The Sentric Music Podcast #34 January 2013

Seen as you can’t spend all those HMV vouchers your nan gave you for Christmas anymore you’re going to need some new music in your life from another source and here on the January edition of the Sentric Music podcast we have ten brilliant tracks by ten equally brilliant artists. Including:

Eliza And The Bear
Cut Ribbons
Catching Flies
Ian Britt
Menace Beach
Among Brothers
Jo La Pop
King Laconic
Jade Hopcroft
Wired To Follow

Subscribe via iTunes hither.

Five and a bit things bands should probably start doing in 2013

By Pursehouse – follow me on Twitter.

So you may have noticed it’s a new year, which is nice. For some reason our psyche has this foible of letting us think that because the year ends in a different number now compared to what it did not so long ago that we can change elements of our characteristics which we find undesirable within ourselves despite us essentially being exactly the same person we were in early December.

Bit odd really; we never think “Right, Simon, it’s the 19^th May, time to stop eating so much chocolate and cut down on caffeine”

Anyhow, in the spirit of this I thought I’d do a post which mentions a few of the things I come across on pretty much a daily basis which bands/artists/musicians etc are still doing which would take no time at all to correct and result in a much nicer experience for their fans and for people like me who might want to work with their music.

On a side note; Blimey this horse is quite high isn’t it? At least it means I don’t have to climb much to get onto my pedestal mind…

And so we begin.

1)   Get your Facebook profile sorted out please

Facebook has pretty much become the go to destination when I come across an artist I want to know a bit more about. There are a number of things you need to do to make sure you are in tip top order…

1a) Get your URL sorted please

If your Facebook URL is something eye-wateringly mammoth like http://www.facebook.com/OMGWTFLMAO/thisisthebiggestURLeverisitnot/blimey/howmuchlongercanthisgoonefor/pleasesendhelp then all you need to do is simply go to www.facebook.com/username and make it nice and short.

TIP try to make it the same as your Twitter/SoundCloud/Vimeo usernames so there’s a nice be of consistency. That’s why if you whack ‘/sentricmusic’ after any of those sites you’ll find little old us.

1b) Have your music on there please

Bit odd I have to include this as you’d expect everyone to have their music available to listen to, but surprisingly not. I come across many Facebook band pages that don’t have their ditties up there.

There’s many widgets you can use; ReverbNation, BandPage, BandCamp are the most popular three. Here at Sentric we use ‘Topdeejays’ which links to our SoundCloud account (have a gander here).

1c) Don’t make me ‘Like’ your page in order to listen to your music please

This is a terrible, terrible, terrible thing to do. If I like your music, I will ‘Like’ your page. If you make me ‘Like’ your page then I won’t listen to your music and therefore will never know if I actually like it or not.

PEOPLE WHO DO THIS: Before you start typing your angry reply to the above, I assure you it’s not just me who feels this way. A lot of people do, so don’t shoot the messenger. Just think of me as your gobby guardian angel delivering worldly advice in a dulcet northern accent.

2) Get your branding sorted please

BOOKMARK THIS LINK: The Ultimate Social Media Image Sizing Cheat Sheet

That amazing link tells you what sizes all the customizable elements of your Facebook/Twitter/YouTube/LinkedIn/Pinterest profiles are.

If you’re rubbish with Photoshop or design yourself, I’d strongly suggest thinking about spending some money on a graphic designer to come up with some branding for you. You should be able to get a decent designer for a couple of hundred quid, or alternatively get a graphic design student to do it for free if they need work for their portfolio.  Logging on to an artists’ page for the first time to find a really distinct bit of branding genuinely results in a great first impression because people are fickle like that.

3) If someone says something nice about your music, tell me about it please

You obviously think your music isn’t too shabby (I hope) so therefore your biased hyperbole is no good to me.

Quotes from reputable sources such as traditional press or known music websites/fanzines are great. You don’t need to put full reviews up; just choice pull quotes which show that the right people are both hearing your music and, more importantly, enjoying it.

Also mention any significant radio airplay you’ve received in the past as that’s always a turn on to read. “Our single XXX was played by Huw Stephens on BBC Radio 1 and Lauren Laverne on BBC 6Music as well as a number of regional BBC stations” etc.

Basically: Tastemakers respect tastemakers’ tastes. Tasty.

4) Realise how important first impressions are when contacting someone and treat it with the respect it deserves please

You can make or break a relationship before you’ve even said hello, so make sure you do that properly eh? I wrote a full blog on this not so long ago so be sure to read 10 Tips On Proper Email Etiquette For Bands.

5) Keep abreast of the industry that you’re trying to make a living out of please

The internet is awash with a number of free resources which will tell you what is happening in the business we call music.

The CMU Daily, Music Week, Record Of The Day and The Generator all do mailouts that include anything newsworthy you might want to cast your eye upon. If you can’t muster up the motivation to read then CMU also do a monthly podcast, which you can listen to.

There you go. Happy New Year and all that – I’m off to drink some coffee and eat some chocolate.

What I’m listening to this week: Coco Morier, The Good Natured, Haerts and Pariis Opera House.

What I’m reading this week: Any Human Heart by Willliam Boyd

Hope you’re well,

Pursehouse

The Sentric Music Podcast #33 December 2012

Everyone loves an end of year list don’t they? God knows they’re everywhere you look on the interwebnets at the moment so why not follow the trend eh? December’s podcast features a track-per-month from each podcast of 2012 so therefore it’s purely and simply an hour of stonkingly good music. STONKINGLY I SAY! Featuring:

Kankouran
Labyrinth Ear
The Chapman Family
Spring Offensive
Death At Sea
Rustle Of The Stars
Tall Ships
French Wives
Mia Dyson
Lauren Aquilina
South Central

If you have iTunes/iPod/iPad/iPhone/iANYTHING then you can subscribe hither.

Sentric Music Synchronisation Round Up…

By Pursehouse – follow me on Twitter

Here at Sentric Music we work tirelessly to get our artists’ music on TV shows around the world which is a nifty little earner for the bands in question and can also result in some brilliant exposure. The ‘art’ of music synchronisation is a tricky one (something we’ve written about before in this blog ‘6 things to improve your chances of getting your music synced‘) and competition can be astonishingly fierce, so that’s why we’re rather proud to say we’re currently getting music used on UK primetime TV on a daily basis.

If you’re an artist/band/musician who’d like to see your music used on TV/adverts/games/movies then head over to Sentric Music for more info. It’s free to join and you retain your copyright – very artist friendly indeed. Also be sure to follow us on Twitter/Facebook and have a listen to our podcast over at SoundCloud.

Here are some recent syncs…

Married To The Sea – Mutiny – Gossip Girl from Sentric Music on Vimeo.

I Am In Love – Buccaneer Mastery London II – Gossip Girl from Sentric Music on Vimeo.

Minnaars – Busy Hands – Gossip Girl from Sentric Music on Vimeo.

Death At Sea – Drag – Made In Chelsea from Sentric Music on Vimeo.

Tall Ships – Gallop – Hollyoaks from Sentric Music on Vimeo.

Cattle & Cane – Belle – MTV USA’s Catfish from Sentric Music on Vimeo.

Song Of Return – Black Sail – Hollyoaks from Sentric Music on Vimeo.

MTV US The Real L Word – Ian Britt – ‘The Shape Of Us’ from Sentric Music on Vimeo.

MTV USA ‘Awkward’ – Strangers by Picture Book from Sentric Music on Vimeo.

The Sentric Music Podcast #32 November 2012

The penultimate month of 2012 sees a rather sleep deprived Mr Pursehouse take you on an audible journey with a smorgasbord of music to cater for all fussy eaters including:

Canterbury
South Central
My First Tooth
Freeze The Atlantic
Blue Boats
Pariis Opera House
Owls
Olympic Swimmers
The Red Suns
Redwire

You can subscribe to this via good old iTunes as well if you so fancied by clicking hither link.

You’ve *finally* got that sync… Now what?

By Pursehouse – Follow me on Twitter

By now we’ve all read blogs (including ours on this very subject), listened to podcasts, attended talks, sat through panels and analysed interviews by a whole mélange of professionals, academics and industry Svengalis in regards to how to get your music synced on TV/adverts/games etc. But once you’ve climbed that proverbial mountain you’d be wrong to think that your hard work is done – oh no, far, far from it.

Granted getting your music a prominent sync is a very difficult thing to do as competition is fierce, but making the most of the use can be the difference between “Oh, well that was nice” and “Blimey, that’s just funded the next record and tour.”

I’m going to start off by giving two different examples of artists who’ve done it very right indeed and then a nice little checklist of things to consider if/when you land that dream sync yourself in the future…

Artist: Kankouran
Track: Rivers
Sync: Skins Series 6 Trailer

Every so often I’ll be sat at my desk listening to all the music we get sent and a song will make me stop doing all the other stuff I’m currently faffing about with at that time (writing emails, tweeting witticisms or inevitably pissing about with figures on some spreadsheet or another). I love these moments, they’re few and far between; rare little soupçons of “Golly gosh, this is quite something I’m listening to here”, they’re the genuine highlight of my job here in Sentric towers and I had one of these said moments when a lovely gentleman called Tarek Musa sent me a track called Rivers which you can listen to here:

You may remember a while ago I did a post-entitled Different People Have Different Ears For Different Needs and in terms of my lugholes; this track is just perfect for sync. It builds all the way through, the female vocal is delivered with the passion matching the lyrics (the way she sings “when the tears run down your face” is just rather magical), the instrumentation, the tempo etc

So I enthusiastically fired the track out to all the usual sync people as is my nature these days and the lovely Kyle who was music supervising series six of Skins clearly had the same ‘golly’ moment mentioned above and wanted to use the track on the trailer for the upcoming teenage-shenanigans-drug-and-sex-fuelled adventures.

So this is where the ‘making a sync work for you’ part comes in.

Originally Rivers was part of a EP titled ‘Kankouran’ released under Tarek’s name and when the Skins trailer sync was confirmed I suggested there was the opportunity to re-release the track and utilise the exposure to get drive some sales. He then removed the EP from all digital stores, rebranded it as a group (which he called ‘Kankouran’), set up a Facebook page which he kept nice and mysterious with a link to stream and buy Rivers and he also gave another track away for free in exchange for an email which was also featured in one of the episodes of that series of Skins.

Here’s the trailer by the way, it’s a rather good sync I think you’ll agree:

Skins Series 6 Trailer feat ‘Rivers’ by Kankouran from Sentric Music on Vimeo.

Within a fortnight of the trailer being aired his Facebook page had 2k Likes, the track had thousands of streams on SoundCloud and various YouTube videos had a total of over half a million views (which he then commented on each video that it was their music being used and included a link to buy/stream). I was receiving emails daily from labels, management companies, agents, promoters etc all asking about Kankouran and now he’s working with a team compiled of people all with very good reputations indeed.

Example number two:

Artist: Ian Britt
Track: The Shape Of Us
Sync: Parenthood (US TV Show)

Ian’s been slogging away in the music industry for a long time now and has been a full time musician for the past three years thanks to the money he’s primarily made from synchronisation (both the upfront fees, and the money I’m about to mention here). He recorded The Shape Of Us in a toilet using a broken microphone the best part of a decade ago and as you can hear below, it’s a rather beautiful love song:

(on a side note; this is also a good example of how sync can really be a waiting game – this song was always destined to be used at some point due to it being simply a very good song, but it took seven years until that sync came along and it’s now generated more revenue for him than anything he’s ever produced before)

When it was confirmed to be used in Parenthood, I told him to make sure the song was easily findable online as those watching at home will inevitably be searching using 1) the name of the TV show and 2) the prominent lyric within the scene; so anyone Googling ‘Parenthood Shape Of Us’ would be sure to find him at the top of their results. Within a week of the programme being aired Ian had sold 9k copies of the single via iTunes alone (not including Bandcamp sales) which as I write this would have landed him at number 38 in the singles chart this week – pretty impressive if you consider the fact he’s doing this all by himself.

Add to that a whole host of new US fans, email addresses, Facebook likes, catalogue sales, merch sales etc – it results in a hell of a lot he very well might have missed out on without spending that afternoon making the song both easy to find and buy online

Here is the sync for those who fancied a gander:

Parenthood Series 3 – Episode 16 feat “The Shape Of Us” by Ian Britt from Sentric Music on Vimeo.

So what to take from all this then? Well here are my tips on what to consider…

1) Make sure yo’ SEO is up to scratch, bro’

SEO (search engine optimisation) is key; make sure that within the page you want people to find your track (SoundCloud, BandCamp, Facebook etc) it contains the programme title, the episode name and the lyrics. You have to consider the fact that unless it’s obvious, the majority of the people searching for your song won’t know what the title is and will only have the lyrics they heard on the programme to go off.

2) Get on Shazam

Shazam is brilliant. I’ve personally spent a lot of money on music from Shazam-ing tracks I’ve heard on TV shows and movies and it would appear I’m not the only one as Music Week reported recently that they currently have a database of over 250 million users. To be on Shazam ensure your music is available to buy on iTunes (which I bloody well hope it is) and just follow this handy and simple guide.

3) Get more than just a sale

So once they’ve found you and bought the track (which you’d hope they would do after putting in the effort to get this far in the first place) then offer them something more. Chances are they might know nothing about you until this moment so offer them a freebie or two in exchange for an email, tell them how to connect with you online (Facebook/Twitter/newsletter etc), just be nice to them eh?

4) Brag about it, but in moderation

If you know the airdate of the show then tell everyone to tune in to watch the glorious moment in action and then be sure to include it in your bio afterwards as it’s selling points like that which get people like me to pay more attention to you.

That should do.

What I’m listening to this week; Lauren Aquilina, Icona Pop, and South Central

What I’m reading this week; Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut

Hope you’re well,

Pursehouse

The Sentric Music Podcast #31 October 2012

Nippy out isn’t it? My nan always used to say that music warms the soul so it’s a good job we’ve got ten tracks by some of the best emerging artists this fine country has to offer to heat your cockles then eh? This month including:

Queen Of Hearts
Lauren Aquilina
Bird
Magnets
IMP
Young Runaways
The Cape Of Good Hope
The Hummingbirds
LightGuides
Bakery Boys

You can also subscribe to this on iTunes y’know by clicking hither: http://senmusi.cc/V6mA4H