THE
MUZIK-ZONE
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- Features: | Sample SoundClick Playlist |
SoundClick is one of the more popular, more successful and better-run music outlets for Indies. I signed up some time in late October 2007, but did nothing with the page until June 2008. I was surprised to see 2,171 plays as of July 20, 2008. The same night (July 20, 2008) I uploaded a new music video ("Beyond Atlantis") and went to bed letting it upload. Imagine my surprise when I woke up in the morning to find it already had nearly 40 hits!
I created a musician account where I can actually create separate pages for the separate publishers and performers I work with. You can also create a listener account.
FEATURES
& BENEFITS:
The site has an abundance of features: a message board, slideshow, blog,
photos, videos, embeddable stations you create, favorite bands, a store
where you can both buy and sell songs and albums through PayPal.
The upload feature is fast, with requirements of 128Kbps - 10Mb/song for free accounts or 320Kbps - 40Mb/song for VIP accounts @ $9.95/month. The VIP upgrade gives you a page without their ads, real-time statistics and "superior" sound quality - but few people download MP3 files sampled at 320 Kbps. Even the big labels use 128Kbps for MP3 downloads - because they take twice as long to upload, and twice as long for the buyer to download.
I especially like the ability to track your sons, one by one, to see how they rank on the charts in the genres you select. You can also look at this tracking by month and for the past year.
You sign up for certain premium promo services ($14.85/3 months) such as having your band rotated as a "featured band". They also offer other extra-cost extras:
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frontpage spotlight - 24 hours on their front page
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promo song of the day - 24 hours in your genre category
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player promotion - they put your song on their front page player, with others
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banner ads - a customized Flash banner ad (I wasn't impressed with the quality of these)
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featured listing on the licensing page (for professionals only)
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online tracking and editing of your promotions
They also team up with MyPRGenie to provide you with promotional services directly to reporters, journalists, blogs, etc. who specialize in music. This is probably nothing more than a service that sends out press releases. From my own experience as a journalist, 98% of these immediately end up in the trash can - there are just way too many of them. This, of course, is also yet another added expense which I wouldn't recommend for beginning songwriters.
See our tutorial for free PR tips that are far more effective than press releases.
PRO:
Fast uploading, ability to edit song information in batches rather than
one song at a time (except for adding photo). Ability to fairly quickly
change the order of the songs (they don't show up quite as they are
uploaded).
You can also upload videos (MPEG, MOV or AVI formats only) with 10-min. 100Mb limit.
CONS:
The only major nuisance are the occasional pop-up ads. Also, many sites
let you upload photos (band photos, logos, album or CD covers) and then
simply use the one you want over and over for each track on an album.
SoundClick does not do this; you have to painstakingly upload the
same photo time after time for every individual song. It lets you upload
photos into a gallery but only for the main account, not for individual
band accounts - and you can't use them for your music!
RECOMMENDATIONS:
The free service is quite good. Before a lot of the extras can do you any
good, you need to have a large and faithful fan base, so until you get
that I would not spend extra money on the VIP or MyPRGenie services.
The Player Promotion and Promo Song of the Day may be worth a shot - but first check your stats. How do you rank in your genres? Some of my songs were in the top 250 within a week or two. Others were dead in the water.
A more immediate solution may be to re-examine your genres and see if changing them to a more appropriate genre might get better results. With batch editing, you can change genres for one or all of your tracks. Experiment with those songs not getting good "air play" and see what happens.
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