Reverbnation - Finding our feet and creating a cunning plan!

You know how it is, you find a new game on the internet and everybody who has been there before you, knows what to do and kicks your butt time after time. Some people will help you a little bit, but they are not going to tell a newbie their trade secrets about how they got where they are in the game until they either get to know you better or you join a guild or a clan. And, even then most people will hold back on what sets them apart from the rest.

Now imagine a new game called, 'How to get to local Number One on Reverbnation'. This time there is no clan or guild to help you. Other artists may be friendly but they are out for themselves too and really want you to buy their music or get noticed by Simon Cowell and not have to bother with all this online marketing ever again, nothing more and nothing less. How wrong they are, but never mind, thats another story for another time.
However, there is a trade to be made here, such as 'become a fan of mine, and I will become a fan of yours' and this is how most people start to find their feet. The downside is, it takes a long time to create contacts and make these reciprocal arrangments stand. Also, if you post this to your profile, it looks like you are begging for help! You're going to get nowhere. People like to associate with success, so you have to boost your own ego and sell yourself hard, nobody else is going to do it for you. With over 830,000 musicians trying to force their way to the top of the pile, or perhaps I should say mountain; little old me begging for a fan here and there is not going anwhere.

Every single artist on Reverbnation has the same tools to climb this virtual mountain, some of them are already mainstream global artists and the majority of these are not sitting pretty at the summit of this online music community. The secret dear reader, is in the numbers!

How many song plays? How many fans? How many profile visits? How many other artists are reccomending you? The list of numbers this site generates is endless. Everything is recorded and counts towards your BES (Band Equity Score) and Reverbnation are not going to tell you how they calculate this, so you have to guess.

I just hope that I have guessed correctly, more next time!

Gateway Music - Where it all started

High Street, Dartford, Kent

We began with jam sessions at Dingo Jacks Guitar Shop in Dartford, Kent; with lots of beer flowing and a group of musicians just letting the notes flow as much as the drink. We made some great music and it got better the more we drank. It was fun for a while, but obviously we couldn't do that all day, every day (apart from upsetting our neighbouring business') it was starting to become too much of a habit. Fun, though it was!

Gino Cinganelli recorded some local bands, made up CD's for them and put them for sale in the guitar shop. He sold a few and became well known for making available the music of local bands. This has to lead somewhere, but 'Where?' was the critical question. What to do? How to do it? And can we make any money doing what we love doing?

Gino found a site called Reverbnation which allowed artists to promote their music, sell their songs and collaborate with other musicians around the world. It was a good first step and provided an outlet for the ambitions of his first recording artists, Andrea Moore and Desmond Lewis who had been playing around with 'Singsnap' and other music sites. However, it was difficult to push them into the upper end of their local chart, let alone sell any songs online. Gino himself reworked some music with the local bands and put together a collection of music from those musicians who were kind enough to give their time to an online project and Dingo Jacks support bands become another profile in their own right, with Gino himself adding his own interpretation of the Doctor Who theme. It was all good practice for what was to come.

Gino eventually discussed his ideas with an old friend of his called, John Sandow and explained how Reverbnation worked. He asked if John's marketing skills could be put to any use on this site as sitting at number 35 or lower in the local charts was really not much of an incentive for Andrea or Desmond. Several ideas were discussed and the conclusion was that the whole concept of online promotion had to be much wider and more comprehensive than just looking at one web service. Facebook and Myspace were the social internet giants and should be included in any form of online activity. From this discussion, Gateway Music Promotions was created in January 2010.