IOTM Blog
Posted: Dec 2, 2025
Category: Merch
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**Guest post written by Julia Kater for Bandzoogle.com.
"Bundles are a smart way to sell your music and clear out merchandise while reinforcing the artist-to-fan connection. They also increase average order value (AOV) and can streamline fulfillment — especially if you pre-kit bundles or ship items from a single location. Setting up and promoting your bundles on your music website can revitalize your site and help you move digital music, physical merch, and print-on-demand items."
View Full ArticlePosted: Nov 18, 2025
Category: Promotion
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**Guest post written by Cyber PR, originally featured on the Cyber PR Blog.
"I know you’re tired of being told you have to always be on: posting, promoting, chasing streams, keeping up with the endless hamster wheel. But if you want to give yourself a good shot at consistently jolting the algorithms, I suggest you release singles every five or six weeks...This post is here to provide you with a step-by-step framework for how to pull this off — without losing your mind." View Full Article
Posted: Jul 23, 2025
Category: Technology
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**Guest post written by Bobby Owsinski, originally featured in the Music 3.0 Blog.
"If there’s one thing that just about everyone can agree on, it’s that AI-generated content known as “AI slop” is seriously boring and beginning to clog up the internet. Not only that, it’s pushing out content created by humans as sometimes recommendation engines can’t tell the difference. If this continues, you may see users begin to flee existing streaming and social platforms in search of true authentic content. In fact, content with flaws may soon become a sort of badge of honor for creators. To that end, YouTube has announced steps to combat AI slop in its upcoming update to its terms of service agreement."
View Full ArticlePosted: Jun 17, 2025
Category: Merch
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**Guest post written by Tony van Veen, originally featured in the Disc Makers Blog.
"One of the questions our Disc Makers product specialists get asked the most is this: If I spend $1000 to press vinyl, will I make my money back? In this article, I’ll discuss the cost of vinyl records and what your profit margins will be when you sell your records directly to fans. This will allow us to calculate how many records you’ll need to sell to cover your vinyl manufacturing cost. I’ll also explain the profit margins for distributors and stores, and I’ll provide some surefire tips for making money on vinyl. Let’s get started..."
View Full ArticlePosted: Nov 7, 2023
Category: Marketing
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**Guest post originally featured in CS Discos' e-book Cover Your Way Up, a guide to leveraging music covers on YouTube.
"Copyright owners typically opt to monetize videos rather than block them, meaning they will run advertisements on them and collect any revenue generated by these ads. Although none of that revenue will go back to you as the creator of the cover, your video will remain viewable by other viewers...Additionally, in some cases, copyright owners may choose not to monetize videos by blocking them instead. Therefore, it’s wise to conduct some research and understand local regulations before posting covers online."
View Full ArticlePosted: Oct 4, 2023
Category: Marketing
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**Guest post originally featured in CS Discos' e-book Cover Your Way Up, a guide to leveraging music covers on YouTube.
"To further your music career, it’s essential to understand YouTube monetization. This process offers benefits like revenue generation, audience engagement, and enhanced content creation. Monetizing your channel means not only earning money but also increasing your professionalism and visibility. To qualify, YouTube requires at least 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours in the past year, or you can alternatively accumulate 10 million short views in the last 90 days, as per updated information from 2023."
View Full ArticlePosted: Sep 12, 2023
Category: Marketing
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**Guest post originally featured in CS Discos' e-book Cover Your Way Up, a guide to leveraging music covers on YouTube.
"Understanding YouTube’s algorithm can be your ticket to shining amidst so many creators. With millions of videos uploaded daily, the algorithm’s effort is directed towards tailoring content to viewers’ preferences, ensuring they get a satisfying experience. As artists, understanding this system can amplify your online presence."
View Full ArticlePosted: Dec 20, 2021
Category: Promotion
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**Guest post written by Jessica Fender, a copywriter and blogger at Edubirdie with a background in marketing and sales. She enjoys sharing her experience with like-minded professionals who aim to provide customers with high-quality services. Previously featured on MusicGoat.com.
"If you want to get more people to attend your music event, keep reading. I'll show you how to generate more pre-show hype using an outstanding social media marketing strategy. Here are a few tips you can use to boost your event marketing efforts."
Posted: May 17, 2021
Category: Marketing
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**Guest post by Christopher Carvalho from Unlock Your Sound.
"Think of a shop. The top of the funnel is the people walking past the shop. The first layer down is the people window browsing. The next layer down is the people who enter. And then the next and final layer is the people who purchase something."
View Full ArticlePosted: Feb 15, 2021
Category: Marketing
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**Guest post from #1 YouTube Consultant Derral Eves.
"I understand that a lot of musicians love to share their music in live settings, and why wouldn’t they? In the past year, unfortunately, sometimes the only option for exposure has been online. So...what better time to focus on your YouTube audience than now?...How do you build a bigger audience, foster brand loyalty, and grow revenue?"
View Full ArticlePosted: Sep 21, 2020
Category: Social Media
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**Guest post written by Leonard Patterson of Artist Collective AKA @ac_leonardp.
"If you’ve been keeping track, there have been countless articles published across the web leading us to believe that Facebook has “new” music guidelines going into effect on Oct. 1st that -- among other things -- would start “banning music in livestreams. As someone who’s seen and personally visited Facebook jail before, let me assure you - these updates are. not. new..."
View Full ArticlePosted: Mar 23, 2020
Category: Technology
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**Guest post written by Matt Santry, independent musician and founder of the Well Paid Musicians Club.
"Part 2 of this series focuses on getting professional-quality video with a smartphone."
Posted: Mar 16, 2020
Category: Technology
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**Guest post written by Matt Santry, independent musician and founder of the Well Paid Musicians Club.
"I think we've all been guilty of posting amateur-looking videos that make us look or sound worse than we really are...Or maybe you don't post any video because you're afraid that what you have isn't a good representation of what you do...We've (myself and Brian Fitzgerald) created a 2 part video tutorial on this topic that goes into more detail."
Posted: Nov 11, 2019
Category: Online Presence
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**Guest post by Randy Chertkow and Jason Feehan of MakingMoneyWithMusic.com. Reprinted with permission.
"What not every musician knows about or takes advantage of is there's a second way to make ad revenue off of your videos -- even if you can't become a YouTube Partner. The key is to register your entire back catalog of music with YouTube's ContentID service..."
Posted: Nov 4, 2019
Category: Online Presence
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**Guest post by Randy Chertkow and Jason Feehan of MakingMoneyWithMusic.com. Reprinted with permission.
"YouTube is the top music search engine in the world, so having your music there is critical. But when it comes to making money, YouTube has raised the threshold for creators to become a YouTube Partner. This is important since it’s only Partners who can monetize the ads being played on their channel and videos...In this article, we'll share two more critical ways to boost views, hours, and subscribers."
View Full ArticlePosted: Oct 21, 2019
Category: Online Presence
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**Guest post by Randy Chertkow and Jason Feehan of MakingMoneyWithMusic.com. Reprinted with permission.
"YouTube is essential for getting your music discovered and heard. But to make money from your channel's advertising, you need 1000 subscribers and 4000 watch hours. In this three part series, we'll give you the techniques you can use to hit this threshold so YouTube starts sending you checks for the ads running on your channel and videos."
View Full ArticlePosted: Jan 7, 2019
Category: Marketing
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**Guest post written by Cassie Phillips as featured on The Music Entrepreneur HQ.
"No matter how talented you are, or how much effort you put into your music, getting exposure for your art can be a challenge...To effectively promote your music, you will need to develop your marketing skills. Marketing will allow you to raise awareness for your brand and be better connected to your target market."
Posted: Jan 2, 2019
Category: The Musician Business
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**Guest post written by PJ Taei, the founder of Uscreen.
"With the number of streaming video sites and over-the-top services available today, starting your own online course on literally any topic has never been easier than it is right now...creating an online music course is a good idea for a wide range of different reasons, all of which are worth exploring."
Posted: Jun 18, 2018
Category: Promotion
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**Guest post written by Andrew Jones of Checkered Owl Media.
"Most people have noticed that video is often the most effective way to both spread your message AND create engagement with an audience. People watch more and more video all the time...So, with that in mind, we all need to be considering video content. The big question becomes what kind of video to make? What will actually help you stand out from the millions of other videos being created every week? We can help with that. I divide most business video content into four levels..."
Posted: Jan 22, 2018
Category: Marketing
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**Guest post written by Cassie Steele, content editor for GuitarFella.com.
"The internet has opened up a world of opportunity for musicians, enabling you to release music to a wide audience without the gatekeepers of record labels or a distribution company. However, you need to know what you’re doing. Releasing music online without a marketing plan and expecting it to sell is like dropping your CD in Times Square and expecting a record producer to pick it up..."
View Full ArticlePosted: Jan 23, 2017
Category: Live Performance
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**Guest post by Niki Walker, lead videographer of NPR's Tiny Desk series. Originally posted on NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Contest Tumblr.
"The Tiny Desk is essentially the opposite of a concert venue or a music video. There’s nothing to hide behind except a real, tiny desk, in a real, very-active office. In some ways, our look is easy to replicate, because it’s all about the music...A lot of people film their Tiny Desk Contest entries on their own, so we thought we’d share a few things we’ve learned by filming almost 600 of these things..." View Full Article
Posted: May 31, 2016
Category: Technology
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**Guest post written by Ari Herstand. It originally appeared on Ari's Take.
"I just released a music video. It cost me exactly $0 to make and it looks pretty darn awesome if I do say so myself. Well, I can say so because I didn't make it. I kind of had nothing to do with it - other than writing and recording the song of course (and showing up and shooting the thing). So how did this happen?" View Full Article
Posted: Aug 31, 2015
Category: Technology
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**Guest post by Hank & Cupcakes, Brooklyn based Indie/Pop/Rock duo.
All of us are aware of how important the visual aspect of our music is for promoting, exposing and marketing our band. It seems that many indie bands are afraid of making their own videos mainly because there's a common mythological assumption that it is very complicated, expensive and technically demanding to create this kind of content, so many bands don't even try to explore this territory which is today as accessible to us as the audio recording field is...
View Full ArticlePosted: Feb 2, 2015
Category: Promotion
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**Guest post written by Phil Johnson, as featured in his blog, Big Whiz Bang!
This is the continuation of last week's post "33 Gig Promotion Strategies (And Which Ones Actually Work!) - Part 1", but rather than focusing on Offline Promotion, Phil talks about his online promotional efforts and their successes/failures.
View Full ArticlePosted: Jan 12, 2015
Category: Online Presence
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**Guest post written by John Waltmann, Client Relationship Manager of Symphonic Distribution.
"The countless features and optimizations of YouTube’s platform can seem intimidating, but we are here to provide you with a few basic optimizations on YouTube profiles that can have you looking the part in no time..."
View Full Article