Using Social Networking to Promote Your Music

It’s been a long while coming, but I am finally getting into the social network thing, if only to promote myself and my music. About 6 months ago I registered for MySpace and Facebook but I didn’t really do much with the pages. So with the launch of ‘Mikooshka’ and the CDR in March, I deleted old versions and started anew. As you may have noticed, if you surf the web a lot, Web 2.0 is run-amok with social networking sites. Yes, there’s Facebook and MySpace, but there’s also a bunch that crossover into music and entertainment promotion too – and they include: imeem, linkedin, last.fm, garageband, ilike and vimeo.

I have just a couple comments on all this, especially as it goes toward promoting your music. If you want to prevent fraud then you might register your artist name/brand/self at all of the above. Beware that Facebook (for the ‘pages’ business section) is making people ‘prove’ their identities before allowing registration – I sent my driver’s license and was approved within a day or two. Linkedin is a more about professional networking than Facebook and charges to make contacts. Facebook has a very classy looking yet conservative interface (only problem is the really useless number string in the URL – see below). Imeem looks like a good place to promote your stuff, and surprisingly for an ‘Apple product’, Garageband is not much to look at and seems to be cluttered with poor design, and ominous rules and warnings. But no need to worry, because MySpace is king, and you can handily post your songs there, and videos via embedding from YouTube or the closest kin – MySpaceTV. Speaking of video, a new option for posting, especially for professionals or serious/aspriring video or filmmakers, is a site called Vimeo.

Don’t forget though to create your own website! You can customize a MySpace page but it’s still got ads and limitations. At your own site, you can do whatever you please and be ‘master of your domain.’

For the record:

mikooshka.com
myspace.com/mikooshka
imeem.com/mikooshka
facebook.com/pages/Mikooshka/10994758814

Interesting reading about Facebook and their ‘pages’:
http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/2007/12/facebook-pages-deletions.html

Coming soon: How to sell your product – looking at CD Baby, IndiePool, Tunecore and other indie artist sales tools.

graphic credit: http://www.davidrivier.com/images/networks.png

Explore posts in the same categories: music promotion, networking