combining social media for musicians: youlicense soundcloud & bmi together

image courtesy of WebTreats

This week I had a kind of “ah ha” moment, where no matter how semi savvy I am with a multitude of various social networks, and with the music business itself, every so often there is a use that eludes me, especially as it concerns the integration of multiple sites to create something systematic that is beneficial to me as a musician. Such was the case when I realized what youlicense could do for me.

My first exposure to it was via Twitter courtesy of @MarkMosher and @HethFen who were already avid proponents, the latter of which has written numerous articles on the subject on her blog.  I already had a songwriter publishing account with BMI, a Soundcloud page, and this blog. I have also been trying to come up with a good strategy for tying them together to sell my music digitally online, and was not coming up with anything I felt really good about. Then earlier this week, I was logging into my BMI account to register a new work, and I noticed that BMI was also promoting youlicense, and I could get a free starter account as a BMI member, so I went ahead and did it.

What youlicense can do for you is beyond the scope of this article, but Heather Fenoughty speaks of it extensively in her “music business” category of posts.

Interconnecting social networks is often hit or miss, as I’ve experienced having my youtube or soundcloud bomb Twitter or Facebook with way too many spammy sounding updates  automatically (as recently as this week) which I have since toned down or turned off. The below is a good example of the kind of cross connected, secure ordering, digital music sales and licensing synergy that can be done with this combo. Youlicense was able to pull all my SoundCloud tracks in via an application connector, so then I just had to select my licensing options, sales options and add the genre and descriptions metadata to the works as to not duplicate effort by having to upload my musical content yet again, to yet another site. The below player is shared as an embed widget in this blog entry on my website, allows you to listen to all the material in the player streamed from SoundCloud, and the “buy” links on the player redirect you to a PayPal secure ordering checkout cart on my youlicense storefront, at which point if you were just a music listener you could purchase the mp3 and if you’re a record label, tv/film/advertising licensing agent, you could license the track for your project in a kind of interconnected social media synergy of sorts.

unreleased tracks by redvoid

This next embedded player goes straight to youlicense for licensing or purchasing:

Well, I am no expert on youlicense and have only recently started integrating it into my personal social web, so I’d like to hear from you. What cool combos of social media have you found to be the most useful for musicians?

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