Ian and I just came back from a fabulous time in Austin, TX.  We were there for the SXSW Music Conference.  Our "Invasion of the Go Girls" showcase was a success, we met a lot of new folks, listened to what is happening in the music industry today, and, most of all, we soaked up the creative vibes swirling around down there. 

This leads me to my next topic, which is our new "Blog Songs" project.  I’m going to start posting new songs to my blog as we write them, and you get to hear them fresh from the oven!  There’s a certain freshness and vitality to a song right after it’s been created, and we want to share that with you. 

We’d also love to get your feedback and ideas on our songs.  Since these are "first drafts," there will be room for each of them to grow and develop.  Why have an audience only sit back and listen when they can be personally involved?  I am particularly excited about this project since songwriting is one of my most favorite parts of this whole music thing.  I hope some of that excitement rubs off on you through Blog Songs.  Our first posting will go up in the next few weeks, and more will follow every few weeks after that.  This will be an ongoing labor of love, and I hope you’ll join us.

Vanessa

House concerts are one of the most important trends in live music. They allow fans to see and hear great artists up close, and these artists get to perform for attentive and appreciative fans, away from the distractions that most music venues attract.  They can be held in small homes and large homes, indoors or outdoors, and the host gets to set the tone for the evening.  We just played our first house concert a couple weeks ago and found it to be one of the best concerts we done!

Please visit http://concertsinyourhome.com to discover this amazing way to see live music. (You might also consider booking us for a live concert of your own. :)

Slim has been documenting the Bay Area open mic scene through video and interviews.  It's a fascinating project.  He very recently interviewed Eric Golub, our viola player.  Check it out at http://www.theopenmic.net/interviews/showtopic.php?topic_id=5

I may be up for an interview too soon.  Keep checking back.  Speaking of open mics, we've been asked to be a "featured act" at McGrath's in Alameda.  I'll give you the date as soon as I have it.  We've asked Carl Weingarten to sit in with us - very exciting!

Musings from the Backing Band – Volume 2

Hi, this is Ian again.  On my last blog post, I talked about how www.Pandora.com was providing an amazing opportunity for both indie artists and for listeners, being a radio station that truly is for the people, connecting the artist directly to the listener who wants to hear that artist.

Today I want to talk about an amazing promotional tool from www.Last.fm.  Where Pandora is radio for the people, one could say that Last.fm is radio of the people (more on this later…)

There are many cool things about Last.fm, but one in particular for the indie artist is the playlist widget.  Because a picture is worth a 1,000 words (and an interactive picture possibly even more so), before I dive into this cool tool, let me show you the Vanessa Van Spall "Cotton-Poly Blend" playlist widget:

What you have here is our entire album that you can listen to (stream) on-line, for free.  It is embeddable .html code, which means that this widget can be put anywhere.  (I've got it on my MySpace page, Vanessa has it in hers, our produce Atma Anur has it on his, and it's also the player on our band's music page.)

This player will allow users to listen to your music (without letting them download it for free) wherever you want to post the widget.  If your e-mails to your fans allow you to embed .html in the e-mail, you can have this player in your e-mails, so they can listen to your music when they open up the e-mail.  How cool is that?!!

When e-mailing potential new fans or MySpace friends about shows (or posting MySpace bulletins), your music is right there for them to listen to.  And also note that in the bottom right of the player there is a little box with an arrow – This launches the player in its own pop-up window, so listeners can continue internet browsing without interrupting the music (that's a feature you'll probably want to include in your announcements about the widget).

So, how do you get one of these?

1)      Head over to the Last.fm Music Manager page and set up your own label and then set up yourself as an artist on the label (note: you must own all the rights to your recordings to do this).

 

2)      Once this is all set up, you upload your music, and under the "Manage Your Catalogue" option, select "Playlists" and build your playlist.

 

In building your playlist, you can include as much or as little music as you want.  Just because you uploaded 10 songs, you don't need to have all 10 in the playlist (we chose to include all 12 from our album).  Also note that for specific songs, independent of this playlist, you can set certain songs to stream at full length or be a free download from your artist page (our is here) You will note that while our full album is available in the playlist widget, only a handful can be streamed in full from the artist page and that we offer a free download of only two songs.  So you have a lot of control over your content.

 

3)      Once you've built your playlist, you can view that playlist from your label page (again, here is ours).  Click on the little cassette tape icon for the desired playlist and it will expand.

 

4)      Below the player you will see a drop-down menu that says "Embed/add this" and click your choice.  Choosing the "Embed anywhere else" will show you the code you can paste into MySpace, e-mails, your band's homepage, etc so the play will show there.

 

And there you have your playlist widget!

So, earlier I mentioned that where Pandora is radio for the people, one could say that Last.fm is radio of the people.  If you haven't explored Last.fm yet, I encourage you to do so.  Where Pandora uses its Music Genome Project to suggest artists to listeners, Last.fm uses the Wisdom of Crowds to determine artist similarities.  It has a service called "scrobbling" which lets users track all the music they listen to.  Last.fm then aggregates all that information for all users and sees which artists are listened to in common amongst the most users.  Last.fm will then create recommendations to users to discover new music based this data.

So where does the playlist widget factor into this?  On top of giving you as the indie artist the ability to easily, safely and conveniently get your music in front of existing, new and potential fans, you can encourage them to go check out Last.fm.  If they are listening to your music, Last.fm will start keeping statistics on your music and associating it with other artists, and then start organically getting your music in front of new listeners.

It's a new way to have Word of Mouth Marketing, one of the most effective types of marketing today.

So what are you waiting for?  Go build your own Last.fm playlist widget and start getting your music heard!

This is just a note to let you know that our latest news, reviews and interviews can always be found at VanessaVanSpall.com/news.

Check out my recent interview with Brian Lush of Rockwired.com.

Thanks!

We're still pretty fresh from recording our full-length album, "Cotton-Poly Blend." Lately we've been traveling the Bay Area open mic ciruit in between booking larger paid shows. The open mics have been so much fun! I can't speak for other open mics in other parts of the country. Around here, they're pretty friendly and welcoming. Here's my top reasons for recommending open mics. What is your opinion of open mics?

they require very minimal planning

people are generally there to actually listen and be listened to

you meet some great musicians and some really interesting people

you can hear music in a very raw and pure state

you might get inspired

you don't have the pressure of bringing in a big draw

you don't have to advertize your butt off

you don't have to worry about hiring musicians

you become part of a community for just one night or longer if you go back

the setting is intimate

it's good practice and prepares you for many of the little things that go awry during a paid show

it's high pressure in terms of performing in front of your peers but low pressure compared to being booked at a club

it can make you a better listener

you might make a new fan

you might become a fan

you might even make a new friend

you might get some free video footage of your performance if someone like, Slim, happens to be there like he was at Freight and Salvage last Tuesday!  Check it out: Palm of Your Hand, After the Fall, The Open Mic Documetary.  Thanks, Slim!!