Tuesday 22 September 2009

"This time next year, Rodney...."

So there follows a list of sites that I have been updating and linking into Pocket Rocket's network. Work still continues, but I think I've broken the back of it.

ROCK-TIL-YOU-DROP Bands, Fans & Industry site: Short of our own website, which I'm working on, this is our main page, as far as I'm concerned, anyway. But then I am biased.

I've put links and banners here to all the Pocket Rocket sites. I've uploaded a couple of songs from the new EP here, and some new photos. The site has a 'What are you up to?' status bar, which must be utilised, but unfortunately is not linked to Twitter or Facebook. Not yet, anyway. I'm sure it will be before long.

ROCK-TIL-YOU-DROP-RECORDS.COM: This is where you can buy our EP as a download, by individual track or as a whole. You can also buy other Pocket Rocket music from the last ten years here, and there are a few free downloads of older material. Still haven't looked into CD Baby or iTunes, but better get round to that too.

Facebook: This is a fan site. Don't know how useful it is, but I feel like we should have a presence here too. The music player is shite. You can't customise it, and you can't upload jpegs of the CD artwork. But it does have a useful fan site widget thingy, which I have added to this blog down the right hand side. Doesn't quite fit, mind. And it does have a status bar, but status updates don't automatically appear on my main Facebook page, which is a bit annoying.

Myspace: Fuck, ugly MySpace. I took all the old tracks down and posted two of the four new tracks. Dunno why? Probably, because I hate MySpace. I'm this close to shutting it down. Should I do it?

ReverbNation: Thought I better investigate this one. Just getting to grips with it. Nice interface, and carries links to our RTYD page, and updates our status from Facebook & Twitter. It also automatically creates a Bebo profile page, whatever that it is? What I like about this site is the MP3 widgets it gives you. Like the one I have put in the top right of this page. Pretty useful.

MeMetro Music: This is Metro newspaper's site for bands, venues, promoters etc. I have a RTYD presence here, so I created a page for Pocket Rocket too, and posted Give The Boy A Chance on it. You can vote for tracks you like here, and the number of people who like your tracks shows up on the site. You can also send the song link to your friends so they can 'like it' too, and this will obviously help to raise the profile of the song and the band. Three people like Give The Boy A Chance, as I write. It has a link to share the song on Facebook, as well, which is handy.

You too can 'like it', here.

London Tourdates. 14 Carat Grapefruit are on this one, and their song Minger is high in the unsigned bands' chart. So not wanting to be left out I joined this one too. Songs made available for free download only, can be voted into the Unsigned Bands chart. So there is a free download of Give The Boy A Chance here for those who would rather not pay 65pence.

And then there's Twitter, which like Facebook cannot be ignored because your tweets and status updates are linked to other sites. To tweet here is to minimise tweeting elsewhere.

I make that eight sites. Now the problem is getting people to visit these sites and to listen to, and download, the music. So far, we have sold one EP as a download from the ROCK-TIL-YOU-DROP-RECORDS site - to a fan. It's a start. It's two quid off our next rehearsal, or our guitarist's bus fare to the next rehearsal.

I suppose we don't have to decide how to spend it yet.

1 comment:

Minor League Rocker said...

My band is still getting its collective head around Twitter. It has a lot of potential for bands. Just gotta figure out how to pull it all together.