better
Agreed with Epiphenomenon!
P.S have all of you people been to my blog? fuck its good~!
jajaja
Thanks mate. Ill look into it. Seems like i dont know much about Facebook after all !!!
Karlos, a fan-page is something you should definitely look into. You’re not maintaining two accounts per-se. You’d still only be logging in once. The fan-pace is maintained as part of your facebook as well as anyone else you’ve given permission to moderate.
Great article.
I was already to do a the Root Music thing but then realised that you cant do it with a normal FB account. I havent got a Fan Page. I dont want 2 Facebooks i just want 1 with the Root Music Tab.
Or did i miss something..?
RootMusic looks cool but im not up for maintaining 2 Facebooks and the RootMusic and Myspace.
Id love this on my normal Facebook.
Great Article, Thanks
Great ideas here, love the Facebook hints.
One time-tested way of promoting yourself is simply to collect email addresses from people when you’re DJing. If you have a wiling accomplice (girlfriend, business partner), they can collar people at the bar with a clipboard or even put them straight into an iPhone or something.
It’s a numbers game – get 10 a gig, and after a few weeks you’ll have a couple of hundred email addresses collected. Promise to send then free mixes (then simply send them a link to SoundCloud once in a while) and also look after them with special offers (negotiate a bit of money off with any venue owner where you play, or a free drink, and get your subscribers to print off your email and bring it to claim their discount).
Email is one of the best ways to engender loyalty and a good email list will spread the word for you like nothing else. I had an email list of 5,000 when I DJed at an promoted a club night and we were full, come resident or guest DJs. People appreciate you making the effort to keep in touch.
im just gonna put this out there as i am already an expierienced bandpage fan and do a demonstration at the same time, in the article it was said that people will be automatically directed to your fan page, this is both right and wrong, you see there has been an issue that rootmusic has been having, basically, if you go to my fanpage and your NOT a fan, you WILL get directed to my bandpage, buut, if you are a fan, you will not, so there is a catch, heres my fanpage for those who want to test and witness first hand http://www.facebook.com/pages/youSbee-DJ/111971872147553
The free version of Rootmusic is quite decent, but I’ll advice every producer to get a Solo account on Soundcloud, it’s not very expensive (79$ a year), the stats are very powerful, and it’s really a good way to show your music to the world
Dude–
The RSS capability only adds a tabbed page people can click on to go to a feed. What I want is a player that reads an rss feed and lets users listen to or download episodes (mixes) from an XML feed, either as a feature instead of soundcloud, or as a sidebar widget. It makes no sense to re-upload gigabytes’ worth of mixes to soundcloud when they already exist for a simple player.
Why this doesn’t exist on facebook somewhere is incomprehensible to me, and the main reason (apart from their shitty privacy policies) I have refused to open a facebook account.
[quote comment=”35078″]Steve, The RootMusic app does have an RSS feed reader that shows up down by the wall and twitter if you enable it.[/quote]
No kidding? I wonder why RootMusic emailed me back to say it was a great idea and they would take it up with the build team. Hmm.
Huge article for me as i’ve been hustlin promotion lately.
As someone who never set up a myspace music page, do you think it’s worth it at this point to do so? My style is geared more toward the rave vibe, and my impression is that “FB is for older people” in which case a myspace music site is still relevant. What would be your advice?
Going to have to disagree with the first suggestion.
I find that people like to keep their number of applications to a minimum, unless they’re 12 years old. If you want to make a nicer fan page, host it on some sort of third-party page and then link to it. Amazon’s cloud storage provides web space cheaply, and simplistic web development can be done easily with a variety of programs. Also, this means you can host demos and mixes on the cheap without worrying about bandwidth and space issues.
I also have issue with the iPhone app, for a similar reason. Are you really going to clutter your phone with a bunch of applications focusing on random facts about up-and-coming DJ’s (and probably not producers)? Not when you factor in the probability of the person never updating it again.
[quote comment=”35081″]Agree with Lys.. Why wouldnt you just use the Static FBML page? Not too clear on that one. The Press Release distro service is not a bad idea though.. Believe I may actually take advantage of that soon![/quote]
Explain yourselves… how do you do this (including full soundcloud integration) and how would coding it yourself be better than a free, streamlined service? I’ve been on facebook since college and high school were still separate, but not really sure what this HTML tab business is
[quote comment=”35081″]Agree with Lys.. Why wouldnt you just use the Static FBML page? Not too clear on that one. The Press Release distro service is not a bad idea though.. Believe I may actually take advantage of that soon![/quote]
Explain yourselves… how do you do this (including full soundcloud integration) and how would coding it yourself be better than a free, streamlined service? I’ve been on facebook since college and high school were still separate, but not really sure what this HTML tab business is
Love it man. I installed Bandpage before i was even done reading the article. Quality advice man.
Agree with Lys.. Why wouldnt you just use the Static FBML page? Not too clear on that one. The Press Release distro service is not a bad idea though.. Believe I may actually take advantage of that soon!
Steve, The RootMusic app does have an RSS feed reader that shows up down by the wall and twitter if you enable it.
The paid PR stuff seems like a real value, I’ve always wondered how to get more bang for my buck when it comes to self-promotion.
As for the app, I wonder if I could host it myself on my own website, because if I were to create an app it would be free and but I would def put iAd in it to make money on the back end.
The appomator website gives the message “I cannot connect to the database because: Too many connections
Please try refreshing your browser.” every time I connect. Do you really want to give these guys hosting and a percentage of your app profit?
It’s a shame that RootMusic doesn’t support RSS feeds. A lot of DJ promotion exists through blog/podcast feeds (all podcasts are xml files), the lack of a decent feed reader/player for Facebook is incomprehensible. Unless someone here knows of one I’m not aware of?
I emailed RootMusic suggesting a feed reader as part of their offering.
Some nice ideas here, but that Facebook thingy is ridiculous, just use a HTML tab!
Professional press releases might be a decent idea, at least if your project is big enough to swing it.
promotion is especially hard in a place where the edm scene is pretty dead. =/, i’m sure this advice would help though
That iPhone thing is cool on so many different levels.
definitely going to look into the facebook one 😀