Essential Tools for Artists

The more I speak to artists the more aware I become that many aren’t familiar with simple tools that can make their jobs easier.  Let me discuss a few of my favorites and why!

*Can’t READ?  Here is a CliffNotes Version of this post!
Distrokid & CDBaby: www.cdbaby.com       www.distrokid.com
smartURL: https://manage.smarturl.it/
MailerLITE: https://www.mailerlite.com/
pCLOUD: https://my.pcloud.com/
DropBox: https://www.dropbox.com/basic

1. Landing Pages:
Nothing is worse than how scattered artist discographies have become.  Multiple social networks, music on a dozen platforms, maybe put out by multiple labels, or side projects.  This makes it easy for your followers and fanbase to miss a release or to let some fall in the cracks. The solution is a LANDING PAGE.  A Landing page is having 1 page that literally links to everything, so anyone who clicks it has the option to listen via their preferred method.  Here is a list of GREAT options for you.


Distrokid & CDBaby: www.cdbaby.com       www.distrokid.com   (CLICK HERE FOR 7% OFF A NEW DISTROKID ACCOUNT) * I will also make a commission off this, so it helps ME too!

Although these are digital distributors, they offer landing pages, Distrokid calls theirs “HyperFollow”


smartURL: https://manage.smarturl.it/

The ultimate landing page provider with FREE and paid plans.  If you just want to have 1 page that links all your content for an album and various digital retailers in one. THIS is probably your best option out!  Check out how King Magnetic uses his SmartURL CLICK HERE


MailerLITE: https://www.mailerlite.com/

This is a Email list and marketing solution with FREE plans as well as paid plans.  with the FREE plan you can have up to 1,000 subscribers and mail 12,000 emails a month.  It also let’s you customize a landing page.  Make sure you include all social media links and links to your music on every digital streaming platform.  HACK: You can also import your e-mail subscribers from you Bandcamp if you want to take advantage of building your list faster!  Export the file from Bandcamp and import it into MailerLite!

2. FILE SHARING
These days a LOT of artists collaborate via the web with other artists.  Although many like the usage of tools like GoogleDrive which generously offers 15GB of space (That space is shared with ALL the emails, attachments and pictures synced as well) – granting permissions to collaborative files to specific people is better managed by others in my opinion, especially for the less tech savy.  Here are my favorites!


pCLOUD: https://my.pcloud.com/

Okay let me make this as simple as possible.  Cloud Storage up to 10GB for FREE – upgrade option to 500GB for $4 a month fee!  Producers and artists should ALL be using services like this, it allows you to grant folder permissions fo others for collaborative projects as WELL as something services like dropbox and GoogleDrive do NOT offer – it has built in Audio Playlists, Playlist creation options and video players too.  Oh and unlike DropBox it does NOT utilize space on your hard drive.  It boasts to also have a better security encryption that GoogleDrive as well.


DropBox: https://www.dropbox.com/basic

DropBox is STILL widely used and they were pretty much the originators of this type of file sharing service.  They allow you to upload files in folders and allows others to share folder with you.  If you are a producer working with multiple artists, or an artist with multiple producers, a content management system like this makes sense so each party can share their created content almost in real time like Update project mixes.  They start you off with 2GB which is expandable if you get friends to sign-up with a referral link.  The drawback is this uses YOUR hard drive space to hold the content, it is NOT Just cloud based (unlike GoogleDrive, which does NOT use your local hard drive space)

 

Do you use something you think needs added here?  Send us an e-mail HERE and we will look into it and update this Blog page!