SONG CONTEST BLOG

::1:: How To Increase Your Fan Base

Jango’s Basic Geo-Targeting feature allows you to hone in on those regions where Jango listeners love your music most.  If you’ve already run a Jango Airplay campaign, simply check your Geographic Reports in your dashboard for this data.  Then, select the cities and states where you have the strongest following before you run your next campaign.  Not only will you turn passive listeners into loyal fans, you will also establish a local presence, leading to more requests for regional showcases and festival appearances.  And the best part… Basic Geo-Targeting is FREE!

::2:: How To Get Free Jango Airplay Credit

Every Jango Airplay artist has a PopScore.  Each week, artists with the highest PopScores receive free credit.  The PopScore reveals how well your music is resonating with Jango listeners based on your campaign targeting. The more precise your targeting, the higher your PopScore.  Obviously, if you are a Scandinavian Black Metal band targeting Dolly Parton fans, your PopScore will be gasping for air, so make sure you target the artists whose fans are most likely to identify with your music.  Remember, free credit means more plays.  And more plays equals more fans.

::3:: How To Get A Live Showcase

Top Jango PopScore artists get booked at the Wakarusa Festival, The Moondance Jam, The Viper Room in LA and more.  If you climb the PopScore charts, you might find yourself juggling phone calls and trying to decide which event is best for your band.

::4:: How To Make A Lasting Impression

Want to get listener attention, lightning fast?  Make an audio intro and attach it to the front of your song before uploading the MP3 to Jango Airplay.  A quick message, five seconds or less, telling the listener who you are and what they’re about to hear.  This is a simple way for you and your music to get cemented in the listener’s memory.

::5:: How To Rise Above The Noise

For artists looking for additional promotion, Jango Airplay offers robust packages though ‘Airplay PRO’.  These promotions include banner ads on Jango.com as well as customized overlay ad units that appear every time your song plays.  Give away an MP3, promote an album or tour; even run a contest, bouncing the listener directly to your own website.  Here’s a 60 second video demo of how the overlay ad units are served:

In addition, you can get a banner placed in Jango’s listener newsletter, sent to over 3 Million registered users each week.  For more info on these packages email: airplay-premium@jango.com

Comment on this post >>

You’re probably not having any luck getting your songs on the radio, right?

That’s because terrestrial radio doesn’t want you.

You see, record labels have a full staff of professional radio pluggers whose full-time job is to pitch their clients’ record catalog to station managers, playlist programmers, DJs and program producers.

They are insiders − they know all the politics and all the rules.  Their rolodexes are packed with every name, number and email in the industry.

So how are you supposed to compete?

Almost 70 million Americans tune into online radio each month.  Overall listenership exploded by more than a third last year alone.  Online radio has become the single most powerful source of music discovery, which is why up-and-coming artists are falling over themselves to land even a few minutes of airplay on music services such as Jango.

Share your thoughts >>

Music discovery and playlist service, Grooveshark, was selected as one of ten winners in CNET’s 2009 Webware 100 in the “Audio & Music” category, sharing the spotlight with the formidable usual suspects including iTunes, AmazonMP3, and Pandora.  This is indeed a privilege for the Floridian upstart which triumphed over CD Baby, iLike, Sellaband, Jango, and other well publicized and funded music dotcoms.  Nearly 630,000 votes were cast this year.

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On demand music streaming service, Spotify, has been on my radar since the company announced a distribution deal with CD Baby in the first week of February.  CD Baby, the leading force in independent music retail and digital music distribution, represents more than 175,000 artists which account for over one million tracks, all of which are now available through Spotify’s lightweight music streaming application.  This licensing deal marks the ‘long-tail’ trend in music availability and consumption, and celebrates the access independent artists have today to mass audiences through pioneering music services, many of which had treated indie talent as nothing more than an afterthought after securing major label catalogues.  Under the aphorism of “access not ownership”, the Luxemburg-based company has been growing exponentially since its €15.3m venture capital injection in October 2008 and, in turn, joining an elite group of legal music experience providers such as Pandora, Last.fm, TheSixtyOne, and others, which have found success in catering to music consumers through a balanced and worldly music library whilst reserving significant real-estate for up and coming artists: a pop-culture and grassroots music mix that appears to be paving the way for a new industry.  A spot in Spotify’s limelight is not yet available directly for small acts and labels but CD Baby has certainly lowered the barrier of entry.  Thank you Derek or, rather, Disc Makers for making this possible…

Related Post: Jango AirPlay

Online streaming radio and music tastemaker, Jango, has launched a somewhat controversial artist promotion programme called Jango Airplay.  Essentially a pay-to-play scheme [and reminiscent of terrestrial radio “payola” which has been illegal since the fifties], Jango Airplay provides artists and their agents a direct means of plugging their songs to Jango’s listener base of 6 million for a fee.  Much like the StumbleUpon advertising initiative, displaying a sponsored web page for every nine unsponsored web-pages, the promotional value of this scheme is not absolute: “If you get 50 positive ratings, your song starts playing for free in general rotation on Jango. If your song continues to get good ratings, it will be played more and more often and in more and more stations.”  For $30, Jango Airplay offers 1000 plays, each track linked to its distributor (i.e. Amazon, iTune).

Pay-to-play may be an unpopular paradigm among musicians but this is actually an unprecedented opportunity for artists and labels to reach a new audience and guarantee some rotation.  For not much more than pocket change, bootstrapped musicians can gain some insight on who is most likely to listen to them, rate them up, and perhaps even purchase something.  Assuming that Jango Airplay plugs sponsored tracks appropriately, this is a truly awesome marketing platform for the music industry.

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