Myself (Leslie Poston) Uptown Uncorked and Film POP!, “Twitter for Dummies“, @leslie

Ariel Hyatt, Ariel Publicity, “Music Success In Nine Weeks“, @cyberpr

Dick Huey, Toolshed Inc, @dhuman

Tavit (David) Geudelekian, Primary Wave Music Publishing, @tavit

Lou Plaia, Reverb Nation, @reverbnation

I have a few clients who make a living creating sonic brands for commercials, products, moments in movies, events, and more. It fascinates me how music and sound affects us as humans. I mentioned the term sonic branding online the other day, and it sparked a very intriguing discussion about how sound affects the brain. Music has long been known to have ties to memory, emotion, and behavior. Is it any surprise that marketers and others have tapped into that over the years?

Where did the term sonic branding come from? I’m not sure – that’s just what I’ve always called it. It seems to make the most sense. That’s what it is, after all – auditory branding of a moment in time. If you follow Ze Frank’s premise that branding is the emotional aftertaste left after a shared experience, which I do, this isn’t a great leap of logic.

From Ze Frank’s web series, The Show, August 29, 2006:

If the concept of sound interacting with the brain and all of the possibilities that entails is new to you, you may enjoy some of these books on the topic (disclosure, I use Amazon’s affiliate links to help feed my enormous book addiction):

The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature

This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

Music, The Brain, And Ecstasy: How Music Captures Our Imagination

The Mozart Effect: Tapping the Power of Music to Heal the Body, Strengthen the Mind, and Unlock the Creative Spirit

There are many more books on the topic, but those will give you a good start. If I missed your favorite, add it in the comments below!

As a consultant, I love seeing the innovative ways the people behind the music we love are using microsharing platforms. It inspires me to see the ongoing and building connections with fans, the innovations in distribution, the advances in sales, the making of successful gigs and forging of collaborations.

These platforms have another effect also: they make music human again, bringing it out from behind a faceless corporate label or radio station. What should musicians be doing on these platforms to get their music heard and do an end run around the status quo?

One to One Sharing: Hand pick fans to send free songs, offer an opt in DM link to a free song each month for your fans and followers, talk to your fans one on one and get to know them – if you are in their city, meet up with them before or after your show. All of these things foster the one to one fan/creative relationship as well as sales.

One to Many Sharing: Use your social platforms and website to give people ways to discover your music. Use all of them! Sure, Twitter is fun, but if you integrate Blip, iMeem (now MySpace Music), and more, you’ll get more bang for your buck with the cross linking and user driven sharing systems they all have. Toss in more obscure things like Twitter lists and you have even more ways to share your sound with the world.

Collaboration: Social media provides an unprecedented arena for collaboration between artists and fans. Take advantage of the mashup culture, and use the ability to reach people you wouldn’t normally be able to reach to create new projects and expand your reach and audience, as well as to make more varied and interesting music.

Booking Gigs: The access that social media platforms give musicians to venues and enthusiastic fans can go a long way toward eliminating the middle man in booking gigs. One of my favorite uses of this is a musician who has been using his social network to book intimate house gigs all over the country, exposing fans to his music in a much more personal way. Another favorite example is the musician using Ustream with other social platforms to generate interest in upcoming gigs locally. Then you have people like Sooz in Boston using her love of music and social media to drive awareness to local bands through an annual event she’s making (Soozapaolooza).

Distribution: The music industry may be crying foul at the way things are changing, but that isn’t going to stop the deluge of fans clamoring to get their music delivered to them in new and unusual ways that free them from the vice-like grip of pale Clear Channel pop and label generated. Musicians on top of the trend with social media platforms for delivery will find themselves ahead of the game. Innovation is the key to success now.

Live Shows: Fans are clamoring for live shows. We already discussed the innovation of having fans host live in home shows via leverage of social media platforms, and of fans hosting live events to showcase their favorite artists. Collaboration with your fans using social media can increase attendance at live shows already on your schedule and help you schedule and broadcast live shows in new and innovative ways on and offline.

These thoughts are just grazing the tip of the iceberg of potential. I’ll be talking in Cannes France at MIDEM about more ways to leverage specific platforms for musicians this month – if you are there, come have a listen!

For me, the musical trailer that leads to a new band, musician, or song is often a shared file sent to me by a friend or client musician. Random nuggets of discovery that lead to musical happiness, vetted by people I trust. For a growing number of people, musical trailers come from sites like Grooveshark, Pandora, Blip.fm, iLike, Last.fm, iMeem (now Myspace music), LaLa, Musicovery, FlyFi and others. Lately, by hooking sites like LaLa and Blip.fm to Twitter accounts, Twitter has become my main source of music discovery.

Hooking whatever account the music lover or band uses for music sharing, even multiple sites, to Twitter creates one stream for music discovery for people in your network. It gives you a way to create a musical trailer stream distributed to multiple fans, that they can then pack and take with them via RSS feed or other services, and that they can share with their networks via lists, hashtags or regular tweets.

If you also hook your discovery and sharing services to other social networks like Facebook and MySpace profiles, you reach an entire extra layer of people. Facebook makes this a bit harder lately. They’ve decided, for example, to ditch the iLike stream (which is unfortunate, it was one of my favorite Facebook apps). But people are finding ways around site restrictions to share the music they love with each other.

Think how you as a musician can up the ante by not only sharing your music and your favorite music to listen to by others using streaming services, but by purposely creating an old school music sampler to act as a coherent musical trailer for your upcoming album. Then release the sample into the wild for free download and make it easy to share. One of my favorite things I see happening on Twitter, specifically, are bands that will randomly send me a link to a free song set (usually two or three songs) via Direct Message a few months before the album comes out – I love that! It’s like unwrapping a present in my DM box.

I’m continually watching for new ways to discover new music to buy, and so many others do the same. Make it easy for us to hear you by changing how you think about your music and the music of others. Emulate the movies a bit, and tease us with trailers – get us excited for your next release. What ways are you using to get fans excited for your new music?

How can musicians turn this time of evolving tools and shifting attention and consumption methods into success? Real success has to find a balance, combining distribution models, access, audience, discovery and talent. No time has ever been more ready for this explosion than now. Music lovers have been not only demanding, but creating, new ways to discover and access music for years.

Thinking Beyond The Tools

We’ve gone far beyond Napster and P2P sharing in terms of tools. How musicians employ simple tools in their overall strategy will be key to their success. Larger, more established artists like Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead have been at the forefront, visible in their experimentation with pricing, access and social leverage. But what can a new, unknown artist do to find the same success, at their level, and create a platform for growth, or even *gasp* pay their bills through their art? Not everyone has the advantage of time and audience readily built in at the beginning of their leap into a combined online and offline business model for their creativity.

For the young artists, the indie musicians, the obscure genres, and perhaps all musicians as we move forward; your social presence will become a keystone, holding up the arc of your career. To put all your eggs in one basket would be short sighted, however. The key to success for you in this fluid world is diversity of platform, access, new payment models and listening to where your audience shifts as it grows.

Using Tools Beyond Their “Intended” Purpose

I get asked often since the book if Twitter is the best tool for musicians. My answer is usually that it is, but not alone. In the end it is only another tool, though an effective one. Whether this one tool will be effective for you depends on how you use it, and what other tools and methods you combine it with. For example, some musicians use Twitter to talk to fans about their music and the process, some to broadcast concerts and sales, a few to collaborate and plan shows and albums, some to promote not only themselves but other artists. The most successful strike a balance of these uses, and employ things like lists to create communities of fans and fellow artists.

Relying on one tool, or even over-focusing on tools over goals, won’t get you very far. It’s sometimes hard for a creative to step outside the “maker” box and into the “manager” mindset long enough to think strategy, to make a plan, and to implement a long-reaching series of tactics (in fact, this is often why a musician or filmmaker hires me to help). When you create something, you want to put all of your energy into your art, and it takes time (and mental energy) out of you to do otherwise.

Battle Plans and Mapping Your Future Success

My advice to musicians for the coming year, both new and established, is to take some time out to create a battle plan. Sit down and compose a list of who your audience is, and who you want to reach. What type of people do your songs appeal to? Set up listening posts using free tools like Google and Twitter searches (there are many more out there) to search for your fans and your potential fans using keywords. Monitor your songs title and band name. See who is already talking to you and about you and think of ways to leverage who is listening to them.

Strong Foundation, Balance, Diversity

Make sure you have a website, as well as a MySpace or Facebook fan page. MySpace, Facebook, iMeem, iLike, Last.fm and more are only tools. Tools may fade over time, and to accommodate the quick shifts in technology over coming years, you need to think ahead of the tools. Websites are on the one hand currently passé in favor of blogs, and on the other hand, a great static tool to make sure your fans can always find you as you expand, grow and shift. Websites are also your node for music sales. Music sales tools like Nimbit, Village Produce – heck, even Paypal – shift, change or fade away with time. The more you can afford yourself a permanent platform for music sales, not reliant on other sites, the more your future will remain secure. That said, having outposts on those other sites will also increase your reach – it’s all about balance and diversifying how your fans can find and buy your music.

Focus Past Acquiring Fans

Think outside of the fans. Gone are the days when music was restricted to your fan base. With the film industry and television in turmoil, and more and more filmmakers and series creators turning to the web themselves, the time has never been more ripe to get your music into other mediums like film soundtracks, audio books, multi-media books, podcasts, video games and television shows (or think further out of the box and develop a la carte licensing plans for webisodics and other new media platforms. Make it easy for people to use your stuff. If you want to go way out there and ensure a higher level of loyalty, make it easy for people play with your stuff – use Creative Commons licensing and new copyright methods to allow various levels of change or altering for use in new ways, with credit (and sales or licensing fees) back to you.

Have a Clear Vision

When you are making your battle plan and thinking of innovative new ways to distribute your music and get it out there, take a moment to visualize your success. This is not just kumbaya mumbo jumbo – what a visualization exercise does is allow you to see yourself as the best version of your future, and align your battle plan in a way that lets you reach that goal. All of the time and effort that a cross platform, far reaching, online and offline strategy will require – whether you hire help or use a DIY approach – will prove useless if you don’t know why you are putting in the blood, sweat and tears.

A clear vision of your future, and a good visualization of that future, will allow you to weigh each decision and interaction in light of it’s effect on your success. There are three kinds of success effects that each interaction, each decision, can cause for your future: the foundation effect, the ripple effect and the direct effect. I’ll go into those in the next blog post, as well as into how you mold your decisions on the fly. For now, just know that even the most simple interaction should align with some part of your future vision, in however small a way.

As you go into 2010, remember these key points, which the next few blog posts will go into more detail about:

• Think Beyond Tools
• Think Farther Than a Tool’s Intended Purpose
• Map Your Present and Future With A Battle Plan
• Build a Foundation That Includes Balance, Goals and Diversity
• Look Past Simple Fan “Eyeball” Acquisition
• Inspire People to Use Your Art
• Seek Alternative Methods of Payment, Distribution, Outreach
• Create a Clear Future Vision of Yourself, and Hold Tight to It
• Always Reach Higher

Side Note: Perhaps I will see you at MIDEM 2010 in Cannes, France, where I am conducting a workshop laser focused on Twitter for Music, and where I hope to have side conversations with many of you about all methods of online and offline music success.

POSTPONED Continuing the focus on hyper local learning and real time reaching out, we are starting Lunch and Learn sessions on some of the topics we get asked about the most. The first of these is on April 18th at Rick’s Pond View (no walk ins, EventBrite signup or email me if you need to pay cash at the door), and is a class on how to keep your kids safe online. (Hashtag #KIDSAFENH)

Also in the hyper local category is the next Social Media Breakfast NH on April 17th (no walk ins, EventBrite signup only). University of New Hampshire (UNH) has generously offered to sponsor this event. This, the third Social Media Breakfast NH, is all about education and social media. We will have two speakers, and then instead of a third speaker we’ll do an open Q&A that will allow the educators present to pick our brains and learn from us in real time. (Hashtag #SMBNH)

Another upcoming event is the next podcast: Topics on Fire, Episode 15: Inbound/Viral Marketing. That will be on TalkShoe next Sunday 4/19 at 10:00PM EDT. You can follow the call here to get a reminder when it will start sent to your email inbox. (Hashtag #TOF)Last Topics on Fire Episode was on Music and Social Media. Have a listen:

There are more classes in the lunch and learn series coming, and more events planned. Stay tuned as we keep finding ways to share knowledge with you and foster connections.

Original post: Topics on Fire is on its 14th episode. I’m so happy at the support it receives from people, and pleased when I hear that you all learned something from an episode, or just plain had fun. So far the two most popular episodes have been Part Two of the Gender Gap and Social Media/Technology and the New Year, New You episode.

Tonight we talk about one of my favorite topics, music and social media. I am honored to have long time friend and musician Flint Mavis as one of our panelists. He has one foot in each side of the equation as a MySpace account executive and session guitarist in Los Angeles. He has been heard wailing his axe in several bands over the years. Also joining us is new friend Joe Marrapodi from Get Rare. You all may know Joe best as friend and manager to Pete Yorn, but through Get Rare I had the pleasure to get to know Joe recently before the WERS 60th Anniversary show in Boston. Carla Lynne Hall will also be on our panel. She is a musician and music blogger (Her blog is Rock Star Life Lessons) and someone I connect with frequently on Twitter. A champion of indie music, she has loads of great advice for musicians looking to make their way online. Piano rocker Matthew Ebel will be on as well. He is known for using social media and the internet to book gigs and sell his music direct to his fans. The other panelists will be announced closer to the start time.

I hope to see you all there! It’s on TalkShoe at 10PM Eastern Time tonight, 3/29.

Updated to add the video from this Social Media Jungle Boston, March 2009:

It is incredibly basic, very easy to use and fits a need of mine perfectly. It won’t win any awards for design, but I can’t say I care about that. Live music is incredibly hard to find where I live (in Boston it is easy, but as you get further away the venues seem to dwindle) and Gruvr brings it right to my door for me to choose where I’d like to go that night.

You can follow bands/musicians also, which is handy when you find a band or musician you especially like and want to stalk them, er, I mean, support their music. You can also add bands, venues and musicians. Basically Gruvr has created a site that provides a useful service in a simple way, and that allows me to adapt it to my needs and preferences – I’d call that a win.

This simple little site has filled a huge need for me. Go check it out and let me know what you think. You can find it at Gruvr.com