Promotion

[filkertom]

This, ha ha, ties in with the last post.

I have a number of promotional pages at various online venues. I'm trying not to go overboard, partly because I'm trying not to just whore myself hither and yon across the internet and partly because it's a real time-sink to maintain all those pages. But the truth is, the only way this is going to continue to work is if I hype myself some. Finding the balance is the key, I think.

Besides my own pages (tomsmithonline.com, filkertom-itom.blogspot.com) and this LJ, I've got pages at:

• MySpace
• The FuMP
• Podsafe Music Network
• last.fm
• Sonic Garden (not up to date, but that's for later this week)
• a couple of albums on CD Baby, which have in turn got me some decent digital distribution over which I personally have no control. It's an on-off switch -- either it's up there, but I can't add new tunes or edit the info or tweak the page, or it's not there at all
• Eventful -- I'm just setting that up, and soon you'll be able to Demand me if you want to ;)

I'm debating going full-bore into FaceBook, payplay.cd, mp3 unisgned, and discrevolt. But I don't want to go too far past that. I'm also thinking of advertising a bit through Project Wonderful.

So, my questions are: Does this seem reasonable? Am I going too far? Not far enough? Am I missing something really big or important?

Comments

[blueeyedtigress.livejournal.com]

Offer a few CDs on eBay -- a very good way to reach people worldwide who might not go to (nor even know about) any of those sites you mention (like me).

Use keywords like "Dr Demento", "filk", "indy", and the usual fannish/SF types of words. Set yourself up an "About Me" page that can have a link to tonsmithonline.com. If you'd like any further eBaying details, I'd be happy to help out. ;]

[phillip2637.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth -- and I truly have not the faintest idea of whether it's worth anything, there's also http://www.ilike.com/artist/Tom+Smith

[lapislaz.livejournal.com]

See if you can get the guys at Pandora interested.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Excellent idea. I just sent them an e-mail.

[bathtubnz.livejournal.com]

No it all seems good, as a artist who's primary method of advertising is (I assume) online you want to be where the people are so they can find you. I presume in most of these cases once you have set the page up, maintainance is minimal, in cost and time, so there isn't much of a reason not to promote yourself in a way that makes you accessable to as many people as possible without just flat out spamming.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Well, the flat-out spamming, or the appearance of flat-out spamming, is what I'm trying to avoid. I'm going to set up a page at TSO just for podcasters and radio stations (both online and meatspace), and direct them there if they want to get my stuff... but, even then, I'm going to pick stations, and send them a nice, one-time "Hey, I'm Here" e-mail, and that will be that. Heck, I probably should use the "Bulletin" function at MySpace more than I do. But I'm trying not to be rude.

[bathtubnz.livejournal.com]

See I think you are doing is the polar opposite of spamming, it's doing it the right way. And yes you should use bulletins on myspace more often.

I am constantly bitching to the guys at RiffTrax about how little Mike uses his myspace page.

In Mikes case you have a almost 4000 people who are interested in him, these are people who are interested in what he is up to. It would take 5 minutes every 2 weeks to post a bulliten saying "Hey folks, this week we did Grey's Anatomy, I hope you guys enjoy it". I would bet money that plenty of those 4000 people are not on the rifftrax forums, LJ, or their email list, how many sales do you need to make the 5 minutes worth it 5,15?

People need regular reminders to check things out, "oh, rifftrax, yeah what have they done in the last few months", "Oh Tom Smith, new song at that FuMP place, lets check it out"

lol, but I am sure you know all this, I think I am just venting my frustrations that the legend films/rifftrax guys sometimes skip some of the most obvious places to inform people of their product.

[partiallyclips.livejournal.com]

See I think you are doing is the polar opposite of spamming, it's doing it the right way.

Thank you! I have tried to tell Tom that, too! :Þ

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

I have this friend who's been entering songwriting contests at folk festivals. He's won or placed in five of them that I know about. You're in that league as a songwriter, in my opinion. I think anything that expands your potential audience beyond SF fandom is great - when I play your stuff for my folkie friends, it always gets great response.

[figmentatious.livejournal.com]

Something different that comes to mind is thinking about hig traffic sites that you really like and writing songs directed at or about them. That may be more direct pandering than you're interested in, but it could get your name in front of more different groups of people, many of whom will probably go check out your other stuff.

Even doing this with some of your already existing songs could be helpful. For example, you could send the cat macros video link to places like cuteoverload.com. Or send some of your more political songs to the political blogs.

As someone else pointed out your music covers a lot of ground and deserved wider play. :-)

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the kind words. And, I have been trying to do that sort of thing when appropriate... but I don't look around and say, "Hmmm, what site could I write a song for to get attention and sales?" I don't write any song that way. Heck, "Talk Like A Pirate Day" happened because I noted TLAPD on my web site and e-mailed them relatively early in the day to say that I was doing so, and their webmistress kightp mentioned that she'd heard my stuff at a con and liked it. I was way flattered, and knocked out the song, and they all got back to me with OMG PONIES (or the piratical equivalent).

This week's song may end up being a good deal more political, and honestly more nasty, than anything I've written in a long while. And I will certainly diary it up at dKos if it does end up that way.

While I am always going to be a filker -- I used to think of it as a burden, but I've come back the other way -- what I am primarily is that odd catchall, "singer-songwriter". The biggest difference between the vast majority of them out there and guys like me is that I will write about whatever strikes my fancy, with a little bit of reasonable self-editing to keep from being too offensive... and every once in a while I'll even overcome that urge. (I'm working on one for The FuMP that should blow every circuit for blocks, and it's going to very, very deliberately not have a single profanity or scatological reference in it... but it'll make Oscar Brand's "The Clean Song" look like a straightforward narrative of a fishing expedition.)

[gclectic.livejournal.com]

As I noted in the previous post, I've tried not to be a busybody with advice on this stuff, but since you're asking, here's my take, which you may freely ignore:

Definitely hit last.fm harder. I believe that rising on their charts *does* translate into real exposure (to the extent that some bands hire people to play their music through the appropriate monitoring software). As far as I can tell, there's no downside to uploading pretty much everything you can for play on their radio. (I'm pretty sure that you *don't* have to allow free download -- it'll just end up in the same sort of randomized play algorithm that other internet radio stations do, but it'll specifically be targeted to people who like the right style of music. It certainly already knows that you're a lot like TMBG, Arrogant Worms, Weird Al, etc. -- it just hasn't had much chance to play your songs at people.)

Perhaps consider selling your studio albums directly through eMusic as well as CD-Baby. It's more of a "long tail" sales model than some of the others, and claimed in the past to be pretty artist friendly on the payments. Don't know if they were telling the truth on that. Again, it has some nice collaborative-filtering "fans of XXX also like YYY".

MySpace, FuMP and Podsafe seem like great ideas, but I don't have much to say about how to use 'em.

My experience with Project Wonderful is that you can get a moderate number of click-throughs for literally pennys-per. With my particular product (T-shirts) the click-throughs didn't gain me anything, but you've got a more compelling product. Certainly crossover advertising between superhero web-comics and TLHoE is too obvious and compelling *not* to try.

I assume you're being proactive and sending a copy of every new album to Demento? You've got enough cred by now that you should rise to the top of the slushpile there.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

I almost certainly will put as much as possible up on last.fm, and several other sites as well. I just signed up with SNOCAP, the sales engine used by MySpace, and once I've got that shop going I can cut-and-paste the store into any page I like.

Project Wonderful seems like a good idea for me because of Last Hero. They do a lot of stuff with online comics, and that's a good one to sneak in.

And I do send stuff to Dr. D. But I don't worry as much about play there as I used to. Besides the fact that he does more themed shows now and I don't necessarily fit in with the themes, and I never got all that much play there to begin with, and if I was really worried about how that audience would receive me I probably would've given up music entirely in 1991... a lot of what I'm writing these days just doesn't fit there. I'm not as over-the-top as it seems you need to be for the current market. Although there are a couple of FuMP songs I'm working on that should crank things up a notch.... ;)