23 Sources for Music in Houston

29-95

Dryvetyme Onlyne

Houstonist

Breakfast on Tour

610 Exchange

Houston Calling

Houston Most Hated

Free Press Houston

We Wore Masks

XLPQ

Houston Hi Pop

Lords of the Loop

Examiner

Houston Press Rocks

Houston Bands

Showlist H-Town

Hands Up Houston

Cocaine Blunts

Space City Rock

Houston Beats

713 Black

Audio ADD

and of course indiehouston.org

SXSW Prep: Make a Band Website in 1 hr without knowing a thing about html using Wordpress *and with Under $50 bucks! With SXSW approaching, we want every band in Houston to have a website. It makes you look more legitimate and it’s a great way to sell merch,cds, etc. We at Indiehouston don’t know how to code and neither do you. Simply follow these instructions and within an hour, you should have the start of a kickass website!

#1 First you are going to need a domain – We recommend Godaddy because their cheap. Be careful though because they try to sell you on too many products you really don’t need – And use this coupon: cjc749fat at checkout so we can make sure you stay under poor band budget. Pick a good name too because after building links to your site, you don’t want to have to go back and change everything. If your bands name is already taken try adding the word music after domain to see if that’s available.

#2 Now your going to need hosting for your domains – We recommend Hostgator because you can host unlimited domains for one set price-which means if your in more than one band you pay one set fee for all of them rather than paying each one separately! -It costs About $10 bucks a month- Click Here to go to Hostgator or the image below first because indiehouston gets affiliate credit which helps pay for our own hosting. But wait -remember that Big Billboard you probably past off 45 – Enter the Word Houston at Checkout and you get the first month Free – This is crucial to saving money that I’m sure could go towards much more important things.

#3 Forward your domains Nameservers from godaddy or wherever you purchased the domain you are using to Hostgator – Their are very easy to follow instructions to do this that come in the welcome email after signing up.Login to your godaddy page and click on the domain you purchased until you find an area titled nameservers – Change the current nameservers to the ones sent to you in the welcome email just by clicking on Nameservers (This forwards your domain to your hosting so you never have to pay godaddy’s high prices for services)

Heres a Screenshot

#4 Now you almost got a website – but now you need to decide if you want to learn to code or learn Indiehouston’s favorite program – Wordpress!

The next steps require you to have already purchased a domain, a hostgator account, and forwarded your nameservers (There is a delay before the forwarding will work – It should take about 20 minutes – Go take a smoke break, get some food, then come right back to your computer so you can get this out of the way before SXSW. We at Indiehouston want to link to more than just your myspace page.

Part 2

Step 1 – log in to your cpanel through the link in the hostgator welcome email you should have gotten by now– your username and password should be in there as well – It will look like the following screenshots

Step 2 – Scroll down and click on add on domains. By default the first domain you setup with HG is ready to install wordpress in, but if you have other domains forwarded here you have to follow this next step. If you only have one domain and you used it to setup your hg account skip to step 4 under fantastico.

Step 3 Type in your other domains, and leave Document Root Blank, Enter a password, and then click Add Domain!

Step 4 Now go Back to your Cpanel Home Screen and scroll down till you find Fantastico De Luxe and double click it.

Step 5 Click on Wordpress

Step 6 Click on New Installation

Step 6 Select the Domain you want to install Wordpress on and enter a username and password

Step7 Print this page so you won’t forget your login information

Step 8 Open up a browser and go to http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-login.php – then login using the information you entered from the step above.

Step 9 Click on Appearance on the left under Dashboard – These are the screens you will be seeing to modify, create, and change up your website – Its kind of like a myspace page builder – or website maker for dummies tool

Step10 -Next as you can see there are not a lot of Themes you can choose from after a new installation – But there are 10,000,000s of themes on the internet which will help make your website look unique – For starters try doing a google search for themes. Once you have found one you kind of like save it to your computer and unzip it if you need to. Next you will need to install Filezilla or Cyber Duck. Open Filezilla up and then under host type in the same information you used for cpanel – only under host, type in the first domain you signed up with Hg.

Step 11 – The files on the right are the ones on your hosting account and on the left are files on your computer. Filezilla is intended for you to easily transfer files back and forth from your computer(Left) to to the Internet(right). Your website that is publicly viewed to the world will be under the folder on the right that says public_html

Step 12 Double click on public_html –> then double click your domain –> then double click wp-content –> then double click themes. This is the folder you want to drop your wordpress themes into.

Step 13 Go back to yourdomain.com/wp-login dashboard page from step 9 after dropping your theme into the themes folder – Now click on Appearance again – You should see the new theme you dropped into the theme folder in the previous step – Click Activate and it should look similar to what was advertised on the theme download page. That’s it – Now you can commence band practice.

After you  like your layout,add information like pictures, news, music, links-myspace,facebook,twitter,last.fm,etc.

Next your going to enjoy installing wordpress plugins-There are many that are useful for bands -here are a few:

Last.fm for Artists
Integrates your Last.fm account into your website.

GigPress
Manage all of your upcoming and past performances or events right from within WordPress, and display them using simple shortcodes or template tags on your WordPress-powered website.

Twitter Tools
Integrates your Twitter account into your website.

Podcasting
Gives you an inline music player and turns your whole page into a podcast (fans can subscribe via iTunes and whenever you post a new mp3, they’ll get it).

NextGen Gallery
Easy maintenance of photo galleries with some sleek browsing options.

ShareThis
Lets your readers easily share your posts via email, AIM, text message, Facebook, MySpace, Digg, Twitter, Blogger, Reddit and many more social sites.

Social Homes
Adds a sidebar widget containing a subtle list of all of your social homes including delicious, digg, facebook, flickr, last.fm, myspace, twitter, youtube, friendfeet etc.

Google Friend Connect Integration
Lets your fans join and create profiles and interact socially.
See an example here: http://www.socialarrow.com/

Flickr Thumbnails Photostream
This plug-in will let you show flickr photos directly from your blog

There are plenty more – if you have any problems, check back here or reply to this post -

To Install plugins – simply download them, unzip them, and move them to the right of filezilla inside the following folder

public_html_domain.com/wp-content/plugins

We hope this helps!

Lessons Learned From Band Camp by Jake Starkey

Here’s a quick 5 (notice not TOP 5) things to consider when marketing your band, your music, or honestly even yourself.

1. Myspace is not the world wide web – Yes, in this day and age you need to have a Myspace page, but it cannot be your only source of advertising or marketing.  Fan pages are good but vanity pages get obnoxious quick.  You need professional websites, music videos, cd design, epk’s and photography.  Professional does not equal expensive to your pocketbook, but rather equals dedication and perseverance in the eyes of label A&R executives interested in pushing bands that push themselves.

2. Find an advocate for your music – It can be a label, it can be a PR firm, it can (also but not exclusively) be your fans.  However, YOU, the artist, cannot get up there and say how great you are.  It will endear you to some for your cockiness, and turn away a vast majority.  Which brings up:

3. Word of mouth is better than any type of marketing – However it’s been proven that a person who dislikes something is more likely to tell others than a person who likes something.  Not sure about the specific stats, but I believe it’s something along the lines of 8 people who dislike something will tell others for every 1 who likes it.  So word of mouth cannot be the only thing you rely upon.

4. Why marketing is still important – Marketing is not sales.  Marketing is raising an awareness of your performance this weekend, the cd you are promoting, etc.  When people show up to your show and buy a ticket, or order your album on iTunes, that’s sales.  Additionally, marketing is not about finding new listeners, it’s about reinforcing your standing with your current ones.  Think of it like this: the reason you market is to make your current fans die hard advocates, which means they’ll forward the link to your music video, to your website, to your music online, to your performance dates to their friends, which gets them to buy the cd and go to the show.  Your biggest fans are your salesmen, the ones getting your music heard.  Marketing is the tools YOU give THEM to make the sale for you.

5. If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound – And here’s the big kicker.  You are an artist and yes it is possible to be both an artist and a businessperson, but my personal opinion is that at any moment you can only be one or the other.  Jamming with your bandmates in the rehearsal studio is not the time to sit down and write a business plan.  So don’t make your music based on preconceived (and ill conceived) ideas of what will make a hit.  Make the music you want to make, then find the right people that knows how to get your music heard.  Because making music that no one will hear is like not making the music at all.

Make your music, your art, using your vision and your passion.  Then consider letting someone who has a passion and vision for how to express your music visually to help you.

And speaking of that, here’s the shameless plug:

Jake Starkey

Jakestarkey.com

To find out more about how to choose your niche.