Free Downloads – Dawn Landes and BYOB

One of the most important parts of a digital campaign is building a strong list of fan data. There are many different ways of persuading people to sign up but, short of “sending the boys round”, free downloads are one of the most effective.

Here at Good Lizard Media, we have run a number of free downloads and continue to use them to grow a database of fans for artists, allowing them to then contact the fans with targeted and relevant information.

We have done this for Dawn Landes and the song “Money in The Bank” using a one page site that carries her style, the track and links directly to retail.

http://dawnlandes.goodlizardmedia.com

Similarly, there is a new video out from the brilliant new artist BYOB. His tracks and image are really strong, so we wanted to combine both the new video and the track together to enable new fans to see the video in high quality, send onto their mates and also get the track onto their iPods and laptops.

http://www.byobmusic.com/prescription/

Both of these sites allow the fans to forward the page and information onto all of the main social networks, blogging systems and to email it directly on to their friends. This is extremely useful for spreading the word, allowing the fans to disseminate the message and content to a much wider audience.

In both instances we used double opt-in for the email sign-up so that we could be sure we were collecting only good data.

The Best Folk Blogs

There are many blogs online that compete for out attentions, some are incredibly popular and some are more niche. As my speciality is folk music I will guide you through, what I believe to be, the best folk blogs. I will also tell you how to work out which blogs hold the most power using online tools.

For the modern folkie there are many outlets online for blogging as many of the major blogs view this to be the taste of the moment. Major music websites also often feature news and reviews of folk acts too.

Here is a list of my Favourite (not necessarily the busiest);

Forfolkssake.com – This a fantastic site that is well connected within the UK folk scene and features regular reviews of albums and live shows. They also have interviews and feature a brilliant news section and are often the site that breaks the news.

TheLineOfBestFit.com – This site is incredibly popular and features reviews and informational content for popular alternative genres. This often includes Folk. They have constant updates and have over 3000 visitors a day.

Thefourohfive.com – This is a strong blog that includes many genres of music but also features the more hyped of the upcoming folk bands often signed to labels like Bella Union. This also gets a lot of hits. They do live reviews, albums, films and many news features.

To find the best blogs that are appropriate for your artist or label there a few good methods. One of the most effective it to search for similar artists using blog aggregators such as hypem.com or elbo.ws. These services allow you to browse blogs that have mentioned and feature similar artists.

Once have you list of blogs that interest you, put their website address into www.statbrain.com and it will tell you how many visitors they get a day. Many of the major blogs worldwide get upwards of 3000 hits a day, these are large outfits and can often be hard to get your music featured.

After you have chosen the suitable blog, find the email or contact page and send them an email explaining who you are and why you are contacting them. Many bloggers prefer to receive music digitally rather than physically, so it is best to ask before sending any records to them.

Written by Freddy Stringer, Digital Media Manager at Good Lizard Media.