Over the years, I’ve had plenty of arguments with musicians and with music management professionals about the importance of maintaining a website under your own domain. Their responses often included: * 1996: I don’t need my own domain. AOL gives me free web page hosting, and I’ll always have my AOL account! * 1998: I […]
Web/Tech
My @SproutSocial Experiment: Setting Boundaries on Social Media
I’ve been teaching some workshops on social media lately, and one of the questions that comes up very often involves how to keep Twitter and Facebook status updates from taking over your life. In the new edition of Grow Your Band’s Audience, I updated my advice about staying accessible and available. To stay focused on […]
Why You Should Own Your Band’s Website
Delicious is dying. And if you’re not a hardcore web citizen, you might not know the reason why so many folks have become so upset about it. In short: a beloved, free service that thousands of people used to automate all kinds of workflows is being placed in a “sunset” phase by Yahoo! Tumblr is […]
Make Space to Leave MySpace
The alarm clock woke me up with the news that a senior News Corporation executive hinted about the possible closure of MySpace within “quarters, not years.” Even if MySpace manages to avoid a total shutdown, independent musicians should worry whenever company executives change the focus of a service from “community” to “celebrities.” For years, I’ve […]
Can Spotify Satisfy American Copyright Laws?
Lots of friends and colleagues from abroad have hyped up Spotify to me, and I don’t doubt that it’s an awesome service. As we hear more about Spotify, especially involving mobile apps and in-car services, I fear we might be getting ahead of ourselves. Specifically, I worry that users’ fervor for the system overlooks the […]
