Walking Maverick

Adding Music to Your Video or Podcast... Legally

Legal Music

If you are creating videos to demonstrate your products or the services you offer it is really nice to be able to add music to make it more interesting. The same thing goes if you are producing audio podcasts. Enter the world of "podsafe" music - tunes that you are free to use as long as no one is paying to see or hear the project that you will be adding music to.

Podsafe Music Network

The easiest source for podsafe or Creative Commons music that is being offered to podcasters (or video casters / vodcasters) is the Podsafe Music Network.

Click on this picture for a full view of the homepage - I've circled the Registration button. If you register your podcast under that link then you can have access to all of the songs available in the network. You'll need a website URL and a "feed" URL, I just used our webpage and the XML feed from my old blog. I'll go back and change the XML feed when I'm ready to make my day-in-the-life-of-a-photographer videos a regular thing.

Once you get registered you will see your custom homepage. Ours looks like this:
I have circled the important parts for discovering new music.

It's time to get started. When I have my video rough-edited but pretty close to finished you can click the pull-down button beside "A-Cappella" and pick from the hundreds of genres available. I'm working on a video for camp of our trip to the TriState Conference so I'll start with something pretty generic sounding like World Fusion. Pick your genre then click "Genre Sort".

You can see under the arrow that there are pages and pages of just "World Fusion" music. This is true for every genre. If you click on one of the "play" buttons under listen you can try out several pieces of music before you decide on one song that you will use. I usually download a couple of songs so that I can listen though them to decide which is the best for the podcast that I am creating. Once you've found a song that you like you can click on the "Add to Playlist" button and then search for some more songs or go back to your homepage on the Podsafe Music Network. The "Go To My Page" link is just under the big Podsafe Music logo.

When you get back to your homepage click the "My Playlist" link." You'll see the Download the MP3 button. Download and away you go!

Magnatune - Another Great Choice

Another option that I have less personal experience with is Magnatune, an independent record label that is committed to providing an excellent home for their artists. They also license music for free use in podcasts.

We specifically grant non-commercial podcasters a waiver to use our music without paying any fee to a royalty collection agency, such as ASCAP, BMI or SoundExchange. Because we work directly with artists, we can legally do this.

marketing, marketing 2.0, podcasts

Rally Test Day - Subtlevox Photography and Andrew Harvey Photography Promotion

Rally Test Day from Travis Jon Allison on Vimeo.

Using Facebook to Market to Millions

Why Facebook Pages?

I believe that Facebook Pages is a very important tool because it
allows people to become Fans of your work. This is a great marketing
stream because once a person is a Fan then as you add information to
your
Page it will show up in all of the Fan's newsfeed (what you see when
you log in to FB). This has a viral marketing effect because as people
see stuff about you on their friends' feeds then they will become
interested in your work because people that they trust are Fans.


Get Started:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php

This will walk you through creating your Page for your business on Facebook.

Here Is My Subtlevox Photography Page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Woodstock-ON/Subtlevox-Photography/6704301187



Other Features
I have added couple of features to the photo business Page such as:

• a feed of my blog in the Notes section. Keeps the Page dynamic and therefore showing up on the Fans' Newsfeed pages
  
  
• Big Photo - A photographer needs to show off pictures well.
• Videos- people have enjoyed seeing videos of a shoot or a video made from all of the frames shot in a day (credit Chase Jarvis)
  

Invite People to Become a Fan
Once you have the basic
information in place you can invite people to
become a Fan. For Subtlevox Photography I contacted all of the high
school and college students
that I know (I used to be a camp director so I worked with some
amazing students) and invited them to become Fans. This will work
great for me to help develop my Senior Portrait
business. Senior Portraits are more of an American phenomena and I am
trying to bring it to a Canadian market. Senior Portraits replace the
stuffy cap-and-gown graduation pictures with shots of the grad looking
relaxed and taking their best possible picture... the opposite of the school gym
assembly line pictures that we are used to in Canada.

Make your clients look good
celebrate their successes . host a Rotary exchange student. becoming president of their professional association. Eg. Free Senior portrait winners


In Their Own Words

Turns out that Facebook has written their own guide called Best Practices for Pages.


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If you are interested in more ways that your company or organization
can benefit from the new "social" aspects of marketing on the internet
please contact Travis to arrange for a quote. You can improve your marketing effectiveness in a few simple steps.