1 – Ask Questions

2 – Post Games and Trivia

3 – Interact with Fan Engagement

4 – Incorporate Wall Sapplets (such as coupons and polls)

5 – Incorporate Relevant Photos

6 – Relate to Current Events

7 – Incorporate Videos

8 – Post Content for Time-Sensitive Campaigns

9 – Include Links within Posts

10 – Be Explicit in Your Posts

Hypebot Challenge: 2000 Things to Generate 20,000 Fans.

Waaaay back in the 20th century, (seems so long ago) you could rely on the A&R department to promote your material. Nowadays, you have to do everything yourself. You need to already have some success in building a loyal following in order for “majors” and distribution companies to invest in your product. SOoooo… that means we need new, innovative ways to bring in these endangered specimens called “music fans” so they can see the light HALLELUJAH!

If you didn’t know, my new day ‘job’ and current educational alignment fall into my Geek Ish – design. I tried, to no avail, to find satisfactory dimensions for pressing up CDs. I had the general idea and got them close enough (Planet Zoron and Umbravo and Lil 850) but now that we’re Official and stuff I have more to take into consideration!

In comes cdbaby.

Long story short, I’ve gotten to know them quite well since the release of Life, Cameras, Action and something I stumbled on – rather belatedly – was this awesomeness. Thank you, cdbaby, for making my job a lil easier!!

Most everything has now been siphoned off into its proper home throughout the Syndicate (there’s way to much to ‘fit’ into this little box) but there was an unknown trade-off in the upgrade. I lost all my embeds, which represented about 90 percent of my content.

Given there’s about to be a shift in the whole video presentation thing anyway, it works out but I’m left with a whole lot of mess that’s pretty meaningless until I have the time to get everything re-re-situated. And there isn’t a whole heck of a lot left here.

Now that I can focus my attentions somewhat back here, I’ll be working to fill in some gaps and provide knowledge I’ve gleaned from my journeys through musical entrepreneurship. And MNTLPLX is working on a new skin for this place so we won’t be dealing with this wannabe newspaper theme for long.

I first signed on with RN because I stumbled across their linkage with Facebook. I signed up for curiosity’s sake and when I logged in, I was highly impressed with all the tools they’ve made available. (You can sign up as an artist, management, a label, venue, and/or a fan.)

It’s like Facebook for music, only better, so I’ve decided to share a tutorial/review of the place from the ‘artist’ perspective.

Registration: Registration was easy as pie. All you have to do is click here or visit ReverbNation.com and click on the big silver button in the upper right corner. You can even populate your registration form with your Facebook or MySpace information, should you choose!

When you receive your confirmation email and click the link, it automatically takes you to your profile where it promptly asks you to post a picture. (Good stuff since every musician needs a ‘face!’) Once the picture is uploaded, you get a good view of what your profile looks like to fans (for now) – pretty sparse.

The first place you’ll want to hit next is your control room. From there you have access to your profile, stats, show schedule, fans, apps, store, and SO much more. All you have to do is click on a button in the menu and you’ll see not only the page but a sub-menu for other related areas. As much as I’d like, I can’t cover it all right now so I’ll stick with the basics and leave the lot of you to figure out the rest!

Control Room – My Home: The control room home page is your one stop shop for all sorts of goodies. The main page displays a status update spot (a must-have for any social network these days), stats galore, service offerings, buzz tracking, and a schedule manager. And that’s just in the main content! The sidebar to the left gives you completion percentages for both your profile and promotions and actually tells you (step by step) what you ‘should’ do next and that’s what had me sold. Obviously you don’t have to do everything it lists but so far as I can tell, if you do it will be well worth it!

Control Room – Profile: Your profile control page is, as RN says, where you will spend most of your time. On the main page, right smack in the middle, you’ll find a nifty little checklist to help you complete your profile. The first two options are checked off (thanks to the automated system) and up next is ‘upload music.’ Just click and RN will put you right where you need to be!

Before we go any further, however, a few notes on uploading:

1. It has to be in MP3 format. Most media players will rip CDs for you these days. Just be sure to check your settings/preferences first because you want to know that your player is actually encoding MP3 (vs. wav, wma, ogg, etc.), where your MP3s are being saved to AND:

2. They have a song limit of 8MB (and anything over that 8 will be cut off). Me, myself, I’m a snob. Unless I’ve missed a few, all my MP3s are 320kbps. (A 3 minute long song is right at 7M on its own.) The standard CD quality is 192kbps so you’ll probably want to encode at that rate. Even then, you’ll want to mind your size – especially if you do longer tracks than the average person. Encoding at 128mbps is the absolute minimum you should attempt (but unacceptable to a lot of places you upload) but be mindful that is low quality and might make a listener shy away from a download or purchase.

3. RN frowns upon copyright infringement so if the music isn’t 100% yours, I’d advise against uploading. I doubt they have the power to police every upload but you never know and it could end up saving you a lot of trouble in the long run. (That is, of course, just and advisement…)

4. (In general.) Tag, tag, tag!!! Any time you make an MP3, and especially if you’re uploading or sharing – TAG! Some of the information (if you’re lucky) is filled in during the ripping process, assuming the CD is recognized or you fill in the information before it’s ripped. If you’re new to tagging, LifeHacker.com has compiled a list of the six best MP3 tagging tools that should at least get you going.

Once you’re at the upload dialogue, you’ll be able to set the title, select the file, decide on the availability (fans only, download, streaming, etc.), link to a YouTube video, pick a picture, and add notes and lyrics. Just put in what you want people to know and click ‘Upload Now.’

Once you’ve got your music up, it’s time to get widgetized!

In the main menu, there’s a button with a gear shape and ‘Widgets’ in the sub-menu. Clicking on both of those will give you access to some pretty cool stuff to explore but, for now, we’re sticking with the music players.

There are a few good looking options for the Pro user but I’m too broke to be a Pro so I’m going to go with the ‘Music Player (Blog Sized)’ for the sake of this entry. Right now, this particular widget is on the third row from the bottom. Clicking ‘Get Widget’ pulls up a new window where you can customize a few options (text and background colors, shuffle, and auto play) and get your code. I’ve not had much use for the Quick Post options so I can’t say exactly what they change. Raw code is, so far as I’ve experienced, sufficient to post the widget wherever you may want to put it. Click the copy button and you’re all set!

Now where you plaster these widgets is up to you – just paste the code into anywhere you can input HTML.

(Leaf Qwembi’s current listing)

And that’s what it’ll look like, assuming all goes well!

There’s plenty more to do but that’s a story for another day (or twenty) and I highly recommend taking some time to explore all the options RN has made available (especially filling out and customizing your profile!) to get the full benefit from your membership. And, if you’re a Facebook user, search Reverb Nation and you’ll find a few ways to tie your RN account into your Facebook artist page (including an extra ‘page’ to list by your wall, events, etc.). Since RN has the option to import your information from MySpace, I’m almost willing to bet MySpace has a bit of reciprocal compatibility but don’t hold me to that because they’re infamously incompatible with a bunch of other stuff. Best I can say is, for the more experienced MySpace user, dig around – and if you’re feeling generous, let me know what you find! I still avoid that place like the plague. Heh.

Now, ideally, all this stuff would be available on your own website but if you don’t have one, don’t have everything set up, are just looking for an easier way to get your music out there, or just need a bit of help with all the extras, Reverb Nation is definitely one of the best ways to go.

I’m working on some music uploads and I decided it’s time to eliminate the issue of having ‘unknown artist’ pop up on a pressed up CD. It’s just not cool. Research led me smack into the fact that I can’t upload the music information unless I’m using Windows. The new owners of the CDDB won’t allow projects like MusicBrainz or freeDB access to their database. What a waste! Shame to think that CDDB started out free with people being able to send emails straight to the guy who actually started it!

Bad form, Gracenote, bad form.