Artist of the Day: Bassnectar – VAVA VOOM

Posted on April 9, 2012 by michele

Bassnectar has been shaping our platform since 2005 through his early involvement in the alpha, beta, and post launch period. His input into what a direct platform should do for an independent artist like himself has been invaluable. I’ve been on his email list since the early days and his direct-to-fan approach through his newsletter always left me scratching my head about how to get into action, pick up on his fancy lingo, or NEED to be part of his movement.

In 2012, Bassnectar continues to be a leader in the Direct-to-fan space. Share buttons on his pre-order page are set up using the *brand new* Topspin Labs Linkbuilder (extended blog post coming soon!), the Email for Media uses Download Anywhere (also built by Labs) and of course, the Bassnectar store is fully Topspin. VAVA VOOM lands on April 10th (tomorrow!), with 11 cuts of brand new Bassnectar and featuring special guests including Lupe Fiasco, Pennywise, ill.Gates and more. To celebrate the pre-order, there are limited hoodies and tour t-shirts, plus signed CDs and sticker packs. Pre-order now and get an instant download of the single ‘Vava Voom ft. Lupe Fiasco’. And don’t forget to sign up for the mailing list so you get your free(k) track ;)

Topspin features: Email for Media; Pre-order; Instant Gratification; Download Anywhere; Linkbuilder; Store

Installed by: Topspin Expert Installer – Modala Media

Get Topspin: http://topspinmedia.com/signup


Posted in Artist Spotlight, Artists Using Topspin | Leave a comment

Partner Spotlight: Music Geek Services

Posted on April 4, 2012 by michele

Continuing our Partner Spotlight series, this post details how longtime Topspin friends and partners Music Geek Services deliver high-quality work to their artists. Thanks to Chandler and Jay for being excellent at promoting their artists with Topspin!

Who are you and what do you do?

Music Geek Services is an artist services firm, run by brothers Jay Coyle and Chandler Coyle. Our primary focus is to help artists create a strong and deep connection with their fan-base by super-serving those fans. To that end, we offer a variety of digital marketing and consulting services including: Web Development, Online Fan Development/Interaction, Direct-to-Fan Campaign Strategy and Execution and Topspin Consulting and Training. We also do Product Development/Consulting, Social Media Consulting, Project Management and even Artist Management.

You guys have been around as a company for quite a while. Talk us through the history of MGS and how it came about.

Jay Coyle (Music Geek): I founded the company in 2008 after leaving a sales/marketing position at EMI CMG in Nashville. My first project was as the band archivist and product development lead for the 20+ year Canadian music veterans, Barenaked Ladies. While working on that project I was turned onto Topspin. I have since spent the last four years by supporting other artists on many levels – such as sales & marketing, artist management, artist development, business development, tour manager, and product management.

The Topspin platform became a part of my toolset very early on. I was seeking out a way to sell direct to fans while working with the Barenaked Ladies in 2008. With BNL we did utilize Topspin to sell some live recordings. By June 2009, when Topspin offered their first official, public training course in Santa Monica, I had started working as part of Sloan’s management team. So I came out to the Topspin office and was formally training on the platform alongside future Topspin creative services employees, Nicole St. Jean and Parker Todd Brooks, and future Topspin Berklee instructor and Concord Music Group exec, Jason Feinberg. By Fall of 2009, I launched a Topspin-integrated store for Sloan and have been Topspin evangelist, ever since.

Chandler Coyle (Digital Geek): After spending ten years running a web development firm serving the nonprofit sector, and many other things before that, I was always hearing about Jay’s work with his various clients and projects. The more I heard about the direct-to-fan model and especially the Topspin platform, I became very interested. Eventually, I decided Jay was having too much fun working with bands and he could use my assistance. So, in 2010 I quit my job and joined Music Geek Services, full-time. I have a background in logistics and marketing and a passion for music and digital marketing tools, which was a perfect complement to what Jay was already doing. To get up to speed with Topspin, quickly, I took the Berklee Topspin course in the Summer of 2010 and have used it consistently, since then. I’m fairly active in the Topspin power-user community and started a blog called TopspinTips.com that I hope will eventually become a resource for other users new to Topspin. I love turning folks on to Topspin. In fact, I am now set to teach the Berklee Topspin course this coming session.

Does Music Geek Services cater to a specific type of artist?

Jay: We are fortunate to have worked with different levels of artists, from brand new acts all the way to established/veteran artists. Personally, I think our age and fan insight from being a lifelong music geek and omnivorous music consumer affords us a deeper toolkit to use for those more seasoned, heritage acts with deeper catalogs and longer history. One challenge that we really get excited about is re-energizing the fan-base of an artist who was popular before the age of the internet and direct-to-fan or has never taken care to build up a mailing list, of which they had control. So, often it is taking a known act and getting them up-to-speed with the new direct-to-fan best practices. Basically helping them rebuild their email list and coming up with creative product and project ideas for new, or renewed, revenue streams.

How have you seen the direct-to-fan space grow since you’ve been involved?

Jay: When I was first talking to Topspin and getting onto the platform, I felt like I was speaking some unknown language to a lot of my peers in Nashville or while on the road with Sloan. But thanks to some amazing projects Topspin has worked with by so many different big name artists (Paul McCartney, Beastie Boys, Nine Inch Nails) I have seen the term direct-to-fan become very much part of the new music business. I do not have to explain to someone what direct-to-fan is anymore. Now I just spend my time explaining how to set it up and execute it properly.

I’m an artist and I would like to use Topspin. What is it that MGS is going to actually do for me?

Jay: We are going to train you how to get set-up on the platform and how to execute projects and products properly through “best practices”. That could be a simple consulting role or soup-to-nuts webpage build with Topspin set-up and product launch.

Do you have a standard approach for a band that wants to work with you but doesn’t have specific direct-to-fan goals in mind?

Chandler: It is pretty common to have artists or managers that know they need to be connecting with and selling directly to fans but haven’t formulated how or with what type of scope. In those cases we will take a step back and do a full audit of the artist’s email list, music catalog, merch inventory, digital touch-points and assets, and current timeline for past/upcoming releases and tours. Then based on the time, resources, and budget, we propose an appropriate strategy and tactical plan of action to get the artist up and running on the Topspin platform and have all their digital assets, like website, Facebook page, etc, in sync with the strategy.

Jay: A perfect example of this was one of our first and still current client, Sloan. Back in 2009 I started things off in a measured way to be able to not introduce too many new things and give me and the band time to get used to this newfangled thing, direct-to-fan. At the time, our primary focus was to build up their very stale email list and generate some new revenue by streaming and offering for digital download, the entire Sloan back catalog. It wasn’t long before I was working with the band to create completely new products to sell direct to fans, once they realized how much enthusiasm was out there in their fan base to connect, support, and actually buy stuff from Sloan.

One last thing, we also offer tailored, one-on-one Topspin training sessions. If you are looking to get up to speed very quickly, we can do a 1-2 hour “deep dive” training session using your actual data. So you can learn and move your getting on the Topspin platform, forward. We can do this as an one-time on-demand thing or as an ongoing thing. This has worked out well with artists who have a limited budget and just need some expert assistance rather than having us run their whole campaign.

If an up-and-coming artist had $5,000 to invest in their business, how would you recommend they spend that money?

Jay: We would be sure that they think of a big-picture approach and take the time and money to create the proper website, maybe just even a one-page micro-site, and Facebook page, and other relevant digital assets. Then with those finely-tuned tools in place, use them to gain fans, communicate with those fans and super-serve their needs. Over time, with authentic action on the band’s part, those fans will want to continue their relationship and support the artist by buying music, sharing music with their friends, and coming to see the artist live. Connecting with fans and allowing that natural relationship to grow is the best thing any artist, be it old or new, can do. The $5k should be spent making sure you have set up and maintain the proper mechanism to do exactly that.

Music Geek Services is available for consultations and would love to learn about your project. Contact them by visiting their website here: http://musicgeekservices.com/.

Posted in Advice for Artists, Marketing, Topspin Partners | Leave a comment

Artist of the Day: Jason Mraz – Pre-order Campaign Details

Posted on April 2, 2012 by michele

This guest post is courtesy of Jeff Nicholas at The Uprising Creative. This post is a testament to Jeff’s cooperative spirit and Topspin really appreciates him!

Site overall
The Jason Mraz site is one of those that appears really simple from the user perspective, which was the intention, but is actually pretty complex on the backend. We’re using WordPress to power the main site with a variety of custom-created plugins and functions, as well as a wide variety of custom post types and automation that allows the Mraz team to quickly and easily pull in content from around the web. We’re also using Buddypress to power the user community, which directly integrates user profiles into the site for commenting, sharing photos and videos, and many more functionalities to come.

Additionally, the homepage is using a custom drag-and-drop tool that allows both admins and users to customize the homepage experience at any time. Just create an account and you’ll have access to the tightly integrated curate tool yourself to customize everything from the background to the modules and their content.

Pre-Order Details
The first big piece of Topspin functionality we added was for the new album pre-order campaign, which can be checked at out http://jasonmraz.com/preorder. This went from a simple US-based pre-order to a much more complex campaign using 5 separate currencies and two fulfillment locations to help satisfy sales chart reporting in multiple territories. That took the number of offers from 6 to 30, but if you check out the page it’s all pretty seamless.


We used custom checkboxes to allow the user to pick different options, and geo-IP detection to direct people to the page for their region. To be perfectly honest, it wasn’t the easiest campaign to launch due to the complexity of the regions and options, and Jason’s requirements to use only organic or recycled goods manufactured in the US or UK added some extra burden in sourcing the appropriate goods for the packages, but you wouldn’t know it from the page. It’s simple, clean, and direct, and has something for everyone, from the potential new fan who just wants to sample the new album, to the hardcore fan who want’s a much more exclusive package of limited edition goods.

We also integrated the Topspin Membership Platform into these packages. In a couple of weeks, everyone who pre-orders the package will get access to an exclusive premium member area of the site’s community, which will give them exclusive access to special content, merchandise, ticket pre-sales, and more.

Creating the custom store with geo-IP detection and redirection
For the Mraz online stores, we wanted to be able to offer fulfillment options from both the US and the UK. In order to do this, we needed to setup two separate Topspin accounts, one for the US and one for the UK, to keep the inventories and pricing separate. The Topspin WordPress plugin we developed doesn’t actually have the ability to pull in offers from multiple Topspin accounts due to issues that this could cause with trying to add products from one account into the cart with products from another account.

This posed a bit of a dilemma because we needed to create individual Store Pages based on products from the individual Topspin accounts. The nice thing about having such amazingly talented developers, and the fact that the plugin we developed is completely open source, is the ability to tackle this kind of issue quickly. Instead of setting up a separate WordPress install or some other hacky method of achieving this, we simply pulled a fork of the plugin and added in this support, along with a few checks and balances to make sure there weren’t any conflicts on the front-end.

Then, using the existing ability for the plugin to create parent and child Store Pages and sort these using the built-in drag-and-drop functionality (which was added a few versions back by Ethan Miller, OK Go’s webmaster), we created a US store at http://jasonmraz.com/store/us/ and a UK store at http://jasonmraz.com/store/uk. Then we dropped in some geo-IP detection at http://jasonmraz.com/store to automatically direct people to the store closest to them and pressed go.

For anyone who is interested, we have this new version of the plugin available in beta over on our github page. It’s definitely beta with limited new documentation, so we can’t guarantee it’ll work great for you, but if you have those ‘leet skillz’ and need this kind of functionality too, feel free to grab it: https://github.com/theuprising/topspin-wordpress/tree/develop

The Future
All in all, the move for Mraz from a flash-driven site to this new WordPress x Topspin setup helps give us an amazing foundation for reaching the fans in a much more direct and engaging way. There’s activity all over the site, with more fan-based functionality coming in the near future, a mobile app via Mobile Roadie in development that integrates into the site using their API, and much more. It should be a good year for Mraz fans and we’re stoked to be a part of it.

Huge thanks to Jeff for sharing his view points about this fan-friendly, global campaign!

Topspin features: Email for Media; Pre-order; Download Anywhere; Membership Products; Fulfillment; Store

Installed by: Expert Installer – The Uprising Creative

Get Topspin: http://topspinmedia.com/signup


Posted in Artist Spotlight, Artists Using Topspin, Guest Post | Leave a comment

Free Music Fridays: Best Coast, Ramona Falls, Marty Stuart, The New Pacific, 808 State

Posted on March 30, 2012 by michele

One of my favorite parts of working at Topspin is getting to scroll through SO MANY interesting and awesome artist websites. It is so amazing to witness the volume of creative and technical energy it takes to promote the music we fall in love with. Here are some great tracks (and sites) to send you into your weekend!

I’m a big fan of Best Coast. LOVE the artwork and the page is very beautiful, by Fanfare Media. Check out their pre-order for the album dropping 5/15/12.

 

Become an instant new fan of Ramona Falls, simply from listening to this very nice song — that’s what happened to me! New album is ready 5/01/12. Their splashpage and artwork giving away the track is killer: http://ramonafalls.com/

Marty Stuart sent a very awesome newsletter this week with a presale set up through our out of the box Spinshop that comes with every Topspin account. They did a stellar job with this Spinshop. See here: http://martystuart.spinshop.com/. New album is available on Sugar Hill Records on 4.24.12.

I love this very direct splashpage where you can preview this hooky track for a new band ‘The New Pacific’. Great sharing functionality too! See it here: http://www.thenewpacific.com/

OTEP is a free 4 track EP of bonus tracks previously only available on special Japanese and US editions of Outpost Transmission. Great looking page: http://www.808state.com/

Keep it rockin’ and have a music-filled weekend :)

Posted in Artists Using Topspin, Free Music | Leave a comment

Advice for Artists: B.Y.O.B.B. (Build Your Own Buy Button)

Posted on March 29, 2012 by dwidaman

If you’ve ever sold music or merch through Topspin, then this little black button probably looks pretty familiar to you:

Simple, elegant, efficient in form and function… but perhaps not the most aesthetically pleasing buy button on Earth. Well, if you’ve been pining for a more eye-catching buy button, or you’re looking for a creative way to integrate your Topspin offers into a custom site, you’re in luck, because I’m about to show you how to B.Y.O.B.B. That’s right… Build Your Own Buy Button.

Start by copying and pasting your Topspin embed code into your site or text editor:

 

 

 

 

Don’t be intimidated by the raw embed code. You don’t need to be a web developer to customize your buy button. In fact, there are really only two steps:

Step 1. Find and delete class=”ts_buttonlink” from your embed code:

You’ll be left with a standard <a href= hypertext reference (FYI – href stands for Hypertext Reference):

 

 

 

Basically, by deleting the “class” attribute from your button, you’ve removed Topspin’s default styling from your button. If you view your button now, it will appear as a simple text link.

Step 2. Replace your button’s text (in this case, “Get it Now”) with an image URL of your choice. For illustrative purposes, I’ll be inserting an image I selected randomly from the Google.

 

 

 

Here’s what my embed code looks like now:

 

 

 

 

Specify that you’re inserting an image URL by including <img src=”…“> around your image URL. Once that’s done, just refresh your page and – voila! Your custom image is now a fully functional buy button! Here’s a live example of the embed code I created above:

With this knowledge, you have the power to replace your Topspin buy buttons (and redemption code widgets, too) with any image URL on the web! For more tips and tricks, make sure to check out our Artist Knowledge Base.

 

Posted in Advice for Artists | 1 Comment