SONG CONTEST BLOG

from: Evan Field
to: Lior Shamir
date: Thu, Sep 30, 2010 at 1:12 AM
subject: THANK YOU from Honor By August!

Lior,

On behalf of the band I just wanted to thank you again — and emphatically — for everything that We Are Listening and Tinderbox have done for us.

As I mentioned to Jon, the band has been extremely excited about all of the success at radio and the licensing potential from the 10 show agreements Jon was able to secure for us.

We can’t thank everyone at Tinderbox enough for all of the great work and results they’ve achieved for Honor By August and, as Jon has been quick to point out, we have you to thank for making it all possible.

We hope to be able to maintain a relationship with you both moving forward and hope to be able to share success stories that we can attribute to your work and investment in the band.

As I said to Jon, if there’s anything we can do, like provide a quote or blurb from the band, please let us know and we’d of course be happy to provide anything that might be helpful. We’ve already raved about this experience to many of the bands we cross paths with on the road and will certainly continue to do so.

Cheers and thanks again,

Evan,
Honor By August

::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 >>

While next-generation music pros are angling for music 2.0 success stories and peddling self-promotion concepts to upstart artists, Bruce Warila of musicXray wants us all to take a breather, not go overboard and lose our shorts.  Bruce colourfully describes the myriad of current industry obstacles and unveils a step-by-step coup d’état.  I particularly enjoyed this analogy, perhaps one of Bruce’s softer moments:

“Genres are coastlines, niches within genres are beachfront properties, and standalone artists are rocks or grains of sand.  Sticking with the metaphor: coastlines and beachfront properties are compelling, interesting and entertaining; rocks and sand are things that get stuck in your shorts and sandals.”

Read the entire onslaught.

Brian Hazard of the Music Think Tank published a comprehensive post addressing the pay-for-play model that online streaming playlist service, Jango, adopted as part of its monetization strategy, dispelling the analogy to terrestrial radio payola and drawing references to mainstream advertising mediums.  In March, I promoted Jango Airplay and touched on the controversial issues Brian addresses in his piece but his first-hand experience and engaging write-up of the music dotcom serves the topic more justice: Is Jango Payola?

Related Posts
Grooveshark Artists
Spotify
Free Music Archive

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.

Related Post: SeeqPod