Homepage Refresh strategy and details

[jb]

I've been working to streamline my posting strategy. Here's what I've wound up at:

My Twitter handle ( @thejbb ) and my Facebook page ( facebook.com/thejohnbenjaminband ) both are now fed by http://home.johnorama.com which I've redirected http://johnorama.com to point to. This is the simplest setup I could get to-- on Dreamhost I couldn't redirect www.johnorama.com to Tumblr which is my control panel now.

On Tumblr I am using a very slightly modified Fluid Neue theme. It's one of the free ones. I didn't want to leave the default styling, as that would be too obviously a stock Tumblr theme. So I made a photograph the background, made the header just plain Helvetica, added a few of the customizing options to the side-bar, and I added the Yahoo Web Player. I haven't yet customized the look of the Web Player, but that's coming up.

To post a single song, I just use Tumblr's controls and make an Audio post that links to a URL on johnorama.com. That way I can keep my MP3s on my Dreamhost account, and point to them in Tumblr posts. They are playable on the site using the theme's audio player.

It was important to me to be able to create playlists. I looked around at the various "player" options that would let me create a flexible playlist-- and they all suck donkey balls. So I wound up just adding a bunch of HTML links to a Tumblr post, and letting the Yahoo Web Player drop a "play" button next to each-- as well as aggregating them in the slide-out player itself. There just doesn't seem to be a better way to do this. I think this is what Brad Sucks came up with too in the end, and I know he put a lot more time into his site than I have mine.

It was important to me to be able to provide those playlists, and also to be able to tag everything. So when I post a playlist I can tag it-- and I have a link to an "Albums" page on the right side that is just a search for the word "playlist". So you can quickly jump to a list of the playlists I have posted. They will be things like "Sensitive Pop Songs" and "Fun Pop" and "Ukulele Covers" and "Weird Shit Man" and so forth. I've only done one so far.

I'm pretty happy with it at the moment-- I've been wracking my brain for a while trying to come up with just the right way to accomplish this junk without going nuts. I'm not trying to make any money off it; only trying to get as many people as I can to hear the music and have an opportunity to share it.

Not having a really solid web site has prevented me-- mostly mentally-- from putting focus on my online presence. Maybe this is the first step to the next step. We'll see.

I'm not completely done yet, but so far so good. I'm happy to answer questions if anyone is curious about something.

JB

[Lunkhead]

Thanks for posting, interesting to read. I was actually just inspecting your Tumblr, because of your FB posts, wondering about exactly these sort of details. It sounds like a good setup and I'm glad you've found something that may work for you.

It seems like musicians are still in need of a good central content-management-system/dashboard these days, as there appear to be a lot of DIY options like the one you've assembled. I was hoping the company I work for, BandPage, would have grown its core product into being a solution for that problem space, but sadly the management has been distracted trying to pursue a million different opportunities at once (and realizing practically none of them...).

I keep thinking of Jonathan Mann and how he is trying to manage making a video and an mp3 every day and getting them out to YouTube, BandCamp, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, etc., all of which have varying sets of metadata they support. What a nightmare! I think he currently has an intern managing it for him.

I think it'd be great for musicians to have a central place to manage e.g. a "song", which could then have media assets (mp3, video, image, etc.) and structured metadata (title, lyrics, tags, genre, composer credits, performer credits, etc.), the proper subsets of which could be pushed out to any of the different content/social networks.

[JonPorobil]

Yes, it seems every time someone comes out with one of those "One solution to post to all your social media accounts!" products, some new network with completely different protocols comes out, and/or one of the major ones changes how they do things.

JB, do you worry about your audience either getting annoyed at the obvious cross-posting, or tuning out because of it? I spend a lot of time on Google+, and I know it bugs me when I see content there that was clearly formatted for Facebook or Twitter, or obviously cross-posted. And do you have plan for responding to any engagement you happen to get from any of these posts?

Not having a really solid web site has prevented me-- mostly mentally-- from putting focus on my online presence. Maybe this is the first step to the next step. We'll see.

I can speak from experience, having a website that doesn't make sharing easy can present a deceptively huge hurdle to building your online brand. When I switched over from Blogger to Wordpress for my news and blog sections of my site, the login and posting process got more complicated, and as a result, I practically stopped posting my stuff altogether.

When you write it out, it seems almost obvious: If you want to be able to share your music as widely as possible, make it easy to share.

[jb]

It seems like musicians are still in need of a good central content-management-system/dashboard these days, as there appear to be a lot of DIY options like the one you've assembled. I was hoping the company I work for, BandPage, would have grown its core product into being a solution for that problem space, but sadly the management has been distracted trying to pursue a million different opportunities at once (and realizing practically none of them...).

Yeah I was hoping that too. Most of the "musician focused" services are geared towards folks that are actively trying to market themselves and their music, and are touring, etc. The normal stuff. I'm not about that-- I have a day job, and my music web site needs to be focused on curating the things that I create. In that respect, BandPage, Bandcamp, etc. etc. are not trying to serve me. And understandably so.

I keep thinking of Jonathan Mann and how he is trying to manage making a video and an mp3 every day and getting them out to YouTube, BandCamp, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, etc., all of which have varying sets of metadata they support. What a nightmare! I think he currently has an intern managing it for him.

Wow, an intern. Song-a-Day pays better than I thought.

I think it'd be great for musicians to have a central place to manage e.g. a "song", which could then have media assets (mp3, video, image, etc.) and structured metadata (title, lyrics, tags, genre, composer credits, performer credits, etc.), the proper subsets of which could be pushed out to any of the different content/social networks.

I completely agree. That's really what I'd love to see-- a way to store all of my songs, and easily display the lyrics, the chord sheet, the origin story, accompanying videos, and a comment section. As well as cross-post to the social networks. Tumblr does let me cross-post as you've noticed-- and thankfully I can modify the tweet before it goes out. It doesn't format the playlists well at all for Facebook-- because Facebook doesn't allow HTML in posts. Facebook in general just absolutely blows fucking CHUNKS for audio posts.

[jb]

JB, do you worry about your audience either getting annoyed at the obvious cross-posting, or tuning out because of it? I spend a lot of time on Google+, and I know it bugs me when I see content there that was clearly formatted for Facebook or Twitter, or obviously cross-posted. And do you have plan for responding to any engagement you happen to get from any of these posts?

No, because my audience is understanding people like yourselves. Now, a post from Procter and Gamble that isn't geared specifically for the network-- that is annoying. They have plenty of community managers.

But if someone is upset because I have half my audience on FB, half on G+ and the other half on Twitter, and don't want to carefully craft a post for each because my toolset doesn't make that easy-- they are most likely over-sensitive jackholes who have too much of a team-player complex. Or an anti-Facebook complex. Or something like that. I have very little tolerance for rabidity of any form.

Ideally, the tool would let me include lots of detail for G+, none for Twitter, and just a little for Facebook. But I don't think Tumblr even integrates with G+ at this point (it's not at the bottom of my posting interface). So I'm probably not going to focus on G+ at all at the moment until I'm motivated by something-- maybe hangouts? But I can link to those anywhere. Nothing special making me use G+ for Hangouts.

[jb]

And also, is a fan going to tune out because someone cross-posts? Don't they want the content however it comes, as long as it comes to them?

I like seeing Radiohead updates, even if they're tweets cross-posted to Facebook. Though I have to say, the most indignant people seem to be those who've adopted Google+ and feel some kind of insecurity. Some need to defend their choice and exclude the rest because of some weird defense mechanism or odd psychology.

I'm sure there's a thesis on the phenomenon, based on cruel experimentation on schoolchildren in the 70's.

JB

[JonPorobil]

And also, is a fan going to tune out because someone cross-posts? Don't they want the content however it comes, as long as it comes to them?

Yeah, fair enough. I'm mainly talking about when people @-tag Twitter users in a non-Twitter post, or ask you to "Like" something on any social network other than Facebook. That's pretty much the only way you'd be able to tell if something was cross-posted anyway.

[Lunkhead]

Is sharing DIY music any better on Google+? I haven't been on there much so I don't know what happens if you post a URL to an mp3. Do you get an embedded/inline player? On desktop and mobile? One of the most annoying things for me about Facebook is how their audio/video sharing embedded player is Flash only and doesn't work at all on mobile (not even on Android devices that do support Flash).

[JonPorobil]

Is sharing DIY music any better on Google+? I haven't been on there much so I don't know what happens if you post a URL to an mp3. Do you get an embedded/inline player? On desktop and mobile? One of the most annoying things for me about Facebook is how their audio/video sharing embedded player is Flash only and doesn't work at all on mobile (not even on Android devices that do support Flash).

It's frustrating on Google+ in different ways. Google+ makes it really easy to share music that's on the Play Store, but for mp3s of our own making, it's still sort of frustrating. For most mp3 files, it embeds the link into your post as though it were any other website, and when you click through, it just loads that file up into your browser's native mp3 player. For other songs, it just refuses to embed, so you just have to post it plain-text and ask people to paste it into their browsers. I think it's related to either the song length or the file size, but I've yet to see any documentation.

That might be changing soon, as Google has recently released an API for "interactive" posts, which include a button saying "Watch!" or "Listen!" or something like that. NPR has been making great use of the "Listen" button, so I'm guessing there's a way to apply that to sharing mp3s as well. I don't really know what goes into one of those Interactive posts, though. I'll probably do some more homework on them after my Nur Ein run is over.

[roymond]

Google+ is so schizoid. On the one hand there's insane content from amazing people (the volume of scientists sharing tremendous stuff from CERN and NASA and such places...makes my space junk fly). On the other hand it's basically a fucking google advertising channel. All fandroids all the time. If they can't hate Apple enough they get off hating Facebook. And if some leak suggests google is working on network-aware baby diapers, it's simply the most brilliant thing and my god, why didn't we all think of that before? How have we lived without these google nose pickers? As a result I post nearly nothing there and as a result of that I consume far less than I used to there.

My own website has been prototype much stagnant these past few years for all the reason you all are chatting here. I may take up John's suggestions because it seem to address many of my needs. But I still have big plans for something better. Just no time.

[jb]

Benefits of a Tumblr-powered Musician Site:
1. Free templates have HTML5 music-players built in. (Flash is dead, y'all.) Just discovered that my template's player uses Flash. So from now on I'll need to include a link to the MP3 in the text of the post, as the Yahoo Web Player is HTML5. Disappointing, though I suspect there are templates that use an HTML5 player-- but I'm happy with the look and feel of this one.
2. Free templates have Facebook and Twitter share functions built in.
3. Free templates are completely customizable for free.
4. When posting to Tumblr I can simultaneously tweet and send the post to Facebook
5. Tumblr lets me tag posts. This way I can create a curated database of my content, easily, that is easy to navigate.
6. Tumblr music posts let me link to a remote MP3 file, so I can still FTP things to my dreamhost
7. Tumblr lets me use a custom domain. (Notice that if you go to johnorama.com you wind up at home.johnorama.com.)
8. Other Tumblr users can find my content as they use Tumblr.
9. Tumblr lets me post to multiple blogs using the same interface.
10. Tumblr has iOS apps.
11. Tumblr has a (rudimentary) post scheduling mechanism. So I can create a bunch of posts for songs in my back-catalog and keep new content going up onto the site for quite a while. (I have written quite a few songs at this point, you know?)
12. Once I sort of figured out what I wanted to do-- and committed to it-- it took me about 5 hours to build everything. That includes deciding upon a theme, adding Web Player, and modifying DNS for the custom domain. It's really quite easy for a moderately-experienced Internet musician.
13. All of the above, except my domain and the MP3 file hosting (which is on my dreamhost account) is all FREE, which is amazing.

Drawbacks of a Tumblr-Powered Music Site:
1. The Facebook integration doesn't result in very attractive posts. Sometimes they are truncated, and songs are not playable from the Newsfeed. I think there may be a market for a tool that automatically generates a YouTube video for your MP3, and keeps track of which videos relate to which songs-- and when you post something to Tumblr for a song it posts that video to Facebook instead. That would result in something that is playable via the Newsfeed.
2. The Twitter integration doesn't result in a tweet with a Twitter Card to display media.
3. You still will need to post manually to Google+ if you want to post there. (Though with the theme I am using, people visiting the site can +1 from any post.)
4. The way I have set up my custom domain means it will be slightly convoluted to follow Google Analytics tracking.
5. I'm relying on the Tumblr service, which may not last forever.
6. For playlists I have to embed the Yahoo Web Player, which is an imperfect solution. (But a solution nonetheless.)
7. Something I don't care about but you may: There is no integrated store function to sell music.
8. Something I don't care about but you may: There is no integrated calendar function to display gigs and whatnot.
9. The post function doesn't quite allow me to show each facet of a song separately-- Audio, Lyrics, Notes, and Videos. As I mentioned, I'd like to have a very rich experience for each song and be able to feature it more thoroughly. I kind of think I could probably pull this off with a custom theme, but that will never happen.
10. I have the "recent tweets" turned on in my theme, and since I am posting to Twitter when I post a song, it tends to show a tweet with the same content as the most recent post to the site. If I start doing more Tweets that aren't related to the site, or done through Tumblr, that won't happen.

That's a surprisingly few number of drawbacks, now that I have finally gone through with the process of conversion.

[jb]

I think I'm coming to the conclusion that there is currently NO good way to post music to Facebook.

- Posting to Facebook when I make a Tumblr post just results in a description of the link with a Play button-- that links to the Tumblr post. So users a) have to leave Facebook and b) need two clicks to play the song. Those posts also don't include the album art-- and they totally could and should! Facebook posts with images get an awful lot more visibility.

- Posting a link to an mp3 directly on Facebook just results in a pretty generic-looking link post. No play button or anything, and it never gives a crap about the ID3 tags.

I think the only way to post a song in a visually appealing, cross-platform way, is to convert it to a YouTube video first and then post the video. Ridiculous and frustrating.

[Lunkhead]

Do YouTube posts show up as playable embeds in the newsfeed on mobile? If so that does seem like it might be the broadest support for media in a Facebook post. YouTube lets you upload videos via an API, so, somebody could build something to do what you're talking about, I think.

[roymond]

I use Soundcloud links in Facebook. In a browser it just plays in the newsfeed. On mobile it either loads a SC page within FB or (on Android) loads a separate browser. Not great but it's the best experience so far. I really don't like embedded YouTube videos that aren't videos.

But as always, you're guilty until proven innocent, therefore if you link an MP3 you're illegally distributing copyrighted work. There are few tools that enable indie musicians to simply share what they want.

[HeuristicsInc]

Hmm, I keep wondering if I should drop my homebrew homepage Perl code and go with some sort of content management scheme. Something that people who have more time than me can work on.
Unfortunately I can't look at jb's page because work thinks it has a malicious embedded link.
-bill

[jb]

I use Soundcloud links in Facebook. In a browser it just plays in the newsfeed. On mobile it either loads a SC page within FB or (on Android) loads a separate browser. Not great but it's the best experience so far. I really don't like embedded YouTube videos that aren't videos.

But as always, you're guilty until proven innocent, therefore if you link an MP3 you're illegally distributing copyrighted work. There are few tools that enable indie musicians to simply share what they want.

Upon further review-- Tumblr shows a "mobile" version on my iPhone if you go to johnorama.com. It's only on the iPad that I don't see the PLAY button on the Tumblr theme itself.

As for Facebook... if you click a link that points to an MP3, it works with one click.

JB

[fluffy]

I've just given up on having any sort of social-media-aware Internet presence and I keep hobbling along with my Movable Type-based site that uses the Yahoo Web Player to make the playlist stuff not painful.

[Lunkhead]

John, what are you doing for playlist posts now that the Yahoo! Web Player is dead?

[fluffy]

I really should get around to developing an HTML5-based Yahoo WebPlayer equivalent. It doesn't seem like it'd be that hard to whip something up in a weekend... I'm just lazy.

[Lunkhead]

I really should get around to developing an HTML5-based Yahoo WebPlayer equivalent. It doesn't seem like it'd be that hard to whip something up in a weekend... I'm just lazy.

same

[jb]

do it! do it!

[jast]

For reference: I've upgraded my own music website to use HTML5 audio (it used a scriptable invisible Flash player before). It currently uses the standard controls provided by the browser. I'm planning to upgrade it at some point so it supports multiple audio formats, and maybe make my own controls/interface for it.
Feel free to let the code I've written inspire you (if only to do it smarter). It's in localstuff.js.