Labels are interested in one thing- money. Like it or not, you are a commodity. This also means that you are a brand and you are responsible for building your brand.
It has never been easier for a start up band to attract enough attention to land a sweet record deal. You are not going to get discovered in a club. These days, you will get discovered on the web. The good news is that now you have the power to control your destiny.
Record Deal vs. Distribution Deal
Before we discuss how to land a record deal, it is important that you understand what your really want from the record label. With a record deal, you will give up the rights to your music and you will not receive any royalties. What you want to aim for is a distribution deal where you own most of your own publishing rights and make money with your music even while you are not working (residual income from royalties). In today’s world, where you can easily produce your own record, there is not a good reason to sign anything but a distribution deal, so do not get sucked in by a slick industry suit.
Attract the labels to you.
Record labels want to make money! “Looking for talent” is suit code for “looking for money”. Your band and your music are a commodity. You are the product. If you are selling a lot of music and getting tons of people to play your music online then the record deal is guaranteed to happen. You do not even have to sell music. Just get it played. Web site plays are the equivalent of radio spins.
Sell your music online.
You should have some of your music for sale on your web site and MySpace page. However, the best way to sell your music is to open an account with CDBaby because they do all of the work. And, with partnerships like GarageBand.com, your music will also get some exposure. CDBaby gives you an advantage because they partner with over 50 online music retailers including the big ones like iTunes so that you do not have to approach every online music retailer that is willing to work with unsigned bands.
Sell your music. Market your music. Get it out there. Get it played. Get people to share it. Record labels are attracted to independent bands that sell a lot of music prior to signing and bands that get a lot of internet plays and radio spins. The more you have the more money you are worth to a label.
Know where you need to be online.
Knowing where the fans are hanging out and where the record label suits are trolling for new talent (money) is a constant effort of keeping in close contact with your fan base and the fan base of similar bands. You need to have a presence where your fans are. At minimum to promote your band online and to promote your music online, independent recording artists must have their own web site (on your own domain), a MySpace page, a Facebook page, a Soundclick page, a YouTube page, and a Twitter (trust me on this one!).
Make sure you link all of your pages together. This is what will increase your rankings with the search engines. Also, if you are promoting other bands or other musician’s resources on your web site and blog, make sure you link to them as well. The more links you have, the more you will get picked up by the search engines.
Learn and implement Search Engine Optimization strategies.
Online music marketing is all about getting found. Getting found is all about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). For the independent band and artist, your ability to master search engine optimization is what will separate you from the rest of the fledgling bands out there and get you found by your fans and the record label suits.
Mastering Search Engine Optimization is as critical to your success as mastering songwriting and your sound. SEO is how people will hear that brilliant sound you have created.
Unless you have the bank to plaster your band’s name all over TV, magazines and billboards (and if you do, then you don’t need a record label), you must make it your number one priority to get your name to the top of those Yahoo! and Google searches so people can find you. It is imperative that you make it easy for people to find you.
People have short attention spans. Do you really think your fans are going to go digging through thousands of MySpace pages trying to track you down? Do you think the record label suits will? Nope.
First, you need to have a cool web site at your OWN domain (www.bandname.com) and all of the previously mentioned social networking pages. You also want to create a blog (try WordPress, www.wordpress.com or BlogSpot, www.blogger.com).
The key to making this work is to link all of these pages together. This means you need to place a link to each page on each page so that visitors can easily hop around. The main reason for doing this is not for the convenience of your visitors. This is called back linking and this is one of the primary things that is going to bump you in the search engine results (SERPS).
Another critical key to SEO and getting that high Google ranking is to make sure your Meta tags, title, and description are clear. And make sure you include as many relevant keywords as possible in your Meta tags. These If you are not sure, go to your web site and click View>>Source and read the source code to see if your Meta tags are done properly. The Google Gods will be less likely to index your pages if you do not give their spiders and bots the tags.
Also, you want to trade links as much as possible. Approach other bands, local clubs, records stores, bars, and restaurants, etc. and offer to trade links. This is the equivalent to putting up fliers like we did in the 1990’s. The more links you have on your web site and the more frequently you update your content the more the search engines will index you and the higher you will appear.
These are just the basics of SEO. Continue to research and study it because it is constantly evolving as search engines get more and more specific and user friendly.
Record label suits pay attention to your web traffic.
One of the biggest secrets to attracting a record label is to understand that they view the number of visits to your web site and your MySpace as one of the most important factors in deciding whether to offer you a distribution deal. They look for what bands are getting the most visits on MySpace, Facebook and YouTube. They are paying close attention to how many plays your music is getting.
Do not attempt to wag this dog by visiting your own MySpace 1000 times a day to get your plays up. They check IP addresses anyway, so this is a waste of time. Record labels are looking for bands and artists who are getting hits and plays from all over the world, not from your house (and your mother’s house!).
The bottom line is to get your band out there.
Attracting a record label today is all about getting popular on the Internet and creating a viral underground fan base. With the tools available to you, this has never been easier. Do this right and you could have your distribution deal from a record label literally in a month or so.
You band being in the right place at the right time still counts. The right place is online and the right time to be there is now. But you must keep up with what is going on because you still need to be in the virtual right place at the right time and to constantly be easy to be seen and heard.
