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Your album is online, now what?
Many bands get their music on digital download websites, but very few do the same push to sell their online albums as they do for their hardcopy counterparts. Think about it; you tour with CDs and merch, you send copies to stores and distributors, you send copies to writers to get reviewed. But what do you do with your mp3s? For people that spend all their money on drinks at the show, do you make business cards so they can go home and still buy your album online? Do you post links on the bottom of your emails or even show flyers? When you get a write-up in the city weekly do you give an address where readers can go find you music? If you are not doing these things you are missing valuable opportunities to win fans and sell your album.
Here are the Top 6 things you can do to promote your digital sales:
1. KEEP AN EMAIL LIST. Keep an email list at your merch table at every show. Hardbound "guest books" are a great way to encourage people to write a comment about the show and jot their info down. You can even trade and "borrow" lists from friendly/non-friendly bands. Use this list when it counts, like when you have a big show, a new release, or a tour journal. Paste the HTML link to your album page at the bottom so anyone that gets the email will be able to buy your music online.
2. LINK TO YOUR MYSPACE, FACEBOOK, & TWITTER. Link your MySpace, Facebook, and/or Twitter profiles to your album download page. If someone likes your songs, make it as easy as possible to buy them. Putting a button near the top with a "Buy our album here!!" can go a long way. http://www.digstation.com/links.aspx (enter your artist name as it appears on DigStation without spaces in the URL field at the top of the page)
3. PROMOTE YOUR ALBUM WITH DOWNLOAD CARDS. Custom-printed Download Cards offer you an easy way to promote and sell your music at gigs, festivals, or even the frozen food section. Each full-color card features your artwork and a unique code that allows users to download your album at DigStation.com. You decide how much to sell the cards for (or give them away for free if you want to) and the customer takes care of the rest.
4. BLOG YOUR HEART OUT! If you hadn’t noticed, the new buzzword is "social." Anything you can do to interact with your fans will increase your desirability. Get a Blog account (free) and keep posting everyday. Short and often will keep people coming back to find out what is happening in your world. Post pictures of shows, stories from tour, promoters to avoid, jokes that were only funny at 4am to your drummer... Encourage people to subscribe to the RSS feed, that way they don’t even have to go to the page to read the entries.
5. MAKE A MUSIC VIDEO! In this day and age there is no reason any band should not have one. Cool YouTube videos have made certain bands famous, and can be shot on a cell phone if you have to. Small videos can be used on RSS feeds like Podcasts, and bigger ones you can just link from YouTube. Don’t forget to link to your album page, if your video blows up and you get 300,000 views overnight, that was a lot of eyes and ears that might have wanted to buy more.
6. TOUR, PROMOTE, TALK, AND WRITE. There are amazing bands that no one ever hears, and not-so-good ones that go pro. This largely has to do with how much they are willing to network. Get to know all the music writers in your town, the promoters, the bouncers, the labels, the great bands, the OK bands, the bands you have to watch from outside in the parking lot, the scene kids, the DJs, and most off all your fans. Every person that you perform for, talk to, or have a beer with has the ability to make your band huge. Make sure they know that you love what you are doing, and what the best way for them to help you out is.
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