Author: David Nevue

Publisher:  Midnight Raid Productions

The following review was contributed by NORM GOLDMAN:  Editor of Bookpleasures. CLICK TO VIEW  Norm Goldman's Reviews     

To read Norm's Interview With David Nevue CLICK HERE  

David Nevue is an independent musician (pianist and composer) who has been promoting his music on the Internet since 1995.

In his debut foray into the world of writing non-fiction, Nevue draws upon his extensive background and experience of marketing music on the Internet. The result is How To Promote Your Music Successfully on the Internet, wherein Nevue provides musicians with a step-by-step approach to Internet entrepreneurship that explores promoting, selling, and distributing music online.

Integrating his personal know-how with solid information and anecdotes, Nevue logically arranges his manual into twenty chapters that offers the nuts-and-bolts as to how to set up your music business on the Internet, how to create music samples for your visitors, optimizing your site for search engines, maximizing the targeting of your customers, effective press releases, building powerful mailing lists, improving your Internet sales, Internet radio, using the Internet to secure gigs, things to avoid, effective use of advertising, and Internet resources.  All of which is indispensable for musicians aspiring to be successful in the music business.

In an upbeat reader-friendly prose that does not overwhelm readers with technical detail and conjecture, Nevue tips are both current and relevant to the music profession. To exemplify, referring to the chapter Twelve Things to Do Right Now to Improve Your Internet Sales, readers are directed to clean up keywords and page titles, only submit the most important pages to Google, make sure that the web design is simple, facilitate the listening to your music and the purchasing of your music, offer deals that are too good to refuse, overcome the fear with desire, create more product, remember to stay in touch with your customers and be friendly, constantly update your site, and use the microphone. All of these topics are briefly and concisely examined giving readers a balanced blend of useful guidelines that ultimately demystifies the process of selling music online in a simple and undemanding manner. If you glance at the tip pertaining to creating more product, Nevue counsels his readers that the more merchandise you have to sell, the more opportunity you have to sell and the more money you can earn.

How often would musicians consider selling sheet music, guitar tabs, album lyric sheets, signed photos, signature CDs, band merchandise (tee shirts, mugs, mouse pads, etc...,) live and “bootleg” albums, digital downloads, e-books, or anything else that can be related to their music?  In other words, forget about being timid or intimidated when using the Internet to sell yourself and your products, and even though you may consider yourself first and foremost a musician, you still can’t ignore the business facet of your profession.

There is no doubt that the music industry is at a turning point. It is vital that musicians have at their fingertips the necessary facts for making informed decisions that will bring their success to fruition. However, as with anything else in their lives, musicians must take the ultimate responsibility for achieving their career goals and as Nevue states: “to succeed on the Internet, you must prepare yourself for the long haul and prepare to work hard. Success on the Internet won’t come overnight.” There is no easy path to success other than hard work. With the Internet, however, a good deal of the playing field has now been leveled offering musicians opportunities that they never experienced in the past.

 How to Promote Your Music Successfully on the Internet delivers what it promises beyond clichés, generalizations and oversimplifications that are so often prevalent in books of a similar nature. This book is a must read for all musicians and one that should occupy a prominent space on their book shelves. For its practicality and helpfulness, David Nevue’s effort should be applauded.