It is incredibly difficult for a new band to break into the music industry. There are thousands of bands aiming for the same goal; to get themselves heard and finally have their time in the spotlight. Clearly, it is imperative that bands should carry certain tools with them along their journey to stardom. For example, a band demo, band press kit, and how about a phenomenal band name? However, bands need a promotional outline that will make their journey to fame much easier and more organized.

Start a website! There are various online resources that help bands create their own website. Specifically, Bandzoogle.com allows bands to create a unique layout for their website and tailor it to their own personal style. The effective design options provided will be sure to set the band apart from the rest. On Bandzoogle.com, artists also have the option to sell their music and receive detailed fan data. For example, if a band wants to track bumps in fan traffic for the previous weeks, they can do so and even see a graph for that data. The fan club feature is another great addition to this website because it gives bands the option to create polls, forums and guestbooks for their fans.

Interact and react! Bands should always use at least one form of social media to market themselves in today’s competitive music industry. Using sites such as Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter allows bands to interact with fans, recieve feedback, and post upcoming shows, gigs, and new music. Bands should use iLike.com because on this site, artists can create a profile page with links to all their social media profiles. This is a great way for bands to promote themselves through the use of social media.

Get yourself heard! Fans listening to your music online is a perfect way to promote your music. But, what if fans love the music so much that they want to buy it? This is what elisteningpost.com is all about. Bands can upload new music along with a pricetag of anywhere between .79 and $1.19 per track. Not only can these bands showcase their music, but they get paid for it as well and elisteningpost.com doesn’t even take a cut of the profit. For bands who want to get heard and make some money, elisteningpost.com is a perfect resource.

Blog and track! Technorati.com is the largest blogging engine in the world. If bands want to communicate wtih fans on a blog, they should use Technorati.com because the site allows users to track blog reactions. Bands are able to post ideas for their next show or album and fans can blog back their ideas and the website will track that blog traffic. Using this blog site is extremely beneficial for bands because they can tailor themselves to become a better band based on what their fans say in the blog posts about them.

Compete! Promoting your band online is very effective. However, if bands are interested in showcasing themselves and competeing against other bands, Ourstage.com is where they should go. A partner with MTV, Ourstage.com is a unique website that offers online music competitions for up and coming artists. Bands can upload an original song of their choice. Then, fans will judge the song and possibly vote it into the Top 20. If your song makes that Top 20, Ourstage.com will choose the winner, who will be awarded a cash prize and much more. Ourstage.com does not only offer cash prizes, but the possible career of a lifetime.

There are various promotional techniques bands can use to take themselves to the next level. But, I believe that these five strategies are key because they are the perfect combination of usage of social media, competing in the industry, and marketing the band using digital resources.

I was at Soul Festival in New Hampshire last weekend to work for some friends of ours in Exiting The Fall. After their set, Life In Your Way jumped up on stage and I grabbed some footage of them. I have seen some of the guys in LIYW since the 90′s at shows around New England so it was really good to see them again. They recently reunited, so I wanted to do a video for them to welcome them back.

Camera: Canon T2I
Lense: Sigma 30MM
Edited: Final Cut Pro
Coloring: Magic Bullet Quick Looks

The B-roll footage is taken from an awesome video from Salomon Ligthelm, called 400 Years. You can check out all of Salomon’s work here.

Which Republican presidential campaign has the best error 404 page? Answer – Mitt Romney.

Our friends @PatrickRuffini and @KatieHarbath along with some others talk about political campaigning in the digital age.

At swiftcurrent, we love hockey (of course we do, we are named after a Canadian town after all) and logos.  So, in light of this, we wanted to share with you the new logo for the returning Jets hailing from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

We have worked with LogoTecture in the past for some logo work – so we want to invite Matt in on this and see what he thinks of this sporty new logo for the Jets.  Matt?

Rising bands are seeking out new ways to promote themselves. Any band can use Facebook or Twitter to increase their fan base. However, fans want to be more involved than just clicking the “like” or “follow” button on social media sites. Some new online resources allow for a deeper connection.

Bands are becoming more and more competitive online by using various resources to increase and track their rankings with fans. Perfect for new artists, OurStage offers artists resources to book gigs, gain exposure, and compete against other bands for extravagant cash prizes. In this month alone, OurStage awarded $6000 in cash prizes to the winners of their online competitions.

Last.fm is also a great resource for up and coming artists. Bands can upload their music and members of the site can listen and be guided to other similar music on the site. The more a song is played, the higher it is placed on the site rankings, thus offering the possibility of being discovered by a record label. Artists can also create a profile and track what  songs listeners are replaying or skipping over.

Another great social media outlet for hopeful superstars is iLike. This website offers artists to create their own “profile page” and upload pictures, songs, bulletins, events, and so on. A great bonus for signing up for iLike is that artists can reach fans across various social sites, like Twitter, Facebook, or Bebo.

eListeningPost is the perfect way for brand new artists to start selling their tracks and making money right form the start. Even if an artist is not with a record label, he can still make his own tracks, upload, and sell them online through eListeningPost, raking in 94% of the profit using PayPal with the buyers.

Nogeno allows bands to set up a “stunning artist page to promote and sell your music,” it’s similar to what About.ME or Flavors.ME does for individuals.

Finally, Champion Sound uses a promotional marketing force by offering a mass email manager, guest list manager, and a mobile app. The email manager allows artists to include text, videos, and images in emails to their fan base. Also, the guest list manager is a great way to create an attendee list for gigs or events. The mobile app feature allows artists to add new contacts into their mass email list, as well as manage their guest lists for upcoming events.

As the music industry is becoming more competitive, artists are searching for the best ways to promote themselves. Straying away from Facebook and Twitter might not be a good idea, but adding to their social media repertoire is just what artists need to give them a boost.

Since instagram is such a fun app, and Friday and Fun both start with the letter F, I figured it’s a good time to share with you some awesome apps for instagram.

• FollowGram.ME – get a vanity URL and a “Follow Me” button
• Keepsy – create a awesome book of your instagram pics
• Artflakes – create 4 inch stickers using your instagram pics
• Postagram – send your pics to  your friends and loved ones, the old fashioned way
• Printstagram – create a large poster collection of your instragram pics
• Instamaker – create mugs, t-shirts, post cards, and just go nutz with your instagram pics
• Instagoodies – create more stickers of your awesome pics

The world is going bananas over instagram, and rightfully so – if a picture is worth a thousand words, then instagram is twitter with a heck of a lot more characters.

http://followgram.me/robwillington

State Representative Dan Winslow (client of ours) has received approval from the Office of Campaign & Political Finance to use discounted platforms to raise money for his campaign.   The Winslow campaign is going to use a local Massachusetts firm called Good Two as the vehicle to promote and collect discounted rates to attend a fundraising event.

In this Boston Innovation post, Representative Winslow said he is “open to all types of marketing tools and wanted to experiment with what might work best to reach an appropriate audience” and in today’s Boston Globe Winslow stated, “you have to be innovative to be a Republican in Massachusetts, just to keep up.”

Someone once said that the best skiers in the world come from New England because they have to learn and practice on some of the worst conditions.  I like to think that of the few Republicans we have in Massachusetts, they are pretty innovative and aggressive as well due to the tough conditions.

Do you follow @DanWinslow on twitter?  If not, you should.

It’s probably worth the value.

The relationship between audio & visual is very powerful and they each compliment and magnify the other. Here is a video brought to my attention by @SalomonLigthelm of a “collaborative project with over 30 independent visual and audio designers/studios. The aim was to explore the relationship between geometry and audio in unique ways.”

What does Dunkin’ Donuts and Barack Obama’s campaign have in common?  [insert cheesy joke about both being bad for our health, fat budget analogies here]

Both recognize that the value of the web is giving you local, personalized information.  When you go to Barack Obama’s campaign website and Dunkin Donuts’ website it will be tailored to you.