To Watch Part II Of This Video, Click Here

When youtube first jumped on the scene, there were millions of people flocking to it but relatively few people that posted. The result, those that had good content literally got millions of views overnight. Those days are long gone now as there are millions of people posting every day and even those that have GREAT content sometimes get overlooked.

Well lucky for you; I know some of the tactics the professionals use to help get more views on their youtube pages and I will share it with you here. Please understand, though, that there is no easy way to get the infamous 1 Million views on youtube and no matter how much marketing knowledge you have; it won’t help you if you don’t put out quality videos.

The name of the game with youtube is viral marketing. You have to give people a reason to 1) watch your videos and 2) share them with someone else. Below are a number of ways to help you do that…are you ready?

1-Keep them short: Although you may like the entire song; no one really wants to sit through 4.5 minutes of you singing a cover. Try to keep your video under 90 seconds if you want people to watch it and pass it on; trust me people pay attention to how long videos are before they even click on them.

2-Have a great title: Think about how many times you have seen “Me Singing: My Heart Will Go On” or “Cover: Hero by Mariah Carey”. My motto is if over 10 people are using the same title, then you shouldn’t use it also. Try using something like “My interpretation of” or “Awesome rendition of”…give people a reason to want to click on your videos when they are searching.

3-Respond to other people’s videos: Some people do it but most people don’t. If you see a video that is similar to yours it would probably be a smart choice to post your video as a response. That way whoever sees their video has the potential to see yours as well. Also try leaving a comment on their page letting others know you responded to their video.

4-Comment on other’s videos: The great thing about social networking is that you have the potential to reach so many people without actively doing that much work. Leaving a positive comment on someone else’s video as well as some friendly advice if necessary will EXPONENTIALLY increase the likelihood that they will look at your videos as well as others that see their video. You can post a link to your youtube channel at the end of the post so that people can click through and see who you are.

5-Be Funny: Of all of them, this is probably the hardest to do. There is really a difference between being funny and being over the top and/or cheesy. I would only attempt funny if you have used whatever you are trying to do in the video in real life and people have genuinely laughed at it. Funny works great…if you can do it right. Do it wrong and people won’t watch your videos anymore.

Good Funny!

Bad Funny!

6-Show your face: I have seen so many youtube videos where people hide their faces while singing. Most people don’t want to listen to an anonymous or faceless person, they want to see the person that is doing the rendition. They want to get a feel for your personality and why you want to sing the songs. If you show them these things they will be more likely to watch the entire video and show the video to their friends.

7-Don’t rely solely on youtube: Millions of people post their videos on youtube every day. This means it is getting harder and harder for your videos to show up in the standard youtube search. Posting your videos on other sites like music forums and even this website will help.

8: Pay Attention to Your Rating: People click on videos that have a rating of 4 stars or better. Make sure that your videos are quality enough to receive four stars minimum! Anything less and people will skip over your video and just go to the next one.

9: Have a great description: While you may believe that telling your life story in the description of the youtube video is important, most people (including youtube) don’t! Youtube farms the descriptions that you write for keywords that they can use to help people find you better. So if your description has very little to do with the video that you just posted, chances are it will be hard for the right people to find it.

10: Ask People to Subscribe: You will be surprised how many people don’t do this! I know you have heard the saying “A closed mouth doesn’t get fed”. Well this works the same on youtube. If you don’t ask people to subscribe, almost all the time they won’t…even if your video is good! But, if you do ask, they are a whopping 60% more likely to subscribe if you have good content. And once they do, every time you post a new video they will be notified. It’s just like having a fan club.

So there you have it; ten tips to help you get more views on youtube. I hope that these will serve you well as you move towards developing your Otaku. If you have any questions, don’t be afraid to comment.

As a matter of fact, leave me a comment anyway on what you think just so that I know that you are alive!

Marcus

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I was in a piano playing mood and just sat down to do this one. Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

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With all that said, now would be a VERY bad time to try to break into the music industry right? Well, not exactly. With all that is going wrong in the industry, there are many things that are going right. I know that so many people, including the record companies, want to scare musicians into thinking that the music business is dying and that it may never clear from this spiral. While I do believe that the industry is suffering from a severe case of swine flu, I think that now is possibly the best time for an independent artist to make a name for themselves in the industry. While the internet is being blamed for destroying record companies and album sales, the internet has also done many great things for music and musicians.

Now I’m not trying to kid anyone, success is any field is hard, and it’s even harder in music. On top of everything that I have said above, you still have to contend with the fact that the music business is highly over saturated with bands, groups, and artists that want to be the next overnight sensation. But, if you understand the new model for how to reach mainstream success, then the process for you to get there gets much simpler. In this post (and in subsequent ones) I will share my knowledge and opinions on what you can start doing today to become a breakthrough independent artist. I would like to talk to you about Otaku.

Now I’m sure you are probably saying to yourself, what is this word that sounds like taco and what does it have to do with me making it in music?!?!? Well Otaku is a Japanese term and it is used to refer to people that have obsessive interests or behaviors. Just like I believe that it is almost impossible to be a success without talent (or talented people working for you), I think that it is equally impossible to become a breakthrough artist without some kind of obsessive cult like following.

Your Otaku will be your main promoters and will oftentimes provide you with the encouragement to keep going when everyone else (including yourself) is telling you to quit. They will be the ones that buy your music instead of downloading it and will be the ones excited at your shows working hard to get everyone else involved. They are the ones that not only tell their friends about your music and will not hesitate to pass out flyers, CDs, and any other materials to help promote you. As an independent artist they are your greatest asset and if you don’t have an Otaku, then I promise you will be hard pressed to find success in the music industry.

So, it would be unfair for me to talk so much about Otaku and not give you some tips on how to get your own. To be honest, an adequate explanation on how to get one can not be covered in one blog post. So, over my next several posts, I will talk about the ins and outs of how to grow your ultimate Otaku. In my next post, I will share with you how to get your own radio show, TV station, video archive, newspaper/magazine, and marketing team all for free. These tools you will be very important to grow your Otaku and will also give them the tools that they need to help promote you while you sleep.

Until next time!

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This is my interpretation of Timbaland and Elton John’s 2 Man Show. I do play it exactly as the original as I add different rhythm patterns and cord colors.

If you want a tutorial of how to play it, BostonAaron has a great one here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RI-Tp1yMB9A

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Leave A Comment & Let Me Know What You Think of The Video.

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Have you ever wondered why parents get to the point where they need to take a drink?!?!? Well read this.

A boss wondered why one of his most valued employees had not phoned in sick one day. Having an urgent problem with one of the main computers, he dialed the employee’s home phone number and was greeted with a child’s whisper. ” Hello? ”

“Is your daddy home?” he asked. ” Yes ,” whispered the small voice.  ”May I talk with him?” The child whispered, ” No .”

Surprised and wanting to talk with an adult, the boss asked, “Is your Mommy there?” Yes .” “May I talk with her?” Again the small voice whispered, ” No .”

Hoping there was somebody with whom he could leave a message, the boss asked, “Is anybody else there?” ” Yes ,” whispered the child, ” a policeman “. Wondering what a cop would be doing at his employee’s home, the boss asked, “May I speak with the policeman?” ” No, he’s busy”, whispered the child. “Busy doing what?” ” Talking to Daddy and Mommy and the Fireman ,” came the whispered answer.

Growing more worried as he heard a loud noise in the background through the earpiece on the phone, the boss asked, “What is that noise?”

” A helicopter ” answered the whispering voice. “What is going on there?” demanded the boss, now truly apprehensive. Again, whispering, the child answered, “The search team just landed a helicopter .”

Alarmed, concerned and a little frustrated the boss asked, “What are they searching for?” Still whispering, the young voice replied with a muffled giggle… ”
ME .”

***

What did you think? Leave a comment and let me know

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Being remarkable is a good thing in most cases (I’ll explain later). But people have the slightest clue how to get other people to label them as such. I used to be confused myself until one of my marketing mentors clued me in to the secret to being remarkable. It is the same secret that I am going to share with you today. Believe it or not, being remarkable is not as complicated as you think.

What would you do if you saw a purple cow on the street? I’m sure the first thing that you would do is examine it to make sure that it was real. And if it was real then I’m about 1000% sure that you are going to run and call/text someone and tell them that you just saw a purple cow on the street. Am I correct? If you said yes then you just made that purple cow remarkable.

It’s as easy as that!

Here’s the secret. To be remarkable simply means to be remarked about. This means the way to be remarkable is to do things or have certain qualities that make people want to make remarks about you either in private or in public. And hopefully, they are positive! You can be remarkable and have people saying negative things about you…this is not what we want.

So when we talk about being remarkable, it usually means that you have something unique about you or your actions that is profound enough to motivate others to make remarks about you. Take a second to think about some of the unique qualities that you have either as a singer or just in general. What is your purple cow? Since we are running a singing community, I would hope that people would like to talk about your singing. But trust me, I know full well how many people have become famous as singers that many would claim have very little vocal talent.

So I ask again for you to think about it. What is remarkable about you? Are you great at falsetto singing? When you sing, do you blend certain styles together (jazz & rock for example)? It does not mean that you need a gimmick, in fact I strongly urge you to not do such a thing. Instead, I ask you to look within yourself and try to figure out what makes you unique. It doesn’t have to be music related, it just has to be something that is unique and it makes you special: it needs to differentiate you from others.

Let me give you an example. People call Eric remarkable because he is a talented singer but is just as talented as a vocal coach. There are very few singers that can double as a vocal coach and even more surprising is that there are few vocal coaches that are actually great singers. Because Eric can do both, people talk ALOT about his vocal method and about his music.

Armed with your remarkable trait, it will help you start to develop your Otaku. Remember in my last post I told you that your Otaku will be your biggest supporters and your biggest cheerleaders. Well in order to gain followers and grow them, you need something remarkable to hook them in and make them want to support. Hopefully that something is what you just isolated as your remarkable trait.

Honestly, take some time today and think about what makes your unique and remarkable. If you honestly can’t think of anything, try and think of something that you can do fairly well that you wouldn’t mind getting better at. Try to be as specific as you can. For example, don’t just say “I want to be a better singer”. Instead, say “I want to be able to sing a full octave above my current vocal range”. It really does help to be specific. I know when I started working on my remarkable trait, my goal was to be able to sit down at the piano and instantly create a song with no preparation or sheet music. It took me two years to develop it but now I get remarks about it all the time!

In my next post on Friday, I will talk about how to take your remarkable trait and conjure a public image that will match the unique thing that people will want to remark about. This will help you to have focus and a sense of purpose when you are developing your Otaku and ultimately when you are growing your celebrity. Until net time…

Marcus

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It has to do with vocal vibrations and the way your skull resonates (I hope I’m not losing you). When you speak, the sound waves your voice emits makes your skull vibrate. When this happens, your voice is distorted (in your mind) and oftentimes sounds a bit deeper than it actually is. It’s similar to when you are at home listening to your favorite hit on the radio then you go to the club with all that bass behind it and it sounds a little different. At the club it sounds great, at home it sounds like it’s missing something although you can actually hear more detail than when at the club.

So, when you sing, what you hear is different from what everyone else hears when they listen to you sing. This is neither good or bad, it is just something that you must recognize if you want to grow as a singer. A good way to test this is to record yourself while singing and listen to the difference . I am modestly about 1000% sure that the voice you hear in the recording will sound different from what you thought you sounded like. I have had others try this same experiment and they were convinced that the voice on the recording wasn’t them when I played it back .

Once you realize this very important fact, I feel that you will make great strides with ear training and becoming a better singer. A great way to work on matching the voice you hear in your head with what everyone else hears is to record yourself while singing. This has a dual purpose. First, it gets you comfortable with the sound of your own voice which is VERY important if you want to be a confident singer.

Second, it allows you to review the way that you sound so that you can start matching your intended sound with the sound that you actually sing. It’s no different from what professional athletes do. Each week, they review “tape” of their performances to see how they actually perform in certain situations and not what their mind tells them that they did. With this knowledge, they make the necessary adjustments the next time so that they will have a better performance.

I honestly feel this will be a great thing to start doing immediately. Not only will it help you become a better singer but it will also help you tenfold with your singing confidence

Marcus

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For the sake of time, I want repeat what is in the article. If you haven’t read it you can read it here.

I feel this merger will be a problem in the music industry. Personally I feel that concert tickets are already too expensive but I also understand that it is one of the few ways left for artists to make money from their talents that they have surely worked almost all of their lives to perfect. I mean with music pirating, CD’s becoming obsolete and the the large amount of leverage being lost by the major labels, artists are finding it hard (like most other industries) to turn a profit.

With this merger of the largest ticket broker and one of the biggest promoters, I can definitely foresee concert tickets becoming more expensive. Not only that but there will be less places for others to go as an alternative. LiveNation was already struggling to turn a profit because so much money went to musicians anyhow. Now with talks of “exclusivity” contracts being given out to LiveNation Ticketmaster, some of the hottest tickets in town (like Jay Z, Beyonce, and Madonna) will be just that much more out of reach.

Truthfully, this seems a little reminiscent of what happened to the boxing industry. With so many power vying for power and to corner certain segments of the boxing market they have a record number of titles and very few boxers that even want to bother fighting for them. And I understand. What is the point of training and training then going to fight where HBO is making a majority of the money that should be going to the people that showed up to fight?

Anyhow, I just found the article pretty interesting and were wondering what your thoughts were?

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