The Site: Step 1

So here's my new take on a plan for marketing my music online. I've already implemented all of step 1.

The site is an idea generated from a conversation I had with a fellow artist Kenny Jaworski and another long time client and also fellow musician Mr. Meeble. Thanks Meeble for the inspiration. It was also inspired by SyntheticSubstance. This idea consists of a viral marketing method, a method in webDOM, and covers the four corners of internet marketing altogether.

I already have the site implemented. It's at: http://wiseeyesmusic.com

It's basically just a one-pager or what many call a "squeeze page" because it only has the minimal elements needed on it to make the visitor do what I really want them to do when all is said and done. The site consists of just the music player (which I made the custom interface for and the back end is thanks to the code over at http://flash-mp3-player.net/players/js/preview/medias/ ), Social links (to give my social network profiles some love,) and then I'm going to include a way to buy uncompressed raw WAV format for DJ's and other professionals. I've got 12 tracks uploaded to it to begin with. The site is viral because of one major factor: The downloads are "free" in exchange for spreading the word. (thanks Kenny!)

When clicking the download button for a song, (right next to the play button,) the user gets a pop up menu which asks them to do one of the following in order to get the download: share on facebook, tweet on twitter, digg the track, stumble it, or bookmark it on reddit. (will probably add more bookmarking services like del.icio.us, etc.) The site is made from scratch (besides that bad ass js/flash mp3 player core back-end); I even gave the player a playlist, position-seeking, next/back buttons, and a nice graphic of me spinning fire poi back in Goa. With this simple design, and the fact that the music player starts right up on the page load, I've seen average visit lengths of 9 minutes 55 seconds in my Google Analytics site statistics.

There are four major things I consider important in internet marketing: SEO, Social Networks, Blogging, and E-Mailing. Blogging, and SEO are being covered in the fact that you're reading this blog entry, and that the site itself is providing SEO through the viral quality of those who will be linking back to it. The Social actions that the site requires the user to make provide back-links as well as helping map the site with search engines. The link that goes back to each track is actually a link that looks like http://wiseeyesmusic.com/tracks-Habibi and is SEO friendly with the title/keywords/description, but basically the same exact player page.

As far as E-Mailing goes... That's double-opt-in E-Mailing for those of you white hats reading this. In the pop-up, a person can enter their e-mail address as well, which will mail them the song link directly. I can then use their e-mail for my mailing list, where my site will automatically send them a new email when I release a new track on the site. This leads us to Step 2, the Marketing.