Music & Marketing: URBANIZED!

Jason de Wilde Head of Audio at the Australian Institute of Music gives another Pro Tools 8 tutorial, this time on saving & copying files in Pro Tools 8. Ever wanted to save projects in different version of Pro Tools?.. well here's how..

When importing a tick-based audio file to the Region List, Track List, or empty space in the Edit window from the Workspace, your prompted to either import the tempo from the file or use the default session tempo. This tutorial explains how to import samples to automatically match the master tempo of your Pro Tools 8 session.

This tutorial explains how to add swing to your already quantized tracks within Pro Tools 8 for more natural sounding performances.

I've been asked about this topic quite a few times, so I decided to post a tutorial to help out my fellow producers. This tutorial from www.winksound.com shows you how to use Reason in Protools with Rewire. This is great if you ever wanted to incorporate the sounds from Reason with live instrumentation recorded in Protools, and/or any other music software you may use for production. Check it out!

A Frequency Analyzer gives you a visual representation of the frequencies within a specific audio signal. The frequency appears on the horizontal axis, and the amplitude is displayed on the vertical axis. This tutorial explains how to use Blue Cat Audio's free Frequency Analyzer plugin to help balance your final mix. Click the picture above to download the 'Blue Cat Audio's free Frequency Analyzer plugin'.

for all you sample based producers or beatmakers looking to start sampling, this is another tutorial from winksound.com that shows you how to extract samples from loops. its the basics, but this can be applied to any old song or track you might want to chop up for use in your beat.

this is a tutorial that i recently checked out at winksound.com , a site you might want to bookmark. its great for producers who may need a little help. this particular tutorial is on how to make those 808 snare fills that are infamous in down south hip hop tracks! check it out!

When comparing social media traffic to other forms of traffic, such as search engine, the numbers typically are going to look rather bleak. While you’ll hopefully see a spike in number of visitors and pageviews, that will often be accompanied by higher bounce rates, lower pageviews per visitor, and a lower average time on the site. With stats like this many bloggers wonder if social media traffic is even worth the time and effort.

Despite the tendency of many social media visitors to quickly exit your site and move on to the next one, there are still some very convincing reasons why you should care about social media and why it is worth your time.

1. It’s Free
Unless you’re paying for a consultant or a link bait specialist (both can be good options), marketing your website with social media is free. It will cost you some time, but that pales in comparison to the value of the traffic that you can get in return. There are countless ways to market a website or blog. Just about all of them involve spending money (which isn’t a bad thing), and of the ones that don’t involve money, the vast majority of them are a complete waste of time. I’ve never tried any other type of free marketing that brought even 1% of the results I’ve gotten with social media at my primary blog. Most bloggers are on a tight, or non-existent, budget when it comes to marketing. If this is the case, social media is for you.

2. The Future of the Internet is Social
Social media and social networking aren’t going away any time soon. The major players and the types of social sites may change of the course of time, but this is a trend that online marketers need to adjust to. Without finding ways to build a website or blog through social media you could be left behind by your competitors.

3. Quick Results
Building a successful website takes a considerable amount of time and effort. Search engine rankings, for instance, can take years to build in a competitive niche. On the other hand, with social media you can develop content and be seen by thousands of visitors within the same day. For this reason, social media is a great option for getting a new website or blog noticed right away .

4. It Gets Easier with Time
If you’re new to blogging and social media and you feel like everyone else is getting traffic but you, understand that it takes some time and effort, but it will get easier. Once you have established a bit of a reader base and you’ve hopefully attracted some social media users to your blog, it will be much easier for you to get votes and ultimately get more exposure. The more you use social media the more you will understand about how it works and how users will respond.

5. It Doesn’t Require as Much Time as You Might Think
Personally, I use social media every day, but on a very limited basis. If you think that you have to spend all day on Digg or Stumbling pages to get some results of your own, you may be surprised. With the right approach you can get fantastic results with just a few hours per week on social media sites. To be a top Digg user you’ll need more time than that, but being a top Digg user isn’t necessary to draw social media traffic.

6. Links Can Help Your Search Engine Rankings Rise Quickly
Although visitors from social media sites may be less responsive than other types of visitors, success with social media will likely increase the number of inbound links you receive. Links will boost your search engine rankings and they’ll also drive click-through traffic your way. Both are generally high quality traffic sources. Well, in addition to sending loads of traffic directly, the links that result from social media success can get your new posts ranking very well with search engines almost immediately. It’s not uncommon for me to see a very respectable number of visitors from Google searches to a brand new post that just drew a lot of links through social media. While it will take a while to build search engine rankings as a whole, it is possible to create specific posts to rank well right away.

7. Some Visitors Will Be Targeted
The biggest knock on social media traffic is that it’s not targeted, and that is typically true. However, visitors from niche social media sites can be very highly targeted, and on top of that, a portion of visitors from general news sites will be targeted as well. For example, if you get 25,000 visitors from a post on the Digg front page, maybe only 5,000 of them will have much of an interest in your site. Still, that’s a quick 5,000 visitors that you wouldn’t have had without social media. Just because a smaller percentage of the visitors will stick doesn’t mean that they are irrelevant.

8. It Will Lead to Other Valuable Sources of Traffic
Although visitors from social media sites may be less responsive than other types of visitors, success with social media will likely increase the number of inbound links you receive. Links will boost your search engine rankings and they’ll also drive click-through traffic your way. Both are generally high quality traffic sources.