39 Ways to Recession Proof Your Music Career
A week ago, I paid broke a personal record by paying over $50 ($51.23) to fill up my 1997 Nissan Sentra’s gas tank. Ouch.
It made Bob’s new free white paper, with the very long but descriptive title, "How to Recession-Proof Your Music Career: 39 Ways Musicians, Bands and Record Labels Can Reduce Expenses and Prosper in Today’s Economic Times" quite a bit more relevant. If you’re looking to pinch some pennies during your next gig (or for that matter, your next night out, yeesh), you can download it here.
Two of the 39 Ways were completely new to me — BetterThanTheVan.com and CouchSurfing.com are sites bands can use to crash couches across America, one living room at a time, to reduce travel expenses. Awesome. A little unpredictable both for bands and hosts, perhaps, but would surely yield some interesting stories while gigging.
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Testing…testing…
Please forgive any "broken site" craziness over the next hour as I try to get this redesign launched…
UPDATE: Ok, that didn’t go so well. All the old URLs were still pointing to the old Movable Type pages. The wordpress launch will have to wait….(sigh).
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The “Questions Answered” Photo Gallery: Take Two
My good friend Taylor (amazing photographer, startup junkie, and BarsForUs star) is launching a new community-generated content photography project called "Questions, Answered".
It’s sort of a cross between a Magic 8-ball and Flickr. YOU submit a question, and he answers it with both words (sort of like that ephemeral buddhist monk residing on a mountain top) and photos (National Geographic can’t hold a candle to Taylor’s portfolio).
Check it out, submit a question. He adds:
[There will be] a little voting, a little participation, some exclusive content for people that submit questions, and a web and print combination. More on all this later. For right now, just focus on the questions.
Nuff said. Enjoy.
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Jumping On the Twitter Bandwagon
Are you on Twitter? So am I. Let’s connect so we can follow each other’s each and every move, 24/7:
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VH1 I Want to Work for Diddy = Hip Hop Apprentice
So, I’m watching a teaser for VH1’s I Want to Work for Diddy, where a cast of random "can do" "A" personality type folks will compete to be used and abused by the media mogul himself. It’s sort of like a "Hip Hop Apprentice".
Apparently, the reality show formula has worked wonders for his label, Bad Boy Records, especially for the launch of Danity Kane, Day 26, and Donnie J. The new show will give him the opportunity to pack in tons of product placement opportunities for his other brands and those of partners’…much like Trump did.
We here in the blogosphere accomplish some amazing things on shoe string budgets while leveraging web 2.0 goodness. But you still can’t underestimate the power of smart marketing and several gazillion dollars…
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New RSS Feed - Please Grab It!
I’m getting really close to launching the new Wordpress-powered GarageSpin.com, and one of the changes will be a switch to a Feedburner RSS feed.
We’re doing what we can to redirect existing feeds, however, the process isn’t full proof. I’d hate to lose you! If you have some time, please subscribe to my new RSS feed:
Thanks! I’m looking forward to taking a slightly different approach with this blog once the new site is launched. Hopefully, it’ll become more of a ‘resource’ going forward… More soon. Cheers!
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Take a Peak — the new WP-Powered GarageSpin
I can’t wait to launch the brand new, Web 2.0 saturated, Wordpress-powered GarageSpin.com. I’ve learned more than I ever intended to about RSS feed redirection, wireless router firewalls, PNG image transparency issues with Internet Exlporer 6, javascript naughtiness, and all sorts of other obstacles. But the new site is looking good, so it’s all worth it.
To the right is a small snapshot taken of the site (originally to illustrate PNG image rendering issues I was facing in IE6), which gives you a feel for the new color scheme. Basically "brown", apparently. Woo-hoo.
The new site will be using about 10 -15 plugins already being used in other WP sites I own, plus a bunchthat are new to me, including MyBlogLog, ShareThis, Relish Comments, Sphere, and more. Hopefully, nothing will expode.
Huge thanks go to Scott, Taylor, Ryan, Eric, and Tara for both moral and technical support. (Especially on Saturday, when I thought the world was falling. Long story short, unbeknowest to me, my router’s fire wall suddenly started blocking all access to my web hosting account. Yeesh.) Everything is more easily surmountable with friends around.
Oh, and my next song is 98% finished; it’s been on standby until this puppy is finished. …Actually, I’ve not yet decided whether to launch the site, then the song, or both simultaneously…
What do you think? Let both loose into the world simultaneously, or do more of a one-two punch?
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Audio Tutorials: Read ‘Em & Write ‘Em
The same gang of creative folks that created all the Rockstar sites, such as PSDTuts, a Photoshop tutorial site, and Audio Jungle, an audio loop and sound effect ecommerce site, has launched the new audio tutorial site, AudioTuts.
It only launched in June, but there are already a few cool tutorials such as "Create a Reverse Reverb Effect", which is one I’ve actually wondered about in the past. Check it out.
Btw, you can also submit a tutorial of your own and score $150 (assuming it’s accepted). Rockstar Sites apparently has a model that’s working for them — pay the massive public to create great content, do some PR, and sell advertising to monetize the incoming traffic. Commercialized crowdsourcing….well, not really, since it’s selective. Not too shabby. I can’t complain about commercialism as long as the content is solid, and so far, it’s off to a good start. :)
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From Movable Type to Wordpress..?
So, I’ve been thinking about switching GarageSpin from Movable Type to the latest version of Wordpress for a long time. Mostly for the amazing plugin support WP has, and because of the many, many, many free WP templates/themes that have populated the ‘net.
The biggest challenges (to me, anyway), are moving all my content, posts, pages, images, links, feeds, etc over to the new platform without breaking anything. But Scott Andrew and Taylor Davidson seem to think that’s the easy part. I’ll also need to either pick a free theme, or have one custom built. Of course, that requires a wallet with actual money in it, so hm. But something are some amazing designers out there that I know could knock my socks off. We’ll see.
I’ve already launched several microsites using WP, and am pretty happy with it. (One actually made over $1000 over a couple months…crazy!) It’s the whole I-don’t-want-to-break-GarageSpin that scares me.
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Another Band Name Poll, Yeesh…
I stink. It’s amazing I get anything accomplished (oh wait, I don’t — I’ve only finished recording one song so far) with the degree of indecisiveness I’m plagued with. I’ve posted a new band name brainstorm poll — does anything appeal to you?
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