Rdio: Clean Music Streaming

As I’ve already mentioned, I have a passion for music. Out of that passion, stems a constant desire to listen to music. And new music at that. But I am a college student with little to no money, so I cannot afford to buy new albums here and there, hoping to like a few of them. So where else do I turn, but to the wonderful world of streaming services, like everyone and their mother.

Now, there is a whole different discussion I could delve into about the morality of using a music streaming service. But I’ll just leave it at: You should know that listening to music on a streaming service gives artists almost no money. I’ll let your conscience wrestle with that next time you open Spotify. 

I, as an artist myself, think that the streaming service industry is a little messed up, and could use a lot of improvement. In a perfect world, we’d all just be buying vinyl. However, I gotta have my pops…and by “pops,” I clearly mean virtually any song I can imagine at my fingertips at any given moment…

But I don’t use Spotify.

I use Rdio.

I was first turned onto Rdio when I was a freshman in college. I found a competition Rdio was holding in which participants made pre-show playlists for an M83 concert (You think you don’t know who M83 is, but you do…). The contestant with the best playlist had it played before an M83 show in Austin, TX AND received free tickets, airfare, and lodging for two. Needless to say, I won. On top of an amazing weekend in Austin, I got a year’s subscription to Rdio for free, and I just couldn’t give it up after it ran out.

But why Rdio? Spotify is cool and they have the Lumineers!

For the sake of this article, I am going to assume you know what Spotify is. This assumption will help me explain Rdio to you:

Rdio is exactly Spotify, but without all the junk, and for a better price.

• Rdio has a cleaner, more minimal design than Spotify

 

This no-nonsense layout lets me find what I’m looking for with no headaches. The focus is on the music, as it should be.

• Rdio doesn’t have all the third party apps that Spotify offers

Why do you need all these apps to tell you what to listen to? Rdio’s “Heavy Rotation” feature shows what albums are popular among your friends (that you hand pick! None of this “Add all Facebook Friends” garbage.), which serves as a great tool for communal listening and developing micro-cultures.

• AND Rdio is only $5 a month for unlimited desktop/mobile access if you’re a student 

Both the desktop and mobile apps are fantastic and I have never had a problem with either. So, what are you waiting for? Get an account on Rdio today and add me! Unless you listen to terrible music, in which case, PLEASE stay on Spotify with the rest of the uncultured world.

*I swear Rdio isn’t paying me for this*

 

My Personal Learning Plan: How to be an Effective Social Media Marketer

Hey there.

My name is Brady Heyen. I’m a college student. And I own a business.

Ideas fascinate me. Music also fascinates me. So, last summer, while working in the vast, arid fields of a plant nursery, these two fascinations collided in my mind.

For a few years now, I’ve wanted to enter into the music business. But for me, this looked like getting a low level position at a big-name firm and working my way up the corporate ladder until I could run things. But then I released, I don’t have to wait! I thought,”What if I just start my own record label?” And so I did. 

After a month of recruiting friends for help and listening to dozens of entrepreneurial podcasts (like The Fizzle Show and Entrepreneur on Fire) in the fields, Sun Blood Records was born. Our tagline is “a new kind of label,” because we are. Typically, a record label is an entity that artists go to for financial support. When you hear about whether an artist is “signed” or not, this essentially tells you whether or not someone is paying for and guiding their endeavors or not. All 15 of Sun Blood Record’s staff members are in college someone in the U.S., so even between us all, we don’t have much money. The money we have is for tacos and coffee. So we had to take a different approach.

We started a music blog, to draw attention and build an online reputation before we brought anyone onto our label roster. Our purpose as a company is to bring exposure to artists we believe deserve more exposure. Our blog falls in line with that purpose by consisting of interviews with artists, album reviews of lesser-known artists, and featured songs. 

About half of a year after our birth, we signed our first artist, HOSTS, a singer-songwriter from Nashville, TN. While there is no pay yet involved in our contacts, we offer the marketing and management services that other labels with money offer. 

But now that we’re getting close to being a year old, we’re not seeing the growth we had dreamed of. We have a decent following, but we’re humans, and we want more! 

How do we get more followers on Twitter? More likes on Facebook? More interaction with our posts and articles?

The internet is a tricky thing. Social media is a somewhat new marketing frontier that is starting to boil over with opportunity! See the infographic below to get a sense of what I mean. But there is a lot of infrastructure to social media like Facebook and Twitter that many people don’t understand. I’m sure we’ve all seen a local business use social media in a dreadfully ineffective way. Well I have started this Personal Learning Plan to figure out the in’s and out’s of Facebook and Twitter. I want to know what it takes to grow your audience and increase your interactions with that audience. So, over the course of the next four weeks, I am going to take you along with me on my journey!