Is your online artist presence a giant clusterf#$k? What to do with all of your accounts
Is it possible for your music to be in too many places? I think we would all agree that for music promotion, the more online venues your music lives on, the bigger potential audience you have to hear it. It's great if your music gets picked up by a ton of independent sites. But is it confusing to people when you have too many "official" artist pages?
The question is, is it better to have as many pages that you manage as possible or to concentrate efforts on just a few?
There are so many sites out there for artist's to utilize. The most popular ones that artists typically manage are their SoundCloud, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Bandcamp, Bandpage, ReverbNation, Official Website, in addition to anywhere else you can throw your music up there.
That seems like a lot of sites for an artist to manage. But many of them are necessary in today's digital, viral, technology addicted world. We can break down the list into a few categories.
1. Social
The big three social networks. It seems that maintaining each of these accounts is vital to staying connected to fans. These aren't pages that necessarily host your music, but they allow you to diretly communicate with your fan base in three different ways.
2. Music Hosting
Each of these sites vary with different levels of services and opportunities that are offered. SoundCloud is a simple site to just post your music. Some call it the "Instagram for music."
YouTube is another service that appears to be necessary to maintain. It's really the only service that distributes your video content and gives a more in depth view of yourself. Especially because it has a monopoly of online video hosting, it seems pretty vital.
Sites like Bandcamp, Bandpage, and Reverbnation offer additional opportunities and services to help advance your music career as well as direct to fan sales. I think the question here is does it make sense to have a page on each of these sites? Or does it make sense to choose just one. Focusing efforts on a condensed number of platforms might allow you to have better control and a larger impact on your fans, however, having a greater presence might allow you to reach more people.
3. Official Site
Every artist needs their official site! Some new artists might utilize one of the above music hosting sites as their official site. The goal of an official site is to be your main venue on the web. This site is used for informational purposes and is your online home. Decorated and designed to best represent the artist.
Think about your goals
When you are deciding how to manage your online presence, it's important to think about your goals and what will give you the best chance for success.
There are a ton of other websites and services in addition to the ones that were mentioned in this article that are designed to help artists. They include sites for live music such as Bands In Town and Song Kick as well as online artist communities such as Indaba and Music Page. Some are used as simple tools whereas some create an entire online presence for you.
Do your research and think about what will work best for you!