My friend and client Brian Ray has just released a brand new video for one of his great songs, Coming Up Roses. I wanted to share it here because I think it’s really clever and so well done.

A word of warning - it’s not for those of you who think the current US President is doing a good job! Hehe!

Coming Up Roses was written by Brian as a “tribute” to George Bush and released on his début solo CD, Mondo Magneto. This video features crazy funny animations made by friends and fans of Brian, Larry and Deb Graves from Canada (Brian has a knack for turning fans into friends). It also includes live footage from Brian and his band Black Unicorn’s recent gig at The Imperial Ballroom in Los Angeles.

The video has been getting rave reviews on YouTube and many other video sites, and has received over 2,000 YouTube views since it was released during the week.

If you enjoy it, please Digg it and pass it on to your friends!

I’d recently redesigned his online press kit Whooray Records, giving it a funky modern feel and Brian wanted something similar for his Christmas newsletter (or New Sledder as he called it!).

I took the header image from the website and added Brian’s signature pink to create a striking skyline, with a sprinkling of snowflakes to complete the effect. Note the snowflake on Brian’s tongue in place of the usual guitar pick!

Designing newsletter templates is, well, hard. There are so many different email providers and email programs and trying to create something that works in all of them is really difficult. Keeping the layout simple is the only way to guarantee that it will be readable. A single column design with a header and footer image, like I used for Brian’s newsletter, is a good option as there isn’t too much to go wrong.

Investing in a few high quality photographs is really important if you want your website or MySpace page to look good. And if you’re a band and you're putting together a press kit, then professional photos are absolutely essential!

It’s perfectly ok to include the less professional looking photos in your website or MySpace photo galleries – most fans love these kind of candid shots and they’re great for promoting tours and CD signings and other events. But for your homepage photos and default MySpace pic, you need those killer photos to really make an impact.

I know that professional photo shoots can be expensive and if you’re an indie band, then your budget may not stretch to this. But there are other ways.

• Try contacting the colleges or art schools in your area to find out if they run any photography courses. If they do, then ask if any of the students would be willing to photograph you or your band, either for a small fee or in exchange for CDs or concert tickets. Many art students will jump at the chance to add some professional work to their portfolio.
• Look out for smaller photography studios that specialise in portraits or family photos. While this doesn’t sound very glamorous, it will often be an affordable option. As long as the photos are taken by a professional with a good camera in a properly lit studio, the actual setting doesn’t matter too much. Ask for the photos to be taken against a plain coloured background – your web designer will be able to edit out the background and add something a little more interesting!
• Do a little networking on MySpace and reach out to photographers in your area, particularly freelancers who are starting out in business. They may be willing to offer you a discount in exchange for some publicity.

If you end up with even just 5 or 6 great photos, that will be enough to build a website or MySpace page around. Plus they’ll look great on your promotional flyers and in your press kit, too!

Five Mistakes Band & Label Sites Make

And here are my 2cents…

Mp3 metadata

The point about mp3 metadata is really important. If you're offering free downloads from you website (which most artists do) then unless you've included the relevant ID3 tags, your details won't display in iTunes, Windows Media Player or any other kind of mp3 player. You should at the very least include you or your band's name, the track title and album title.

Most media players like iTunes and Windows Media Player will allow you to easily edit the tag information as you're importing your music. Another handy (and free) option is the AudioShell tag editor, which works with most Windows operating systems (sorry Mac people!). It's easy to use - once you've installed it, just right-click on any mp3 and select "properties". You'll see a new tab called "AudioShell Tag Editor" which will allow you to enter all the important information about your song. You can even include album artwork which will display in iTunes/Windows Media Player when your track is playing.

One way communication

This is becomming more and more important on the web today, especially for bands and musicians. Fans love to be able to communicate with their favourite artists, and this is one of the reasons that sites like MySpace and Facebook have become so popular.

It's also easy to provide this kind of two way communication on your own website. Writing a regular blog where your fans can post comments, adding a reviews page or guestbook and allowing visitors to comment on your photos are fantastic ways to build long term relationships with your fans. And because it's all done online, it's safe, too.

Too much Flash

Too much Flash is one of my biggest pet hates! Don't get me wrong - Flash is an amazing tool if it's used properly. It's ideal for advertising banners, audio/video playback and website headers. But if it's over used then it just gets in the way! Personally, I think Flash websites can be difficult to navigate and they often don’t behave the way a pure HTML/CSS site does.

But just because your website isn't all Flash, it doesn't mean it can't look wonderful! The Internet is evolving so quickly these days. There are so many new and exciting features available that we web designers weren't able to use a few years ago. The possibilities are endless.

Two more things...

Make sure your website is easy to navigate. There should be links to all the important sections on every page and your music must be easy to find. Ideally you should have an mp3 player or links to streaming mp3s right on your home page - make it one of the first things people see. If people have to go searching for your music, they probably won't bother.

Keep your site up to date. Post regular blog entries or new articles at least once a month, keep your photo gallery fresh and mix up your mp3 playlist on a regular basis. This helps make sure that people come back again and again.

I've designed websites for several people in the music industry over the past couple of years and one thing I've noticed is that there's a huge gap in the market for high quality, custom designed band websites that allow fans to really interact with the site and with the band.

The reason that websites like MySpace and Facebook have become so popular is because they allow people to communicate not only with each other, but also with the musicians and bands they admire. So it makes sense to encourage your fans communicate with you via your website, as well as on MySpace. Providing regular updates, a personal blog and a means by which your fans can "talk" to you means that they'll visit more often and probably help spread the word about your music.

All of my sites feature state of the art blogging systems which allow fans to leave comments on news articles, post reviews of albums and live shows, and even comment on the photos in your gallery!

I've put together a package designed to give bands all the tools they'll need to build a great web presence. The package includes the following:

• Unique website design
• Blog/news section
• Band bios
• Photo gallery
• Contact form
• Audio/video player
• Music page with mp3 downloads
• Content management system
• FREE MySpace page design
• FREE advertising banners

Lots of add-on features are also available, such as a forum, mailing list and gigs calendar. Visit the features page on my site to find out more.

If you're using Windows XP, this is not a problem - there's a handy Multiple IE tool which allows you to install older versions of Internet Explorer and run them alongside each other. If however, like me, you've taken the plunge and upgraded to Vista, the only way to run IE6 is by using virtualisation software. Luckily Microsoft have released Virtual PC 2007 - it's free - and a VPC image containing a pre-activated copy of Windows XP and IE6.

Now I know this has been blogged about a lot, but it took me over an hour of Googling and fiddling with settings to actually connect to the Internet using IE6/VPC. I thought I'd post some simple instructions on how to get it up and running - maybe it'll help someone else out. It's easy when you know how.

Download and install the software

This part is really straightforward and shouldn't give you any trouble.

1. Download Virtual PC 2007 and install it.
2. Next, download the IE6 VPC Image. This will take a while as it's a whopping 643MB, so go and have a coffee or walk the dog.
3. When the VPC image has downloaded, you'll need to expand it (just double click on it) and save it to a directory of your choice - I put mine in C:\Program Files\vpcImages.
4. Open Virtual PC and click "New" to configure a new virtual machine. Choose the following options from the wizard:
   • Options: select "create a virtual machine".
   • Name and location: leave it at the default location and name it something like "IE6 Image".
   • Operating System: select Windows XP
   • Memory: leave it at the defaut of 128MB - you can change this later if you need to.
   • Virtual Hard Disk Options: choose "an existing virtual hard disk".
   • On the next screen browse to the directory you save the expanded VPC image to in step 3, select the IE6 image and finish the wizard.

Getting on line with Virtual PC

Now for the part I had trouble with - connection to my network and getting online.

1. Go back to the Virtual PC console and click on "Settings", then on "Networking" and go to the "Adapter 1" dropdown menu on the right - this is where you tell the VPC image how to connect to the Internet. If you're on a wireless network, you should see your network card listed - select this. Otherwise, select "Shared Networking (NAT)" and click ok.
2. Back in the Virtual PC console, select the IE6 image and click on start. Once XP has started open Internet Explorer 6, go to Tools > Internet Options > Connections and click on "setup". Choose the following options from the wizard:
   • Network Connection Type: Connect to the Internet
   • Getting Ready: choose Set up my connection manually
   • Internet Connection: choose Connect using a broadband connection that is always on
   • Click on "Finish".
3. I had to complete one more step to get it work. While still at the "Connections" tab, click on "LAN settings" and deselect the proxy server option and click ok. I'm not sure why this would be required, but it wouldn't connect with it selected.
4. You should now hopefully be online.

Viewing local files

If you're running a webserver such as Apache or IIS on your PC and using localhost to view your files, this won't work in the VPC image. Instead you'll need to use the IP address of your computer, which will take you to your Apache htdocs directory. (To find your IP address, just open the Command Prompt and type "ipconfig" - you'll need the IPv4 address.)

One final note

According to Microsoft, Virtual PC will only run on Vista Business and Vista Ultimate (and their XP equivalents). However, I've successfully installed it on my laptop which is running Vista Premium and it seems to run just fine.

Not only did they include my site in their July listing, but they also included it in their top 10 websites of July! Now THAT felt good.

If you haven’t already checked out Whooray Records, take a look - I absolutely love the colour scheme on this site!

http://whooray-records.com

The website acts as an online press kit for Los Angeles based rock musician, Brian Ray. Since it’s aimed at press/PR people rather than fans, the content needed to be a little more formal that his main website, but we wanted to give it a slightly grungy, indie style to reflect Brian’s personality and music style.

Bearing in mind that the website's target audience would mainly be busy media professionals, I kept the design as simple and easy to read as possible. I chose a colour scheme of deep pinks, browns, and ochres which Brian really loved - he said it reminded him of old-style Russian posters and adverts. I used relatively large, well-spaced text and a straightforward navigation menu and included prominent links to Brian's main website and his MySpace page.

The website includes the following features:

• Valid XHTML/CSS layout
• A modern Web 2.0 style layout with a striking colour scheme
• Slimbox photo gallery
• Flash mp3 player and streaming audio playlist
• A randomly loaded banner on each page, displaying review snippets and quotes about Brian's music.

You can see the website at www.whooray-records.com.

Dan came to me looking for a simple website where he could promote his state of the art studio, showcase some of his work and provide a point of contact for people to make bookings. When he first approached me, he was armed with all his site content, photographs and mp3s, and he even had a list of other websites whose style he liked. This made putting together his website was a breeze and Dan was a pleasure to work with!

You can visit Escape Route Productions at http://www.escaperouteproductions.com.