Tim Jahn saw a spur-of-the-moment video of me at one of his meet-ups for local creatives in Chicago. He was interested in hearing more about Plugola and how music fans can resell (or “plug”) the music they find on the site, earning a commission. He stopped by my *cough* office one, frigid morning and got the cameras rolling.

Created by Tim Jahn, Beyond The Pedway seeks to discover creative entrepreneurs and explore their unique story of passion, dedication, and what truly excites them.

Of course, I’m working on more tutorial videos that really get down to the nitty-gritty of our features and how to get the most out of Plugola. If you notice that I didn’t cover a particular area you have questions about, please be sure to leave me/us some feedback. That will also be helpful for any future tutorials.

2009 was a year of change for the music industry. From sliding CD sales to increased digital efforts to the changing face of music distribution and direct to fan sales systems.

Due to these extreme changes in music marketing and discovery, Gen-Y Rock Stars, a leading music marketing and social media blog for musicians and music industry professionals, has updated their premiere resource, “100 Resources For DIY Musicians.”

The original report was called “100 Social Media Resources For Musicians,” and has been downloaded over 5,000 times. It was created after leaving a music conference where Greg Rollett spoke on music marketing and was amazed at how little musicians were doing to take advantage of social media and the power of technology.

This updated resource includes every tool a musician needs to be successful online from blogging platforms to email service providers to essential social networks, industry bloggers, shopping cart solutions, musician tools, video cameras and so much more.

Writer of the resource Greg Rollett says, “Musicians have the power to build not only a career, but a business at an astonishing speed with all the tools that are available to them. The problem, they are only tools. Each musician needs to learn to use them and use them in the right situations in order to be successful.”

Download your free copy of the 100 Resources for DIY Musicians

If you would like to read more about it, our friends over at Creative Deconstruction goes a bit more in-depth and even picks a few of their favorites!

We are…

First, you should know that we are strictly independent music only. We have no plans, nor desire to eventually bring in major acts or record labels. I know that’s the direction a lot of similar indie music services go, but Plugola was conceived on the idea that indie artists needed a home online.  So we will NOT desert you when bigger things begin to happen. Of course, we have nothing against these major artists/labels, but they already have many homes.

A Digital Marketplace

The original concept behind Plugola was to provide a digital music store for indie music only. At the time it was still fairly tough to find good, non-commercial music on the web; especially located all in one place. Downloading that music legally was a whole other story. Plus, there is a whole culture of independent music fans that usually have to really search to find the music they like. Once they find that music, the only real option in sharing it with friends was to do it illegally. We are changing that.

A Social Network

We thought that Plugola needed more of a reason for music fans to visit, other than only music. Although helping artist distribute and sell their music is the main goal, we also wanted fans to be able to communicate with the musicians, discuss the music, vote on it and share it with their friends.

Music Discovery

We took a bit of a different approach for fans to discover new music. First, when music fans register with the site, they choose their favorite genre. So when they login, artists in their chosen genre are presented, rather than having to search through all the other genres. Second, all rankings and featured artists are put there by our members. We’re not suggesting to fans other artists they may like, but the community is. All music and videos can be streamed completely free, as well as the ability to share/embed them on any web site.

Why you may want to use Plugola:

We are fully aware there are a lot of options, for both indie musicians and music fans out there. We are not saying we are better than any of these service, but we ARE different. Here is why…

Sell Music & Videos

Artists can sell their own digital music (mp3) and/or music videos however they see fit. There are no upfront or service fees, but the artist is paid a flat rate of 82% of the sale price. However, this 82% includes all processing and transaction fees. A lot of services claim artists get 100%, but the fine print usually states that it’s 100% AFTER all fees are paid. Plugola handles all the payments and commission distribution, so artists don’t have yet another task they must worry about. We accept payments in credit card or Paypal, and pay-out via ACH or Paypal.

Artist Control

All artists keep ownership of all their music and rights. We want to make clear that, they are not giving up any control of any kind; and they can discontinue using our service at any time without any cancellation fees. In other words, Artists have absolutely nothing to loose. Also, our features allow artists to set their own prices, control their ‘plug’(or affiliate) commissions, approve or disapprove plugging and set their own copyrights or download terms.

Marketing Tools

One major feature we noticed was missing among other DIY music stores was their lack of marketing tools. Yes, everyone has widgets (including us!), for the most part, these days. Where Plugola differs is, we have also included some built-in options for artists to create incentives and/or campaigns in order to sell and distribute more music.

Plugging (affiliates)

This is probably our coolest feature. Not only can fans purchase and download music, but they have the option to ‘plug’ it, as well. Plugging a song allows the fan(s) to resell their favorite tunes to their friends, and even earn a commission! Essentially, fans can get all their music free and the artist still gets paid. We are aiming to keep the tradition of sharing music alive, but in a bit more controlled environment; and with incentives. Our thoughts are, would a fan rather earn a few bucks or just put that music up on a p2p network? Everyone wins using this feature.

One-Click Purchasing

For music fans who choose to use a credit card, we offer one-click purchasing. This will allow members to add their credit card information only once and can freely add or remove songs to their shopping cart at any time, until they are ready for checkout. No extra steps or leaving the web site. Paypal users must checkout for songs from each individual album.

Profiles

Profiles are loosely set-up to include all the info an artist’s press kit would include. Design/theme is completely customizable using our WYSIWYG editor and we even left some open areas where more creative members can include their own HTML. We also have a cool little feature for the events calendar where musicians can upload their concert posters/fliers.

Fan Interaction

Since we are also a social network, artists and fans have a chance to interact on a more personal level. There are not many music store where fans can communicate directly with their favorite artists.

Statistics

We have general stats that include sales, downloads, plays, affiliate sales and arists’ sales rank among their peers. However, I’ll be the first to admit that we do not have robust stats or metrics; such as a service like, Bandmetrics. Though I can tell you that this is a feature that is definitely coming in future.

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Hopefully, this will clear-up any confusion about Plugola temporarily, until I can lay it out in a much more obvious fashion. It’s completely free to sign-up and get started for both artists and fans! Please let us know if you have any questions, feedback or issues with the site. We are also available if you need any help getting started or with your marketing campaign(s). You may contact us HERE.

You may, or may not, have noticed that Plugola has been getting some attention lately among music industry bloggers. We do have a press page located on Plugola, where I try to keep you updated, but I wanted to bring some of the chatter into the spotlight so you can see what’s going on with us, in case you have missed it.

About.com: Music Carreers: The ‘Music Carreers’ section of About.com interviews Plugola founder, Erik Peterson, about Plugola and the new music business.

Independent Music StartUp: Part One of Interview with PLUGOLA founder, Erik Peterson about the music community and what indie artists should be doing to market themselves online. Part 2 of Interview

Creative Deconstruction: DIY music-marketing blog, Creative deconstruction, blurbs us in their article on musicians targeting their fans.

Indie Guide: The Indie Band Survival Guide recommends Plugola for their ‘Useful Link of the Day’ section.

GigHive: The Buzz: From ‘The Buzz’ section, a write-up of Plugola by fellow indie music social network, GigHive.

Gen-Y Rock Stars: Rock star chat with Plugola founder/president, Erik Peterson & Greg Rollett, of GenYRockStars blog.

HypeBot: Independent music industry blog, HypeBot, blurbs Plugola.

GigDoggy: Canadian Gig-startup, GigDoggy, likes Plugola’s “plugging”(or affliate) feature.

Killer Startups: A killer nod from the startup review kings.

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I’ve been through literally thousands and thousands of band profiles and musician websites and I’ve noticed a lot of things that could make their presence better. However, most of them are not SE (search engine) friendly, making it harder for fans of the genre to discover the artist(s).

First, if you’re not doing so already, consider targeting your music to directly to the people who are fans of the genre; your ‘niche’. I know this sounds like a no-brainer, but for a lot of us it seems natural to present our music to as many people as possible. Don’t let this fool you, though. Niche marketing/targeting is MUCH more effective. Instead of putting your music out on all the p2p networks hoping someone will discover you, try focusing on a much smaller group of hardcore fans of your genre. If anyone is going to care about your music, it will be the fans from this group. Obviously, you can’t track down ever single fan, so it’s best to optimize your site and profile pages for the search engines, so they can easily find you.

Now, there are many intricacies when optimizing a web page for the search engines, but here I’m going to give you the basics. Just following these simple suggestions will help your site/page rank higher in most search algorithms, as they change quite frequently. This is aimed at musicians, but really anyone can follow these tips.

Since these tips turned out to be WAY longer than I anticipated, I decided to break up these SEO tips into a couple posts.

Header Meta Data

If you have your own web site already, you or your webmaster should be able to control the header meta data. This is the most important part of SEO for any web page/site and probably the easiest, yet so many designers and developers leave this out or do it incorrectly.

Above, is a screen shot of the meta data area within your page’s code. When a search engine spider crawls your site, this is more-or-less the first bit of information it will read. Based on this info, the SE spider will begin to categorize your site. Your title is considered most important, so it should be to the point and worded carefully. If your delta blues band was called, “Jimmy James & the Blue Flames”; you may word your title like, “Jimmy James & the Blue Flames - Down Home Delta Blues” It’s pretty much a no-brainer, but definitely important.

Next in line is, the meta description (not keywords. they will be last). Again, it’s fairly obvious what you should include here. However, you don’t want to go crazy. Stick to one or two sentences describing your band and/or music. When writing your description, try to use as many of your keywords as possible while keeping it sensible. Also, be sure to include your act’s name and genre. This will help the spiders compare to your title, so you want to keep the same topic.

Finally, your meta keywords. Why would keywords be last, you ask? It’s of the least importance to SE spiders, but it’s still needed. When a spider crawls the rest of your site, it will be able to understand the keywords just by the text, but we will cover that later. In your meta keywords, again you want to be sure to include your act’s name and genres, as well as, anything else that’s important to recognize your presence, but do NOT keyword ’stuff’. This means to repeat your keywords over and over, trying to gain advantage over other relevant web sites. The spiders WILL recognize this and penalize you, usually by dropping your rank, but sometimes a complete ban.

Unfortunately, on most profile pages you will not have control over this data. So you must make the best with what you do have control over. For the record, PLUGOLA has some built-in features that will automatically create some key meta data for you, upon profile creation.

Categories/Tags

One of the biggest mistakes I notice musicians making is not categorizing themselves by the correct genre. I know it’s funny for a death metal band to classify themselves as “Chinese Pop”, or vice-versa, but from a search/discovery standpoint, you’re really doing yourself an injustice. When you’re targeting a specialized fan base, you want to make it easy for them to find you. When the SE spider crawls your page, you want it to rank you in the search results for your genre, preferable on top. If you’re in the wrong category, obviously genre fans will not be able to find you. I suggest you include your general genre (ie: rock, r&B, etc.) and your sub-genre (ie: crunk, nu-jazz, etc.). Be sure to include these same genres as keywords in your header meta info.

I’m sure you’ve been noticing more sites these days, using a ‘tagging’ feature for bookmarks, videos, photos, etc. I’ve always considered tags a sort of a cross between a ‘category’ and ‘keyword’; an extra tool to note myself (and/or others) in a couple words what will be found upon clicking. Tagging your pages and content correctly is also essential in higher SE rankings.

Although these are only beginning steps to optimizing your profile page(s) and site, by following them you will already be ahead of most. They’re also stepping stones to more SEO tips that will have you ranking higher no time, such as; revalency and link popularity. But I’ll get to that in the next post.

For more information about this you may want to also check out Gen-Y Rockstars article:
Learn to Describe the Crap Out of Your Music

UPDATE: Here’s another great article from Musician Wages blog:
Getting the Most from Tags & Descriptions

ArtistRevue was just launched and it will be updated with interviews and streaming music/videos from some of PLUGOLA’s stronger artists. Any and all visitors can listen, rate and review the showcased artists without the hassle of signing-up with another site. All music and/or videos will be hand-chosen by the artist along with easy, direct access to downloads and other online destinations where the artist(s) can be found and heard.

For music fans, it will be a great place to learn about up-and-coming indie artists and hear some great, new music. For musicians, it will give them the opportunity to be heard by fresh ears and show potential fans where to find more of their music. Be sure to let us know what you think.

ArtistRevue.com

The truth is, Trent Reznor experimented with many ideas before he discovered a great model that is working for him, however this model will not work for every independent musician. NIN is an internationally-known musical brand, with a huge base of true fans who will shell out the money for rarities. Nine Inch Nails music crosses generations and genres, not to mention they have been a top selling recording artist for 15+ years. You can bet that when a new NIN album is released his millions of fans will be going to iTuens/Amazon to download it. Perhaps only his true fans know to visit the web site for freebies and/or physical rarities. The question is; do you, as a relatively unknown artist, have the weight to bring in the amount of fans necessary to move a profitable amount of rare merchandise and/or box sets? Does your audience even care about these rarities? If you’re trying to get noticed it’s a big commitment for a new fan to invest that kind of money. However, a few dollars and not having to take the time to search the p2p sites for your music is another story.

For anyone to claim that musicians can no longer earn money from their recorded/digital music, is ridiculous. I cringe when I hear these words spoken to struggling indie artists, because it’s simply not true. I also noticed this is usually said by people unfamiliar with any real world marketing  or music business experience. All anyone knows for sure is that the old way of doing things just isn’t going to cut it anymore. Trent himself even claims in that very post,

“Here’s a truth: nobody knows what to do right now, me included. The music business model is broken right now. That means every single job position in the music industry has to re-educate itself and learn / discover / adapt a new way. Change can be painful and hard and scary.”

You can still sell your music digitally–online.  It’s mainly a matter of execution and how you present your music.  The sky isn’t falling, as some bloggers would have you believe. For one, digital music sales are on the rise despite all the bad news we hear. Yes, it’s true that there is nothing you can do about piracy, but connecting with your fans on a personal level will help deter this. On a p2p site, you’re just content. On your own web site/profile, you’re a musician. As they say, personality goes a long way.  Unfortunately, there will always be people who find it more important to beat the system than to compensate the artists for their work. You should either embrace this or ignore it, because online piracy is not going anywhere anytime soon.

I believe this is a very exciting time for the music industry and especially for independent musicians. Never before has there been the opportunities to spread your music around at your discretion, as there are today. You definitely should try different models and strategies until you find a way that makes you satisfied, but from someone who has been marketing digital content online for roughly nine years, my suggestions for marketing your music, for both profit and word-of-mouth, I suggest (in no particular order):

• Yes, give away SOME of your music for free. Pick only a few of your stronger songs and spread them around like a wild fire. You will want to leave most of your music available for purchase only. Wherever possible, be sure your music links to your main web site or digital store of choice. If they like your music, they will want to know more about you and where to get more of it. Show them. You WILL sell more of your music if your fans know where and how to get it.
• Know your audience. Target only them, no matter how small or large a group they may be. You will get a much bigger response from your targeted audience. If your music is destined for mass appeal, these will be the people that bring it there.
• Upload your music everywhere! The Internet is HUGE and still growing everyday. So be sure to have a strong presence and your music where your fans are, and UPDATE regularly to keep your name in everyone’s face.  Remember –  no matter how great you are — out of site, out of mind.
• Itunes and Amazon aren’t the only digital record stores. When I tell musicians about PLUGOLA, sometimes they say, “Well, I already have my music on iTunes”. And I usually respond, “So, you only want to sell your music at one record store?” Just like the days of physical record stores, there are a lot out there and it only makes sense to have your music available at as many as possible.
• Exchange your site’s link(s) with similar bands and musicians; competition or not. This is a proven, effective method of increasing interested web site visitors, yet so few bands take advantage of it. Trading traffic with same/similar genres wil not only increase your search engine rankings, but if a new surfer isn’t feeling your link partner’s music, they might like yours; and vice-versa. This will help bring in targeted music fans that may have never discovered you otherwise. Not to mention a somewhat steady flow of new potential fans.
• Make it easy for your fans. Humans are lazy and if it takes too long or requires too many steps to get what we want, we lose interest. Especially if we’re paying for it or helping someone out. If you want them to purchase or share something, do everything you can to take the guess-work out of it. Keep clicks and scrolling to a minimal.
• Never be deceptive! A huge factor in selling anything online is, trust. This is not a face-to-face transaction, so people only have your word to go by. Some will take the chance, but if you let them down once, it’s probable you lost them forever; at least as a paying fan.
• Feeder web sites will help a lot. Similar to exchanging links, feeder sites can filter and send a steady flow of targeted traffic to your site or store. A feeder site is basically a separate web site(s) created especially for targeting and attracting potential fans using a different angle, usually based on key words. In other words, if you’re a a ska band, you might put together a simple site (separate from your own web site) called, Discover-Ska.whatever. Here you would display some of your music, maybe a brief bio, text about the music/band, link exchanges and of course obvious links to your main site/store. Perhaps even include other ska bands, making a ska directory of sorts, and they can link to the feeder site, as well. All this can be done relatively easy and on the cheap.
• Take advantage of all the free online tools available these days. Especially all the social bookmarking services. Every time your band is mentioned, reviewed, interviewed; add the links to the bookmarking services (Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, etc.) This probably will  not help much with SE rankings, but it’s still a good traffic source.
• Treat your fans/visitors how you would like to be treated. Think yourself as a random surfer who stumbled across your site. Would you come back to this web site again? Would you download your music? Would you pay for it? Never underestimate your fans or potential fans.

Hopefully some of these tips will point you in the right direction in marketing your music online. Throwing spaghetti on the wall, hoping something will stick, is not an effective marketing campaign. So, I highly recommend NOT giving away ALL your music for free if you intend on selling it.

Here’s some additional reading that may also help:

Basic Marketing Principles for Artists
Getting the Most from Tags & Descriptions
How to Create a Release Strategy for the New Music Marketplace
20 Must Read Articles for Musicians Marketing Their Music

Plugola has actually had a page at Virb for a while now, but other than the initial profile set-up it has gone untouched. That is, until a few days ago when I discovered that they have made some cool changes for musicians of their community. If you’re unfamiliar with Virb, it is another social network from the company behind PureVolume, however it’s focus seems to be on the arts and music. Bands get the general social networking features, such as: free profile, video/audio sharing, etc. I’m not trying to sell you on Virb, or anything, but I noticed they have added a great, new feature for musicians to market their music.

As in most social networks, bands get their own music player where they can upload their music. In Virb’s media player musicians are also allowed to add a “Buy Link”. If a surfer hears a song they have just got to have, clicking on the “Buy” button next to the track will send them directly to a page where they can purchase and download the song. Of course, musicians can send their fans to any one of the digital stores where their music is available for download, but since this is PLUGOLA, I’m going to show how to send fans directly to tracks available on PLUGOLA.

PLUGOLA musicians will want to locate their single track pages from the “Audio” page. The “More” link leads to a page hosting the single track(s) in question.

Plugola Audio Page

Click on “edit” next to the audio track, in the profile dashboard. Just paste the link to song page where the track is located

Virb's Audio Edit Page

After the buy link is saved to the audio file, it will appear in the media player as a “Buy” button, located next to the song title. Not only can potential fans listen to audio tracks on Virb, but they can share them elsewhere; giving the song an even wider audience.

Virb Audio Player

When the “Buy” button is clicked, the surfer is directed to the song page where the song can be easily purchased and downloaded; or even more options to spread and share the track even further.

Plugola Song Page

Indie/DIY musicians should take advantage of all the tools made available to them online. It doesn’t cost any money to do this and it will only help make your music more accessible to current and potential fans. This is only one way to show your fans how they can purchase and  download your music and videos from PLUGOLA, or even other stores. And it’s FREE!

Single Tracks/Pages:

We’ve always had this feature, however we really spruced it up and made it much more useful. Before it was just a page with basic functions and one track sitting in a big, clunky media player. After a few months of really analyzing some of the more popular social media sites, we did a slight re-design of these pages and developed a new single-track media player. The pages have been completely optimized not only for the major search engines, but also for the major social networks (ie: MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, etc.) and bookmarking sites.

Our new, embeddable single-track media players were designed to easily fit into ANY blog or web site without taking too much room. We kept it plain and simple as to not distract from others’ designs and layouts. More advanced users will be able to edit the size and background color for a flawless fit.

Along the bottom you’ll notice clickable links that will either lead to this track’s page, where downloading/purchasing information is displayed; or a quick and easy way to share these tracks on other networks and web sites. The artist’s profile photo is thumbnailed and links directly to that artist’s profile page for additional music, videos and/or info. No more guess work for potential fans wondering where to find you and your music.  Don’t forget, we’re also set-up for video distribution, as well:

The downside here is that we really haven’t figured a good way to present these single-track pages to you and the public. For now, they can be best accessed in the “Top 10″ section on the PLUGOLA’s front page, or from the “Audio” and/or “Video” pages, accessed by clicking from the top navigation.

Digital Store/ Media Player Overhaul:

There have been a lot of changes since we developed the original Plugola Player (media player/digital store widget). The design isn’t much different, but just about everything else is. Most importantly, we have developed and added a brand new shopping cart/e-commerce system. Any user can now select and save tracks from multiple albums/artists if they wish, and after a selection has been made,  a notification will display indicating content is waiting in their cart. All content can be saved in the shopping cart if a user decides to return another day to continue their purchase. Before any purchases can be made, all payments details must be completed in members’ secure “Account” section.

On the front-end of the Plugola Player, we have rearranged it’s layout a bit to be less confusing and more user friendly. You may have noticed that we’ve put more emphasis on the individual tracks and the artist that it belongs to. We also have removed the “Plug” (or affiliate) option from the Player, since these options are more apparent in all members’ “Account” sections, and it won’t confuse anyone when it comes time to download their selection(s).

Sharing:

Now you can practically share just about everything from Plugola on all your favorite web sites and/or other profile(s). For this, we went to outside sources to ensure that any content sharing is completely user friendly and as easy as a mouse click or two. We chose two well-known and trustworthy sharing applications, where none of your personal login info will be saved. For profile sharing, we have added the Tell-A-Friend app. You can share your favorite profiles through any email service, bookmarking site(s) or any number of social communities. We applied the very popular Gigya app for all content sharing. Gigya has their own apps for all the main social media web sites, where any of our media players can easily be embedded with very little effort on the user’s part.

Purchase Options:

We have always accepted credit cards, but on this update we have also added the option of using PayPal instead. Artists outside of the U.S. have informed us that PayPal is the preferred method of online payments. Using PayPal instead of our e-commerce system will not allow the same luxury of our one-click purchasing, however we want to give you as many options and appeal as possible.

Other Changes:

There have been a few smaller changes we made that we also wanted to inform you about, too.

- All music and videos are now set to stream full-length clip by default, after upload. If artists decide to change their settings, they have the option of full or 30 second clip in your “Account” section.

- All mp3s and videos now have a minimum price artists must charge. Don’t worry, we kept it very low ($.20/mp3 and $.50/video) We had to do this in order to cover our own operating and processing costs, but we have also given our artists the tools to help promote themselves.  This doesn’t mean that you do not have the option to give your music away for free. Again, in the artists’ “Account” section, artists may set any one of their songs to ‘Promo’ and grab their download codes in order to distribute them for free.

- Basic actions, email alerts have also been added. This feature is still in the rough stages, but basically you will get an email alerting you that another member has sent you message or has added you as a ‘friend’. We will also be adding ways to opt-out of this feature soon, so please bare with us if you are not a fan of this. However, it should not be a bother at all.

- We made a few functions optional that were not before. They are so minor I’m sure you will not even notice.

We’re also in production with  some new instructional videos on how to get the best results from Plugola. So please be sure to check back soon!