Hi all,

It’s been a while since I blogged on OurStage. In that time, we’ve had several major competitions, including this month’s Bow Wow hip hop contest. We just announced the winners of the Be Legendary contest and we made some significant changes to our channel pages (OurStage 100) and closed some channels down. But most important of all, in my opinion, is the introduction of KB (aka, Kristin) as a new leader of the OurStage community. (I’m not going anywhere. It’s just that KB will be handling most day to day stuff now).

There’s talk on the street, it’s there to
Remind you, that it doesn’t really matter
which side you’re on.
You’re walking away and they’re talking behind you
They will never forget you ‘til somebody new comes along
Where you been lately? There’s a new kid in town

Those of you who have followed my exploits here on OurStage (I joined the team Jan. 1st, 2008) know that I try to be fair, listen and help you (the independent artist and music fan) get the most out of OurStage. That commitment comes not only from my professional ethics, but also because, as an artist myself, I know what sort of help and advice I would appreciate. I’ve tried to emulate those qualities in my daily interactions with our community and to that end, I hope that I’ve succeeded.

As much as I love being your facilitator here, I’m equally passionate about being a creative person as well. Just recently, I had the very good fortune of selling my novel (and two more to follow) to a major NYC publishing house. I’ve spent years learning the craft, networking and getting rejected time and time again to arrive at this milestone. In a lot of ways, it’s like landing that record deal so many of us desire. And yeah, it feels great and is VERY exciting.

So as new issues arise, we’re confronted with various challenges, or you simply have a question about OurStage, I hope that you’ll view KB as a trusted leader here and extend to her the same respect and friendship that you’ve shown to me. You should feel that asking her to participate in various discussions and topics is the same as asking me. I might not be blogging as much as I did before (heck, I’ve got to write these books) or penning all of your artist updates, but I will continue to blog, support KB and the rest of the OurStage Community Team, as well as participate in what we’ve built together.

I hope this post inspires you to become friend’s with KB, drop her a nice “welcome to the Stage” message or comment and just know that she is available to answer your questions and protect the integrity of our Community in the same way that I hope I’ve done this past year.

Click here to read KB’s bio. She has a very impressive music industry background and will bring a fresh, new perspective to what we’re creating here.

Thank you again for extending your support to KB. And don’t shy away from asking her the tough questions you’ve asked me (like you would anyway ;)). Most importantly, thank you for rockin’ OurStage.

DELIRIOUS, by Daniel James Palmer
In DELIRIOUS, Charlie Giles, an up-and-coming electronics superstar, sees his life unravel as his company and inventions are wrenched from his control, and his family is decimated. One day he’s king of the hill, the next day he’s the prime homicide suspect as his former employers are picked off one by one. In a mind-bending story where the line between what is real and what is imagined twists and turns, Charlie enlists his schizophrenic brother to uncover the dark family secrets that lie at the heart of the conundrum.

Comments welcome.

Well, it is. Yup. A la, our AOL prize (which has helped some deserving artists with their buzz building) select high-ranking artists from each month’s competitions on OurStage will be selected for a feature on the OurStage Radio channel in Winamp. All high-ranking artists across all genres on the Music Stage are eligible; The winning artists will be selected by the OurStage editorial staff. The channel is currently featuring the best music from OurStage artists in Country, Rap, Rock, Pop, Hip-Hop and many other music genres and will be updated regularly.

Just for facts, there are over 72 MILLION potential OurStage Radio WinAmp listeners. And since we announced our sterling new partnership with WinAmp, we’ve just been off the hook with new fans and artists joining in the OurStage fun. So if you didn’t have reason to enter your best before, or inspiration to vote in a channel, hopefully this good news will do it.

I think this is cool. And I don’t always say that. Really, I don’t. Okay, maybe I do. But I always mean it.

-DP OUT

OurStage is a team effort. It’s not your stage, or my stage, it’s “OurStage”. When you ask for things, we do our best to deliver. For example, you asked for a way to give your songs a permanent place to be found, even when not entered in a competition. You said it was hard to find your songs, and because the link to show off your song changed every month, there was no easy way to show yourself off. Consider our new media pages our good first try at “fixing it”. Using this page, you can quickly link your friends to a cool song on OurStage, and soon they will be able to see similar songs, other songs by that artist, and all the comments and other information.

Starting next week this media page will also be used in the search results. Going forward when you search for a song, you won’t see a list of all the entries that song has ever had on the site – just one link to that song. It’ll make it much easier to find things, which was a big complaint as well. Here’s something we hope you’ll really like:

The OurStage Top 100:
First, let’s explain the idea behind the OurStage Top 100, then we’ll get into the why. Right now, when you click the MUSIC or VIDEO links in our top navigation bar, you go to what we call our “channel pages”. Each channel (Pop, Rock, Hip-Hop, Folk etc.) has its own “channel page”. Every song entered in the channel contest that month is viewable on that page in its current rank order—1 to however many songs are entered in the channel that month. Starting May 1st, OurStage is going to make a major change to how these pages work. We will no longer show the rank for ALL the entries in the channel; Only the Top 100. As a song moves into the Top 100, they will show up to all in the channel pages. Artists who haven’t yet reached the Top 100 will be able to see their real-time rank on their artist profile. Only the Top 100 will be visible to the member community at large.

Here are 4 reasons why we are doing this: 1) For new users, they’ll see the channel page as a way to find the best music on OurStage.

2) For older users, being in the Top 100 now becomes a bigger mark of distinction – Think of it like Charting on the Billboard Charts or another chart. Being in the Top 100 will bring you much more exposure than the past because you are now one out of a hundred, instead of one out of many hundreds. Real bragging rights.

3) When we looked at our website logs of activity, almost no-one ever scrolled or listened past 100 in a channel. People were most interested in the top 20-30 songs, and they often did listen deeper in a channel, but virtually no-one ever listened past 100.

4) Some artists actually complained that their songs that ranked lower than 100 were visible and could not be easily hidden – They felt like it made them look bad and they did not want it shown on their profile. Artists were uncomfortable inviting their friends and fans to join OurStage when their song was ranked 400th in a channel of 900 items.

We are, as always, open to feedback about these changes. Please let us know how you feel by commenting below. We appreciate that this is a very big change to how our existing users use OurStage, and we want to make sure that our Community helps participate in solutions. I only ask that you discuss this topic here, and not on your own blog or messages so that I can effectively respond to all of the questions or ideas that people raise here, instead of having to try to reply to lots of messages and comments here.

See you on OurStage!

DP, your loyal Community & Artist Relations Guy here with some breaking news from Radio One and Hip Hop superstar, Bow Wow. Hip Hop artists take notice!! Bow Wow wants to see if you can “Roc the Mic” so ‘You Can Get It All’. Bow Wow is helping Radio One and OurStage find the hands down best hip-hop artist. Artists please submit your best original hip-hop song into the contest. Bow Wow will be listening to the top 10 entries and hand-picking the winner. Show Bow Wow that you can “Rock The Mic” and You Can Get It All.

Winner will get to “Roc The Mic” on stage in front of thousands as a part of the legendary SCREAM Tour concert series. Add to that, a meeting with Columbia Marketing Executives at Sony Music headquarters in NYC to listen and critique your music (possible record deal??), trip for 2 see Bow perform live in NYC and a meet and greet with Bow Wow. This isn’t just opportunity just knocking, it’s kicking down your door.

Check out the official Bow Wow OurStage page and complete rules and gear up to “Roc the Mic”.

As for blog post comments, feel free to shower OurStage with glowing praise for providing this AMAZING opportunity, FREE OF CHARGE, as well as our on-going commitment and support for Urban Music and the artists who make it.

DP out.

I was exchanging email with DiCarlo a few days back and it came up that he is on the International Drummer Endorser List at Zildjian, one of the largest cymbal makers in the world.

Every manufacturer dishes out a few coveted artist endorsements, a PR move used to showcase to other musicians that their goods are “the goods”. By your playing a manufacturer’s instrument (I myself, love my Guild acoustic and Lee Oskar harmonicas) you are in a way, endorsing that brand. Hence the question, are you endorsed or endorsing?

This got me thinking:

1. How many artists on OurStage are currently endorsed by a instrument/gear manufacturer (instrument/recording equip./etc.)?

2. What tips do you have for getting an endorsement?

3. What’s the value of being endorsed by a manufacturer? I’m hoping it’s free gear!

I know that endorsement deals typically go to touring bands, but I figure monster players may be endorsed as well, despite not being out on the road for 288 dates a year. I suppose the manufacturer (or its publicist) is often the one to initiate the offer. I’m wondering if we have stories here within the OurStage community that suggest otherwise.

I thought this would be a good blog topic to comment on. If I had my druthers, I’d put together a comprehensive list of OurStage artists who are endorsed and promote it to our fan community. Question is—do we have a list or a smattering? Personally, I think it’s good practice anytime we can share tips/tricks so that others less in the know can become more informed. So comment away if you have anything to say to questions 1-3 above. Hope we have lots of artists being endorsed. I know we have the talent, that’s for sure.

If you haven’t heard, there’s a movement underfoot here on OurStage. MrBall (aka MrBall) has created something he dubbed: The OurStage Music Challange. The purpose behind the challenge is noble and dear to the hearts of artists everywhere-that being, getting paid for your labor of love.

Now, being an artist is one thing, but being recognized for your art is something entirely different. OurStage exists to help artists achieve more recognition, be it winning a channel, improving on past results, or making connections that inspire your creative work. What I dig about MrBall’s campaign is that he’s asking everybody to pitch in a little and show their appreciation for their favorite OurStage artists with a little bit of coin.

In a short period of time MrBall has jump started a sales stamped on OurStage to rival a midnight running of the brides. I’m INSPIRED by his passion and truly humbled by the response. It proves to me that OurStage is a real and vibrant community, with artists and music fans who are taking chances and making a difference. I commend you MrBall and those who are participating in the movement. More importantly, if you haven’t already:

My hat’s off to you MrBall. But don’t you go taking off yours now, ya’ hear.

A while back we created a “Cover Bands” channel on OurStage, with the well-intended goal of giving professional and emerging cover bands a way to showcase their talent on the site. The reason for our doing so, was that artists didn’t want to compete against say, Open Arms in Contemporary/Soft Rock, or Back in Black in the Hard Rock channel. They felt they were at a competitive disadvantage because of the listener’s familiarity with those songs. As much as possible, we try to keep apples to apples during the contest. So far our experiment with the Cover Bands channel has worked out okay. The channel gets a lot of attention, quality content, loads of diversity and seems to attract purist cover bands as well original acts who have a couple covers in their repertoire, equally.

I realize a few channels do lend themselves to showcasing “standards” more than others. These standard songs have been covered so many times and have earned a rarified spot in our musical consciousness, that by putting one in competition wouldn’t necessarily be an advantage or disadvantage for the artist. Take Stormy Monday for instance. Chances are the votes will be based on the quality of the performance and won’t be swayed much by the songwriting because of the tune’s ubiquitous familiarity.

Still, it’s not apples to apples in the purest sense of covers being with covers and originals with originals. Yes, we have some channels that aren’t apples to apples (New Age/World come to mind), but this is by necessity. These channels aren’t ready to stand on their own for lack of battle support and content. By having a Cover Bands channel we at least have a forum for any cover song, be it standard or something more obscure, to compete with other cover songs across a variety of genres.

Therefore, come April 1st, the Community team working tirelessly on your behalf (and yes, 7 days a week), will honor “Off Topic” flags for any cover song in a channel that isn’t in the Cover Bands channel. This applies to standards some have uploaded to our Jazz, Blues, and Bluegrass channels. I realize this will put a bit of a burden on select artists, but hopefully everybody has some original material to work with who wants to compete in these channels.

I’m sure you have thoughts and opinions on this rule clarification. As always, feel free to share them in the comments section below.

Thanks for reading and please accept my personal apology to anybody I’ve confused in the past regarding this policy. It proved a contentious and multifaceted issue, but the OurStage team does agree this is the best resolution for the Community—be you artist or music fan.

Today, I worked on a new song. Yeah, I still write songs from time to time. While I was hammering out the lyrics, I noticed something a bit unusual about my writing process. I started cutting out words to say more with less.

As I cut words, I found it actually enhanced the song. It was rather freeing. It meant I didn’t need to spoon feed the listener my meanings with extraneous syllables for them to understand me. This got me wondering why I was making such a conscious effort to shed unnecessary lyrics, taking each word, heck, each character into deep consideration. I didn’t necessarily have that discipline before. I wasn’t always asking myself: “Do I need that word? Could I say the same thing with fewer words?”

Perhaps I’ve been influenced by Twitter and didn’t even know it. Twitter allows micro-bloggers a max of 140 characters per post. Check out my previous post about Twitter and why you should all be using it. You can even use search.twitter.com to see if fans are “tweeting” about you (esp. important after a show/CD release).

I like how Twitter reminds me to be more economical with my prose. All this insight has given me an idea. Anybody wanting their lyrics “Twitterfied” by our community (just a line or two please) go ahead and post them as a comment on this blog. Anybody can in turn post their “Twitterfied” lyrics in response as comments too. I think it will be interesting to see what comes of it. Let the experiment begin!

I stumbled across a great do-it-yourself idea list for marketing and promotion that I wanted to share with everyone. I know it can be tough doing the creative piece and also being the town crier. Nobody wants to look pushy when it comes to promoting their hard work. But there is so much at super speed these days, we really don’t have much of a choice if we want to be noticed.

For this post I’d share some of the ideas culled out of this DIY promotion list. Maybe it inspires you to be more bold in your personal branding and marketing, or perhaps there are ideas here you hadn’t considered before.

DIY Ideas for Marketing/Promotion

Make a dedicated cyber presence for what your promoting—Let’s say your releasing a new CD, or have a major show you’re playing. Think about creating a dedicated cyber presence just for that one event. Whatever presence you give it (a link to a page off your Web site, an ongoing blog, etc.) keep updating it with news and information about the event, and then allow your fans to comment on the happenings and give you feedback (e.g., “I just got the artwork back from the printer’s today. Looks amazing IMO. Check out this sneak peak and tell me what you think.”)

Twitter and Facebook are great tools for alerting your fans about new content in this “mini-space”. You should also encourage your fans (email subscribers especially) to subscribe to your mini-site’s RSS feed as well if you can host one.

Mailing List-this is an old school tool, but also a VERY useful and important one, not only to have, but also to use. Don’t just collect a bunch of names and addresses for fun. Email your fans at least 1x per quarter. Consider investing in an actual physical mailer (in these days, that would sure set you apart from the pack). Try, whenever possible, to offer your mailing list subscribes something personal and unique—a thank you for being on your mailing list. This will keep them excited and interested in you over time instead of being the latest band they forgot about.

Make use of the sites you use—If you use sites other than OurStage to promote your music (it’s okay, you should) make sure you keep a log of everyplace you have a cyber presence. Dedicate one afternoon each week to check in and keep that profile fresh with content. Spend some time networking with fans and other artists on the site. Also, check out my blog about Twitter and why I think it’s a MUST DO for any musician.

Make friends with tastemakers- Every genre of music has a core group of influential tastemakers whose very word inspires action from their loyal followers. Find the tastemakers who matter most to your music (check blogs and ask other artists especially). When you find them, make a introduction and try over time to build relationships with them. When you need to promote something big and new, your tastemaker friends will carry a lot of promotional help that they could throw your way.

Groups are good—explore Yahoo Groups or other places where people gather (Facebook too!) for fans of your style of music. See who you can network with who might want to learn more about your latest big happenings.

ABC1 – Always Be Communicating- Use the phone, email, and Web sites to network with fellow artists, fans of your brand of music and tastemakers. Don’t try to sell them on you, but rather, show them that you’re passionate about what they are too—your style and genre(s) of music.

ABC2—Always Be Creating- And if you say, I don’t want to do any of the above. I just want to make music and perform. Heck, that’s ultimately what it’s all about. But the connectedness of the Internet makes it almost a requirement that artists be available to fans and other artists in ways that weren’t expected before. Hard to balance it all, I know.

What’s your take on this list. Inspiring? Refresher? Daunting? Missing something important? I encourage everybody to comment below and share your viewpoint.