Few weeks ago, I participated in the Audiojungle composition challenge. Audiojungle (AJ) is a market place where you can sell and buy audio clips for commercial usage without worrying about copyright. Basically, you pay for the suitable clips composed by musician registered with AJ. Then you have the right to use the clip in your video, your projects and, your presentation.
The challenge is simple. A short phrase of six notes was given. The participants used the notes, without changing the interval, to compose an original music clip. The length is best between 30-60 seconds. You can change the rhythm, tempo, key, but not the interval. It has to be clear that you are using the given motif to compose your music clip.
This is what I like to do - composing music. So I took the challenge and created a clip of about 60 seconds in length. You can hear my composition by clicking here.
I am so lucky that my composition was being shortlisted in the final 20 best entries. The winner will be selected via a poll, where anyone from anywhere can vote. You don’t have to be an AJ member to vote.
At first, I only got a few votes but the leader at that time had around 112 votes. I am a long way behind. Apparently, without doing any promotion, I am not going to win the contest. I believe there are not many people who will listen to every clip, and cast the vote for their favourite entry.
So I started to promote very aggressively on 5th of October 2008. When the voting ended on 8th of October, I won the contest with a total of 258 votes.
Here, I am going to share what I did in those three to four days that help me to gain enough votes to win at the end.
How and where to promote
In order to win, you need to get people to vote for your song. The first step is to let people know about the contest. That’s not so hard. The second step is to get people to go to the AJ site and vote for your music. I would say this is not as easy as it sounds. The “conversion rate” is quite low if you spam those who don’t know about you. The best conversion rate you can get is to ask help from those who are very close to you.
It is impossible to track the conversion because I don’t know who actually casted the votes, unless they told me they did. However, we certainly can figure out who will support you and help you to cast your vote.
At first, I don’t really spend time to promote because I though that this contest shall be a “fair” game. Only the best music wins! But it didn’t turn out the way it should be. Some not really popular entries were getting more votes than those who are favored. I got comment from other musicians at AJ, especially Cube3 who thinks that my music deserve more votes. That’s what motivates me to promote aggressively in order to win. I should live up to the standard when other musicians sincerely think that I deserve to win.
Here are the places where I promote the contest:
1. Blogs
I operates three blogs.
KCLau’s Money Tips - This is the most active and popular blog among the three. It has over 900 RSS subscribers, and over 300 newsletter subscribers at the point of writing. The first thing I did is send a broadcast email to subscribers, and subsequently posted a request on my blog. Since this blog has nothing to do with music, I don’t expect high voting rates. Most of this blog readers don’t know that I am a musician. So I gave away 20 of my solo music album CDs as promotional gifts. Although they are not my music fans, but most of them appreciate the advice and articles I put up regarding personal finance. Some would return the favour by casting a vote.
Pianologist - I co-write this blog with a good friend, who is a professional pianist. The number of subscribers is around 190. I posted a promotional article about AJ contest there. It probably attracted some votes too.
Klavier Creation - This is my personal music blog. I only publish materials that’s related to my music composition here. It is a brand new blog and there are not many subscribers. But those who subscribed are my music fans. I posted a request here and the conversion should be the highest compared to the other two blogs.
2. Personal mailing list
I guess that this is the most useful list to ask for votes. There are thousands of contacts in my gmail accounts. However, I didn’t email everyone of them because it will look like spam mail. I sent a request to my close friends, relatives and some colleagues.
I think many of the participants also asked for votes from their close encounters.
3. Facebook
I did promotion on Facebook very actively for several days. I write on every friend’s wall to ask them to look into the composition challenge. I think this has a very high conversion rate because most of them are friends. But my friends are very limited at that time because I didn’t actually use Facebook on a regular basis.
In order to get more votes, I started to dig up a lot of old friends, my school mates, and pratically anyone that I can think of who knows me previous to this contest. When I write on their walls, their friends will also see the message. I think some of them did respond and cast a vote too.
You can add me as a friend at Facebook here.
4. StumbleUpon
Stumbleupon is a social bookmarking sites. One of its feature is to send your virtual friends a link with personal message. When they use the “stumble” function, they will reach the AJ voting page. At the same time, they will receive my message to request for votes. If they think my music is worth the vote, they will cast it instantly. I sent every mutual friends on Stumbleupon this personal message together with the links.
You can add me as a mutual friend here: http://kclau.stumbleupon.com/
5. Imeem
Imeem is a social networking sites where musicians and fans share their playlist, videos, and music-related posts. I am a member there for quite some times and I had made quite a number of friends along the way.
I send personal message to everyone in my Imeem friend list. I didn’t actually meet any of them in real life. But there are some who responded and informed me that they casted a vote for my entry because they love it too.
The greatest help came from Desmond Williams, who is a very active Imeem user and musician. He runs a very active forum there. He guided me to post my request at the Pimp My Song group which has thousands of members. There are members who gladly voted my entry. Thanks Desmond!
You can add me as a friend on Imeem here.
Conversion rate
Basically, those are the main places where I did my online promotion. In those few days, I had reached thousands of friends. At the end, the total vote is only 258. It is not a high conversion rate, which I think is around 10-20%.
Nevertheless, I am very grateful to those who support my music and help me won this contest. Without your help, I wouldn’t have made it.
What I learn and gain
As promised, the winner of the AJ composition challenge will get a Digidesign Mbox 2 Pro. I didn’t get the exact prize. But Flash Den paid me the cash value of US$799.00 via Paypal a few days later after the announcement, which I can use it anyway I want. I won’t use the money to buy the Mbox 2 Pro. Instead, I will upgrade my music studio on several areas, probably a decent pro-audio interface and a compressor for audio recording.
Beside winning the prize money, I also gained other stuff that can’t be measured in monetary value.
1. Meeting many old friends
This contest had motivated me to dig up a lot of old friends via facebook. I found them through friends’ friends, some network search and also email search. Some of them I haven’t met for more than a decade! Now I had become very active at Facebook.
2. Getting to know some musician buddies
I met some great musicians at the contest. The most special one is Cube3. He is the 1st runner up in the contest test with 203 votes. He is very kind and knowledgable in audio production. We are competitors from the beginning, but later we had become close friends at the end of the contest. We chatted regularly throughout the contest and shared some music insights.
Later, he also remixed my music composition Understand using his hi-end, top notch audio setup. I will share about this another day. Now, we contact regularly and will work on some projects together in the future.
3. Gaining new fans
From the composition challenge, I’ve got more exposure and online presence. Some music lovers had become my fans and subscribed to this blog. It’s a great feeling to know that there are people who actually appreciate the music I do.
Never stop promoting!
Although I won the contest, but I think that I am yet a great marketer. The main reason I won is probably because of I’ve started promoting music online months before the contest. I’ve had some followers and that helps at the time their help is needed.
Promotion is an ongoing process. Basically I did full time aggressive promotion during the last few days of the AJ contest. I would say that I am lucky to win.
Finally, I would like to thank all of you who had paid attention to this, regardless of whether you voted or not. This is a great experience for me, and a rewarding one.
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