One of the most exciting things about new media is the move from people being passive listeners to collaborators by producing content of their own, based on your output. One example of this is a growing trend is for people to offer their music to be remixed. Artists from Gang Of Four to Radiohead to DIY artists such as Brad Sucks and lots of electronic artists have all offered their tracks up to be remixed by their fans.
Remixes are great because they give you a new perspective on your music and allow you to crossover with another artists audience. All you need to do is to get the stems (individual parts from the multitrack) for your songs in a folder on an online hosting site as an archived zip file for people to download (4shared.com seems as good as any). You can either export the stems from your recordings yourself or ask your Producer or Engineer to provide them if you record at a commercial studio. You can then link to the folder from your website/blog/Facebook or Twitter and ask people to start remixing. Remember to let people know what the BPM of the track is, it really helps when people are importing stems into Pro Tools or Logic or any other recording software.
There are also sites like CC Mixter that can host the files for you and have the added bonus of a community of remixers looking for tracks to remix. You can use a general Creative Commons license to allow people to use the stems for non-commercial use (and spread the word about your music). Once you have a few remixes in you can then post them on your blog to show how talented and clever your listeners are. This also gives you something to talk about via Twitter and Facebook and gets people talking about your music.
Remixes are also good to submit to podcasters and can even sometimes get your music on podcasts that don’t cover your usual genre. Its been known for a house remix of a rock tune to get a lot of play and even be used for adverts and films (depending on agreement for commercial use between the the artists and the remixer). This is another opportunity to build your listener base (depending on how tight a hold you want to retain on your music).
Also can you remix other peoples music? You can ask for the stems from other artists, its worth a try and its a brilliant way to build a relationship with an artist if you like their work and to get more exposure for both of you. This works fantastically on a local level
You could even release the best of the remixes as an EP on Bandcamp.This is a lot of new music created with very little work by the artists themselves, but with a lot of engagement from listeners and fans. Regular releases are vital to keep acts in the public eye, the days of one album every 18 months to 2 years are long gone.
Really the key to social media for musicians is to have interesting things to talk about and lots of content to enable you to start conversations and to be social, then hopefully the content will be shared by influential people across Twitter, Facebook, Podcasts and Blogs. Remixes are a great opportunity to start people talking and collaborating.
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