The NickJag.com Band/Music Contest!

First of all, thanks to everyone for their participation! Stressing that the preliminary judging was difficult would be an understatement. There were HUNDREDS of participants, many of which were extremely talented musicians. I was impressed by the quality of a lot of the music I heard and wish you all the best success in 2008.

The winner receives the following:

1. The MySpace Marketing Book, Second Edition 116 pages
2. The Facebook Marketing Book (just released) 42 pages
3. Access to the exclusive marketing forums
4. Lots of exposure, plays, and new fans
5. A complete, positive review by Nick Jag and a premium spot on the NickJag.com homepage.

You can only vote once, choose wisely! You can link others (fans and friends) to this page as long as you’re not using any type of proxy system to increase votes (violators will be disqualified). Voting ends February 29th, 11:59pm!

Vote here:

After listening to hundreds of bands, I thought a lot of you could benefit from some free music advice to enhance your music and get the most out of it.

1. First and foremost, know your target audience. Know what they like, what they eat, what they breathe! Know them and cater your product/service to their needs.
2. The first 10 or so seconds of your music are the most important. I’ve listened to some songs that took about 30 seconds just to get started! By that time, most of your potential fans are long gone. You need to hook them fast and hard!
3. Put your best song first! If you’ve ever listened to any music gurus, they will all tell you this. Whether it’s your demo, MySpace, or PureVolume, you need to have your best song first. Some bands had some amazing songs hidden away in the middle. Potential fans will give you about 10 seconds of their time to listen to the first song that plays. If you don’t have your best song first, you’re losing a large percentage of conversions.
4. If your vocals aren’t good, use Auto-Tune. I mean, if they are not 100% perfect, you need to be using Auto-Tune. Let me put it this way… If you needed to send out press photos of someone with a little acne, wouldn’t you try and clean up the photos in Photoshop? If not, how would compete with the perfect photos of the Majors? You wouldn’t, and you wouldn’t get very far. Unfortunate, I know, but I’m just being honest with you! It works the exact same way with your music. This applies to drums also! Use Beat Detector if your drums aren’t right on.
5. Spend a few bucks or some time and have someone you know (that has a cool layout) do your MySpace layout. Aesthetics play a large part with people’s perception of your music quality, especially if you can appeal to your target market in a creative way. One of the best layouts I came across (there were many) was In the Bag Productions - http://www.myspace.com/inthebagprod.