Our weekly ImprovFriday output is averaging around 50 pieces per week and roughly 20 participants. This is a huge outpouring of creativity each week and it is good to see that many IF members have assembled CD collections of their best ImprovFriday pieces. What should we expect from these CDs and how can we get the most out of our efforts? I thought I'd share a few of the things I've done, what they cost and what has resulted so far. Others can add to the discussion so we can all benefit.

Looking Good

I recently read a very useful article “Practical Advice for the Online Musician” here   

http://www.blog.lowercasenoises.com/2011/04/practical-advice-for-online-musicians/

Perhaps you have seen it also. This article describes a few simple things that you can do to look good on the Internet – I've done most of them and have been very pleased with the results.

First thing – get your own domain name. This used to be a mystical process involving lots of money and organizations like 'Go Daddy', but I simply registered through Wordpress where I host my website. This cost $17 per year, took maybe 10 minutes - and now I have my own domain name: http://www.venturacontemporary.com. I really like Wordpress – it is easy to use and it looks good with the simple templates. I can have 5 Gbytes of MP3 or pdf files on it and that only costs $20 per year. So for less than $40/year my website, music, scores and domain name are all in the same place.

Not only that, Wordpress lets you assign subdomains. I also have a Bandcamp site but the URL is www.music.venturacontemporary.com I link to this from my website home page and the CD download area (actually Bandcamp) looks like it is part of my site. The Bandcamp part is still free and they have a fairly straightforward way to add your subdomain name, all at no charge.

I also have email addresses that use my domain name – and it is all hosted seamlessly by gmail. I can have multiple email addresses: info@venturacontemporary, paulmuller@venturacontemporary.com, etc and it is all free. I can access these addresses on-line anywhere through gmail.com and it is very easy to set up.

Detailed instructions for doing all of this are in “Practical Advice for Online Musicians.”

Reaching Out -

One way to get your music noticed is to send your CD to radio stations for airplay. This requires some research because there are a lot of stations out there and only a handful that would be likely to play music from ImprovFriday. One shortcut I used was to follow the Facebook page of Electroshock records (JC Combs' label for "Safe Passage" headed byArtemiy Artemiev) – they post the station and the program where one of their artists was played. I collected about a dozen different programs that would be likely prospects for my music.

The thing about radio stations is that you have to send an actual hardcopy CD directly to the program host. So you have to do some research to dig out the street address for the person to whom you want to send a CD, and this is not always the address of the radio station itself. Plus, you have to generate a physical CD and mail it. There is some debate on this – you could make up a demo CD on your PC burner (I use lightscribe and they actually look pretty good) OR you could make up CDs with full color artwork, inserts and jewel cases. A lot of program hosts don't care as long as all the information is right on the disk itself. But it turns out you can send a good-looking CD for not a lot of money.

I have used Kunaki (http://www,kunaki.com) and this is a great value. You can create a full-color CD with inserts and jewel case for less than $2 each. Of course there are mailing costs, but let's say I want to create 25 CDs for a promotional mailing to radio stations and reviewers – the Kunaki cost for all of them is $45.35 delivered to my home. This includes the CD with my tracks burned in, full color artwork on the CD, full color 2-panel insert, cellophane wrapping and a plastic jewel case. Looks just like you bought it at the record shop.

Of course sending the CDs out to the individual program hosts is a separate cost and I use a padded mailer (about $1.25 each) and include a handwritten note – I also remove the cellophane wrapper from the jewel case. Postage to anywhere in the US is $1.74.

So if we add all this up, you should be able to put 25 review copies of your good-looking CD into the hands of 25 radio program hosts for about $4.80 each – or about $120 total.

I did this (with about a dozen copies) of my 'Direction' CD earlier this year and had 4 tracks played by 4 different stations – a pretty good ratio.

Keeping Track -

When you are sending out a dozen or two promotional CDs there is going to be a lot of communication.  It is a good idea to send an email to the program host to inquire about sending a CD, and then follow up to be sure the CD has been received.  I've found most radio hosts are pretty responsive - even though they must be deluged with promotional materials. 

Anyway, I use www.FreeCRM.com to keep track of all this.  FreeCRM means free Customer Relationship Management, and it is for sales people so they can keep track of who they called, quoted, etc.  There is a LOT of stuff FreeCRM can do, but I use it just for the basics - name, address, email etc.  I enter each person that I send material to into FreeCRM - that way I can put the date I sent out a CD, and know when to send a followup email, a thank you if I get airplay, etc.  Any time I contact or am contacted - it goes into FreeCRM.   It works much better than trying to keep track of everything by spreadsheet and it is all on-line for free. 

Social Networking -

The conventional wisdom is that it is a good idea to have a Facebook page and Twitter feed for your net label. I'll probably do that on my next release. Also, if you have a MySpace page, delete it! MySpace is so 2009...

Some Good Examples -

I've mentioned Electroshock Records – they do a really good job with promotion. I also really like the Three Legs Duck label http://threelegsduck.bandcamp.com/ – Jerome's artwork is very attractive, his website is visually appealing and he has had some of his tracks played on radio stations in France. Steve Layton's Niwo label is another good-looking site and I'm sure there are more IF members who can report success. Paul Bailey recently was interviewed on KUCI about his new CD 'Life's Too Short'. His promotional kit included a CD and booklet with they lyrics in the form of a comic strip – a very creative idea.

So what have you tried? What sites do you like? Let us know with comments to this post!