Winters | Solveig Whittle

How Three Women Got Together To Book Their Own SXSW Gig

March 18, 2015 2 Comments

Since I’m not attending SXSW myself this year, I thought I’d bring you a real life, in the trenches, on the road, slice of life post about three female artists I met through Madalyn Sklar’s GoGirlsElite and #ggchat. I’ve met two of them In Real Life, and have watched two of them perform on ConcertWindow – which feels almost like IRL I’ve read their blog posts and listened to their music, and they are all such positive and energetic women, doing all the right things to market themselves in this crowded place we call indie music.

Meet Rorie Kelly, Mary Bue and Alex Winters. [Full disclosure, Mary Bue is a music marketing client of mine, but Rorie and Alex are not. All three women are also being represented by my friend Stacey Sherman of RSP Entertainment Marketing while they are at SXSW.]

These three talented musicians got together (completely unbeknownst to me) and booked themselves an unofficial showcase gig tomorrow, Thursday March 19, 2015, at 8 PM at the Waterloo Ice House in South Park Meadows.

I love this story because:

It’s a bunch of women getting together to make their own gig happen – community, not competition!
It’s social media at its best – helping people meet their business goals. Rorie, Mary and Alex met and got to know each other via the GoGirlsMusic network, which is a great virtual networking tool. The public Thursday Twitter chats at the hashtag #ggchat at 3 and 9 PM EST are well-attended by both male and female indie musicians and are always lively and informative. You’ll note below that they have some mutual male musician friends as well who are also frequent participants in the #ggchat Twitter chat, and helped encourage this group gig at SXSW.
They all have great stories in addition to great music. I know some good PR will come from this for some deserving indie artists just trying to get heard above all the SXSW noise.

On to the interview.

Marketing, Music, Social Media, Thoughts

12 Reasons We Want You To Stop DMing Us

August 23, 2014 1 Comment

I recently participated in a group discussion with Christine Infanger (@norabarnacle) and a few other music industry people about musicians who send automated Direct Messages (DMs) on Twitter when someone follows them.

The result was a light-hearted compilation of all the reasons we all hate it when musicians Direct-Message us. It was posted on the CD Baby DIY Musician Blog, and I thought you might want to read it if you haven’t already. There’s some good advice here!

I cannot restate this enough- Do Not send bot/automated DM's. It's spam, everyone ignores them, & it's annoying. Trust me, musicians.

— Christine Infanger (@norabarnacle) July 29, 2014

It began innocently enough; a tweet was sent which read “I cannot restate this enough- Do Not send bot/automated DM’s. It’s spam, everyone ignores them, & it’s annoying. Trust me, musicians.” From there, an onslaught of musicians and others involved in the industry in various capacities got to retweeting, favoriting, and corresponding.

This innocuous tweet touched on a subject which seems to have been gnawing its way to the top of many pet peeve lists as artists are becoming further removed from personal engagement and replacing it with automated direct messages.

What transpired was a fascinating two day conversation amongst a group of people all very active in the music industry and all very knowledgable about social media and the common sense behind using social media to interact. The conversation then necessitated more than 140 characters and moved to email where the group decided to compile a list of what to do, and perhaps more importantly, what not to do when sending direct messages on Twitter. [Read more here…]

Interviews, Marketing, Music

Concert Window 101: Elegant Live Performance Streaming

May 4, 2014 14 Comments

I’ve written about the platforms StageIt and YouNow, where indie artists can stream a live music performance and even make money doing so. Concert Window was launched in 2011 by Harvard grads and musicians Dan Gurney and Forrest O’Connor to provide the same service. Still running a bit under the radar because they’ve only been live for about 9 months, Concert Window is gaining praise and growing quickly through word of mouth buzz in the indie musician community.

Last week, I attended a streaming performance on Concert Window by Austin singer-songwriter Alex Winters. The event security was a little strict but that’s okay, it went so well that I thought it would be interesting to interview Alex about her experience and try setting up my own artist profile.

Alex and I met through GoGirlsMusic, and while she was here in Seattle recently, she mentioned she was about to do her first Concert Window performance. I signed up on the website ahead of time as a viewer so I could tune in. One of the things I noticed right away was that I could watch Alex’s performance on my iPhone while away from my desktop. I think this is a smart feature, and no doubt increases audience views significantly. Mobile is where it is at.

After a few minor glitches on both her end (Alex’s PRO TIP: “When you’re ready to broadcast, hit the BROADCAST button!”) and on my end (my AT&T phone signal was weak at first), I was able to enjoy her concert on my earbuds with no problem. Note that all the viewer features of the desktop version are not there on mobile, such as chat and tipping.

This post has three parts. First, an interview with Alex about her experience with Concert Window . Second, my walkthrough of setting up an artist profile and a performance on Concert Window. Last, I give my assessment of some of the features that make the Concert Window platform stand out.

Marketing, Music, Thoughts

Walking The Dog Episode 6: ConcertWindow and Facebook (Again)

May 2, 2014 No Comments

Every Friday morning, I walk my dog and record a podcast about music, music marketing and whatever is on my mind that week.

In this week’s 19 minute episode, I talk about two things:

Concert Window, a streaming performance platform for musicians much like StageIt, which I reviewed a number of months ago, and
tips and tricks from Kim Garst for using Facebook to promote your music – without paying for advertising.

Look for a more in-depth review of Concert Window, including an interview with musician and songwriter Alex Winters, in a later longer blog post form on my website. In today’s podcast, I cover an overview of what Concert Windows is and a few of the features that stand out to me to differentiate Concert Window from StageIt.

The majority of today’s podcast discussion comes from a free ebook available from social media consultant, Kim Garst of Boom Social, entitled “9 Ingredients For Dominating Facebook’s News Feed… Without Giving Them a Penny… Shhhh”. I love Kim’s blog posts about Facebook marketing. She does research and shows examples of her experiments with her own Facebook page, and she also works with clients, so she focuses on real life data and situations.

Frankly, there is also something perverse in me that enjoys the idea of sharing Kim’s tips on using Facebook WITHOUT paying for advertising. Plus, the meta-lesson here is that or order for you to download her ebook, her landing page is, well…. on Facebook! She’s using her own marketing principles to drive traffic to her Facebook page for free. Smart.

In last week’s podcast, I highlighted an article from Social Media Today about why it may be smart to ignore Facebook as part of your social media strategy, or at least why you should only consider it as part of your integrated marketing plan for your music.

As a social media marketer, I remain professionally ambivalent about Facebook, to say the least. I enjoy using it personally, but I hate it as a marketer, and I don’t respect the way the company treats its customers. And it also scares me a bit how much personal data Facebook collects online.

[Tweet “”I remain professionally ambivalent about Facebook””]

I cannot, however, in good conscience, suggest to musicians that they completely ignore Facebook as a marketing tool. However, with

1.26 billion users worldwide
757 active daily users
138 million active daily users in the US alone

you can’t ignore the fact that

[Tweet “Facebook is the dominant social media platform on the planet,”]

Listen to my podcast to hear Kim’s 9 tips and tricks for maximizing engagement with your Facebook fans and see how you can make the most of Facebook to market your music – without paying for advertising.