MP3unsigned News

Nowhere on the site are the upgrades more visible that on the new Artists Pages. Older users who have had their pages updated will see plenty of space for updating their information and pimping their profile. The following guide should help you to get your profile up to scratch in a few minutes.

Artists Pic

Make sure you use a good quality image, especially if you want a shot at appearing on the homepage as Featured Artist. A lot of people will judge a book by its cover so if you want the best chance of having getting your music listened to put some time and thought into the image you use. Remember, this little image will also appear beside your tracks in the Top 100 and the Charts.

Player

The new flash player is a significant upgrade over the previous one. It offers enhanced sound quality and default volume with no compression at higher bitrates. Have you ever noticed on some sites that the track you listen to through your computers MP3 software sounds a lot better than what you post to your page? This won’t bother you on MP3Unsigned so please, for the love of all that is holy… upload the best quality tracks you can! We recommend a minimum of 128kbps and a preferred rate of 192kbps or over.

Another thing to bear in mind is that the player can accommodate up to 100 of your tracks. Unless your creativity matches the productivity of a bunny rabbit in heat this should be more than enough space for you to show off your talents. You’ve got the space and the player so you might as well use them.

One last thing about the player, just below it you will notice a tab called ‘Listening To’ - this is your unique playlist of tracks you like from other artist on MP3Unsigned.com Anytime you go to an artists page and you are logged in, you can add any of their tracks to you playlist by clicking the + symbol beside the track that is playing in their player.

Artist Comments

This is where you get to describe your track. You can explain the equipment you used, the concept behind the piece, what motivated you to write is - whatever you want. You’ve got plenty of space so you might as well use it. It’s a good idea to add plenty of information about the track in this section so the listener can get a better sense of what you have achieved or what you want them to experience from your music.

If you want user comments then make sure to ask for them. If you want honest constructive criticism then ask for it too. Once of the things that this music community prides itself on is honesty and straight talking, so get with the program and forget about just giving and receiving vacuous comments. Bear in mind though that not everyone likes to have their music dissected and laid bare on front of them, use your tack comments to get across what you are looking for.

Lyrics

If you’ve got em, then post em. We’ve given you a tab beside your comments to post up lyrics for any tracks that have them. Again, posting lyrics is a good idea as it keep your listener more engaged and focused on your work.

Gallery

This is self explanatory, people like to get as much of an impression as possible from an artist whose music they like. Give them what they want, use this to share your art, photos or even just images that you have found that you feel express what you’re all about. Is is advisabel to have at least one picture in your gallery as this will help to fill out the look of your artist page and make things more interesting.

Video Feed

Use this to upload your music videos. It is becoming increasingly easy to make videos using free downloadable software and even free online resources. If you have a music video this is the place for it. The video feed works as a feed from your youtube channel. All you have to do is input the code to your channel in your account and you’re up and running. If you don’t have a music video well you can still use this to show whatever you want on youtube!

Artist Bio

This is very important. It is strongly advised that you add some information to your Bio to let listeners know more about the person behind the music. Use the text editor to make things look interesting, you can even insert more images here such as banners etc.

Artist News

Recording a new track? Playing some gigs? Involved in a collaboration or new band? This is the place for it!

Reviews

Reviews are done by other members of the site and are usually organised through the reviews section of the forum. Make sure you read the stickies first in the reviews part of the forum before requesting a review.

Influenced By

List your influences here - what other musicians have helped to create your sound and mold you into the artist you are today?

Twitter

Here are some facts about Twitter:

Links

Some links worth putting in here include:

• Fan page for your music on Facebook
• Your Twitter link
• Link to your forum profile
• Links to your music on other networks (soundcloud, myspace, soundclick etc)
• Causes, Influences etc - any link you want to promote goes here (illegal links such as warez, illegal downloads, crack software or porn is strictly prohibited)

Every musician has multiple profiles across different sites and networks, we understand this. So why not just post them all in one place.

Recommends / Recommended By

This was a change that we had to make for a number of reasons. Previously, everyone had a list of links to other artists who they recommended and artists who they were recommended by. Rather than having rambling lists of links at the bottom of your page we have replace this with a grid that displays artist images from your Recommends / Recommended By list. This list recyles and is randomly chosen every time your page is clicked or refreshed. It displays 16 images on each side and ia fixed size so your page will not run the risk of skewing out of shape. We will probably rework this down the line but for now it helps to round off your pages nicely. This also offers yet another reason for you to have good images on your page becuase your pic will be appearing randomly on other artist pages who have recommended you across the site.

Note: To recommend an artist you simply click the Recommend button above the flash player.