YouTube insight means no more cheating!

When YouTube launched YouTube Insight this Summer all the fake views marketers and advertisers freaked out because now the stats go beyond comments and views.  Up-loaders are encouraged to display the complete statistics of their video views and those who don’t will be investigated by  and be giving off a pretty sketchy vibe in general.  Aside from having honest and healthy looking video statistics including geographic and demographic, advertisers will be interested in the videos which get a lot of eye shots, so don’t YouTube surprised if you have popular videos getting hit up by Advertisers, primarily YouTube/Google.

Imagine how embarrassing it was when YouTube launched YouTube Insight and peoploe who had purchased fake views had no information showing up in their stats, yet that had many views. Each view in linked to a real IP, so fake views are easily caught now.  Another embarrassing element to the YouTube Insight is when very clean and corporate companies use their Adult or Casino web traffic, now the referred traffic source is shown! It may be better to hide it then one may think because it is in the privacy option to decide wheather or not to let your video’s Insight go Public, but having public information is the standard. It shows you are not ashamed or scared to show where your viewers are coming from.  To see where to look at your YouTube Insight.

How to Use YouTube Insight

Susan Boyle Hero of Misfits Everywhere!
SuBo at home in Scotland

SuBo at home in Scotland

I know, I know, yet ANOTHER blog entry on instant-fame sensation Susan Boyle. How can this be new you ask. Well it’s not. I just felt like writing a little ode to everyone’s inner misfit.
Our society is always trying to sell us things to make us more beautiful, sexy, successful, etc. And more often than not if we don’t measure up we end up feeling less than.
Well here’s a lady who has just lived her life as she pleased, and in good time, her talent ended up being recognized. But even if she had never ended up on that show, she still would have lived a happy life in her small town with her cat, drinking a pint or two in the local pub. I only wish I had that self-confidence and faith in myself to take my life as it comes and not worry too much about its outcome.
From all the misfits out there: WE LOVE YOU SUSAN BOYLE!
Faking MySpace plays is a real industry!

It was big news last year when someone discovered that a software called TuneBoom Pro was being utilised by music labels and musicians to artificially increase the number of plays for their songs on MySpace. The site was reported to MySpace administrators and it has since disappeared.

Bands and labels wanting to falsify their number of MySpace plays still have plenty of other ways to manipulate their play counts. We know of several other sites providing the same type of service. (We wouldn’t encourage them so if you are looking for references don’t count on us!)

So what’s the matter with falsely increasing MySpace plays? If everyone else is doing it, you find yourself almost being forced to — just like Olympic athletes and steroids. The sad thing is MySpace will probably never be able to eradicate all these play increase softwares, somewhat like how the International Olympic Committee will never be able to insure athletes never use steroids or other types of drugs.

What this mean is we’ll just have to take high plays on an artist’s site with a grain of salt, and realise that this does not necessarily mean they are actually popular. And you can expand this to the number of Youtube views a video has, and the number of friends on someone’s Facebook account.

Beware of fakes!smN3qE

Viral your way to fame!

Remember Susan Boyle, the Scottish singing sensation who made her break through her appearance on Britain’s Got Talent? She soared to fame mainly through the viral explosion of her performance on Youtube (and she’s only one of many)  There are countless other examples of people shooting to fame from having their videos on Youtube (Jon Lajoie) or their song associated with a cute video (“Ensemble” by Coeur de Pirate).

You might think that getting your video views is simply a matter of chance, but don’t be fooled. There are very definite strategies to getting your video viewed; people pay big bucks to get theirs on Youtubes Most View of the Day, of the Week, for 100,000+ views, etc.

I suppose you could do it yourself once you knew those strategies, but even then it would take you hours and  if you’re on this page, chances are you are an aspiring musician, not an aspiring viral video promoter.  So let us do all this nerdy and tedious techy stuff for you! Just remember that having a popular video on Youtube is definitely a first step on the path to success!

Jon Lajoie
Jon Lajoie

Susan Boyle

Top 10 SMM sites for bands

The Social Media Marketing world is a large part of the web and knowing how much time to invest on which sites can be a grueling task for musicians. Thankfully, BandMark has done the research for ya! Here are the top 10 Social Platforms to be on in 2009 for your band and how often you need to re-fresh the content for each:

  1. MySpace – Still #1 for musicians  -requires weekly bulletins and updates
  2. TWITTER -Fastest growing micro blogger -requires 5 TWEETS daily
  3. Face book -Best way to promote a local gig -requires 1 Daily update
  4. YouTube -Still the largest video share shite -Requires monthly updates
  5. LASTfm -Still the most popular  indie hangout -Requires monthly updates
  6. Flikr -Largest place to share photos -Requires monthly updates
  7. SLIDE -Largest place to share slide shows -As needed
  8. Qik -Live video streams of your event via mobile  -As needed
  9. LinkedIn – Still the best place to shmooze labels and agents -Monthly
  10. Imeem – A cross between LastFm and Ilike -Monthly