Benefits Of Membership
What are the benefits of membership to a community of likeminded individuals and groups, who share your dedication and sense of purpose? It is a long list of individual benefits, and taken together some might say that they are both rare to find and priceless. People with experiences you can learn from. Connections that you would otherwise not have. After all, the power of connection multiplies our reach.
Alone, we are just a speck. Together we are bigger, stronger and much more noticeable. Indeed, together we are extremely hard to ignore.
As a music community we are all this and more.
Table of Contents
Development
Under the category of development there are several areas where you will find several of the benefits of membership:
- Songwriter Development
- Artist Development
- Production Development
- Music Marketing Development
Particularly within the field of popular music, of various genres, there is a lack of focus and support on the development of skills. It tends to be ad hoc and sporadic, with little to no planning. It also largely depends on the individual to drive it, to give it direction.
Here, Songstuff can help. From both the perspective of the site and the community, we can make a difference. We can help shape your development, making sure that you are exposed to a breadth of skills and experience and to a depth in specific areas that suits your focus and area of interest. Songstuff can provide that framework of lessons and the raw material that helps shape music professionals.
Our community can also greatly help with this. Members have a great deal of experience to pass on to each other. The site provides the shape, and gives the prompts to encourage ongoing development in your chosen areas, whilst the staff and community help with support, encouragement and critique.
Songwriter Development
Lyric Critique and Song Critique
As a songwriter, musical or lyrical, critique can play a vital role in your development. Critique is a discussion between writers and their peers. It’s not just about getting critique of one of your own new works. Songwriters often learn more in the process of giving critique to others about their songs than they do when having their own song be the subject of critique.
Learning how to take part in the critique process can make a huge difference in the development of individual songwriters.
Song Writing Challenges
Community staff regularly set challenges for songwriters specifically designed to stretch writers, introducing them to new techniques, and new disciplines. Our challenges also introduce writers to the world of collaboration.
Our challenges are challenges in personal development. They are not contests, although sometimes we do use an element of friendly competition to encourage participation and make challenges a fun learning experience.
Writing Tiny Tunes
We encourage the use of Tiny Tunes. Small, perfectly formed songs. They are quick to turn around, fun, and they allow you to do quick experiments, letting you explore, try new techniques and concepts, trying combinations in an encouraging space.
Artist Development
Critique For Artists
As an artist, formal critique rarely happens. Yet it can be a useful tool for artists trying to find their sound, fine tuning how their music reaches their audience. It is a key tool in helping with artist development. Critique gives artists a framework for discussion with their fellow artists and musicians.
Learning how to make the most of critique can make a huge difference to individual artists.
Challenges For Artists
Communities present the possibility of challenges to artists. Artists challenge each other. They exchange ideas that stretch their capability and expand the range of things the can do with their various creative assets.
Our community encourages artists to collaborate with other artists, marketers, producers, writers and more. It’s an ever evolving, and exciting range of challenges.
Tiny Tunes For Artists
We artists to try using Tiny Tunes. As small songs they make for perfect vehicles for trying new ideas, new sounds. They are quick to create and easy to build upon, making it easy for you to take a tint tune and create a full length song. That makes them ideal for capturing an idea, exploring a concept, sound or new market.
Production Development
Production Critique
Production critique is an ideal framework for the exchange of ideas between music producers. Creating short production snapshots, that just capture the most interesting bits in a new recording, makes for ideal, fast moving production explorations. That could be the overall sound, transitions, progressions, arrangements, effects chains, tool sets, sound libraries, and much more. Critique is an excellent vehicle for producers to educate each other.
Production Challenges
Production challenges on Songstuff are sometimes driven by the site staff and sometimes driven by members. Creating and running production challenges can be great ways of auditioning producers to work with a band or songwriter, and they can be great ways for trying out unexpected techniques and audio mixes.
Producing Tiny Tunes
Combining the production of Tiny Tunes with Production Critique is a very effective way to progress and develop production skills. You develop new skills, absorbing what is on trend, adapting it and incorporating it into your own productions.
Marketing Development
Marketing Critique
The opportunity for marketing critique is not common. It can be greatly effective and identifying issues and for finding unique and original ways to enable new audiences to discover artists, to effectively engage them and to identify and develop the effective steps to convert listeners into avid fans.
Marketing Challenges
Community staff occasionally set marketing challenges. Sometimes they are stand alone challenges, but often they work with combined song writing, production and marketing challenges. It can be great for exploring completely new tools and processes. The challenges themselves look to explore marketing skills such that they give marketers a well-rounded experience of music marketing.
Some challenges are personal challenges for the individual, while others explore team challenges and the benefits to be had by working together.
Networking
Apart from the other benefits of membership our music community provides an ideal environment for networking with your fellow musicians, songwriters, producers, managers and more. They can provide access to great opportunities as well as opening unexpected doors and presenting your with unexpected possibilities.
Our clubs in particular make it very easy to discover and work with people on collaborative projects and/or to work with closed groups of people.
Marketing And Promotion Opportunities
On-Site Opportunities
There are a number of regular marketing and promotion opportunities available. These range from interviews, being a featured artist, playlist placements, and banner advertising.
You can also get help with Press Release and Electronic Press Kit creation.
Our blog also presents a great opportunity for reaching new audiences.
Newsletter
Our music community newsletter is one of the great benefits of membership. In addition to be an informative read, our newsletter provides community news and much more. As a member you will get both free and paid opportunities for the promotion of new releases, live streams and events. If you are lucky enough to be featured or interviewed it also promotes those interviews and features as well as exclusive banner advertising.
Opportunities On Sister Sites - IMS and SSUK
Our sister sites, independentmusicstage.com (IMS) and songstuff.co.uk (SSUK) (Yeah, we know!) provide opportunities for showcasing your music directly to listeners. Further benefits of membership are exclusive opportunities for your music. That’s right, as a member of Songstuff you can take advantage of opportunities that are only open to our members.
IMS has a broad remit. It is a fan-facing website that focuses on independent music, but it will still include mainstream music tracks in it’s features, interviews and playlists. To be featured, interviewed or even playlisted by IMS, your music must be of a professional standard, professionally recorded and mastered, presenting a high quality product. Work that is not of this standard will not be accepted for promotion.
SSUK, on the other hand, is still a fan-facing website, and it includes features, interviews and playlists from across the world of independent music, but it leans slightly in the direction of featuring more Songstuff artists. We still expect a high quality of product, but it is a little bit more accessible than IMS.
For both sites, building their audience of listeners by delivering the highest quality of music is the highest importance. The damage that can be caused by delivering sub-quality music is too high. Therefor we hold submitted music to the highest of standards.
Between them, these sites present a significant, and growing, opportunity for artists to reach an audience of independent listeners.
Social Media Opportunities
Songstuff Social Media
Our social media, like our site, is largely artist-facing and writer-facing. Fans will still encounter the site, but they are not our focus. Luckily, reaching large numbers of artists on social media is pretty easy. We are active on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and others.
IMS and SSUK Social Media
Their social media is fan-facing. They try to grow their reach and engage new audiences. IMS and SSUK are active on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and others. They promote their playlists, interviews, features and editorials on all their social media portals.
The Next Step... Accessing The Benefits Of Membership!
It’s difficult to put a value on all the benefits of membership. Something that offers you so many things that are vital to success as a songwriter, artist or music producer.
Did we mention that basic membership of Songstuff is free? For all those benefits of membership, that is an offer that is impossible to beat.