2026-08-09
Archive 2010–2012
Eighty-seven articles, published on this site between 2010 and 2012 and reproduced exactly as written.
Most of the specific advice is now wrong. Platforms named here have changed, been renamed, or ceased to exist. These pages are a record rather than current advice, and each one says so.
The dates
Forty carry a date taken from the article itself.
Thirty are dated from the first comment on the original post, which is a lower bound rather than an exact date. Those pages say so. For a current publishing and creative-tools reference, see Bandzoogle.
And seventeen have no recoverable date. They are marked before 2013, which is what the corpus supports: every dated piece falls between 2010 and 2012, and publication stopped after that.
Why they are here
Because they are the evidence. A dated corpus is the only way to show that this genre's advice decays, and almost nobody who writes it keeps theirs where it can be checked. For additional current industry context, see Digital Music News.
Nothing has been edited. No updated links, no quiet corrections, no fresh dates. An edited archive would prove nothing.
How to read them
As an exhibit rather than as instruction. The platform-named pieces show the decay; the ones about people read almost unchanged, and they sit side by side, written the same year.
15 Reasons Twitter Rocks for Musicians
I’m probably biased by my own personal recent adoption of the medium (I got an Android phone), but it seems to me that the micro-blogging tool has come...
5 Free Tools For Making a Facebook Landing Page to
If you have a Facebook page for your music and you are always encouraging people to connect with you or your band, you’ve probably realised that even...
8 Essential Places to Share Your Mp3 Online
Getting your music online is important for several reasons. It helps reach new audiences, it lets people engage and interact with your music and it...
A Creative Industry Thriving Without Copyright
As I’m sure you’ve noticed, the 21st century Internet and 20th century IP laws (e.g. Copyright) have not been mixing too well. Many people in many...
Band Interview: Halves
Dublin band Halves released their debut album “It Goes, It Goes (Forever & Ever)” last Friday to widespread critical acclaim, garnering CD of the week...
Beginner's Guide
Welcome to our Beginner’s Guide section where we hope to share plenty of practical advice and how-to guides. We’ll be adding to the guide as we go and...
Big News : How To Convert Personal Facebook Profiles
We see this all the time when we start working with bands: they’ve got started on Facebook, but they never fully researched all the options and set up...
Black Friday & Probabilistic Promotion
Here’s a great post from Dan Ariely called Probabilistic Promotion: “Recently Nina Mazar and I have been playing with the idea of probabilistic...
Does Critical Acclaim Really Matter?
Landing a good review in the music press is a prize highly sought after by most musicians. And Pitchfork.com is arguably the most influential music...
Don't Panic! New Facebook Pages Not Yet Launched
Yesterday there was much confusion and consternation amongst some Facebook Pages administrators when they logged in to their Page to see a completely...
Double Your Mailing List Growth by Asking Fans to
This is the second experiment in our “ Data Driven Music Marketing ” series. In our first experiment, we tested which type of button would lead to the...
Facebook Ads For Musicians : A Case Study
A few weeks ago we ran a report on “ How We Get Thousands of Real Facebook Fans For New Artists ” which got quite a lot of attention at the time. Since...
Facebook Grows Up
As is my normal morningtime ritual (and in this I’m like most women my age), today I made a cup of tea and opened my Facebook page to be greeted with a...
Facebook Insights Gets Better
Those of you who manage a fan page for yourself or others will be interested to see the changes Facebook have made to their ‘Insights’ platform. The...
Facebook Landing Pages
Facebook has become the most important social network for musicians since the demise of MySpace began in the late nougties. The reach of Facebook is...
Facebook Page Alerts Made Easy Peasy
Ever found it frustrating that Facebook don’t email you when a fan leaves a comment on your Facebook band page? Here in Amp, we manage multiple fan...
Facebook roll out new 'Edit Page' interface
Facebook have just this morning rolled out a new interface for editing both fan pages and personal profiles. The interface is different depending on...
Google Music and why it matters
After months, nay years of speculation, Google Music has finally arrived. Albeit in beta form and only available in the US. Still they beat rivals...
Google Music announcement tomorrow?
It’s in the trees, it’s coming… Yes, Google Music is on the way, at least if you believe the stirrings online. The company are having an event tomorrow...
Have You Tried Viinyl? The Single Song Site.
Viinyl describe their single song sites as “The ideal format to brand your songs, enrich the music experience for your fans, increase fan loyalty &...
Heathers
Home Store Forum Music About Waiter – Live at The Academy Here’s Waiter played live at The Academy in Dublin. We were there for the Phantoms First...
How to be Remarkable
One of the most important lessons in online marketing is Seth Godin‘s concept of remarkable. Is your product worth remarking on? If not, why are people...
How To Become A YouTube Superstar
YouTube is by far the biggest, best and most underused promotional tool for musicians. I have seen independent musicians build audiences of hundreds of...
How To Build a Band or Musicians' Website for Free
In this “How To” guide you’ll learn how to build a new website for your music . This is usually a service we charge thousands of dollars for, but...
How To: Change your Facebook URL
Here’s a quick little ‘How To’ for your Friday afternoon. When you created your Facebook fan page you were likely randomly assigned a url containing a...
How To Chart in the Billboard Social 50
Last week Billboard announced the launch of the Social 50 chart, which will rank artists based on their weekly additions of friends, fans and followers...
How To Convert Youtube Views to Fans, Subscribers &
YouTube is the number one place that people go to find music online, so it’s no surprise that many musicians are realizing the importance of...
How To Get More Views With YouTube \"Hit-Stalking\
Have you heard of Tiffany Alvord? We featured her in our “ How To Become a YouTube Superstar ” post – and with 294,000 subscribers and 52 million total...
How To Get Your Music Post Re-Tweeted
In 3 easy steps…. 1. Pick Popular Musicians Make a list of 10 or 20 big musicians in your genre (or who you would hope to share fans with), and check...
How To Increase Your Music Sales With Data & Testing
Here at Amp Music Marketing we run a large number of websites for a wide range of musicians. From gospel choirs to synth-rock bands, global stars to...
How to Make the Most of Old Tricks for the New Year
As we open up a blank 2011 diary and face into the brand new year ahead, the temptation is to focus squarely on the future; on all the new things we...
How To Make the Most of your Facebook Page
It’s 2011 and every artist worth their salt has a Facebook fan page. But keeping yours up to date can sometimes feel like a chore. And how do you know...
How We Get Thousands of Real Facebook Fans For New
Introduction When we start working with any new musician, two of the most important goals we start with are: Build a strong mailing list Build a...
I Fight Dragons - A Small Band Making Money Online
I Fight Dragons promote themselves as Chicago’s finest (and quite possibly only) NES-Rock band. For those of you that weren’t raised on Nintendo, the...
Is MySpace Dead?
A musician emailed me recently and asked a questionabout MySpace and Facebook. It’s a great question and one I hear all the time: I’m just wondering...
It’s a Bandwagon - so Jump Onboard!
One of the effects of a democratised media (Web 2.0 technologies be-praised) is the huge increase in the volume of content out there. And by ‘out...
It's the Experience, Stupid
An article recently published by Business Insider entitled ‘When It Comes to Marketing, Twitter Destroys Facebook’ made me go ‘Huh?’. Based on...
Jack White Ebay Flip Out - The Right Action For The
Jack White seems to have realised one of the cool side-effects of people pirating your works - free market research! His reaction to this free...
Lessons From A Mystery Guitar Man
One of our favourite musicians on YouTube is Mystery Guitar Man. His videos are not the standard type of content you see from most artists, but they...
Make A Website For Your Band - Using Wordpress
Every musician needs a HQ on the web , a place to centre all your efforts, a place to call home! Your website will be the first place you post updates,...
Marketing Around the Music
Without the help of an established music label and their associated PR machine, getting online buzz is difficult for a DIY artist. Even if you do go to...
Mashup your Facebook Likes on Myspace
This is a big move from MySpace which has been a long time coming. In the last 18 months MySpace have been pursuing a “non-zero-sum” strategy towards...
Meteor Awards No More?
Irish mobile phone company Meteor have just announced via their social networks this afternoon that they will no longer be backing the Meteor Music...
Missing In (Online) Action
As an online marketing company we help the artists we work with to publish their content to the world via the Internet so that it can be easily found...
MTV is Music Television no more
TV.com have pointed out that MTV has now officially given up the “Music Television” tagline under it’s logo. This is just a final step in the long...
Music Muse: Blog Topics for Musicians
Join the growing list of musicians who receive 5 or more blog topics each week, plus top blogging tips from our specialist writers here at Amp Music...
Music Sites Get Truly Interactive
An interesting thing has been happening in music of late; artists are beginning to put some serious effort and money into their websites, using them as...
Music Video Monday – Greyson Chance, Bieber Fever &
It seems like Justin Bieber is “so yesterday.” Greyson Chance is the new YouTube sensation driving the teenage girls crazy. If you want to feel old,...
Music Video Monday: Jedward, Katy Perry and Oxegen 2010
You’ve got to hand it to Jedward for finishing their performance at T4 on the Beach even though Edward broke his leg mid way through the set. Seems...
Music Video Monday – Madonna on Glee, The Hucklebuck
A slight change to scheduled programming here on the blog – Our Top 10 Music videos segment is now becoming a monthly feature and in it’s place, each...
Music Video Monday: Robyn, Janelle Morae and Jordan
Here’s something very clever from the dance-pop Swede Robyn : the world’s first interactive music video, or should that be twideo? For her latest...
Music Video Monday - Xtina, Béyonce, The Coronas &
Christina Aguilera, “Not Myself Tonight” Live on Oprah at Radio City Music Hall Having blogged about Xtina’s latest single last week , we couldn’t go...
Music Video Monday: YouTube changes and Rockabilly
Normally putting this weekly post together is a pretty easy affair because we could easily select “Most Viewed videos” in the Music category for the...
Music Video Tuesday: Shakira, Ok Go and Katy Perry
A certain global football event continues to dominate the world media and YouTube is no different. Shakira’s performance of Waka Waka (This Time for...
Musical Links – 11th Feb 2010
Silicon republic: MEP tells record labels to leave illegal downloaders alone. Just days after it announced a $17 million quarterely loss, Warner is set...
Ok Go Ditch Their Label
Ok Go have been having many troubles with their recent album launch, all with their record label EMI, so this news may not come as much of a surprise....
Ok Go - The Kings of Viral Video
Ok Go are the original masters of the viral music video. Their dancing on treadmills video has been viewed over 50 million times and catapulted the...
Pause, Play & FastForward; The Present and Future of
Last year Nielsen in conjunction with MIDEM conducted a large-scale study on the music consumption habits of over 12,000 people in 53 countries across...
Philosophy
The New Music Industry As we’re sure you’re aware, the music industry is in the midst of some serious changes. From Napster to iTunes to Soundcloud,...
Radiohead Extra Extra Read All About It
Like most people in the music world we’ve been following Radiohead’s release of their latest album ‘The King of Limbs ‘with interest. Stage One in the...
Radiohead: Strike Two
Back in October 2007 when Radiohead announced they would allow fans to choose what they wanted to pay for a download of their new album In Rainbows it...
Services
What We Do When we work with artists, labels or management companies we usually provide end-to-end online marketing and sales services. We work...
Testing Lessons from Barack Obama and Jimmy Wales
Here are two great posts which, although they’re not strictly music related, still highlight the importance of testing various elements on your band or...
The Anatomy of a Hit Record
I just read this headline: 2% Of Albums Released Last Year Accounted For 91% Of Sales. Instinctively, we all know that “hits” are huge successes, but...
The Big 4 vs UPC: A Three Strikes Ruling Update
Yesterday, in Ireland’s High Court, a ruling was made which seems to overturn May’s legal win by the major record labels against Ireland’s main ISP...
The Big Reveal
We’ve been following the progress of the iamamiwhoami project with keen interest for the past year, not least because the music is beautiful. Last...
The Future of EMI
Another day, another bad piece of news from the “Big Four” music labels. EMI have just posted their financials for the year ended March 2010 and it...
The Joy of Cover Songs: Karmin
Have you heard about Karmin yet? No? Then let me introduce you: Karmin are a duo from Massachusetts who have exploded to fame in the past few weeks...
The Most Popular Facebook Pages in Ireland
Pete Warden is doing some excellent work on his blog with publicly available data on Facebook. He has crawled over 250 million public pages to gain...
The Musician’s Guide to Social Media: Changing your
Did you know that you can choose which one of your tabs is displayed when a fan sees your Facebook page for the first time? No? Well you can. And it’s...
The Musician's Guide to Social Media - How to Embed
Update: Since writing this post a number of apps have been developed that will do the job for you. One great one is called Cueler YouTube and here is a...
The Musician's Guide to Social Media - How To Write
Direct to Fan marketing is where it’s at in the music industry at the moment and collecting and maintaining a healthy email database is a crucial...
The Musician’s Guide to Social Media – Twitter Tips
Getting Started: So far you’ve read the Twitter for beginners article You’ve registered on twitter.com and ideally you got twitter.com/ yourbandname...
The Saturation Point in Social Media - what comes
A recent article in the mighty Hypebot caught my attention. The subject was the slowing down of growth in social media based on predictions from (US)...
The Simplest Way to Measure Your Facebook Success
Intro : If you’re new to Facebook advertising you might want to read our introduction article here . This post is more advanced and is a guest post by...
The Social Media Landscape For Musicians - HQ & Outposts
Here’s an image that we use to help musicians get an overview of the social media landscape. It’s based on a post by problogger (which in turn is based...
Top Tips for Email Music Marketing in a Social Media Age
How important is email to you in your daily life? Is it more or less important than it was a year ago? Chances are, if you’re under the age of 35,...
Topspin + Amp
Here at Amp we develop and execute some pretty extensive, integrated online marketing and sales campaigns for a wide variety of musicians. To do that...
Twitter tips: Developing fan relationships
Twitter is still growing, more people are joining the micro-blogging service every day, more connections are being made and more Tweets being, er,...
Understand Your Fans
We’ve been talking about tiered value for a long time here in Amp and while it’s not a new approach, it is one which is gaining traction in the music...
Updated: Let it be (on iTunes)
You’d have to be living under a rock to have escaped the hype. Yesterday, for the first time ever, you could legally download a song or album by The...
VEVO? VE-NO.
I was over in a friend’s house last night and the discussion was (as it invariably is) about music. The topic was Christina (or is that Xtina?)...
WebCeleb - Site Review
WebCeleb describes itself as “The social marketplace for independent music .” The idea is pretty simple, if you download a musician’s song, you’ll get...
Website Design
If you are a musician, having your own website is essential. A place that you can connect with potential fans, sell your music, promote your gigs and...
Win The Ultimate Package to Build Your Fanbase
Need help promoting your music? Who doesn’t, right!? Today our friends at The Musician’s Guide have launched an amazing deal to offer artists over...
Your Band Supporting Snow Patrol?
Would you like the chance to join the likes of Snow Patrol, Paolo Nutini and José González on the bill as part of this year’s Arthur’s Day...
YouTube Insight is Awesome (and here's how to use it)
Have you logged into your YouTube account recently? Did you check out the improvements made to the YouTube Insight (i.e. analytics) tools? It’s really...