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Old 12-04-2018, 04:03 PM   #1
bd32
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Default Web page for musician. Best way to start?

I figure many musicians here so I thought I'd ask if people could recommend a service that lets someone who can't code etc set one up. One that gives bio, lets me sell some music , gig dates etc. The main thing that I'd like to do is keep the domain name if I decide to change services.It wouldn't be heavy traffic. Appreciate any recommendations.
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Old 12-04-2018, 04:14 PM   #2
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Firstly decide and secure your web domain name. There are so many great services now for simple to set up and professional looking web sites. Services like Wix, Square Space, Weebly to name just a few. Most have relatively affordable (or even free) usage and will host your site too. You always however get more features when you spend more. Generally the free level options will not let you use your own domain name.

Some musicians use social media sites as their main way of selling themselves but I’m of the generation that is pretty hopeless at social media. I do think things are great now though for creating simple and pro looking sites without knowing much if any code. Writing my first web site I had to try and learn some code and muddle my way through. I managed to create an ok sort of site but it wouldn’t have won any design awards. Nowadays it is so simple in comparison with these services available.
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Old 12-04-2018, 05:14 PM   #3
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Just to stick my oar in.. I've had a few websites over the years - I've now not got any because they were not cost effective and they hardly got any traffic. They all completely pale compared to what I've achieved using facebook. I get almost all my work through facebook..
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Old 12-05-2018, 01:34 AM   #4
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Soundclick.com is pretty good

See the link in my signature below.
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Old 12-05-2018, 02:38 AM   #5
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Agree on facebook.
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Old 12-05-2018, 04:58 AM   #6
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Another good site to look at especially for selling music is Bandcamp
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Old 12-05-2018, 11:08 AM   #7
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Websites aren't worth the trouble without proper social media support. The only people that will find them are the people you give the links to. That's one of the things social media is for. Google is unlikely to help you until if/when your site already has alot of traffic/links from other sources.

That said, I would NEVER post anything creative, especially my music, directly on fakebook. Read their terms. You are basically giving away all your rights. They own everything you post. Put LINKS to your stuff there only.
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Old 12-06-2018, 06:48 AM   #8
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Originally Posted by Steviebone View Post
That said, I would NEVER post anything creative, especially my music,
directly on fakebook. Read their terms. You are basically giving away
all your rights. They own everything you post.
This is very true.

And that is something many musician forget: They tell a long rigmarole
about their keeping their copyrights - and not beeing stolen. But then
they put their songs up on Facebook - and so give away just every of
their songs. Weird!
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Old 12-06-2018, 06:55 AM   #9
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Originally Posted by bd32 View Post
One (website) that gives bio, lets me sell some music , gig dates etc.
My recommendation:

1. You need a domain-provider (which costs a little).

2. You need a hoster (which normally is free).

That's all! If you have (1) and (2) you just need very little
Know-How about HTML - only 5 HTML-commands - and you can do
all you want!

The 5 HTML-commands are: <head>, <body>, <p>, <a href="...">, <img>
Just look for these and you have it all!
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Last edited by enroe; 12-08-2018 at 12:27 PM. Reason: <link> substituted by <a href="...">
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Old 12-06-2018, 08:27 AM   #10
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Default Bandzoogle

Strong recommendation for Bandzoogle, most especially if you're new to it all or are just too busy to mess with website maintenance like I am. They have templates, drag and drop editing, good customer support and you can outsource your music sales and credit card processing stuff to them.

If you'd like to see what they look like in practice, my website is TexasMusicForge.com - I use that website to support music sales, licensing, podcast publishing and touring in the US and abroad. It took me a couple of hours to set up, tweak and load content into. Worth mentioning - in light of some comments on this thread - that it's really easy to load a new song onto the site, make it available for sale, then generate a link for a good looking mp3 player which loads well on Facebook without actually loading your music onto Facebook's servers.

There are cheaper alternatives and a lot of people swear by bandcamp and other services. Bandzoogle has worked for what I need my website to do without having to invest time in learning WordPress or work around the shortcomings of some other sites' approach to building a website. Your mileage may vary.
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Old 12-06-2018, 10:12 AM   #11
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Originally Posted by enroe View Post
My recommendation:

1. You need a domain-provider (which costs a little).

2. You need a hoster (which normally is free).

That's all! If you have (1) and (2) you just need very little
Know-How about HTML - only 5 HTML-commands - and you can do
all you want!

The 5 HTML-commands are: <head>, <body>, <p>, <link>, <img>
Just look for these and you have it all!
Well this is GROSSLY oversimplified to say the least. And perhaps a bit misleading.

1. getting a domain name is easy enough (although there are alot of domain name scams out there so beware). Make sure you actually own it and can point it to wherever you decide to host without limitation.

2. Hosting, especially if you want to stream music from your website, is not at all an equal or level playing field. Although there are a ton of free or cheap 'hosting' sites, again you need to be careful and read all the fine print. You generally get what you pay for. Can you backup your website easily to your own equipment? Are you using templates?

Stay away from templates if you can. You generally CANNOT back these up properly nor can you move them to another hosting provider later. You will be stuck starting from scratch. This is because the 'template' approach means you are depending on the hosting service to construct your pages on the fly. The resulting HTML has dependencies which are specific to the hoster and not accessible to you. You can't simply save the page to your hard disk and put it up somewhere else.

3. If you want to stream your music you are going to need a host that permits and supports it. And you are going to need more than those simple HTML markups to make anything worth looking at. If you want to get ranked in Google eventually you will need a much better understanding of SEO, CSS, mobile multi-platform, etc. Again, there are templates out there that can help you with that but you will be tied to the hoster. Any attempt to move later will mean starting over.

Your analogy is like telling someone they can type:

print('hello world');

and now they are a computer programmer.
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Old 12-06-2018, 10:32 AM   #12
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This is very true.
No, it isn't, the policy is they can 'use' the thing that you post which has been mostly true for any entity long before the internet, they don't own your copyright or anything like that:

Quote:
For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (IP content), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.
Now one may somewhat rightfully take issue with the fact they can share/use it, but it is only a license for them to do that, they do not own anything of yours that is IP albeit there are thousands of people misreading the term and perpetuating a certain amount of nonsense without fact checking. Granted, I'd bet that there are customer support people at FB that misread this also but in reality they don't actually own your song if you post it there, to state it in plain terms.
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Old 12-06-2018, 10:47 AM   #13
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No, it isn't, the policy is they can 'use' the thing that you post which has been mostly true for any entity long before the internet, they don't own your copyright or anything like that:



Now one may somewhat rightfully take issue with the fact they can share/use it, but it is only a license for them to do that, they do not own anything of yours that is IP albeit there are thousands of people misreading the term and perpetuating a certain amount of nonsense without fact checking. Granted, I'd bet that there are customer support people at FB that misread this also but in reality they don't actually own your song if you post it there, to state it in plain terms.
This is more accurate. Thanks Karbon. Nonetheless, do you want to give fakebook the right to use/publish your music without restriction and/or notice/compensation? Frankly, I don't trust Fakebook to follow their own rules anyway. Better to post links to a site YOU control. Karbon's detail is correct but the end result for me is the same. I wouldn't post anything I care about there.
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Old 12-06-2018, 11:00 AM   #14
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This is more accurate. Thanks Karbon. Nonetheless, do you want to give fakebook the right to use/publish your music without restriction and/or notice/compensation? Frankly, I don't trust Fakebook to follow their own rules anyway. Better to post links to a site YOU control. Karbon's detail is correct but the end result for me is the same. I wouldn't post anything I care about there.
I don't really use Facebook much (for different reasons) but I don't think this is about them using/publishing one's music in the way most interpret. Part of it is surely a CYA since it is a social site and other users are going to use FB to like/share what you post to others (FB would have some responsibility there with IP that is posted) and/or general promotion, which might be similar to a formal song/band site where the site wants the right to use your content as examples of the great content contained therein.

As far as the original post, there is going to be a line where they just need to use something like soundcloud and free or it gets close enough to being a business that it's going to be worth joining/paying for a site dedicated to this.
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Old 12-06-2018, 11:13 AM   #15
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Thanks for these replies. They are telling me a lot I didn't know. I do have a Facebook page but the thing that disturbs me about that is for people that don't have Facebook pages themselves. I'd like for them to be able to communicate and interact outside of it. Good to see some of those hosting recommendations. So I can just go out and buy a domain name on my own and then use it with one of the hosting sites?
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Old 12-06-2018, 11:15 AM   #16
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Thanks for these replies. They are telling me a lot I didn't know. I do have a Facebook page but the thing that disturbs me about that is for people that don't have Facebook pages themselves. I'd like for them to be able to communicate and interact outside of it. Good to see some of those hosting recommendations. So I can just go out and buy a domain name on my own and then use it with one of the hosting sites?
You can and just as a random example, someone like GoDaddy will sell them relatively cheap and typically has great customer service - as in helping you navigate any technical settings like nameservers, DNS etc. so that you can point that shiny new domain to whichever hosting site you choose. Just make sure the hosting site allows vanity (aka your own) domain names to be pointed to your site.
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Old 12-06-2018, 12:24 PM   #17
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The thing about Facebook is that even the most tech-ignorant person can share a link - that's a lot of what it was about when it started - while having a personal domain name might be the most interesting thing about your site, and few people are going to be able to easily share your site pages.

Back in the day, MySpace was the place to send bookers for your demos, and it worked (really).

So maybe Facebook with links to Soundcloud or Bandcamp or whatever is the way to go.

I had one band with a wizzo website AND a forum, which was populated to start with mainly by people who knew us from a regular venue. But you end up being your own fanclub secretary.
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Old 12-06-2018, 01:45 PM   #18
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Originally Posted by enroe View Post
My recommendation:

1. You need a domain-provider (which costs a little).
Don't use the cheapest one. Try to find a reliable one. These usually cost a tiny bit more. A reliable one will register the domain name with you as registrant. Some cheap ones register your domain under their own name. That will cost you dearly when you decide to transfer, give away, or sell your domain. Cheap ones are around 10$ a year for a .com. Reliable ones are about double that.

Quote:
2. You need a hoster (which normally is free).
A free host is nice to play around with. It will hurt your Google ranking. An affordable reliable one is hard to find, because there are so many out there. Ask around. Also, support is important if you're wetting your feet. The free ones only have paying support, or no support at all.

Quote:
That's all! If you have (1) and (2) you just need very little
Know-How about HTML - only 5 HTML-commands - and you can do
all you want!
You really don't want to write your own HTML etc. There's plenty of CMS packages around. Even Wordpress can be pretty good now they have auto updates, if you stay away from some plugins. Ask your host. They'll usually have a shortlist of CMS packages they support and these days, a serious host will have an auto install for these. That gets you up and running in an hour or so.

Quote:
The 5 HTML-commands are: <head>, <body>, <p>, <link>, <img>
Just look for these and you have it all!
I'd like to see your pages...

I run several sites of my own. The oldest one is nearly 20 years in existence, has about 50.000 visitors monthly and is about food. Sorry, only in Dutch and link only via pm. It started as a research project into search engines. That's why I don't want to post a link here. Would disturb my measurements, as this forum is very big. Another one is over ten years old and about audio, but also only in Dutch. Besides those, I manage a few dozens of company sites.

It's not impossible to score well with a personal site without social media. But it takes patience and a lot of hard work. You need lots of text, as Google can't index pictures, music, or video.

If you don't want to invest in hard work, a FB page would be better. You can always put links on there to your music on a reliable host that doesn't steal your content. But even a FB page requires work. You need to keep it alive and that requires regular "news". It also requires you to search FB for people with similar interests.
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Old 12-06-2018, 02:05 PM   #19
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Originally Posted by karbomusic View Post
You can and just as a random example, someone like GoDaddy...
GoDaddy is perhaps the prime "stay away" example. There have been several instances of people losing their registration to... Godaddy. After which, Godaddy sold the domain to a competitor of the original owner.

Just do a search for Godaddy and scam...

One host that used to be good and US based, is Bluehost:
https://www.bluehost.com/

But, honestly, I haven't used them in years.

In Europe, one of the biggest and cheapest that is reliable, is OVH. They're French, but also available in English:
https://www.ovh.co.uk/
Their products range from free to professional. Support is good. And they're big enough to have server farms all over the world.

Another very big and cheap one is one.com. They are reliable, but their support is sometimes not that great and they oversell a lot. If you're lucky, your 1$ a month account will be reasonably fast. If not, you might be on the same server/ip as some adult content hosts and that will hurt your ranking and speed.

If you're dead serious, your own dedicated server will set you back around 50 €/month. Far more storage, but far more work. Could provide room for 100-500 sites.

And then there's the cloud. On the same level of expertise as your own dedicated server. Is being sold as extremely reliable, but all the big ones have been down for hours lately. Except IBM, but they are expensive and not available unless you're a business.

Besides, being down for a couple of days doesn't hurt your Google ranking.
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Old 12-06-2018, 02:07 PM   #20
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GoDaddy is perhaps the prime "stay away" example. There have been several instances of people losing their registration to... Godaddy. After which, Godaddy sold the domain to a competitor of the original owner.
I call BS, I have probably 60 (yes 60) domains there for 15 years now, I've spoken with support multiple times and thus far always a pleasure and one of the rare instances where someone actually answers the phone, and anytime a domain is near expiry, if it gets too close, they will actually call me to confirm.

And don't forget, GoDaddy is one of the reasons domains aren't 50.00 USD a pop like they were then Network Solutions was basically one of the only domain resellers. Been in that business for a very long time.
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Old 12-06-2018, 02:17 PM   #21
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I call BS, I have probably 60 (yes 60) domains there for 15 years now, I've spoken with support multiple times and thus far always a pleasure and one of the rare instances where someone actually answers the phone, and anytime a domain is near expiry, if it gets to close, they will actually call me to confirm.

And don't forget, GoDaddy is one of the reasons domains aren't 50.00 USD a pop like they were then Network Solutions was basically one of the only domain resellers. Been in that business for a very long time.
I've had customers with domains there too. I've moved all of them away without any problem. Except one. And that one lost their domain.

Just search a bit. You'll see.

Here's a typical one, admitted from 10 years ago:
https://princesimon.wordpress.com/20...newal-process/

They might have cleaned up their act today, but I've seen enough scams, threats and other unsavory practices from that outfit to never do business with them again.
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Old 12-06-2018, 02:34 PM   #22
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I've seen the occasional domain lost but not attributed to any one registrar, and almost always some negligence was involved somewhere by the owner. However, my point is that I've done enough long-term business with them (and with other registrars), I don't need to search for rare exceptions since exceptions are called exceptions for a reason...

Quote:
GoDaddy is perhaps the prime "stay away" example.
A few instances of a lost domain isn't a prime example of a company to completely avoid, it just isn't. It isn't about today, been using them since roughly 2002 or whenever they came on the scene.

BTW, that article you posted is also BS based on my actual experience, not to mention, domains that expire must stay in limbo for 45 days IIRC after the expiration so someone isn't telling the entire story.
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Old 12-06-2018, 07:30 PM   #23
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Steviebon
That said, I would NEVER post anything creative, especially my music, directly on fakebook. Read their terms. You are basically giving away
all your rights. They own everything you post.
Quote:
Originally Posted by enroe
This is very true.
Quote:
Originally Posted by karbomusic View Post
No, it isn't, the policy is they can 'use' the thing that you post which has been mostly true for any entity long before the internet, they don't own your copyright or anything like that:
Oh yes, it is true. Did you read your own quotation:

Quote:
For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (IP content), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.
Of course you don't hand over the copyrights as such. That is - here in
Germany at least - impossible. But you give facebook all rights to use
your content, your music! And not only that: You give facebook ALSO the
right to give your contant to any 3rd party.

And not only that: Of course the license ends when you delete your IP-
content. But everything at the 3rd party stays! Haha - you know what that
means?

Of course, we can go into more detail - and then it becomes even more
absurd!

Quote:
Originally Posted by karbomusic View Post
Now one may somewhat rightfully take issue with the fact they can share/use it, but it is only a license for them to do that, they do not own anything of yours that is IP albeit there are thousands of people misreading the term and perpetuating a certain amount of nonsense without fact checking. Granted, I'd bet that there are customer support people at FB that misread this also but in reality they don't actually own your song if you post it there, to state it in plain terms.
"only a license" ... which in fact never ends. What more could they
take away?

In contrast to your statement most facebook members are just infinitely
naive regarding the exploitation of their works. This fact is only relativised
by the fact that most works are just on a level where a professional
utilization is very improbable.
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Old 12-06-2018, 07:32 PM   #24
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Of course, we can go into more detail - and then it becomes even more
absurd!
Please do. The only absurdity is you quoting another poster and agreeing that FB's owning "everything you post" was very true, it isn't. I don't care if you disagree with it, that's fine, I do care about accurate statements when giving advice.
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Old 12-06-2018, 07:33 PM   #25
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Originally Posted by Steviebone View Post
Stay away from templates if you can. You generally CANNOT back these up properly nor can you move them to another hosting provider later.
No, there are thousands of templates just in HTML.
You need to download them - on your PC - modify them
with ANY editor - and there you are.

Nothing is more easy - the backup is on your PC.
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Old 12-06-2018, 07:39 PM   #26
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@cyrano: Good advices here from you!

Quote:
Originally Posted by cyrano View Post
You really don't want to write your own HTML etc. There's plenty of CMS packages around. Even Wordpress can be pretty good now they have auto updates, if you stay away from some plugins. Ask your host. They'll usually have a shortlist of CMS packages they support and these days, a serious host will have an auto install for these. That gets you up and running in an hour or so.
Of course you can take one of the CMS packages. And there's
plenty of them.

But you also can write your own HTML very easy. I'd like
to encourage everyone to write his own HTML. And for a
first result it is rather easy (--> see next post).

The advantage is: You always have full control over your
own HTML-site. And slowly but steadily you might improve
your site - and still understand every code on your side.
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Old 12-06-2018, 07:52 PM   #27
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Quote:
Originally Posted by enroe
The 5 HTML-commands are: <head>, <body>, <p>, <link>, <img>
Just look for these and you have it all!
Quote:
Originally Posted by cyrano View Post
I'd like to see your pages...
Haa yeah, you're very invited to visit my pages (--> see this footer)!

I'd like to encourage everyone to make his own page. And really: As
a start you just need a good "web-picture" - put it in via <img> and
voila: Your first website looks as good as this webpic.

Quote:
Originally Posted by cyrano View Post
I run several sites of my own. The oldest one is nearly 20 years in existence, has about 50.000 visitors monthly and is about food. Sorry, only in Dutch and link only via pm. It started as a research project into search engines. That's why I don't want to post a link here. Would disturb my measurements, as this forum is very big. Another one is over ten years old and about audio, but also only in Dutch. Besides those, I manage a few dozens of company sites.

It's not impossible to score well with a personal site without social media. But it takes patience and a lot of hard work. You need lots of text, as Google can't index pictures, music, or video.

If you don't want to invest in hard work, a FB page would be better. You can always put links on there to your music on a reliable host that doesn't steal your content. But even a FB page requires work. You need to keep it alive and that requires regular "news". It also requires you to search FB for people with similar interests.
All true, yes.

Nevertheless it is a difference if you have your own site. You also do
your own music, don't you?

In all cases - if you use a CMS or wordpress or build up a FB-page -
it is an amount of work you have to invest. Why not invest this amount
of work into your own page where you always have full control? And
from where you can build it up in an evolutionary step-by-step way?

There are many ways, but I plead for the last mentioned way.
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Old 12-07-2018, 01:33 AM   #28
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Stay away from templates if you can. You generally CANNOT back these up properly nor can you move them to another hosting provider later.

You will be stuck starting from scratch. This is because the 'template' approach means you are depending on the hosting service to construct your pages on the fly. The resulting HTML has dependencies which are specific to the hoster and not accessible to you. You can't simply save the page to your hard disk and put it up somewhere else.
Why wouldn't you be able to back up a template? I do that quite often when moving sites.

There IS a reason to be careful when choosing templates. Some are not so good and might introduce security problems. That's especially true in the case of Wordpress and Joomla.

Quote:
3. If you want to stream your music you are going to need a host that permits and supports it. And you are going to need more than those simple HTML markups to make anything worth looking at. If you want to get ranked in Google eventually you will need a much better understanding of SEO, CSS, mobile multi-platform, etc. Again, there are templates out there that can help you with that but you will be tied to the hoster. Any attempt to move later will mean starting over.

Your analogy is like telling someone they can type:

print('hello world');

and now they are a computer programmer.
That's basically true. But I can't think of a host that doesn't "permit" streaming. In it's simplest form, it's just downloading. And the only barrier is file size limits. A song is several MB, some hosts limit file size to 1 MB or so...

Still, you can always host your songs on one of the streaming hosts, like Soundcloud and link to them.

@Karbo

Why are you in denial? We all know the words "own your music" aren't exact. FB gets the right to use your stuff for free, without limits, even including selling it. And that has happened, IIRC. They made a publicity video with pics from FB users, without asking or even telling them. That's OK, maybe, but they also made it seem like these users had a fake profile, because their names were fake in the vid.

The same goes for Godaddy's business practices. OK, they manage millions of domains, being the biggest in the business. So you probably won't get to experience the same scams.

But I personally know of three cases. One in the domains I used to manage and two of quite famous security researchers. The latter two lost their domain because GD all of a sudden decided the content of their sites wasn't "appropriate", despite the content wasn't hosted with GD, nor the DNS. That's not only crazy, business wise, it's also clear censorship...
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Old 12-07-2018, 07:34 AM   #29
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@Karbo
without limits, even including selling it.
When ^that happens to you or someone you know by any quantifiable measure, post back here with the details of FB selling their music, along with links of how and where FB is selling it. Watered-down exceptions or half-baked horror stories found on the net not acceptable (which many of you seem to be terribly gullible of and falling for).

What do you think is going to happen, you miss your chance at being a worldwide musical sensation, and end up in ruins because FB made millions off some song you shared - in a world where your chances of more than 50 people even seeing it (much less caring) is miniscule at best? Sorry to break any hearts but FB doesn't give a shit about yours or my music.

Thusly, you guys are taking it further than sensible reality and perpetuating fear which is what I do care about - that, is in reality the much, much bigger issue. I find it odd that you don't understand that it is, or 'why' it is the bigger issue.

Ha, I just realized there is an FB post in my sig, I didn't post it on FB, our marketing company did, but guess how worried I am... not one bit, because there is nothing to worry about.
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Old 12-07-2018, 10:13 AM   #30
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But I personally know of three cases. One in the domains I used to manage and two of quite famous security researchers. The latter two lost their domain because GD all of a sudden decided the content of their sites wasn't "appropriate", despite the content wasn't hosted with GD, nor the DNS. That's not only crazy, business wise, it's also clear censorship...
There is no way that is even remotely related to increasing danger of a musician buying a domain in any real sense, it's just more fear spreading, not to mention it sounds fishy in every way. I could easily parrot stories for ANY registrar because shit happens and the devil is always in the omitted details - It's not that mistakes or bad decisions aren't made, it is the out-of-proportion weight and demonization you are applying - again, exceptions are a called exceptions for a reason. You are more likely to get hit by a bus.

To be clear, it's the "Chicken Little" behavior I'm arguing here, not the companies involved.
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Old 12-07-2018, 01:10 PM   #31
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No, there are thousands of templates just in HTML.
You need to download them - on your PC - modify them
with ANY editor - and there you are.

Nothing is more easy - the backup is on your PC.
I'm not talking about that type of template. There are hundreds of sites that let you create web pages using their on-line editors/templates. These sites depend on their own servers creating the web pages for you. In other words, there are back server scripts that read your database of input and publish the pages. You will NOT be able to transfer these sites properly.

Downloading HTML is a whole other thing. Still requires the end user to be a competent coder. Also, most of these 'free' pages are less than optimum.
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Old 12-07-2018, 01:13 PM   #32
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Strong recommendation for Bandzoogle, most especially if you're new to it all or are just too busy to mess with website maintenance like I am. They have templates, drag and drop editing, good customer support and you can outsource your music sales and credit card processing stuff to them.

If you'd like to see what they look like in practice, my website is TexasMusicForge.com - I use that website to support music sales, licensing, podcast publishing and touring in the US and abroad. It took me a couple of hours to set up, tweak and load content into. Worth mentioning - in light of some comments on this thread - that it's really easy to load a new song onto the site, make it available for sale, then generate a link for a good looking mp3 player which loads well on Facebook without actually loading your music onto Facebook's servers.

There are cheaper alternatives and a lot of people swear by bandcamp and other services. Bandzoogle has worked for what I need my website to do without having to invest time in learning WordPress or work around the shortcomings of some other sites' approach to building a website. Your mileage may vary.


+ if you wan't it to be simple and easy and look pretty good. It couldn't be easier. Also their tech support is very good from my experience.
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Old 12-07-2018, 01:23 PM   #33
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Why wouldn't you be able to back up a template? I do that quite often when moving sites.

There IS a reason to be careful when choosing templates. Some are not so good and might introduce security problems. That's especially true in the case of Wordpress and Joomla.
Wordpress is crap. As is Joomla. Proprietary junk that's marketed with a high profile.

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Originally Posted by cyrano View Post

That's basically true. But I can't think of a host that doesn't "permit" streaming. In it's simplest form, it's just downloading. And the only barrier is file size limits. A song is several MB, some hosts limit file size to 1 MB or so...
no not downloading... streaming, two very different things

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Originally Posted by cyrano View Post

Still, you can always host your songs on one of the streaming hosts, like Soundcloud and link to them.
like I said...


Quote:
Originally Posted by cyrano View Post

@Karbo

Why are you in denial? We all know the words "own your music" aren't exact. FB gets the right to use your stuff for free, without limits, even including selling it. And that has happened, IIRC. They made a publicity video with pics from FB users, without asking or even telling them. That's OK, maybe, but they also made it seem like these users had a fake profile, because their names were fake in the vid.
There is NO good reason to post anything of value on FB. They can't be trusted. Giving someone license to do whatever the f*k they want with your music without notice is dumb. ESPECIALLY a crap company like fakebook.

Yes, you retain your copyright. So what? How many musicians have been screwed out of their property by signing over "exclusive distribution, publishing or marketing" rights? Yep, still got your copyright but it's basically worthless at that point cause you can't do anything with your own property.

How would you like it if you found out Fakebook was using your original music for all their TV ads without attribution or compensation? Or maybe some third party in South America that specializes in kiddie porn?

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Originally Posted by cyrano View Post

The same goes for Godaddy's business practices. OK, they manage millions of domains, being the biggest in the business. So you probably won't get to experience the same scams.

But I personally know of three cases. One in the domains I used to manage and two of quite famous security researchers. The latter two lost their domain because GD all of a sudden decided the content of their sites wasn't "appropriate", despite the content wasn't hosted with GD, nor the DNS. That's not only crazy, business wise, it's also clear censorship...
I have used gkg.net for 25 years. Never had an issue. I've had more than a few clients that have been screwed by godaddy tho. Your mileage may vary. Their ad campaigns should tell you all you need to know about who their target customer is.
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Old 12-07-2018, 11:17 PM   #34
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For most of us, all this IP and copyright talk is wishful thinking, as in, I wish somebody liked this enough to want to steal it.

Just getting anybody to notice it at all in the first place is 98% of the work of promoting. There are roughly 36000 new songs released on the internet every day, so it's not what you'd call a 'sellers market'. Basic economics: scarcity increases value. But there's no scarcity any more...
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Old 12-08-2018, 01:27 AM   #35
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When ^that happens to you ...

What do you think ...

Thusly, you guys are taking it further than sensible reality and perpetuating fear which is what I do care about - that, is in reality the much, much bigger issue. I find it odd that you don't understand that it is, or 'why' it is the bigger issue.
Karbo, you are interfusing two things:

1. With your account on Facebook you hand over nearly all your rights
over to Facebook. That is a fact.

2. Without an account on Facebook you likely won't reach a bigger public.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

And yeah, everyone has to balance between these two poles, (1) and (2),
and make his very own decision. But it is not honest if you trivialize
fact (1)!
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Old 12-08-2018, 01:35 AM   #36
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Originally Posted by enroe
No, there are thousands of templates just in HTML.
You need to download them - on your PC - modify them
with ANY editor - and there you are.

Nothing is more easy - the backup is on your PC.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Steviebone View Post
I'm not talking about that type of template.
Yeah, but I was talking about that type of template. And:
That type of template was part of my recommendation, which
you are refering at!

Quote:
Originally Posted by Steviebone View Post
Downloading HTML is .... Still requires the end user to be a competent coder.
Yes, but up to what "competence"?

I believe that learning only a few html-commands is easier and carries
you wider than struggling on sites with so called "pre-configured
template-provider".

It is better to get a little bit of competence in HTML - and do
your own small HTML-sites than always depending on others with their
utterly cluttered and overly advertised preconfigured site-templates.
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Old 12-08-2018, 07:21 AM   #37
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Karbo, you are interfusing two things:

1. With your account on Facebook you hand over nearly all your rights
over to Facebook
. That is a fact.
What exactly are "nearly all my rights"? I have a lot of them, that is not a specific statement that informs anyone of anything, it's generalization minus details - facts on the other hand are specific things.

Quote:
And yeah, everyone has to balance between these two poles, (1) and (2),
and make his very own decision. But it is not honest if you trivialize
fact (1)!
It's a SHARING site, it's predicated on users sharing (music in this case) with as many people as possible. That fact alone requires pretty much the same agreement wording as a responsibility to the users so that user 1 can share something, user 2 likes it and can share with someone else, the very definition of the exposure you want by posting music to the public. The host, (in this case FB) needs some type of license from you to allow that to occur on their servers. I have my own issues with FB but this isn't one of them.

As far as being honest, I'm the only one who took the time to actually find, and present the actual agreement, everyone else was just fine making stuff up. Being honest and factual is the only reason I even replied to this now train wreck of a thread

Take care.
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Old 12-08-2018, 12:26 PM   #38
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Quote:
Originally Posted by enroe
Karbo, you are interfusing two things:

1. With your account on Facebook you hand over nearly all your rights
over to Facebook. That is a fact.
Quote:
Originally Posted by karbomusic View Post
What exactly are "nearly all my rights"? I have a lot of them, that is not a specific statement that informs anyone of anything, it's generalization minus details - facts on the other hand are specific things.
Ooops, isn't that obvious?
If we talk about "facebook + copyrights" then "nearly all rights" are all
rights regarding the utilization of all content you post on facebook.
You don't transfer the copyrights to facebook, but you transfer "nearly
all rights" of utilization.

Quote:
Originally Posted by karbomusic View Post
It's a SHARING site, it's predicated on users sharing (music in this case) with as many people as possible. That fact alone requires pretty much the same agreement wording as a responsibility to the users so that user 1 can share something, user 2 likes it and can share with someone else, the very definition of the exposure you want by posting music to the public. The host, (in this case FB) needs some type of license from you to allow that to occur on their servers.
Yes yes: On a SHARING site you need to share the content. Everybody understands
that. But the other side of the medal is that with this "sharing agreements"
you inevitably hand over rights to exploit your content. Everybody should be
aware of this fact. A fact that you tend to deny (sorry to say that).

But that's not enough: The term "transferable, sub-licensable" means that
Facebook can give the rights to utilize content to other companies and
3rd parties
. They can transfer it anywhere!

For instance, the experiences and conclusions of a Corey Ann, a fotographer
and blogger, are:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Corey Ann
… once something is posted or uploaded onto Facebook it becomes Facebook’s property. So if the original photographer uploaded the photo first onto Facebook and then others have taken it from there and uploaded it to their pages or profiles, this is legal and within policy, there’s nothing I can do about it unfortunately even if they are taking credit for the photos.
Keep in mind that this does not only apply to fotos, it also applies to
mp3s or wavs.

Of course, Facebook does not really own the copyrights, BUT Facebook
has nearly all rights to utilize all your content. And it has the
right to give these rights to other companies, to "tranfer" them and to
"sub-license" them. That is what Cory Ann has experienced after a long
fight with facebook.

Info: click here.

The problem is: What Corey Ann experienced is not an isolated incident,
it most likely isn't.

Quote:
Originally Posted by karbomusic View Post
As far as being honest, I'm the only one who took the time to actually find, and present the actual agreement, everyone else was just fine making stuff up.
I appreciate you for this. Thank you!
Nevertheless it is quite difficult to deal with the complex topic "facebook
and copyrights" as a side note in a thread like this, because nobody likes
to read long juridical convoluted statements.

Quote:
Originally Posted by karbomusic View Post
Being honest and factual is the only reason I even replied to this now train wreck of a thread
Yes, + 1.
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Old 12-08-2018, 02:09 PM   #39
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Yeah, but I was talking about that type of template. And:
That type of template was part of my recommendation, which
you are refering at!



Yes, but up to what "competence"?

I believe that learning only a few html-commands is easier and carries
you wider than struggling on sites with so called "pre-configured
template-provider".

It is better to get a little bit of competence in HTML - and do
your own small HTML-sites than always depending on others with their
utterly cluttered and overly advertised preconfigured site-templates.
Valid points. Most of the time tho, people who are NOT HTML proficient just make a mess of downloadable templates. At least that's been my experience.
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Old 12-08-2018, 02:23 PM   #40
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One of the sites that I own and manage provides access to state/federal laws for non-lawyers. Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. However, I have had the unfortunate experience of having to address areas of copyright licensing in my tenure as webmaster of the services.

This does not make me a copyright expert. However, what I can say with absolute conviction is that owning a copyright means nothing if you are not in control of how the copyrightable product is utilized. Whenever you transfer the right of "sub-licensing" to someone without restriction, for example, you are essentially giving up control of your copyright, or at least the product that it covers which is in essence kind of the same thing.

This type of legal wording appears regularly in all kinds of publishing agreements where a musician unknowingly signs away important rights to his music without realizing it. For example giving someone "exclusive" publishing or distribution rights. A musician should never sign anything that has the word "exclusive" in it anywhere without very careful consideration. These terms are quite common in all kinds of recording contracts. You may still own the copyright technically but if you can't do anything with the material and someone else can do whatever the hell they want with it it's kind of moot.

Even without the word exclusive you must consider that if the "sub-licensing" does not have conditions, controls, expiration and recourse then even though you may be able to continue to distribute your own product you have no control over what the third-party does on their own, which could be detrimental to you while quite profitable for them.

It doesn't matter if you own the copyright to something if you can no longer control how that something is shared, copied or utilized.

The way I read the Facebook agreement and from what I've read online and in talking to my lawyer clients about this issue Facebook can essentially use your material in pretty much any way it sees fit including licensing it to third parties for compensation. So technically, fake book can take your music and license its use for a porn site, or a political figure that you do not agree with (for example). Of course these may seem like more extreme examples but nonetheless valid.

For that reason I would suggest never posting anything of creative value directly on Facebook. Instead post a link to a hosting site that does not assert those same ownership and licensing tactics. This can be tricky because many hosting sites also have all kinds of legalese that no one ever reads. The only way to be 100% sure is to probably on your own server and site.

PS: I knew a very talented musician that was approached by a significant label. He ended up losing out on what would've otherwise been a big break for him because the material they wanted had been previously licensed without him realizing it. Because he could not transfer all rights the label passed. All because he shared some stuff on social media carelessly.

And, consider that even if FB were to do something in violation, good luck getting redress. Suing one of the largest corporations in the world, all over the world, is beyond the pocketbook of all but the largest and most successful artists.

Last edited by Steviebone; 12-08-2018 at 02:38 PM.
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