5 Rules for Successful Artist Contests

I've been running online contests on behalf of artists across all genres and career levels for some time now and have learned a thing or two in the process. A special contest or promotion can be a great way to engage your online fanbase or achieve some other marketing goal, but before launching into something there are a few rules of thumb that could make the difference between a worthwhile effort and a waste of time.

1) Determine Your Goal.

Don't ever run a contest just for the sake of running a contest or to give your fans 'something to do'. Use a contest as a means to achieve a specific marketing goal and determine what that goal is before starting. Do you wish to promote a new album, single or video? Increase sales? Build a fanclub? Obtain fan feedback? Promote a social media profile? Encourage newsletter or mobile fanclub signups? Figure out what exactly it is that you'd like your fans to do FIRST and tailor the promotion around this objective.

2) Keep It Simple

I cannot overemphasize the importance of creating contest elements that are as simple and straightforward as possible. The entry instructions/method of entry are the most important in this respect. If you cannot list your entry instructions in less than 3 individual steps, revisit the concept and overall framework of the promotion in order to determine a way to simplify things. Stick to a method of entry that doesn't require the entrant to visit multiple websites or social network profiles or submit too much personal data. The more hoops that your fans have to jump through to participate, the fewer that will.

3) Beware of Contest Cliches

A viral video promotion sounds like a great idea, right? This may be true, but before confidently asking your fans to share videos of themselves rocking out to your new single, be aware that an extremely small percentage of online fans will take the time to record and submit a video. If you are a developing artist I'd recommend steering clear of this one as you will likely be disappointed at the low number of submissions. As a conservative estimate, you can expect 1 video submission for every 20,000 myspace fans. No joke. An alternative U.G.C. promotion? Ask fans to submit photos, or even better, text entries on a specific topic. I also recommend using voting campaigns (i.e. 'vote for our band on 3rdpartysite.com') sparingly, if at all. Why? First of all unless you can obtain full entry data from participants and offer some sort of prizing for participation, what are your fans getting out of voting for you to win a contest on a 3rd party site? Whats in it for them? Why should they submit their email address and other personal info to a site that they don't care about so that you can win an online contest? I see artists and bands overusing voting campaigns all the time, and the only ones who seem to benefit are those running the contest.

4) More Prizes, More Submissions.

As a rule of thumb, it is a better incentive to offer many fans a small prize rather than a 'grand prize' that only 1 fan will be lucky enough to obtain. Think about it; a fan will read your contest details including prizing info and quickly calculate their chances of taking something home as a result of their participation. 1 prize offered to 1 lucky fan tells the fan that the odds are not in his or her favor, so why bother? Instead, offer a larger number of smaller prizes to more participants- or better yet, EVERYBODY that enters. A free song download for each entrant or 5 Free CDs per week for 4 weeks is an outstanding value proposition. Don't have a budget for shipping prizes? Label won't let you give away song downloads? Be creative!

5) Be Consistent with All Contest Elements

If your contest language indicates that you will announce the winner on August 21st, you'd better stick to it. If you promise a small prize to a large number of people, do not put off your fulfillment efforts. If you say that the prize is a free pair of concert tickets on Facebook, it had better say that on Myspace as well. Even if you feel like the majority of your fans are in one place online as opposed to another, be sure to announce and promote your contest equally across all web properties; respect people where they choose to interact with you online, not where you feel they should be. Make an effort to create visually appealing contest artwork; hire a graphic designer to do this if possible.

Awesome Viral Video Promotion

One of my favorite myspace designers recently sent me a link to a viral video promotion that he'd seamlessly integrated into the website for the Ohio-based rock band Before Their Eyes. Near the top of the website just below the band's photo and logo, visitors are prompted to share an exclusive video as a status update with friends on Facebook or Twitter first and receive access to the video second.

Tracking on the site's backend shows that this particular campaign generated over 2,000 posts between Facebook and Twitter.

While the concept of exclusive fan content is certainly nothing new, I love the way that this has been so attractively built into the backend of the band's website. In only 2 mouse clicks I have shared the content and viewed the video without ever leaving the site; this is infinitely more attractive a proposition than finding, copying and pasting code or a URL, leaving the page to visit a new one, figuring out the best way on each constantly-evolving social network to share it, etc. I also love that because the promotion exists entirely on the band's website, in essence they 'own' the promotion, as opposed to hi-jacking a branded technology that somebody else has created for a similar purpose and plastered their logo over.

The only concern of course is cost. Web design and video production services do not come cheap. However if you email Nick Moore at nmoore3@gmail.com to inquire about this service, he may cut you a good deal.

The New Tyler Hilton EP and Why It Should Sell

One Tree Hill fans will remember Warner/Reprise artist Tyler Hilton in his recurring role as the villainous Chris Keller. Those of you who without an affinity for the soapy CW teen drama may remember him as Elvis in the 2005 film Walk The Line. Though throughout his 10-year career as a recording artist Hilton has not quite been able to match his success on the screen with success on the charts, he's been on my radar since I first heard 3 brilliant and memorable acoustic/pop tracks from his 2004 album The Tracks of Tyler Hilton (When It Comes, The Letter Song, and Pink and Black). I believe that When It Comes is still in my Ipod's Top 25.

A few days ago I saw a Facebook Ad announcing a new release of Hilton's-- likely targeted to me because I'd listed him years ago as a favorite artist. Since he'd already earned my trust I was more than willing to give his new music a chance, but the first thought that popped into my head was "I am not paying $8 for 5 songs that I haven't heard and may or may not like." The second thought? "I don't have time to listen to 12 new tracks that I haven't heard and may or may not like." To my surprise and delight, the 5-song EP was available on Itunes for only $2.99. I downloaded it without hesitation.

Kudos to Warner/Reprise for appropriate pricing and marketing on this release.

Will EPs eventually replace full-length albums as the default method for releasing new music? This marketer and music fan hopes so. Think about it; unless we're talking about a full-length new album from an artist that one is very passionate about (I can only think of 5-10 of these off the top of my head), why should I allot hours of my time to dedicate the 3-5 listens to 12 songs that it normally takes to reach a level of familiariarity and enjoyment with each? Also, why should I spend $9.99 on unknown music when I could just as easily use this money to purchase 10 songs that I love?

If labels and artists want digital downloads to compete with the Groovesharks of the world as a means of music discovery, a fairly priced EP is definitely a step in the right direction.

Photos from Winter Music Conference 2010

7 Artist EPK's and What I Like About Them

I am currently in the process of developing my first artist EPK and came across a few things that I liked in my research. The main thing that I learned in the process is that an artist EPK (Electronic Press Kit) Video doesn't have to be anything specific, but it should always accomplish one specific goal. Whether that goal is to introduce a developing artist to a wider audience or to promote their 11th studio album, it probably makes the most sense to keep that goal in mind during all aspects of production and not to try to do too much.

While I have yet to find the 'definitive' artist EPK, here are 7 that I came across that possessed a great quality or two that we can all learn from.




I love the EXCITEMENT that this projects. It tells us that Michael Buble is a worldwide phenomenon and makes us feel like even bigger things are in store for 2010.

Alice In Chains
I like how this is shot like a film and the artistic qualities conveyed. I also like how the use of black & white imagery contrasts the video content. They don't appear to have had much video content other than the interview to work with but these two factors help tremendously.



James Hunter "The Hard Way" EPK @ Yahoo! Video

I like how the song titles appear digitally in the corner of the screen as they show the live footage and the print media quotes add a nice touch. Both great ideas.



I love how the best and most dramatic clips of their music are used the way the timing of each music clip works with the storyline. The dominance of the music in this EPK makes me feel like the music itself is the strongest part of their act—that they don’t expensive video effects, high quality performance footage or a compelling interview to show us who they are.



I like how it starts off with her voice and name IMMEDIATELY in the first couple of seconds without delay. The video also shows a good balance of live audio with mastered audio tracks.



I like how the different effects on the still photos make them feel ‘alive’ as well as the use of childhood photos. I also like how he talks about the songwriting process and most importantly how the video genuinely ‘introduces’ the artist. It doesn’t assume that I already know who he is and what he’s accomplished; I'd never heard of him and the video told me everything I needed to know.



Again I enjoy and appreciate the ‘filmlike’ qualities of this. They really only have interview and rehearsal footage but the editing technique makes it feels like so much more. I also enjoy the way that the start of a new song in the background signals the beginning of a new topic of conversation.

Top 25 Music Discovery Sites

I did a bit of research for my own purposes and thought I'd share the results.

I'd been reading a blog post entitled 'The Top 5 Music Discovery Sites' and was surprised to see at least 1 that I was unfamiliar with. The article linked to a similar article on Mashable that cataloged the top 50 services. I noticed, however, that both articles seemed to be a bit outdated-- at least in online terms. I thought I'd check on the Alexa traffic ranking (U.S.) of each site listed and see how they stacked up against one another. The top 10 results turned up at least 2 sites that I'd never heard of and I was unfamiliar with most of the listings after that.

Here are the results:

The Top 25 Music Discovery Sites with Alexa Rank

1. Pandora (77)
2. Ilike (607)
3. Grooveshark (911)
4. Blip.fm (1946)
5. Mog (2298)
6. Purvolume (4487)
7. Hypster (9462)
8. Haystack (9586)
9. Magnatune (29,702)
10. Finetune (61,084)
11. Ijigg (65,884)
12. Musicovery (67,262)
13. ProjectOpus (87,077)
14. Audiolunchbox (103,941)
15. Epitonic (127,899)
16. Babulous (168,678)
17. Flyfi (229,655)
18. MusicNation (245,618)
19. Twones (273,138)
20. Bandbuzz (643,332)
21. Soundpedia (706,069)
22. upto11.net (910,787)
23. OneLlama (1,221,092)
24. Musicmesh (1,284,224)
25. Audiobaba (1,524,016)

Tricks of the Trade for Building a Twitter Following

In the past couple of months, building Twitter followings for my marketing clients has become a part of my everyday workload in the way that can only be compared to myspace 'friend adding'. If done improperly it can be enormously time consuming and extremely frustrating. Here are a few tricks that I've picked up in my own work that I am confident will make the process easier for you.

First and foremost you must understand your options for identifying people with common interests within the Twitter network.

Tweepsearch allows you to search Twitter profiles-- specifically what people have written in their name, location and 1-line bio. It does not search actual tweets but can be extremely useful, especially if you are hoping to target people in a specific city or state, or people whose primary reason for being on Twitter revolves around a specific purpose (as described in their 1-line bio).

Search.twitter.com allows you to search tweets but not profiles. Be sure to use the 'advanced' option in order to limit your search to specific phrases and keywords. The advantage here is that when you search, those who have written updates containing your search term recently show up in the results. It lists them in order, in fact. This helps because you will waste less time searching through profiles of people who have abandoned Twitter months ago.

Now that you know where to search, here are a few tips on HOW to search and who to follow.

1) Only follow people whose most recent update was posted within the last 2 weeks. If somebody has not logged into their profile since early 2008, they are probably not going to log in the next day to follow you back.

2) Only follow people who appear to be real people; avoid following accounts that appear to be business, informational or promotional. These profiles certainly have a legitimate place within the Twitterverse, but the truth is that most are exclusively interested in their own product or service and have no interest in learning about yours. This includes other artists. Instead, follow those who have a profile picture or name that identifies them as a real person.

3) Do not follow profiles that appear to be sex-oriented. This can be signified by the letters 'XXX' within the person's username, by an erotic profile photo or through updates. These folks are only interested in one thing and it isn't you.

4) DO follow people who are already following somebody with an interest very similar to your own. Underneath the 1-line bio on every profile you can click on the 'followers' number and link. If you find somebody whose followers you feel would be interested in learning about you, this link will bring up a list of that person's followers. Using the rules above, simply click the 'follow' button to the right of each person's username. I find that this strategy is the most time-efficient because unlike searching on Tweepsearch or Search.twitter.com, you do not need to open a new window to follow somebody.

5) DO follow people who appear to be posting in your own language. The return-follow rate for users in other countries is simply too low to be worthwhile, even if you are promoting a product or service with international appeal. This is the only difficulty with finding people via #4 above.

6) Do not follow people whose 'followers' list drastically outnumbers their own 'following'. This is the case with many promotional and business related profiles. Tweepsearch allows you to see these numbers before clicking through to a profile; definitely worth a glance.