This is another question we often get asked, especially by new artists.

Here’s our answer with some wisdom from Andrew Dubber of New Music Strategies:

In most instances, the answer to this one is a firm YES. In fact, We struggle to think of an instance in which the online presence of a musician, band or music enterprise would not be enhanced by the addition of a blog.

The most common counter-argument against musicians blogging is the idea of the ‘aloof artist’ – the notion that the mystique of an inaccessible and ineffable artist adds to the value of the work itself. We disagree, though of course, there are exceptions. You pretty much have to go into hiding to make that strategy worthwhile.

But the main reason to blog is not, as you might expect, that it’s a great way to promote your music. It’s more that the blog is now part of the way in which you do what you do.

Let me put it another way. Just as copying simply happens online, so does communication.

Accessibility is the norm online

If I find it difficult to locate you, listen to your music, find out what you’re up to and where you’re at, then it’s far easier for me to find an alternative source for what you do than it is for me to go digging in order to find out what’s going on.

If you’re trying to get work, sell your music, gain clients, gather fans, promote a record or a gig, or connect with the online environment in any way, blogging is the first step towards that. It is, at the very least, evidence that you understand that your online presence should be a conversation and not a brochure.

So what actually is a blog?

Well, actually, allow me to broaden the standard definition a little. Generally speaking, the term comes from an abbreviation of ‘web log’ – a continually updating ‘diary’ of events and occurrences. But it really just needs to be some regular form of communication that can be easily updated by you.

In that respect, I’d put a ‘micro-blogging’ platform like Twitter on the list, and a voice-based message system like Utterz on the pile as well. Mostly though, it’s somewhere you can post the latest news, thoughts, events, and interesting things as they come to mind, so that visitors to your site can see the latest, go back through previous posts – perhaps respond, and spread the word.

And the best reason to blog?

A smart friend of mine once said that the best music in the world is the sound of someone’s insides on the outside (yes, he was an old punk – how did you know?). His point was one about self-expression. That music, at its best, is something we can identify with on a human level. And we tend to like music we can relate to, because it expresses something of ourselves.

And because music is self-expressive, we are more positively inclined towards music by people we know and like – because if we like them, we’re likely to appreciate expressions of their ’self’.

So by logical extension – removing the curtain, engaging with your audience and actually letting them in on your day to day life will allow people to feel that they are getting to know you (in a ‘managed’ way), and will therefore be increasingly inclined to appreciate your music on that basis.

To put it in narrative terms – you become a character they care about. Whether you’re a musician, a label manager, a promoter, a venue owner or a music teacher – starting and (more importantly) maintaining a blog creates a story (remember this idea — we’ll be coming back to it). People love stories — and want to know what happens next — and if it’s a story they like with characters they can identify with, it will start to become meaningful and important to them.

Everybody must blog! Why do you think Twitter is so popular and pretty much any company that matters is on it?

The idea that the world is divided into content creators and consumers is increasingly redundant. What’s important is the quality, frequency and ‘engageability’ of your content – and that’s no longer restricted to your musical output.

The fact that you make music is unremarkable. The quality of your communication — musical content included — is now the measure by which you will be judged. This is not a call to pick over the mundane minutiae of your life. This is a challenge to be interesting.

And really, this is not such a radical or transformative idea. Your music has always been communication. Your music business has always been a communication business. This is about using the online tools to enhance that communication.

Another more technical reason to blog is related to one of the more important but less important ’20 things you must know about music online’ which you should read if you haven’t already and that’s SEO: Search Engine Optimization.

Everything you blog about gets catalogued by the search engines. So that means a lot of ways for people to find you and hear your music. Often things totally unrelated to music which is fine – people love to stumble upon things accidentally and ‘discover’ them for themselves. Some of our artists greatest sources of traffic to their website have been related to playdough, hiking, religious oppression and video games!

So think of blogging as an indirect way for people to find out about your music.

Ok, So what should i write about?

We hear this one a lot from artists, what should I write to my fans and mailing list subscribers?

Well, since it’s essential you send a message out to your list at least once a month (you DO have a mailing list don’t you?) Here are some ideas of what you can write about:

- Details of the creation process of your latest musical works and otherwise

- Upcoming shows

- Recapping recent shows (telling funny stories if there are any)

- New music (either full CD releases or just new songs posted online)

- Info about upcoming releases

- New merchandise

- updates to your website, new blog posts, photos etc.

- great music, books, videos, foods and other things you’ve appreciated lately

- Funny/interesting stories and events that happen during your downtime

- Any other artist news

- Anything really. Fans signed up to YOUR list to hear what YOU want to say!

And you thought you had nothing to say!

It’s important to write something at least once a month, but no more than once a week.

But I really don’t like writing!

Ok, sure there are some of us who will just never get into or want to do this, fine, that doesn’t mean you don’t blog… Here’s a supplementary list for you:

- post photos you’ve taken or that you’ve found that you love [and credit the photographer]

- post your favourite videos you’ve found online

- post videos of your own, embedded from your youtube account [vblog]

- post some artwork you’ve created and mention the inspiration behind it or something

- post your own podcast [let us know if you want help setting one up]

We could go on… there are easy and quick ways to do this now using mobile technology and such, again, let us know if you need help.

With over 20 million users, StumbleUpon.com is not only a very cool site to browse the internet more effectively, it is a great tool to get exposure for your music. Here is how StumbleUpon define themselves:

“StumbleUpon helps you discover and share great websites. As you click  Stumble!, we deliver high-quality pages matched to your personal preferences. These pages have been explicitly recommended by your friends or one of over 15 million other websurfers with interests similar to you. Rating these sites you like () automatically shares them with like-minded people – and helps you discover great sites your friends recommend.”

Once you install the StumbleUpon toolbar to your web browser, everytime you click on this “Stumble!” button, something new will come up. And the more you rate the sites StumbleUpon recommended, the more likely StumbleUpon will find the sites that fit your interests. So from now on, you won’t need to worry if you can’t think of new ideas to post on your Facebook, Twitter or blog. Simply set your preferences in StumbleUpon and start stumbling based on your taste in music or anything else, and you’ll have endless ideas to share with your fans.

Not only StumbleUpon is a great tool to find sharable content, it can also help YOU get discovered. You can submit your music, video, streaming tracks, blog post or anything else, then you get potential of thousands of people stumble across your content.
(on some browsers, the toolbar doesn’t allow you to submit content though, so you’ll be best off using a browser that allows you to install the full toolbar such as Firefox and Chrome)

Some users reported that hourse after stumbling her friend’s newly released music, the tracks got thousands of views. However, there is an art to using Stumbleupon effectively for music promotion. Stumbleupon works best when a page is shared that many others would want to share with their friends or contacts online. If you submit too many links from your own, or the same website, you could get blacklisted, or your account could be suspended. And those who want to promote their own websites may find it hard to keep track of who had linked to or shared their pages.

Let us know if you need any assistance using Stumbleupon as well as other important tools to promote your music.

In our last blog we posted Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails‘ thoughts on the illegal downloading of music.

There are countless articles and comments on this topic, probably millions.
Here is one of the most recent from Forbes, by a young author that effectively captures some of the complicated and mostly misunderstood issues surrounding this debate:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/02/03/you-will-never-kill-piracy-and-piracy-will-never-kill-you

It’s great that these kinds of articles are coming out now sharing more detailed information and truth, it’s just sad that it took over 5 years for the media to start talking about this and investigating.
We feel it is important to reveal that the fundamental ideas behind this issue and the often overlooked REAL reasons behind it were first brought to light in Andrew Dubber in a blog written over 4 years ago called, “Should I Be Worried About Piracy?“, part of the 20 things you must know about music online eBook.

The overall conclusion of this article and those experts who really understand what is going on is that ‘piracy’ is common because entertainment companies refuse to give consumers what they want, or do business fairly or honestly.
If companies who create film, music, and TV provided consumers what they wanted, the way the want it for a fair price, then there would not only be very little piracy, but those companies would make far more income than they ever can now. But they won’t, even after over 10 years of fighting and losing over and over.
So people continue to pursue what they want the way they want it, and that happens to be in a way that prevents money from going to the content creators at their own choice, which they call ‘piracy’.

Youtube’s partner program has made some musicians realise that being active on Youtube can bring some real income. Here’s how it works and what you need to do to make money with it:

We’ve done a lousy job at blogging or updating our site lately…
This is partly due to some staff changes and our work with pioneering new strategies for our new and existing artists, but primarily, it’s because of a number of  large developments that Pro Soul Alliance hasn’t shared much about… until now!

After doing some work in China over the last few years, Pro Soul has been working on setting up a world class studio in Beijing over the last year. This is not only a massive undertaking, but a very challenging one in China, as the standards, resources, and experience in this area are still quite limited.
We are excited to announce that after many months of design, construction, development and adjustment, Pro Soul Studios Beijing is now completed and we have begun using it already!

Here’s a photo of the control room:

Here’s the recording booth. It’s professionally built to completely isolated from outside sound, and is large enough to fit a full live band:

Since the studio is in a renovated traditional Chinese courtyard building, we were determined to keep the feeling that was originally there, which was quite a challenge acoustically as there is a lot of glass including a glass roof! But whatever wasn’t perfected in design, we were able to compensate with sophisticated hardware/software system that corrects anomalies and imperfections in the room for my monitors.

This has allowed us to create what we feel is one of the most unique studios in China if not the world!

Everyone who has visited say this new studio is not only unique, but inspiring, both Chinese and foreign artists, so we are very pleased. Take a look:

outside, front entrance:

inside before construction:

studio entrance door:

stylish and comfortable, rear of control room:

Recording booth:

Producer, founder of Pro Soul Alliance, Jarome Matthew:

All the equipment has been imported into China for the best possible quality, no fakes or imitations! Just the real thing, Apple, Neve, JoeMeek, Neumann, AKG, Sennheiser, RME, Mackie, Alesis, Tannoy with Mogami cabling and Neutrik connectors all the way! This is driven by Pro Tools, Cubase, Logic with Waves, Audio Ease, Spectrasonics, Native Instruments, East West software to name a few.

Many of these are recent additions to Producer Jarome Matthew‘s existing range of classic analog and cutting edge digital equipment, making this new studio in Beijing the most powerful, highest quality studio he has worked with in 20 years as a music producer, composer and audio engineer.
We’ve put a huge amount of time, trouble and great expense to make this one of the best, top quality music and sound design studios in Beijing.

It wouldn’t have been possible without the generous support of many wonderful friends and clients in China, you know who you are, Thank you so much!

More exciting news and developments for Pro Soul Alliance in 2012, keep an eye on us!

All the best for 2012 for you and your work.

Though users in Europe have been reaping the benefits of Spotify since 2008, music lovers in the United States got their first taste for the first time a few days ago, when it officially became available in the U.S..
Created in Sweden, At first glance, Spotify must appear like yet another overtyped streaming music service, but upon further investigation users will find that it could very well be the future of the music industry.

It’s not that Spotify is unique, it just blends some of the best features of several competing streaming media services. Like Google Music, it uploads music you own to a cloud library, and like Qrocity allows you to stream full albums and songs from a database of millions of songs to a wide range of devices. Like Amazon Cloud Player, you can even access it from a wide variety of devices, including your PC, Mac, tablet, or smartphone. But most important of all, it’s like Pandora in that it’s free, subsidized by ads.

Basically, it’s the ultimate way to get, discover, and listen to music.

The foundation of the service is the computer software player, an iTunes like portal that is attractive, powerful and flexible. The interface feels good, presenting songs in an organized list, with a side bar that displays your library and playlists, playback controls and artwork.

When you first start the software, all you’ll encounter is the music you already have localized on your computer, but there is a much larger cloud library that you can explore…

Unlike digital marketplaces like iTunes or Zune, however, Spotify doesn’t present the cloud database as a storefront, but relies on search, an listing of most popular songs and albums, and social interaction amongst users for new music discovery.
The Top Lists present 100 of the most popular songs and albums on the service, which can be filtered by locale (U.S., U.K., Spain, etc.), and a New Releases panel shows off the newest additions.

But what really drives the service is social interaction and search. Spotify integrates with Facebook, which allows users to find friends who use the service, and share public playlists with each other. It also allows users to copy direct links to their custom playlists, which can be shared publicly (to users who sign up for Spotify)

Browsing custom playlists from friends is a great way to find out their tastes, but using the search tool to dig into the larger database is the best way to expand your library.
Spotify has built a library of over 15 million songs, with 10,000 new tracks added every day. Currently the site’s foremost publishing partners include Sony Music, Universal, EMI, Warner Music, and many others.
In searching for music on Spotify, we’ve found most or all of the tracks we’ve been looking for, with only a few limited instances where we couldn’t.
The biggest names in music? They’re there too. Most have their entire catalog available.

Adding songs to your personal library is as simple as dragging them to a playlist, and there’s no limit.
Once you’ve built a large library, you can take it on the go using the Spotify mobile app for iPhone, iPod touch, Android smartphones and tablets, Windows Phone 7, and WebOS.

Of the various versions of the app we tried, all had surprisingly speedy high-fidelity playback, even over 3G. Browsing music using the mobile UI was also pretty intuitive, though obviously browsing thousands of songs is preferable on your desktop or laptop.
The one catch, however, is that only users who pay a monthly subscription fee will be able to stream their complete music library on their mobile device. While the app will allow free users to browse the Spotify library, only premium users will be allowed to play tracks, and flag songs to be cached for offline playback.

The fee for unhindered access is actually pretty reasonable, however, at $9.99 a month, which grants you unlimited offline mode playback on both your PC or your mobile device, as well as higher audio quality and the ability to remove ads.
Of course, nobody likes paying monthly subscription fees, but the beautify of Spotify is that the core service of unlimited access to the larger streaming library is free, so if you decide you don’t want or need a premium account, you don’t lose any tracks you’ve organized. For six months, the free version of the service will offer unlimited playback, but after that it will limit users to 10 hours of playback and only 5 plays per song each month.

For those who don’t care about mobile access and offline functionality, but loathe ads and want unlimited access, there’s a separate option called Spotify Unlimited that costs $4.99 a month and eliminates ads.
If you’re cheap like us, however, you’ll want to stick with the ad-subsidized version. The ads really aren’t that bad. Over the span of two hours, music playback is usually interrupted around twice, and the ads are less than a minute. They were actually not annoying at all. The audio ads either advertised functions of Spotify or played a sample of a song available.
There were also banner ads built into the player, but we hardly noticed them.

What does all this mean for the music business and the future of music?
If you used Spotify, we think you would know the answer, basically it fulfills the need of the music lover that has existed ever since the release of a $18.99 CD with one good song on it. It’s quite simply, the legal solution to music piracy.
Music fans want their music when they want it where they want it without restrictions and limitations, or a hard drive of files that gets filled up and won’t fit on your phone iPod…
And best of all, the music creators all get paid!

If your a music fan, get on Spotify now (let us know if you can’t because you don’t have an invite, or your in a different country, we can help…)
if your a music creator, contact us if you want help getting your music on Spotify.