The service is part of iTunes 10, which Apple releases today.

Steve Jobs said of Ping

“Ping is like Facebook and Twitter meets iTunes. It’s a social network all about music and built right into iTunes.”


Ping could have a large effect on how musicians and fans interact online because it focuses on interaction, sharing, concert dates, status updates, videos, etc. This very well could be another nail in MySpace’s coffin. We’ll see.

Features According to Apple’s Website:

• “Follow your favorite artists with a click and become part of their inner circle”
• “Get in on the action with artist photos and status updates. Even add comments to join the conversation”
• “Find out what music an artist likes and pick up a few recommendations”
• “Ping is built into the iTunes app on iPhone and iPod touch. So you can see artist updates from anywhere.”

The question indie artists will be asking is how do we use Ping to connect with our fans?

Well, at this point nobody knows how much access independent artists will have to the service.

What do you think Apple’s music announcements mean to the indie musician?

Join the discussion below!

Google is constantly developing nifty applications and technologies to enhance the way we communicate and work online.  Because Google survives on advertising revenues these products are all offered at the amazingly low low price of FREE.  As a musician in a rather competitive market, it’s important to know and use tools that increase the efficiency of your marketing, managing, and networking efforts.  The goal is less time pulling your hair out in front of the computer screen and more time making beautiful music!

1. Google Docs
Google Docs is similar to Microsoft’s Office suite only simpler and completely online.  This allows you access to your important lyrics, schedules, and accounting docs from any computer anywhere on the internet.  Use Google Docs to share your lyrics with your band mates and even upload and share mp3s.  Use a spreadsheet doc to manage band expenses and income.  Use the form maker doc to create a booking form.  Use the word processor doc to create a set list or the drawing pad to sketch your  stage set up.  You can then share your documents and allow multiple users to update information.  You can also choose who does or doesn’t have access to these documents. The possibilities are endless.

http://docs.google.com/

2. Gmail
Besides being a reliable and easy to use email provider, you can also use Gmail to manage your band email addresses @your-domain-name.  Learn how to set that up here.

Gmail also features handy filters and labels to organize your email and almost unlimited storage.  So you can easily archive email as well as separate your fanmail from your family mail etc.

Gmail also has a built in IM and video chat feature right in your inbox–which can be useful when you need feedback from an absent bandmate when you’re in the studio. This chat tool can only be used with other Gmail users, however.

http://mail.google.com

3. Google Analytics
Google Analytics will show you dizzying details about how your fans interact with your website.  Find out which of your songs is the most popular, how many people visit your site on a given day, or which search terms people use to find your site in the first place. You can find thousands of additional down and dirty details and statistics about how people use your website.

http://google.com/analytics

4. Goog411
Ever find yourself late for a show and you just can’t find the venue or you don’t have the phone number?  Google offers a nifty voice activated Google Search.  Just call  1-800-goog-411.  Google will not only find the business your looking for–it will connect you to them for no charge.

http://google.com/goog411

5. Google Calendar
Use Google calendar to manage your tour, practices, and concert dates.  You can give all your band members admin access so they can add their own schedule at their leisure.  Set up email reminders to remind you about your next show, radio interview, or practice.  Best of all, you can integrate multiple calendars (work, home, band, etc) using color coding.  Keep some calendars private while making others public.

http://google.com/calendar

6. Google Reader
Google Reader is a great way to have all your industry news in one place.  Subscribe to the online magazines, news sources, and music blogs that cover your genre.  So when you open Google Reader each morning (coffee in hand) you’ll you’ll see all the most recent articles from all these sources in one place.  It’s like a personalized digital newspaper.

http://www.google.com/reader

7. Google Alerts
This one is a must.  Ever wonder what people are saying about your online?  Create a Google Alert and get an email every day or every week with a synopsis of who’s been talking about you or your band online.  Google Alerts will provide you with a list of links where you or your band is mentioned.  This way you can reach out to people giving you props and defend yourself against internet slander.

http://google.com/alerts

8. Picasa
This is a great photo editing suite with lots of features.  It also allows you to publish photos and share them online.  Edit, crop, enhance, and clean up your band photos and share them with your fans.  Picasa has a new face recognition feature built in and can automatically tag photos with the names pf people featured in them (pretty cool).

http://google.com/alerts

9. Google Blogsearch
One of the best ways to find success online is to be promoted and talked about on popular music blogs by the taste-makers in your genre or style.  What are the blogs to be reckoned with in your field of expertise?  Use Google Blog Search by searching for terms relative to your niche.   Once you find a good blog site, subscribe to it in Google Reader so you can keep up to date on the newest posts.

http://blogsearch.google.com/

10. Google Voice (in Beta as of this writing):
Google Voice is great way to manage your voicemail and text messages.  Currently it is invitation only, so ask one of your Geeky friends if they have any invites left.  Everybody gets 3 invites (sorry I already used mine).

With Google Voice you can access your voicemails and texts via the internet in text format.  You can even set up a unique Google phone number that is specifically for your band and rings to multiple cell phones.  Google Voice also turns voicemail into email that you can read or listen to from your computer.  You can even send a text message via email and make specific outgoing messages for people on your contact list.  Pretty cool!

http://google.com/voice

Share your favorite Google tool in the comments!

Read more at the DIY Musician Blog

Lyric writing can be a frustrating, nail-biting, paper-crumpling experience.   Getting just the right words to conform to the cadence and rhythm of a musical piece is hard enough, let alone composing a gripping tale to woo the hearts and minds of your listeners.   Here are 8 tips to inspire and help you get through the roughs spots in lyric writing.

1.  Let The Music Set The Scene

For most of us the music (or some version of it) comes before the words.  Use this to your advantage.  Music is adept at painting complex emotional landscapes.  In fact, music often tells a compelling story without any words at all.  Even if all you have is three chords on a piano or guitar, record it (every songwriter should have a hand held recorder).  Try to listen objectively.  Listen to it over and over.  What emotions does the music stir in you?  A slow minor progression might conjure feelings of lost love: a romance.  An upbeat and major chord progression might produce feelings of vigor and challenge: a hero’s song.  Let the music reveal to you what kind of tale it has to tell.

2. Discover Your Story

Story is at the heart of any great song.  A great story is usually more engaging then fancy prose and rhyme (Bob Dylan often sacrificed the latter in order to tell his stories without compromise).  Fret not.  Stories are neither mysterious nor hard to find.  All you need is a character with desire, and suddenly the whole pantheon of fables, myths, and tales from across the globe are at your disposal.  People desire love, money, fame, safety, and many other things.  Story is created when a character wishes, dreams, risks, acts, or dies in pursuit of one of these things.   When you listen to the music you are working on, do you feel a yearning for something?  Then you’re halfway there!

3.  Fill a Notebook

In a TV interview,  the performer Sting said that he usually fills an entire three-ringed notebook full of lyrics before he’s finished a single song .  Don’t be afraid to write and write badly.  Write everything that comes to mind.  Write an essay about your song.  Write a letter to a character in your song.  Write about how you can’t think of anything to write about.  The more material you generate, the clearer the story will be in your mind and the easier it will be to condense the story into lyric form.

4. Listen to Your Favorite Lyricists.

Nothing helps me get out of a rut more than listening to my favorite songwriters do what they do best.   Listen with a notebook and pen at your side.  Write down what you think about.  Pay close attention to the words, phrases, and stories they tell.  Sometimes a misheard lyric can turn into a whole new song.  Don’t be afraid to beg, borrow and steal from your favorite songsters (without infringing on copyright law of course).  Songwriting and storytelling is an organic tradition that has been around forever.  Stories and songs are passed around, changed, elaborated upon, reinvented and modernized.  Don’t be afraid to draw upon this rich tradition.

5. Read Lots

Sometimes the best cure for writing is reading.  Read poetry.  Read mythology.  Read fiction and non-fiction and prose.  Many a great song has been written based on a poem or a fictional character in a book.  When what your reading moves you–take note.  This is what you want your songs to do.  Was it a character, a description, or an event that struck a chord? See if you can harness this element and use it in your song. If not, keep on reading and noting the moments when the art moves you.  I often find my favorite song ideas in the works of authors I love.

6.Remember The “I” is Not You

It’s easy to get stuck when you’re writing about yourself in the first person.  Ego has a habit of derailing good art.  It’s important to remember that the “I” in your song is a imagined version of yourself, a character.  Bruce Springsteen’s “I” is  a blue-collar worker down on his luck.  Ziggy Stardust’s (David Bowie) “I” is a benevolent space alien.  Johny Cash’s “I” is a lonesome gun-slinging cowboy.  While these characters exist within the artist, they are not the whole artist.

If you can step back from yourself and remember that your listeners may have no idea who you are, the emphasis is put back on the story, and you are forced to paint a picture of your characters.  Remember, it’s your listeners who will be identifying with the “I” in your song.

7.  Take A Break

Don’t spend too much time staring at blank page or a glaring computer screen.  Take a walk or go see a movie.  When your brain is engaged in the creative process, it helps to give your attention a rest. Let your subconscious mind work out the kinks for a while. I can’t tell you how many times stepping away from a song for an hour, or even a day was just what my brain needed to fill in the blanks.  Don’t expect a song to just pop out in a single sitting.  Let your songs ruminate. Leonard Cohen spent years composing some of his most famous songs.  Don’t feel bad if the process is slow.  You’re not alone.

8.  Don’t Let Your Internal Editor Beat You Up

Enjoy the process and know that you’re honing your skills.  Don’t be too hard on yourself.  A rough lyric draft is supposed to look like a whole lot of nonsensical high-school poetry.  If it doesn’t look like that, you’re not doing it right.  And remember: lyrics are meant to be experienced with music.  Sometimes they look a little dry on the page without the spiriting rhythm and melody of song to lift them up.

Despite the fact that recording has become a much more affordable medium over the past decade, it still costs a considerable amount to produce a quality recording.  Even if you borrow, beg, or steal in order to secure free recording time, there’s still the mixing, mastering, and manufacturing costs.

There’s been a lot written recently about “crowd funding,”  a term born of another internet buzz word “crowd sourcing.”  Crowd funding is as simple as it sounds.  It simply means to fund a project by gaining small donations from a large group of people.

Sites like Sellaband.com, Slicethepie.com and Kickstarter.com have emerged as the social networking conduits between an artist and their potential micro-investors.  Artists create profiles and spec out the money needed to accomplish their goals, and site members are invited contribute a few bucks if the project seems worth while.

In a nut shell, artists are beginning to look at their potential fans as potential patrons.  While most musicians go into debt in the studio with the vague hope that their fans will dig them out after the album is finished, these sites promise the possibility of raising capital up front.  What a concept, right?

Why not ask your friends and fans to contribute to the effort? You’d be surprised how empowered people feel when they are invited to support a project, artist, or friend they believe in.  They’ll often give well beyond what you ask them for.

Now, while these new crowd funding sites are great (and I encourage folks to try them out).  I wondered if I could do it myself on my own site.   I set a modest budget for the recording of 2000 dollars.  We would borrow the gear and microphones.  We’d use Pro-Tools on my computer.  But rather than just ask for donations, I figured why not sell the album?  I could use PayPal to take orders before copies even exist.

Granted this isn’t a brand new idea.  People buy concert tickets months before an event.  People pre-order books on Amazon before the book has been released. We all buy dinner before it’s been cooked.

Why not pre-sell your album to the people who would benefit the most from its completion? Don’t be afraid to hit up your aunts, uncles, parents, and neighbors.

Not-so-surprisingly, this method has been successful so-far (and this from a band that hasn’t released an album in 10 years). People who have bought the album tell me they’re excited for its completion. They’re literally invested in it.

Buying an album before it’s been recorded does pose a slight risk to the buyer.  What if it never gets finished?  Or what if it’s a bad album?  But if the album is priced reasonably, the worse case scenario is they’ll be out some pocket change.

One of the unintended benefits of this selling method is the introduction of scarcity into a market where digital technology has made this concept nearly obsolete.  The monetary value of music has lessened due to how easily it is acquired, copied, and shared.  But you can’t copy or share an unfinished album.  An unfinished album, if not properly supported, will never exist.  If your fans felt that buying your album was essential for it to come into being–don’t you think they would pay more?

I’d be curious if other have had success in crowd funding and or pre-sales.  Leave your story’s and thoughts in the comments section below.

If you’re interested in following Chris’ fund raising efforts for his band Nervous and the kid, you can visit his website here.

Self promotion can be a lot of work. Sometimes all we have time for is a few email reminders, a post on MySpace and a text message on the day of the show.

Given the limited time and energy you have to advertise for a gig, what’s the most effective way to spend your energy?

Lets flash forward to the night of your show. You’re staring at your audience from the stage. The room is packed. They’re all smiling back at you–hanging on your every word.

But how did they get here? Do you recognize any of them? Are they co-workers, family members and friends? These are usually the people that cheer the loudest (so make sure they show up and make you look good). What about the others you don’t recognize? Are they here to see YOU or the group that plays after you?

There’s a couple standing in the front row. They look familiar.
Let’s imagine their conversation a few hours earlier:

John: Isn’t there something going on tonight? Ryan gave me a handbill, but I lost it.
Sarah: Yeah there’s a show–Blankety Blank is playing. Someone posted on Facebook.
John: Blankety Blank. Oh right, Ryan said they’re really fun live show
Sarah: Joan told me she loves ‘Blankety Blank.’
John: *click, click, click* Their website says it starts at 8pm. They’re playing with the So and So’s and they’re giving away free jello shots
Sarah: I’ve always wanted to see the So and Sos.
John: I love Jello shots. Let’s go.

Now here’s an example of how it probably never happens:

(John and Sarah walking down the street. John stops and looks at poster-plastered telephone pole.)
John: Look. Salami Sandwhich is playing at Dinos.
Sarah: Who’s Salami Sandwich?
John: Never heard of them.
Sarah: You wanna go?
John: Yes. I love going to see bands I’ve never heard of based on telephone pole advertising.

Now the difference between these two scenarios is two-fold:

The first conversation suggests that John and Sarah have received recommendations from trusted sources (Authorities) as well as repeated exposure to the upcoming event (Familiarity).  It’s the combo of these two aspects of promotion that succeed in getting them to the show.

Authorities

Whose opinion would you trust more: a friend or a telephone pole? People who have never heard of your music group are not going to come to your concert unless an authoritative source has offered them a good reason to.   In some cases this authority might be you.

Your best bet for getting new people out to your concerts is to encourage your die-hard friends and fans to spread the word. In the first example above, John and Sarah hadn’t actually listened to Blankety Blank but they both had friends who recommended the show and therefore decided to check it out. Respected newspapers and magazines also have authoritative power so make sure to submit your concert dates to your local weekly’s and newspapers.

Make sure that you invite your biggest fans first. If your biggest fans are your Aunt Suzie and your kid brother, that’s ok. Invite them! Ask them to bring a friend. Ask them to spread the word. Invite them to post about your show on Facebook, Twitter and Myspace.

Do you have any friends who’s opinion you trust unfailingly on certain subjects? Do you always ask Terry about hair products or Pat about computers? There are music fans out there, taste-makers, people who other people listen too. These are the best fans to have. Bribe them, massage them, give them free stuff. They will repay you in bringing more fans.

Familiarity

It’s good to get in people’s heads through different mediums. In the first example, John and Sarah had heard about the show through word of mouth, a handbill and on Facebook. If you’re anything like me, you often forget about concerts you’d like to go to unless you get multiple, different reminders.  So yes, making posters, handbills, posting on all your social networks, blogging and doing everything else you can think of can be very beneficial. But only if you are reaching the right people and places. Posting your metal show poster on the conservatory’s bulletin board may not create positive results.

Who listens to the kind of music you like? Where do they eat,  sleep and play? What social networks do they use? Target these places first.

Unless you have all the time in the world, you must focus your marketing efforts. Even if it’s just a gig at a hole in the wall, smart promotion can make for a killer show.  Don’t be afraid to try new things.  Figure out what works best and improve on it.  Try using incentives to get people to come to your shows. Give your biggest fan 5 free tickets to the gig. Offer free t-shirts, stage a raffle, a dance contest, a giveaway.

Lastly, don’t be discouraged.  Anybody who’s ever set foot on stage in front of screaming fans has also had a crumby gig on the wrong day of the week when nobody showed up.

Mark Twain’s quote that “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics” comes to mind as I compose this article.  Statistics is an elastic science and when approaching the stats for your website it’s hard to know how to interpret all the numbers and then use those numbers to inform your marketing efforts.

Let’s avoid an in-depth analysis of web stats and leave that to Wikipedia. What I do want to explain are some of the basics and clear up common confusion regarding the concept of a website ‘hit’.

From Wikipedia’s entry on Internet Hits:

“The number of hits received by a website is frequently cited to assert its popularity, but this number is extremely misleading and dramatically over-estimates popularity. A single web-page typically consists of multiple (often dozens) of discrete files, each of which is counted as a hit as the page is downloaded, so the number of hits is really an arbitrary number more reflective of the complexity of individual pages on the website than the website’s actual popularity. ”

In other words, your gross hits doesn’t tell you a whole lot.    One person visiting your site could potentially generate hundreds of hits in one visit.

Now you may ask, “How do I know how many people are visiting my website?” Whether you choose to use your HostBaby stats viewer or use Google Analytics or another similar service, you will notice that there are many different terms and data sets to review.  Visits is the best indicator of the number people loading your website.  Unfortunately, there is no way for a statistics program to tell the difference between a person, a computer, and a search bot–so even this statistic must be taken with a grain of salt.

According to Wikipedia: “A visit is defined as a series of page requests from the same uniquely identified client with a time of no more than 30 minutes between each page request.”

In other words, a visit is one person or computer accessing your site within a half-hour period.  If that same computer or person accesses the site after a half hour has elapsed it will create a new visit.  So if you go to your own site a few times a day–you will be generating multiple hits.  In some analytic programs you can view the unique visitors per day number, which would cut out the repeat visitors.

There other useful statistics to review as well such as:

Top Referrers: The web addresses from which visitors navigated to your site

Top Urls:  The most clicked on your website

Countries/location: The geographic location of your website visitors

Depending on your affinity for numbers and stats you can dig in quite a bit deeper, but for most artists the main interest is in being able to notice when there is a jump or drop in visits. This helps you judge the effectiveness of your marketing (e.g. online newsletter, blog, promotions, etc.).

Of course, monitoring your web traffic is only one of the many ways to keep track of your online buzz.  Try searching your artist name on Twitter to see if people are talking about you.  Use Google’s Blog Search to see if people are blogging about you and set up a Google alert so that anytime your artist name is mentioned online you get an update straight to your inbox.

If your interested in using Google Analytics with your HostBaby wizard account, click here.

Additional Resources:

Wikipedia:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_analytics

Google Analytics Video:  http://www.youtube.com/profile?v=_qfG2d9etvk&user=googleanalytics&hl=en

How to Make Sense of your Website’s Statistics: http://www.a1-optimization.com/web-statistics.htm

Getting out on the road to build an audience is a constant struggle for the average indie artist. Limitations on time, money, and resources are all huge hurdles to overcome. But what if you could take your show around the world without moving a single guitar amp or eating another drive-thru meal? Now you can!

Indie artists like Matthew Ebel have harnessed the power of online services like UStream to accomplish just that. Each week, Matthew performs live via UStream without leaving the comfort of his very own basement. Internet audience members congregate (in the virtual sense) from all points around the globe to watch his homespun concert broadcasts. In the full-length audio interview, Matthew goes into great detail concerning some of the technical aspects of how he produces a UStream show. If this piques your interest, you can listen to the episode in its entirety at http://cdbabypodcast.com or subscribe in the iTunes podcast directory.

What is UStream?
Well UStream, like YouTube, is just another site on the Internet. But instead of doing video hosting of recorded videos, they host live video feeds. It’s the first site I’ve seen that has brought live streaming to the masses in a similar fashion that YouTube brought pre-recorded video to the masses. It’s very easy to set up, very accessible, and you don’t need a lot of equipment to make it work. It can just be a MacBook connected to the internet.

It goes beyond just having the ability to stream, though. Part of it is the interaction that you have with the audience. How have you used the live chat room component?
The chat room is live interaction just like having an audience. And it’s something I’ve been telling other artists who have been asking me about this stuff. One thing that you need to do when doing a UStream show is talk to your online audience a lot. Treat them like they paid for front the row seats because that’s basically what they are doing. To the end viewer it’s nothing more than you and them in a room. So it’s really nice being able to interact with people live even if you’re alone in a little studio in Boston, Massachusetts once a week — like I am.

When I first saw your show, I hadn’t realized there was the chat room component beforehand, which made the whole experience have a much greater impact. People were actually having more fun because of the chat room. They were interacting with you and each other, and it made it a really cool event to be a part of. When you see a show on UStream, you’re not just watching something on the web. You actually have the opportunity to participate.
Oh Yeah! And they’re not just participating. My viewers are actually making requests, which is really nice because I can deliver the exact show my viewers want… and there is the prospect of making money. The particular show you saw, I had people watching in the Netherlands, London, Canada, and other various countries around the world. One person asked, “Can I get your CDs shipped internationally?” I wasn’t 100% sure if CD Baby shipped internationally, but the best part was that while I was stuck in front of a keyboard performing, other audience members went to CD Baby and looked it up for themselves and answered the guy for me.

One of your shows I saw, you had over 300 people watching.
And last week there was like 85. Some days it’s good and some days it’s bad. It all just boils down to how many people know about you in the first place. One of the things that drives up the viewer base is getting your fans to imbed the show on their sites. Just like YouTube, you can imbed the video, not recorded video, but the live streaming video. I actually encourage my fans to imbed my show on their MySpace page, blog or website, and then put up their own affiliate links to CD Baby, iTunes, or Amazon to basically make themselves some money selling my CDs. It benefits both of us that way.

Have you seen an impact on your music sales as a result of doing these live UStream concerts on a weekly basis?
Without fail, somebody buys one of my CDs, or goes on iTunes and gets some of the tracks. The real kicker, though, is that people sign up on my email list and grab coupon codes for the subscriber side of my website. It’s one thing to have somebody show up and look at the UStream page and say, “This music is kind of nice.” But as soon as they click on one of those things, that’s a way to bring the casual viewer closer into my world for me to build a stronger relationship with that viewer.

Matthew Ebel streams live every Tuesday on UStream. To catch his next show, just go to matthewebel.com/ustream

Check out more from the CD Baby DIY Musician Podcast

Jimmy Fallon’s best role yet!

HostBaby has recently launched a new blog page feature in the HostBaby Wizard.  More on that here.

What better time to address how musicians can use a blog to advance their career then right now?

Most of you know that a blog (short for web log) is a web page that allows articles, videos, and pictures to be posted in a journal-like format. Blogs also typically allow users to leave comments and therefore are a great way to interact with fans.

Blogs can also be subscribed to by clicking an RSS icon and using a ‘feed reader’ to view the content. Most browsers have a feed reader built in–so you shouldn’t have any trouble viewing and subscribing to feeds right from FireFox, Safari, or Chrome (IE is an exception, but it’s not our favorite browser anyway).

Most internet phones also have feed readers available. A feed reader is a great tool to channel all your favorite news in one place.  It’s like creating your own newspaper with only the articles, subjects, and writers that you like. If you haven’t tried using a feed reader and have a Gmail account, Google Reader is a great tool and a good place to start.

Why is having a blog important for musicians? Because a static page isn’t enough to generate return visits. A website that never changes isn’t worth visiting very often. A website that has new videos, new music, new pictures and new articles every week is far more likely to generate return visits and more sales.

Another great thing about blogs is that every post you write has the potential to be picked up and re-posted, distributed, and talked about online. Yes, blogs can go ‘viral.’

It’s the viral aspect of blogs that you should keep in mind when you are writing your posts. Don’t just write for your fans and friends, write for the world.

Say you write an article about how you got this really cool effect on a certain instrument in your last recording by doing X, Y and Z. Say one of your readers thinks it’s an awesome tip and pastes a link on Facebook to all 200 of his friends. Say one of his 200 friends is an audio engineer and she reads the article and posts it to her audio engineer buddies. Suddenly, you get 4000 people hitting your site trying to listen to the song that you wrote about. Say 300 of those people download the song. That’s how a blog can become viral.

If you hope to use the viral aspects of blogging to promote your music, write for an audience that has no idea who you are. Write as if your content is going to be published in your favorite music magazine. Write about things you are interested in. Be careful not to treat your blog as a walking advertisement for your music and your website. Most people who visit your website already like your music, so you don’t need to convince them. Sure, if you had a great show, a new single, or some cool pictures from your tour, you should post them–but look for the STORY. People loooooove stories! If your van broke down and your drummer dropped out mid tour–write about it. If the opening act at your concert spontaneously gets naked on stage–write about that. If you find yourself telling your friends this same amazing anecdote over and over again–write about that.

Being a blogger means that you are running your own publication. You are the reporter, editor, designer, photographer and publicist (Luckily running your own blog costs a lot less then running a magazine or newspaper). If you don’t like wearing all these hats, share the responsibilities with your band mates.

Most of all, have fun and experiment. A blog can be whatever YOU want it to be. Read other blogs by musicians (Check out Finger Tips) and see what works and what doesn’t. Ask your friends to submit articles. Ask other bloggers to ‘guest blog’ and publish their articles on your blog.   And, no, you don’t have to be a great writer to blog–just a good entertainer.