I specialise in ground-up affordable Internet and social media profiles for new artists, bands and individuals. That is, I’ll kickstart your online presence with a WordPress blog, download store, social media profile and help you through every process from updating your Twitter, adding widgets to your WordPress to getting your music distributed worldwide or getting that eBook on sale on Apple’s iBook store and Amazon’s Kindle. I can offer training and instruction if you want to go DIY and set yourself up.

Karen Scott is an artist I’ve been working with recently to establish a WordPress blog and MP3 store and Facebook store for her Christmas album. We also helped set up and customise her Twitter profile. Karen is all set to fly right now with her viral video ‘Southwest Florida Christmas’ becoming an underground sensation on YouTube with 500,000+ plays in just over a month, with even the Today show picking up on the buzz.

What I Do…

I specialise in helping artists navigate the online maze of the Internet and guide them into establishing a optimised online presence with no BS, no false promises, just practical no nonesense service and advice. Email me with any queries, I’m affordable too. I can offer an hourly service or all in package deals to suit any genre of artist or budget.

WordPress I have over six years of working with blogging platform WordPress and I can pretty much do everything you’d need to get flying. I can install the software, host it, manage and customize it with the hundreds (thousands!) of plug-ins, mods, text widgets, themes and just about everything inbetween. Throw in a bit of organic SEO and you’re pretty much set.

On the web-hosting side of things I can help you choose the right webhost for your project and related essentials like domain names, name servers, control panels/management and DNS issues.

Social Media: I’ve been using social media for years now and have probably used every single new service at some stage before narrowing down the field to the most useful. Which right now are services like SoundCloud, YouTube, Facebook, Bandcamp and Twitter (for music). This arena is in constant flux as you can witness recently with the ‘demise’ of MySpace and new services like Apple’s much maligned Ping.

I can help to draw up a custom plan to spread your brand/niche/music to the right outlets and audience.

Music Industry: I have over a decade of music industry experience, including hits singles in the UK (as the 99th Floor Elevators) and appearances on over 50 albums worldwide for labels including Ministry of Sound, Virgin, EMI and BMG. I’ve been lucky enough to get national airplay on BBC Radio 1 and am a long term member of the PRS and the PPL.

These days you might want help with blogging, SEO, social media, MP3 encoding and tagging, digital distribution, niche marketing, licensing and royalties, performing rights organisations, vinyl/CD manufacturing, retail barcodes, QR Codes and a hundred other things.

Karen Scott Xmas album QR Code

I can help with easy to understand planning and co-ordination, free of any industry BS. Been there, don’t like that!

Feel free to fire any questions and inquiries however small over on the Contact Page.

My Current Projects

Buzzsonic Records has been a part-time project ever since I secured the recording rights to the two UK top 40 pop hits by the 99th Floor Elevators,  ‘Hooked‘ and ‘I’ll Be There’. It’s been a job of rights management more than anything recently as well as securing licensing deals and remixes in Europe. Which has seen both tracks re-issued on 12 inch vinyl and various download platforms including key dance outlets like Beatport and TrackitDown and of course the ubiquitous iTunes.

Both Hooked and I’ll Be There were licensed to Toolbox Recordings in the UK and an acclaimed set of new mixes kept the fires burning on European dance floors as did appearances on more compilation albums.

More recently (last year) ‘Hooked’ was licensed to Suesse Records in the UK for a new set of  (four) house remixes for European floors which resulted in an appearance on Grammy nominated remixer, Stonebrige’s album, ‘The Flavour, the Vibe Vol:3‘ and some Ibiza aimed CD action too. There’s a new mix coming soon to celebrate the 21st anniversary of Trade via Toolbox House.

MP3 Stores

I’ve just finished building an MP3 store at Bandcamp that’ll be acting as the MP3 store for the 99th Floor Elevators various remixes. We decided to keep the much maligned MySpace as a holding page for the name, maybe things will improve over there, though I doubt it. Still..I have bigger hopes for music on Facebook these days and have started to set up MP3 stores over there both 99th Floor Elevators and Karen Scott. Looking good.

Buzzsonic.com

Buzzsonic.com blog has been running since 2004 and has survived three hurricanes, some name changes and a few barren periods! Still, of late the blog has found new life due to a respectable following of fellow music industry and technology fanatics via the Buzzsonic Twitter page and a daily Twitter roundup is published on the blog.

Some of the most popular posts on the Buzzsonic.com blog to date:

200+ Music Industry, Marketing, Social Media and Tech Blogs That’ll Make You A Media Whore!
The Best Music Biz Book You’ve Never Heard Of
How To Press Up a Vinyl Single and Add Instant Kudos to Your Release
How To Get Your Music Distributed on iTunes (And Keep Most Of The Money)
Exploring The Digital Music Distribution ‘Jungle’
Digital Music Distribution Round-up Part 2
The Ultimate Digital Music Distribution Round-Up (Part Trois)
Resources to Help Get Your Music in Films and TV
Radio and Airplay Resources for Independent Artists

MusicBizHacks PDF E-Book

With over a decade of music industry experience, highs and lows, failures and success I decided to collate all that useful experience and information into one place so it could be of use to others in the hope that it could help any artists/bands avoid the stumbles and mistakes that I made.

Working title (at the moment) is: “MusicBizHacks and The Punk Rock Situationist Music Industry Marketing Plan”

The e-book will be available for as a PDF initially on a ‘Pay What You Can’ basis then I’ll look into eBook formats via somebody like Book Baby if there is demand. I’m aiming for an early 2012 release.

There’s a somewhat messy (but useful!) PDF I cobbled together on digital music distribution, 14 pages of tips and links and detailed run downs of what, where and who.

The Buzzsonic Digital Music Distribution Guide PDF

Feel free to contribute thoughts, suggestions and ideas via the Contact Page.