|
|
| StreetJelly BLOG: Community News, Video Streaming, Online Busking, and more… |
StreetJelly musician and computer guru Clifton Printy demonstrates the Alesis MultiMix 4 4-Channel Audio Mixer with USB. He goes through the setup and configuration to connect your guitar amp and vocal microphone to StreetJelly and create great live sound for broadcasting.
Got any questions? We’d be happen to answer them. Add them below…
I think that every artist who joins StreetJelly has one thing in common, the love of music. We all love playing and performing the tunes that move or inspire us and we all want an audience to watch and enjoy our music. Luckily we have all found a wonderfully encouraging community of artists and music lovers here.
My family and I have been fortunate enough to find a measure of success on this site and we wanted to share some of the tips and tricks that have worked for us. There are a lot of do’s to be successful here and just a few don’ts:
Do’s
Be Creative – You don’t have to be the most talented musician/singer around to make money, but you have to let the passion you feel for your music show in everything you do – every time you’re on.
Be Entertaining And Engaging – Talk to your audience, get them involved in conversation and remember that you are performing for their entertainment.
Practice, Practice, Practice – If you want to be good, you’ve got to invest your time in your craft.
Promote Yourself – Use Facebook (your personal page and StreetJelly’s page), Twitter, free printable StreetJelly flyers (available here) and word of mouth to let people know when you’re performing.
Promote Other Artists – If you would like other people to talk about your shows, make sure you talk about theirs.
Have A Good Audio/Video Setup – Fuzzy images and poor sound detracts from the performance and will make attracting and keeping an audience harder. (You can find StreetJelly how to blog posts and videos to improve your sound and video) If you’re not sure how your broadcast is coming across, don’t be afraid to ask your audience.
Be Courteous To Performers – If you don’t like what someone’s playing or saying, just leave the room. If you think someone is being inappropriate, let StreetJelly know so they can handle it (contact page).
Be Family Friendly – Remember, there are viewers and artists of all ages, so try to keep your language clean. F-bombs and other such language will definitely lose you viewers.
Be Supportive – Tip the artists that you enjoy watching, and if you are unable to tip support them with applause and positive comments.
Get To Know The Other Artists – There are some awesome people on StreetJelly. Get to know them, watch their shows and join in the conversations while they’re playing. Artists love to know who’s watching them. If viewers are enjoying the music, and the more active you are on the site, the more people will want to check out what you are doing.
Read The Blogs – The StreetJelly blog offers great information for new and experienced performers and is a great way to keep up to date on the craziness that is StreetJelly.
Don’ts
Play Just a Few Riffs – Learn whole songs, the audience will get bored of hearing only bits and pieces.
Miss Scheduled Performance – If you schedule a show, try to stick to it. If for some reason you can’t make the scheduled time, post a message on StreetJelly’s Facebook page to let people know that you aren’t going to be able to go on.
Drive-by (Steal other Performer’s Audience) – Popping into another performer’s show just to say you’re going on is rude and disrespectful. If you want to mention that you’re going on, wait until the performer is wrapping up their show.
Steal Another Performer’s Thunder – Use your discretion when scheduling your shows, you will find that you can attract more viewers by following another act or opening for another performer (just be courteous to the other artists).
Have more Do’s and Don’ts? Add them below in the comments. ~frankie
StreetJelly musician Damian Trujillo featured in his city newspaper, The Sheridan Press, Sheridan, WY.
SHERIDAN — Damian Trujillo isn’t your typical street musician. The Americana-inspired instrumentalist and vocalist may specialize in many of the same styles as public performers in some of the country’s largest cities, but unlike his urban counterparts, Trujillo makes his home in small-town Wyoming…
Read the full article here… Broadband allows access to global community
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!
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!
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.
Image courtesy of TheRadioCafe.com
StreetJelly has added a scheduling feature on the website. Artists can now set a date and time for their next live performance on StreetJelly. While spontaneous jams are the bread and butter of live entertainment, many of our artists like to prepare ahead of time for their fans. They need to get their equipment set up, write down a playlist, spread the word to their community, and put on a polished show. They are effen awesome!!! And we are happy to obligue their request.
We’ve added a calendar system to the site. It’s pretty simple, click on the calendar icon 
in the upper right hand menu, or click on the “Edit My Schedule” link on the My Account page. That will take an artist to an easy to use page to fill out a date and time, and a headline message for their show. The scheduled performance will now appear on the site’s homepage, as well as the artist’s profile page. Also, we’ll send out an e-mail notification to all the fans listed under the artist’s “favorites” list.
Hope you all enjoy the update. Keep the ideas coming. StreetJelly is a site for the musicians and music lovers out there. Anything we can do to make it better is our goal.
Performing online in front of a webcam is something probably new to most musicians. It’s certainly new for us, too. We noticed some things that will help your performance be visually more appealing.
Do you have any more ideas? We’d love to hear them.