In a previous post on how to improve your website traffic I mentioned that when sharing a video or stream of a song, it should be embedded on your official web page. Sites like YouTube are designed to keep people interested by jumping around from video to video. Attention from your music will quickly shift by something else they recommend. Their aim is not to drive traffic to your site, or to get you a sale.
By linking people to the video or song stream embedded on your site it is much more likely people are going to streamline more of their attention to your material.
I went with a friend to see a documentary, Searching for Sugar Man, last night. The small description in the paper intrigued her. A Detroit musician in the 1970s named Rodriguez, who released a couple of albums that did nothing in North America (but unbeknownst to him was selling as big as Bob Dylan in South Africa and practically the soundtrack to Apartheid.)
He disappeared after his second (what he thought to be unsuccessful) album didn’t do anything, and rumors in South Africa circulated that he shot himself on stage, or set himself on fire and died on stage after a series of bad happenings at a concert (sound issues, heckling etc.) It is really quite an interesting and inspiring documentary.
After the film, we went to grab a coffee (yes, it was midnight but yes we’re musicians.) On the walk there she said something to the effect, “Imagine if your music was famous in another country and you didn’t even know it.”
There are a lot of Facebook groups available for music promotion and networking. The difference between a Facebook Fan Page and a Facebook Group is that the Fan Page is geared to your music only, while a Group attracts a large number of people into the same type of music.
One of the most important things you can do as an artist is to have your own domain name. Even if it simply forwards to a WordPress site in which you make a basic layout with sections on where to buy your music, how to book you, videos, and updates. If you ever move your page it is much easier to bring your fans with you if they don’t have to type or remember a new address. It is also easier to remember and type something like jefkearns.com as opposed to jefkearns.wordpress.com
If you not technologically adept enough to create a simple layout as mentioned above have a friend do it.
Now onto what this article is about: how to increase traffic and interest in your website through YouTube.
I recently posted a cover of Lil Wayne’s track Blunt Blowin’. I got a fair number of hits on it … nearly 2000 in one week. I am going to take a moment to give some insight into how that was accomplished.
A lot of it is picking a song that is fairly new and popular. That being said, there are covers of this song on YouTube that took 2 months to reach 2000 views, some have less than 400 views in two weeks, some only 36 views in a week.
On the other end there are covers of it that there are the ones that blow up, and you’re always left wondering why.
I had a bad experience getting my first album mastered. I did a few things correctly but made a few mistakes that could have prevented me wasting a thousand dollars having to get it mastered again by someone else. I’m not saying I chose a bad engineer in the first place, I just didn’t pick the one who was right for my music.
With this blog entry I am going to get intowhat mastering is and does, how to prepare your track for mastering, and how to pick the right mastering engineer.