Profiles & Communities (Tools To Promote or Discover)

[..LeRenard!]

Hi,

I was wondering which profiles, communties or other social interaction tools are you using for your band, label or for personal use?
And which ones do you like best or are the most effective?
Let me kick off..
Myspace, Vampirefreaks, Facebook, Trig, Virb, Psyrec, Moshable, Purevolume, Youtube, Flickr, Mindviz, iLike, Last.FM

So far I find Myspace & Last.FM the most effective tools to reach and gain new listeners..
I also shouldn't forget to mention that Youtube was kind of effective too to my surprise..
Vampirefreaks is too, but I had more experience with myspace & last.fm..

What are your tools or where do you search for new music etc..

Grtzz
Yves

[Pixieguts]

Last.fm is my major site. Despite some real drawbacks (mainly associated with it being now owned by CBS), the site has an amazingly sophisticated and far reaching focus on music as with no other site I've seen - it really appears to be the most important living archive in existence of contemporary and historic music globally. I like being a part of that.

Because of its massive size (about 20 million users), there is also the potential to get your music out to listeners (through tagging for radios etc) in a way offered nowhere else. It's amazed me that I've been able to attract over 10,000 plays of my collaborative music project at that site in less than a year. Not that this is a lot in the wider context but no other site comes close and I'm very grateful for the real listener engagement I find at Last.fm. The independent artist community growing at Last.fm is another major aspect of its appeal to me.

Aside from this, I often wonder about the value of spending huge amounts of time on all the different music sites, many of which seem to be primarily about generating advertising revenue for the site itself with little or no result to the artist. I tend to think focussing on a few might be of more value than spreading too thin over many. I have nonetheless set up on many other sites, usually in response to invites from other artists. Whether or not my profile has been developed further from this initial stage has depended mostly on the actual activity that seems to have occurred there after sign up. Consequently, these are the sites where I have the most developed profiles:

Myspace
Reverbnation
Soundclick
EI Network (and other networks here at Ning)

Like many people, I'm also at Facebook, but I've yet to see evidence of it really assisting artists in any significant way, seems more like a place to spread inane message forwarding spam, lol, and a sometimes fun place to say gidday to already existing friends ;)

With the Ning sites (including this one) I tend to be motivated more by the value of developing and connecting more closely with the independent artist community rather than just promotional stuff, though that is a part of these sites too. See the main page for links to some others worth checking out.

It seems a very large amount of time and energy is required for results on any site - there is no magic place that will do all the work for us unfortunately!

[Pixieguts]

A current question I have if anyone can help...

We used to be able to embed tracks from Last.fm onto other sites but, since the recent changes, html embedding code for this is no longer available.

Can anyone recommend a site for embedding single tracks in blogs etc?

[Angus Maiden]

i have to agree about last.fm, it is an amazing place, although as me and pix were just saying in another thread it could possibly be going downhill, they appear to be focusing now on shaking hands with record labels which gets a massive tut-tut from me. nevertheless i have also reached a number of plays i never thought possible considering my ameuterish approach to music. we, the underground, do indeed thrive there, and i wouldn't know pixie if not for lastfm, or heaps of other people, and they wouldn't know me or my music. there is (or was) a real sense of community about the place and as far as putting your music up: no limits in number, organised into albums, beautiful stats that you can drool over. one bad thing is everything has to be 128kbps, and they recently completely overhauled the site though and have yet to re-introduce some features which were an integral part of the system, but they're working on it and i'm remaining positive. but yea, it rules(ed) ... *crosses fingers* don't go down the loo, Last.fm!!! but apart from last, how about here?! I mean, 100 tracks, at any bitrate?! friggin' awesome :)

[Voide]

I hope for the best with Last.fm - it is a very very good site and service but I have sincere doubts about CBS and their ability to manage it with us in mind. Money talks.

Some really good(?) reading I recommend on the topic:

Facebook Tackles Music, Movies
"Facebook today launched two new Pages for music and film aimed at getting musical artists and film makers on the site. The new pages are templates for artists that include applications specifically designed for music and film, such as a reviews app, a Flash player, and the Facebook music player, as well as officially co-branded Facebook apps from sites such as iLike and Fandango."

MySpace Music Won't Give Equity to Indie Bands
"Listening Post cited concern on the part of The Orchard, an aggregator of indie bands and labels, that the indie bands who built MySpace as a music destination would not be made partners in MySpace Music."


Source of the above links are taken from the MusicSubmit newsletter.

[Voide]

I forgot to add, I find SoundClick.com to be one of the better community sites for finding new listeners as well, MySpace is overpopulated where all is seeking fame and it is hard to find new music of your liking (thus the domination of Last.fm).

I mainly use MySpace, Garageband.com (Interlinked with iLike), Soundclick, Last.fm.
Facebook is junk imo.

SonicJive.com is also an option, it is run by a guy named Mike Canter - no big corporation.

MusicIP is another really cool site where you can submit your music and use their software to generate awesome playlists from your mp3 collection, and find music you did not even know you had. It analyzes the files and group tracks that "sounds the same" - I have spent faaar too many nights with this toy :)
http://www.musicip.com/

[..LeRenard!]

cool new things,
facebook & myspace come in handy to keep people updated who find you there I think..

soundclick & last.Fm etc.. is more for getting new listeners to discover you I gues..

[Voide]

One neat feature that some sites (Like ning) support is XML feeds.
For example, instead of updating your blog on fiftyeleven different sites and communities you can simply take the feed from your favorite blog site.

iLike is one of these sites that allow you to update multiple sites with a feed, as does MySpace.
I currently use my MySpace XML blog feed to update my blog here at ning. It would be great if more sites took after this, problem is they all think they provide the ultimate site and instead of allowing to use feeds they want to be the source of it.

Speaking of the different communities, here is what I plan to do.
On the sites where I may not frequently login to (like dayly or weekly), I am going to keep a minimalistic profile with maybe a song or two.
The select a few sites where I plan to be active and keep these up to date.
If possible I would like to update all sites with XML from one source, but the site community owners need to come to this insight first.

Back before the lawsuit of mp3.com in 2000 I used to use that site, it was great and we sold a number of albums there - now the site is utterly useless with a really poor interface.

My favorite sites are MySpace and SoundClick.
Garageband is great for getting real opinions about your music and is a good feed to Live365.com.
iLike is weird but good in some ways, the linkage to Garageband.com makes it confusing at times.
Last.fm used to be good, but this is covered in several other threads - let's hope they recover.
Fredio is good for lots of plays, but the site seems to be on a amateur standard and I don't trust their web application skills. Nevertheless, if you have nothing to loose in income it is a good spot.

SonicBids is also good, but for different purposes like submitting your music for use in TV, on CD samplers and other events like live gigs.

Maybe I should compile a list of the sites I have used and post my experience here, believe me - they are quite a few.

[Voide]

Pixieguts said:

A current question I have if anyone can help...
We used to be able to embed tracks from Last.fm onto other sites but, since the recent changes, html embedding code for this is no longer available. Can anyone recommend a site for embedding single tracks in blogs etc?

Pixieguts - you can embed a station, a playlist or a single song using SoundClick.com and they have two selectable widths. You also have the option to randomize play (if several songs) and set to autostart or the user have to click play.

Here is the small one:

And here is the standard width one:

[Pixieguts]

cheers :P

[northcape]

Karen and Angus have both separately just told me about a relatively new site, thesixtyone.com, which in some ways seems similar to last.fm, but with a different focus. I've been on it a couple of days now and getting an encouraging amount of plays and listens. It does have an interesting idea behind it as well -its a kind of 'game' which rewards listeners for discovering new music, and seems to be mainly indie artists. Also as a site its very well designed and nice to use. Maybe worth a try...

[Pixieguts]

Have to admit I've been a bit addicted to thesixtyone since I joined a few days ago (after invites from about 4 artists already there). Like Last.fm you can set up both an artist profile and a listener profile. I've heard some great new sounds on my listener profile. I love the way listeners are rewarded with points for listening to 'under the radar' music on 'The Rack' at the home page - helps us indies get heard! BTW, I'm there as a listener using the handle sisterauntie. Come visit if you join up!

[northcape]

I seem to have stalled at 210 points :-(