Indie Ambassador

Music has become a permanent fixture in the physical world's social gatherings, so wouldn't it make sense for the art form to translate fluently to the online social world as well? Such is not the case. Companies and musicians alike have been trying to figure out how to best wed music, social media, and blogging for as long as such things were have existed, but there has yet to be one breakthrough strategy.

Jon Ostrow of MicControl understands that music promotion on the Internet is still in an experimental stage, something that makes his approach unique. With the recent launch of an e-book dedicated to blogging, a new MicControl branch specifically for consulting, and a series of educational webinars, MicControl is poised to become a force in the online music marketing field. Check out our interview with Jon below, and be sure to attend his webinar on Tuesday, August 2nd at 7PM EST if you have a chance!

IndieAmbassador.com: It’s been great working together with your company and watching it grow over the past 6 months or so, but I realized recently I know very little about your and the company’s respective backgrounds. How was MicControl born? Are you yourself a musician?

Jon Ostrow: Absolutely! It’s been great having you guys contribute to the blog community! MicControl has been through a lot over the past 3 years. The MicControl journey started in 2009 with a basic music blog and has since morphed into a music blogging community where everyone from musicians, music bloggers (discovery, advice, and otherwise) and industry professionals can join, share their experiences and expertise and learn from that of others. And yes, I am a musician; a bass guitar player of almost 12 years! That was what sort of lead to the initial decision to create MicControl. I had been playing in a band at school and had been speaking with both my Dad as well as my childhood best-friend, Chris Taylor about how terrible Myspace was for emerging musicians and how something needed to be done… we just decided to take it upon ourselves to get involved.

IA: In the wake of the established music industry’s deterioration, many services have surfaced promising to champion artists and help them navigate the evolving business. What makes MicControl different?

JO:  What makes us different is our level of transparency, and the fact that we are actually doing what we are telling others to do at the same time…

We are the first to admit that the whole project is one big learning experience, as it should be with both social media AND the music industry shifting and expanding to become something new and exciting every week. One of my favorite parts about how we have approached MicControl, the music industry and musicians is that since day one we have compared musicians to entrepreneurs. This has been so important because it’s allowed us to not just learn from our own successes and failures but to turn right around and translate what we learned into useful advice for musicians.

IA: You recently unveiled three new products that really round out your service offerings, one of which is MicControl consulting. Any way you could give us a sneak peek of what your various consulting packages will consist of, and why bands should care?

JO: Yes! We are so thrilled to finally have launched MicControl Consulting! Over the last two years or so we have worked with many artists and their managers and even social music start-ups to first help them better grasp the importance of branding, and then to help strategize and execute proper social media and blogging strategies that helped them to build better brands and stronger fan bases. We felt the time had come that we offered these services for real, and so MicControl Consulting was born. Basically we want to cater to the needs of any artist, manager, label, social music start up ,or any business for that matter, who wants help creating and executing a brand-focused social media/ blogging strategy. For some, a simple Q&A session over Skype will do, just to hammer out some of their uncertainties. For others, it’s more involved and requires us to actually examine their current online presence and create a strategy that caters to their needs.

All of our services are outlined in full at http://miccontrol.com/consulting

IA: As the Internet becomes increasingly ingrained in the music industry, the ability for artists to have their music publicized on blogs grows more important every day. But how are musicians supposed to know which blogs are the right blogs for their sound?

JO:  Ah great question! For musicians looking to promote themselves through blog features, it’s all about knowing, and truly understanding who they are as a brand (image, direction, mission), who and where their fans exist and what niche they fit into. Understanding these basics will give them a big suite of keywords to work with that will help to seek out the right blogs on a local, regional and national level. We’ve actually put together a webinar on this exact topic! On August 2^nd, at 7pm EST, we’ll be running our first webinar called ‘Get Your Music Featured On The Right Blogs’ that will help artists to better understand the importance of networking with blogs, and will assist them in all phases from finding blogs, to reaching out to bloggers to creating lasting relationships with the right bloggers. Heres a link to all of the info about the webinar: http://miccontrol.com/miccontrolblog/how-to-get-your-music-on-the-right-blogs-webinar-announcement/, but here are the details:

• We're going to start things off with a 45 minute presentation showing them the ins and outs of the blogosphere.
• Afterwards we will hold a half-hour Q&A session where you can ask us questions pertaining to all the material we covered.
• Finally, we're including a PDF reference guide that will outline all the material covered in the webinar for your personal use as you take the blogosphere by storm.

And most importantly, we’re offering anyone the chance to receive a free social media/ blog audit from us where we will examine your current social media or blog presence and help you to identify all of the best opportunities based on your strengths, weaknesses and direction. All you need to do is refer us 10 friends who might be interested in signing up for the webinar. More info about this is also available via the link above.

IA: And for musicians interested in writing their own blogs for promotional purposes, what advice do you have for crafting an effective blog post?

JO: Very simply, stop talking about yourself and start thinking about a concrete direction for your blog that can deliver new value to existing and perspective fans. I actually wrote a blog post a while back outlining 10 different ways musicians can blog in a way that will help gain new fans and a stronger online presence without being outright promotional.

Of course, my best advice would be to check out my brand new e-book, How To Craft The Perfect Blog Post, that we released as a free download to anyone who joins our mailing list for MicControl Consulting.

IA: Anything else on the horizon for MicControl?

JO: At the moment it’s just all about getting comfortable with the new consulting service and taking on new clients. A ton of work has gone into planning out MicControl Consulting, the ebook and the webinar so now that it has all been released out into the wild, we are just trying to keep moving, building and helping musicians out where we can. Feel free to follow us or reach out via: Email: jon.ostrow@miccontrol.com Twitter.com: http://twitter.com/miccontrol