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Tips on Filling Out your Artist Profile / EPK

Posted on January 23, 2013

SEO Cheat Sheet: Artist Profile / EPK (Electronic Press Kit)

  • Headline – Provide a short three to five words of who you are.  “Latin Country Singer from Nashville”  This headline is repeated in the HTML <title> tag; which means its heavily used by search engines.
  • Music Categories – Although choosing two music categories is optional, it really helps to pick two.  For one, search engines will find you in multiple places, but so will viewers.  Also, choose at least one of the main categories that appear as part of the top menu buttons: Rock, Country, Hip Hop, etc.
  • Location – Many people search Google, Bing, and others by also including a city name.  By filling out the location field, you get indexed by search engines for anyone’s search within specific regions.  The search engines are smart enough to expand searches geographically even by just supplying a local city or town name.
  • Bio – A good bio is important for both viewers and search engines. Keep in mind to include words that people may use to search for you.  For example, it’s always beneficial to include your stage or band name. “I am Frankie Two Shoes.”  This way whenever someone searches for you on Google, or even the StreetJelly search box, your profile will get returned.
  • Links – You want your presence across the internet in as many places as possible.  Not only does it help viewers find your YouTube account, or Reverb, or whatever, it also gives weight to search engines to crawl your other pages out there on the net.
  • Stories – Similar to the advice for Bio (above), be sure the fill out your fun stories with specific venue names, bands, famous stars, and so on.

Artist profiles/EPK (electronic press kits) on StreetJelly are important for two main reasons.  One, they allow the internet search engines to find the artist.  The cheat sheet above covers that.  It’s generally known as SEO: Search Engine Optimization.  The other reason to make a great profile is to inform viewers about the artist, their style, show a picture, links to social media, etc.

All social media profiles, whether it be Facebook, Twitter, and the like, are all about telling the world who you are!  But with StreetJelly, there is an added incentive to make a real connection with the artist.  Ultimately, we hope to entertain viewers through music in exchange for gratification, fan exposure, and of course, tips.  On StreetJelly, however, we did not create profile pages like all the rest.  In fact, we put in fields where the artist can link back to YouTube, ReverbNation, etc. so they can expose their fans to their other online profiles.  But we did specifically add questions to the StreetJelly profile to invoke a more personal response about being a musician.  We as humans make connections with others through experiences.  Telling a short story about oneself is more effective than listing out prior job titles from a boring resume.  Successful profiles are fun, interesting, and a bit personal.  Viewers will see the artist as a close friend rather than some anonymous organ grinder.

Which artist profiles on StreetJelly do you think are great?  Add them below in the comment section.

There is an absolute psychology that belongs to musicians

Posted on January 10, 2013

Special guest blog by Clifton Printy, front man for Don’t Know Jac.

There is an absolute psychology that belongs to musicians.  A specific need or desire that has caused them to spend years and hours learning to play. Yes, “I am going to be a rock star,” is part of it. That is not the reason for most musicians. The idea after gigging out for twenty years of hitting the big pay off seems like a lottery ticket for most of them. So why would they practice into the night, and play for their friends every chance they get? They do it because they want you to listen.

That’s where Street Jelly comes in; an author wants you to read their book, a painter wants you to get their art, and a musician wants an audience. It does not matter if it is three in the morning or nine o’clock in the evening they want a crowd.

Clifton Parade

Street Jelly helps to fill that niche by allowing musicians and music lovers to enjoy the intimate setting of a private gig, without violating your privacy. It provides the listener a way to interact with the musician you could only get by standing next to a stage and allows the artist to play live. Musicians love to listen and critique other musicians usually by encouragement, and likewise like to better their skills accordingly with the input of unbiased peers.  However, they mostly want to play for you.

You cannot always have a stage unless you have a…

“Peanut butter and Street Jelly jam samich” – Clifton Printy.

“It’s musically delicious.” – Image and Family.

Clifton Jam Band

The World Didn’t End, It Just Started

Posted on January 8, 2013

Celebrate a great year with StreetJelly.comI know the world didn’t end last month from the Mayan doomsday calendar.  You and I are still here.  I’m pretty smart, huh?  Or I’m just a smarty-pants stating the obvious.  Don’t answer that.  I do know that great things are happening for StreetJelly.

Last month on StreetJelly I witnessed a growing community of musicians meet each other, start friendships, share the holidays, and even build a team to raise money for charity.  Here’s a recap of some notable days in December 2012.

End of the World Shows  On 12/21, the Mayan Doomsday, a few musicians scheduled “End of the World” concerts on StreetJelly.  That must have sparked everyone’s urge to perform one last time before the calamity of global destruction.  Starting around 10:30am, musicians performed one after another all day in one big long concert.  It lasted well into the night.  Fun was had by all.

Christmas Eve  12/24 was a special night.  Yes, it was holiday fun and most musicians were singing Christmas carols.  But a wonderful thing happened during one performance.  A group of musicians were all chatting together watching Maestro when the conversation turned to benefit concerts and performing for charities.  Long story short, this group has teamed up to start performing monthly concerts on StreetJelly for charities.  All tokens collected by these musicians on such days will be donated to a specific charity.  The team is currently working hard behind the scenes to put this all together – stay tuned for more details and a chance to contribute.

New Year’s Eve  Drinking songs, distortion, and …well …more drinking songs capped off the night.  Musicians were performing all night long, and a crew of us were able to celebrate the New Year in most of the US time zones (sorry Hawaii).  Our master jam band extraordinaire Clifton played for hours with his band at a local Shriner’s basement.  The sound took a few to get right, but everyone still enjoyed themselves.  Even when the laptop went flying, nothing was broken!

These were just a few of the great times in December on StreetJelly.  But what stands out to me is that all these events were made special by the people who took part.  It had nothing to do with marketing, or advertising, or social media shenanigans.  It all happened spontaneously from the nice folks that found StreetJelly in 2012.  That makes me very happy, as I know this can only lead to bigger and better things for the site.  It’s just getting started!

Frankie’s Awesome Hot Chocolate Recipe

Posted on November 21, 2012

Frankie’s Awesome Super Great Hot Chocolate Recipe

Awesome Hot Chocolate Recipe

Photo from www.RadishesAndRhubarb.com

This has nothing do with anything …except maybe comfort …which I suppose is similar to enjoying music.

I came up with “Frankie’s Super Great Hot Chocolate Recipe” a few years ago.  It was a wintery day and I was jonsen for some hot cocoa.  Dang, we ran out of the typical powdery instant packaged crap.  But, I had a bag of my favorite Dove Dark Chocolate candies on the counter.  So I thought I’d throw some of the chocolate pieces in warm milk and see what happens.  What’s the worst that could happen, I make a mess?  Not like I’ve never done that before.

Eureka!

It was amazing.  I couldn’t believe it, the little chocolate squares all melted without a problem and made the milk creamy smooth and delightfully chocolatey.  (Do I have you craving for some, yet?)  I experimented a little with the amount of chocolate squares, and came up with the recipe below:

Dove Promises Dark ChocolateDove Promises Milk Chocolate

  • 1 cup milk
  • 2 Dove Promises squares – Silky Smooth Dark Chocolate
  • 2 Dove Promises squares – Silky Smooth Milk Chocolate
  • Warm the milk in a sauce pan over medium heat with the 4 Dove chocolate squares (unwrapped – foil tastes weird).  Stir continuously until all is melted.  You’re heating up milk, so be careful not to boil it over and make an ungodly mess.  Makes one serving.

For my taste, I think the key is mixing the flavors of Dark and Milk Chocolate.  If you don’t have both in the house, just one flavor works, too.  To make more than one serving, add more chocolate.  4 chocolate squares per cup of milk is actually quite rich, so adjust according to taste.  Using 6 squares (3 dark, 3 milk) works great for two servings.

That’s it, enjoy!

Newfie Sing-a-longs

Posted on November 19, 2012

Image69 Merv and Family

My business friends can all relate to the statements from our marketing departments: tell a story when promoting your business.  I certainly have the gift of gab, thanks Mom, so telling a story is never a problem.  But actually trying to pull out a compelling story from the day to day drudgery of business is not that easy.  I mean really, in my world of software development and data analysis, I beg that even the greatest bullshitter can’t consistently spin up interesting yarns every week.

Along comes StreetJelly, the streaming live music website I founded. (Dang, he plugged the site and hasn’t even started his story yet.)  I have already witnessed numerous great moments of live broadcasting: wonderful music, passionate singing, hilarious out takes (I’m looking at you, Maestro, lol), and so on.  All of which are moments you can never see again because we don’t record anything on the site.  Crazy, I know!

Last week I was watching ImageAndFamily on StreetJelly.  This is a family from Toronto who loves to perform sing-a-long tunes, Newfoundland fishing chanties, and singer/songwriter classics.  I’ve only met Merv and Amanda online through StreetJelly.  If I got it straight, Merv is from Trinidad and Amanda is from Newfoundland.  She’s the Newfie!  Their son, Robert, performs on keyboard and vocals with them.

Robert is 13 and autistic.  I would have known this if I read their profile, but Merv was telling me his story in a chat conversation.  You see, Robert didn’t talk or communicate much with the world before the age of 7.  That’s when Merv introduced him to music.  Something clicked!  Robert responded to music like he was a virtuoso of 75 years.  I’ve seen him on keyboards and singing on StreetJelly.  There’s great talent there.  The amazing thing is how music rescued Robert from his quiet world.  While playing keyboards with his family, he sings chorus and melodies in a sweet innocent voice.  Precious!  And Robert follows along with the chat window, says hello, and suggest songs himself.

I don’t know what else makes a more amazing story than being let into the living room of Merv and Amanda and sharing in with their family sing-a-long.  Try that with a digital download mp3 site!

Giving Songwriters their Fair Credit

Posted on October 25, 2012

At StreetJelly.com we love songwriters as much as we love musicians.  And we also love live, spontaneous music.  Actually, that’s whole point of StreetJelly!  Our musicians play whatever they like, whenever they like, from wherever they like.  StreetJelly has licensing agreements with various songwriter associations, BMI, ASCAP, and SESAC, that allow us to stream music from the songwriters they represent on our website.  We pay licensing fees through various calculations based on our revenue.  And we always take these fees away from our budget, not from the tip money earned by StreetJelly musicians.

The songwriter associations then take our fees, along with the 1,000s of other music websites out there, and distribute royalties to the original songwriters.  But with StreetJelly, we don’t quite fit the mold.  Because we are live and unscripted, we never know what our musicians are going to play.  They can be originals or covers.  Most other music websites are streaming saved content from mp3s or videos.  It’s easy for them to know exactly what they play.  The songwriter associations can really only take our lump fees and distribute among their artists through their own magic formulas.  That’s not really fair to the songwriters whose songs are actually played on StreetJelly.

To better approach a world of music fairness (I know, don’t start), we at StreetJelly are asking our artists to self-report what they play.  We made it as simple as we could and created a “Enter Play List” section on the StreetJelly broadcast screen.  In between songs, we encourage our musicians to enter what they have played.  It’s not hard, just takes a few clicks.

But there’s more to it than just self-reporting songs to outside songwriters associations.  Our playlist section is useful for the musician to keep track of what they have played.  It takes a little planning to put together a set play list.  Every musician can totally relate to the, “what should I play next” feeling.  We hope this helps a little.

Covers or Originals?  Both!

We take the data entered in the playlist and send it off to the licensing agencies.  They can then better distribute royalties more accurately with our song lists.  But that list is inclusive for both cover tunes AND originals from StreetJelly musicians.  Assuming our musicians are registered with the above groups (and we encourage you all to do so), our musicians can collect royalties on their original material through these agencies in addition to the tip money made on StreetJelly.

We know we’re not solving all the musical industry’s problems, but ever little bit helps.  And being a good steward of honesty and fairness is probably the most important thing we can do.  Courtesy is contagious!

No, You Can’t Upload a Video

Posted on September 25, 2012

Can I upload videos and mp3s to my profile?
No, you may not!

Did we just break the cardinal rule and say “no” to our customers?  I guess so.  But I’m not really the type to do what everyone tells me to do, anyway.

We’ve been asked a few times at Street Jelly if an artist can upload their videos and mp3s to their profile.  When an artist is not performing live, understandably, they would like their repertoire of songs and videos to be easily accessible.  We can totally agree with this.

But at the same time, Street Jelly is about LIVE performances.  We don’t allow musicians to broadcast recordings, presumably over and over, to put up some kind of tip jar filling machine.  There is a craft to entertaining the public for tips.  The great performers do it for the love, and the tips come naturally.

We thought long and hard about adding the ability to upload files to a Street Jelly profile.  Our decision was to stick to our guns about LIVE music and not allow uploads.  After all, there are plenty of websites out there for uploading videos and songs.  The last thing we want to be is yet another place on the web where musicians feel obligated to put up their “store front.”

We also believe that the delivery of music will fundamentally change again in the near future.  Digital downloading, piracy, copyright infringement, etc. has made one big unsustainable mess of things.  But one fact hasn’t changed – we humans love our silly love songs.  And we will be seeking that love by any means practical.  (Note I said “practical,” not free.)  It’s our guess that people will seek live music more and more for its true entertainment value.

So Street Jelly is not a digital uploading / downloading site.  Hurray!  We do what we can, however, to help promote our artists.  We made it easy for them to place links to their YouTube channel, ReverbNation, etc. right on their Street Jelly profile.  In fact, we encourage it.  This week, we released a feature that now embeds YouTube videos directly in the artist’s profile page.  Now music lovers can watch artist videos on Street Jelly without having to pop over to another browser window.  This should make life easier for musicians.

Humbled by Recent Endorsement

Posted on September 18, 2012

Bashful PuppyA few days ago, a musician and StreetJelly fan posted this testimonial on our Facebook page.

StreetJelly you are awesome and I LOVE you! ♥♥♥
Let me just say I have been a part of a few “upcoming” music things, and you are the first to be so incredibly supportive and active! I’ve got $16 in my tip jar and I can’t wait to schedule more shows- so fans if you haven’t signed up it’s FREE and musicians you can get in on it too (also free), go listen to music from around the world online LIVE, no more youtube videos!

We’re makin’ history y’all!
– Amelia Y.

What a delight, and we are so humbled by Amelia’s kind words.  Without getting all mushy, it should be known that our goal is to be in this adventure together, with all the artist and fans.  That’s kind of the point of live music anyway – making a connection, face to face.

I’ve chatted with Amelia a few times, she is definitely a cool chick – and an awesome musician.  Don’t forget get to add her, MeiaMusic, to your StreetJelly favorites and catch her next performance.  Let’s fill up her tip jar some more!

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