I met up with Soundcloud’s UK manager, Dave Haynes earlier today. He was celebrating a venture capital investment of 2.5 million euros, announced today.
I talked to him about how independent music can make the most of the service.
After receiving a bit of encouragement (let’s not call it nagging) from a bunch of musicians who love the SoundCloud service, I’ve added a Dropbox to my sidebar. There it is, just under the Search bar. That way, if you want to send me one of your songs, you can just click it, upload – and I’ll get it in my Soundcloud Inbox.
I quite like the service – even though you can only upload 5 tracks a month without paying. It’s useful for promo-ing, for sharing tracks with people you’re working with and also for putting songs on your own site (though Bandcamp does that one better).
Here’s an example.
Skoggins is a directory site that allows bands to list for free, and lets people search for live performers for events in their area. It seems a fairly straightforward idea.
Your thoughts? Is this a solution for events bookings? Something to add to your arsenal? Worth the bother of registering? Had a booking through them? Let us know in the comments.
Two days ago, this would have been way down on my list, but while it’s fresh on my mind I thought I’d mention it: you should be on Facebook.
The good news is that you’re probably already on Facebook. Statistically speaking, you’re likely to have been bombarded with invitations from friends and, about a year ago, signed up. Since then, you’ll have been bitten by werewolves, compared, sold, invited and friended so often that you’ve either succumbed to it entirely and it wastes almost as many hours of your life as television used to when you were at high school – or, like me, you’re kind of over it and only go there reluctantly from time to time.
But Facebook is a little different for you now. You’re someone who has fans and customers, so you need something more than just a profile. You’re someone who could make use of Facebook Pages.
Image by Photog Phillip
The website, as you may notice, is not looking its usual self. I’ve been talking about a site overhaul for months now, and it’s time I got to work on it.
So this weekend, I’m going to give it a go. I’ve upgraded to the latest version of WordPress, I have a few ideas about what I’m going to do with the site – and I just kind of liked this template.
So… please excuse the mess and the missing navigation. There’s no easy way to do this without a bit of disruption to normal service.
I’ve been doing a bit of consultancy with independent labels and new online music startups recently. Very few of them can pay me – and actually, that’s fine.
Generally speaking, I’ve done my consultancy on a day rate, on a half day rate, and (in exceptional circumstances) for a bite of lunch and the train fare to London / Oxford / Manchester or wherever.
There are, of course, friends I give advice to back in Birmingham and also here in New Zealand (where I’ve just arrived for a few weeks of meetings, conferences and relaxation) for the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of something cold.
I do consultations in person and via Skype video hookup, though I vastly prefer the former.
But the cashflow thing is a real issue. There are people who have told me they read the blog, but won’t ask for me to come and spend the day with them sounding out ideas, even though they believe this would help focus, strategise and improve the eventual profitability of their online music business – simply because there is no budget whatsoever.
So I’ll put my (lack of) money where my mouth is: if you’re an independent artist, label or online startup, and would like my focused attention over an extended period of time with on-call advice, pointed questions and a sounding board thrown into the mix – and you don’t have any money to pay me, then I’ll cut you a deal.