Headliner

Headliner.fm Teams Up With Myspace For ArtistHQ

Nick — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:18:50 +0000

Starting today Headliner.fm will be featured on Myspace Music’s ArtistHQ area. Myspace is the music industry standard for social networking. Virtually every band/artist who is serious about promoting themselves online has a Myspace page. ArtistHQ is an area in Myspace that offers bands and artists select tools to advance their careers as musicians. We are very excited to work with Myspace and to help bands on Myspace use our site to promote themselves. We are going to have some exclusive offers for bands on Myspace so stay tuned! Check it out here.

Headliner.fm on Myspace ArtistHQ

Congratulations to the Winners of the Papa John’s x Headliner.fm Contest

Nick — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 20:32:40 +0000

Back in May we teamed up with Papa John’s Pizza to give bands and artists a chance to win gift certificates for free pizza. A lot of cool bands participated in the contest, but we could only choose 3 winners. The winners are:
1)2 Grown Kidz $500 Grand Prize Winner
2)J. Smooth $250 Second Place Winner
3)International Farmers $100 Third Place Winner

Check them out!

Headliner.fm Interviews: The Lighthouse and The Whaler

Nick — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 19:22:01 +0000

The Lighthouse and The Whaler

Whenever I find an independent band I really like on Headliner I try to interview them. The Lighthouse and The Whaler was one such band that caught my ear. The Cleveland based group makes beautifully crafted indie-folk songs with intricate instrumentation and intelligent lyrics. This is a band that deserves a lot more recognition and they if keep releasing solid tunes I would not be surprised if they become a lot more well known. You can check out their site here. Here is a brief interview I did with band where they talk about Cleveland, their influences and some of their favorite places to play.

How would you guys describe your sound?

Indie pop in a folk wrapper.

What do you think about Cleveland’s music scene and have you ever thought of moving to a bigger city?

Cleveland’s music scene has been growing over the last few years and there are a lot of good bands emerging from the scene here. A lot of people overlook Cleveland, but there is a lot happening here that people aren’t aware of. We have thought about moving to another city before, but we’ve done really well in Cleveland and we’ve been able to tour both coasts so, for us, being in Cleveland has been an advantage.

Besides yourselves, who are your favorite up and coming bands?

Tallahassee, a band from Rhode Island, and Typefighter, a band from Washington, D.C..

What is your favorite venue to play and why?

The Beachland Ballroom in Cleveland is a phenomenal venue. We’ve played all over the country, and it truly is one of the best venues we’ve been privileged to play at.

How has your approach to making music changed in the time you guys have been together?

We’ve definitely grown as songwriters since we started. The process in which we use to write music has evolved as the chemistry in the band has become stronger. We’re big on collaboration and most of the band members play a big part in the writing process.

How did you guys end up signing up for Headliner?

We thought it would be a good way to get more fans into our network.

Musically who are your biggest influences?

The influences in the band vary depending on the member, but we can agree on a few like Sufjan Stevens, Radiohead and The National.

You guys keep a pretty detailed blog on tumblr. What made you decide to start one and how do you decide what to put on it?

We thought creating a blog would help people to get to know us better. We want people to feel like they are on this journey with us so we put up things that, hopefully, allow them to see who we are when were not on stage.

You guys have opened for some pretty big names. Of all the shows you have played which has been your favorite?

It’s a tie between opening for The Temper Trap at The House of Blues in Cleveland or playing at The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. This question is actually the subject of much debate between band members.

How to Create Promotions on Headliner.fm Even Faster

Nick — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 21:01:30 +0000

Here at Headliner we have been hard at work on new features that make creating promotions easier. A few weeks ago we introduced the Express Promotion to streamline the process of promotion creation. Since then we have developed a new feature, “Select All” button, that should further simplify that process. The “Select All” button allows you to select every artist on a page in the Artist Discovery screen on Headliner. It is a very simple and intuitive feature, but if you create a lot of promotions it can save you a lot of time. Below is a screenshot with the “Select All” button highlighted in red.

The Select All Button

Myspace Adds Facebook Connect

Nick — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 18:41:38 +0000

Making Facebook easier to use isn’t one of Myspace’s priorities. Just a few years ago Myspace and Facebook were direct competitors, engaged in a battle for the top spot of social networkdom. Yesterday, the two giants called an uneasy truce when Myspace launched Facebook syncing, a new feature that allows users to post their Myspace status updates to Facebook (although not vice versa.) Check out more info here..

Travie McCoy x Headliner.fm Case Study

Nick — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 22:05:16 +0000

Travie McCoy has had a big year. Travie released his solo debut, Lazurus, and his single ‘Billionaire’ was a top 10 hit. We had the opportunity to work with Travie, promoting ‘Billionaire’ to music fans via our site. Here are some of the results from our campaign:

Travie reached over 5 million new fans.
Travie connected with over 9,000 artists to help promote “Billionaire” through recommendations.
8,197 clicks of the “Billionaire” video on Youtube.
2,454 visits to Travie’s official website
6,420 clicks of a free download link for “Billionaire”
22,000+ overall clicks.

Here’s what Fueled by Ramen’ senior director of new media Adam Samiljan had to say about the campaign:

“Headliner made it incredibly quick and easy for us to help Travie McCoy’s ‘Billionaire’ single reach over 5 million new fans. We got amazing results from the campaign…hits on the music video, music downloads and new followers on Twitter. Thank you!”

Does Headliner.fm Work? Yes!

Nick — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 19:50:43 +0000

Nick Carter has been using Headliner for a couple of months now. Nick had one simple goal when we first started: Gain more Twitter followers, or as he told us “Dude I want to get to 100,000 Twitter followers. Can you help?”

We wanted to share the results of Nick’s campaign. Which we think are pretty awesome.

Nick ran 17 promotions on Headliner.
Nick reached 3,785,062 new fans on Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.
His new fans visited Nickcarter.net 19,508 times through links via Headliner.fm
Nick connected with 5,463 artists to promote his music.
Nick got over 20,000 new Twitter followers and reached his goal of breaking 100,000.
Nick had his promotion message retweeted 100′s of times reaching 100s of 1000s of additional fans.

To show some love we sent Nick this T-Shirt and asked him to send us back a pic with him wearing it
Check out the pic here:

5 Social Media Trends Artists Need to Understand

Nick — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 19:17:48 +0000

Social media is an important part of getting your band noticed and understanding social media is a must for aspiring artists. Hypebot has an article today, written by Johnathan Ostrow, about 5 social media trends artists need to understand. What are these important trends that neccistate awareness?

Fan Funding Campaigns: Taking advantage of sites like Kickstarter to fund project with grass roots campaigns.
Metrics: Using available tools, such as Artist Data or Headliner.fm, to track the results of your online promotions so that you can make informed decisions.
Social Currency: Trading free music for fan engagement.
Geolocation Marketing: Targeting fans by region to make sure your music gets to the right people.
Streaming Video: Taking advantage of video streaming sites to promote your music.

You can check out the full article here.

Myspace Music Changes Layout

Nick — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 20:55:50 +0000

The New Myspace Lay Out with Status Highlighted

Myspace Music rolled out a new design today that makes the site cleaner, easier to navigate and more aesthetically pleasing. The new design also makes status updates more prominent, which means it will be easier to communicate with your fans on site. Status updates are an extremely effective way for bands to communicate with fans online and this new change makes status updates on Myspace a much more powerful tool. So far, Myspace reports that more than 4 million users have made the switch. I would strongly suggest that all Headliner/Myspace users make the switch. More info here.

Using the New Headliner

Nick — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 18:45:51 +0000

As you may have noticed, Headliner’s layout has changed. Several features have been moved, and several new features have been added. We made the changes to improve the user experience on Headliner, but we understand that it might be confusing the first time you use it.

Here’s a run down of all the changes:

New Features:

More Targeted Promotions: We listened to our users and changed our system to make it easier for bands/artists to connect with like-minded musicians. We changed our system by limiting promotion requests to artists within your genre. Now, you will only receive promotion requests from artists whose music is in the same genre as your own.

Headliner's New Metrics: Rank, Total New Reach and Connections

Headliner now displays three new metrics: Rank, Total Fan Reach, and Connections.

Rank: Your Rank is your standing on Headliner compared to other users. Rank is determined by success on Headliner.fm with factors including: activity on Headliner, fans reached and connections made. The most successful band/artist will be ranked number 1. Reaching new fans on Headliner will improve your rank.

Total Fan Reach: Total Fan Reach is the combined reach of every promotion you have created on Headliner. Total Fan Reach represents the number of music fans you have reached through Headliner.

Connections: Connections measures your interactions with other bands on Headliner. Every time you accept a promotion or another band accepts your promotion that is a connection made.

Moved Features:

The Account Settings Button has been moved from the main navigation bar to the top navigation bar.

The Social Network Breakdowns have been moved. The breakdowns of your fan base by Twitter, Facebook and Myspace, and the graph of your social networks over time are now located in the Social Networks Tab.

We believe these new features will greatly improve your experience on our site. If you have any questions or suggestions feel free to contact me at Nick@headliner.fm