I am currently working as a freelance designer/conceptual thinker with a company who are pretty experienced in the current trend of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and helping new businesses get set up with Google Ad words. This obviously is crucial to get them ranked up higher on search engines.

My thought is....is there a way of using this same principle with new bands/artists?

Set up a new music-only based search engine portal?

Obviously alot of bands don

It depends if the revenue will come from bands/labels paying to be promoted or the punters that enjoy the absolute best music search engine in the world. Which do you have in mind?

I had the bands in mind as the source of revenue. If i am right, Google Adwords works like an auction - basically the highest bidder ranks higher up the search engine.

Still early days on the thought process

Thoughts, hmmmm...

First off - "...helping new businesses get set up with Google Ad words. This obviously is crucial to get them ranked up higher on search engines."

Erm... no it isn't. Adwords and your website's search engine ranking are unrelated.

A search engine for musicians - you did Google that didn't you? Seems some good solutions already operational, what is your improvement on those already there?

You ask "Can this idea..." what idea? Other than inferring the existence of ad-supported portals there is no idea here.

I am being a bit harsh because you say you are working in the Internet/SEO field yet seem to have missed some very basic elements.

haven't you just described myspace, which is free?

tere are too many people trying to ekemoney out of 'unsigned' a phrase that is redundant anyway

Yeah i agree about the 'Unsigned tag'. I never mentioned 'Unsigned' once though - just new bands.

I don't claim to know all about SEO and Google Adwords etc. That's why i am a musician/designer. I am just throwing some thoughts and ideas into the pot.

Thanks for all your answers though - it proves this idea isn't going anywhere.

Cheers

Unless you have a tight niche that isn't being particularly well catered for at the moment... the (disputed) Long Tail thingy.

My thoughts are:

One thing that is missing when you actually think about it is a coherent and cost effective advertising strategy for bands.

Using Google Adwords for music is not cost effective unless you are selling items valued over 10.00 dollars. Better still 20-30 dollars.
One thing that might work would be a way for bands to be marketed online properly.

Google works well for genre listings, cover versions or FREE music.

I think initially you need to find great bands, quality bands and link them by category or genre. This is not being done. The closest you get is Myspace but the categories are not reviewed at all. I've seen major label artists listed as unsigned and also unsigned listed as major etcukbands also lists bands.

The amount of work required for this is huge. Do you have the time for this ? I would suggest you concentrate on your own music, your own strategy, make some success out of it and then sell an ebook on Clickbank to educate others on how you achieved your success.

Other than that another strategy with online advertising is to build up your site visits where you can give away FREE downloads but you must think long term here and aim to get up to a million visits a month. You can then auction advertising on the site to musicians using Adbrite and/or Google.

My whole point was not to use Google as a tool but to create a new search engine that has a similar concept.

Incidentally, I manage a lyric search engine on my site below (above "recent posts" on the right-hand column). It gets a fair amount of traffic, but is not exactly a money-spinner. It's not really a dedicated separate entity, of course. So the concept is different.

By the way, if anyone wants to incorporate it into their site, I can send the code (plug, plug!).

Michael