16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
an overview of buzz your mp3 by brian freeman, March 23, 2002
By A Customer
This review is from: Buzz Your MP3 (Digital)
...Chapter One (Getting Started) is a short, but important introduction to this concept of "buzzing." The author's voice is particular interesting. He sounds like he's just sitting around chatting with some friends. I find that makes a textbook like this much more enjoyable.
Chapter Two (Don't Read this workbook!) explains that Buzz Your Mp3 isn't a book to just read, you need to interact with it, try some of the ideas, and use it to brainstorm your own plans. It's an interactive book, basically. I think this is good advice for any self help book.
Chapter Three (Offline Buzz Tips) is where we really get into the meat of things. The author lists and explains over thirty tips for promoting music via gigs, radio air play, your local community, etc. Stuff in the real world, not on the Internet. I found these tips to be very helpful. A little more explanation and examples could have helped, but there is certainly enough information here to get you started.
Chapter Four (Online Buzz Tips) is a lot like chapter three, only the author focuses solely on promoting work online. A lot of good ideas. More examples would have been good, but this is a good starting point.
Chapter Five (The Buzz Plan) explains how to take the seventy or so tips in the previous chapters and build a game plan (steps you will follow to promote your music). Maybe you'll start by arranging gigs and giving out freebies and go from there. Or maybe you'll start by building a website and joining listserves. That kind of stuff. Very informative.
Chapter Six (Brainstorming) is a short chapter about brainstorming. The key, according to the author, is to brainstorm with a group of people, whether online or offline. I think he is right. Three minds are always much better than one. You'd be surprised what ideas you can come up with in a group that you'd never think of on your own.
Chapter Seven (Dos and Donts of Buzz) explains what not to do when promoting -- spamming and the like. Make sure you read this chapter before you do anything else!
Chapter Eight (Top Publicists give advice) is really neat, but I think it was originally meant for a book on promoting books. Nonetheless, their explanations of what they do is very illuminating. Well worth the cost of this book, actually.
Chapter Nine (Other Musicians Got Buzz) is one of the best chapters in the book! The author allows a lot of bands discuss their buzz plans and how they're promoting themselves. There are some really neat ideas here.
Chapter Ten (Now is Now) is one of my favorite chapters. The author obviously really likes this band and he walks you through how they got their self-released single played all over the world while spending very little money. The band is called NOW-is-NOW, by the way.
Chapter Eleven (Rock Band Live's Fan Club) is a pretty long interview with the director of the fan club for the band Live (Lightning Crashes, I Alone, Selling the Drama, The Dolphin's Cry, Overcome). Lots of neat stuff here, especially if you are a Live fan. But this will show you what happens with any fan club or street team.
Chapter Twelve (The Art of Web Promotion) discusses promoting on the web in general. These is just the basics, but it is a good start.
Chapter Thirteen (Finals Thoughts) is a nice little chapter that ties everything up. There are also two appendixes that promote the Buzz message board and mailing list.
All in all, I have to say I enjoyed this little eBook. I hope there is a second edition with even more interviews and tips (my favorite parts of this book) and a print edition would be nice, too. I highly recommend Buzz Your Mp3. It is well worth the price. I wish there was a print version, but the ebook was very easy to work with and it runs via a free program you can download here at Amazon...
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Independents Unite, March 20, 2002
By A Customer
This review is from: Buzz Your MP3 (Digital)
This is surely a book for every independent artist who chooses not to accept the path of going through established labels to get thier music out there.
There are some GREAT ideas in this book which I found incredibly useful to jump start my career. I always hated the channels I had to go through just to get my music heard by the masses. With the help of this book, I no longer have to. Thanks, Brian!
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Hype about Hype, August 5, 2003
This review is from: Buzz Your MP3 (Digital)
Clearly, the Buzz Your MP3 "street team" is writing glowing online reviews to help buzz this book.
No secrets or insider tips here, just a hackneyed combination of obvious ideas (i.e. make a website with press clips and gigs), and hare-brained schemes (start an "e-mail tag" where you send an mp3 to someone and get them to send it to 5 more people).
The pervasive marketing jargon is almost stomach turning, and equally upsetting is the author's use of the word "sincere" (as in, "make sure your e-mail to blah blah reviewer is sincere") to mean "sincere-sounding". Obviously, when you are promoting your music, everything you do has a degree of insincerity in it. Better to come to terms with that.
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