Okay, so here’s a rant that I’ve had boil up in my head for the better part of a year or two, and finally, well, I’m here.

If I made a band’s Web site, I would have, at a minimum:

1. Lyrics to the songs. This is so unbelievably important, and it’s so unfuckinglybelieveably frustrating that more bands don’t do it. Let me give you a hint, bands: hiding your lyrics from the Web will just have some fanboy put them out there for the world to see, and the people who will get the traffic [and the ad revenue] are the shady jerks with the “Congratulations, you have won a free Nintendo Wii!” ad that screams at you the moment the page loads. You want that traffic. Why? You want them to know who you are.
2. Tour date listings. Essential. It’s a pain to update them, I know. There’s many apps out there for that, but I would choose Yahoo!’s Upcoming if I were you. Upcoming is searchable, scriptable, extensible, and also pretty darn easy to update. Then there are folks like me who use All Crazy Style to mash up Upcoming data with Last.FM plays to find out when bands I like are playing near me. Real simple: you load the data in Upcoming, and you can spit it out on your site. You can update Upcoming from anywhere.
3. Links to listen to your stuff. Don’t fire music at me when I load your site. I know you’re a musician, but the Web is largely about text. Let me choose to listen, and give me that option, but that auto-load bullshit is for MySpace. [And don't get me wrong, MySpace has value.]
4. Links to buy your stuff. These need to be everywhere: main site, discography pages, album pages, individual song pages. If you create a page per song, that individual song page should have a link of a place to buy that song—iTunes, eMusic, what have you. You want to cater to the fan coming in to Google some obscure lyric they heard on a commercial or in a Zach Braff vehicle—they’re gonna buy that shit if you give them half a chance.

The way to think about it is this: most people aren’t going to load up your main Web site and have that be their entry point. They just aren’t. Google is going to send them to you. So, think about a song you really love, Mr. Band Guy, and Google that. So, if you love Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven”, you get Last.FM’s page for the song … which has … BINGO … iTunes link. Last has done the heavy lifting for you here. But they’re gonna do that for Page and Plant … chances are they won’t for your garage band.

Some thoughts: if you get a song picked up for Grey’s Anatomy or Kyle XY or whatever, you want to 1) have that fact listed on a page about that song, and not just in a news feed/blog 2) lyrics of the song on that page, so the Googlers who are bad with names but good with ears for mumbled lyrics can find it and 3) a quick, fast way for them to buy that song and 4) relevant links on that page to find out more about you. The scenario is this: “I heard this killer song on Scrubs last night. Let me find it on Google … ooooh, there it is. 99 cents? Sure, I love that song. Hmm … who is this guy? Let me read more about him …”

It’s hell getting found in the music business. It’s hell getting found in the blogging world, too—which is why this entry is named like it is. Chances are that, if you’re not one of my regular readers, you got here from the Goog, too … so you should be nodding your head.

Okay, okay, okay, examples.

Bad: M. Ward: LOUD MUSIC, can’t find shit. Damn shame, because I love M. Ward.

Poor: Shearwater, which has a lyrics page for their stuff, but … in PDF. I know, you want art. I want to cut and paste the lyrics into iTunes. Don’t make me work, dammit.

Okay: The Mountain Goats, who have lyrics for The Sunset Tree available, but that page does not get you anywhere on that site. There isn’t a link to be found—not to the rest of the site, not to a place to buy the song you Googled, nothing. Kudos for posting the links, though.

Good: Andy Osenga, and not just because he uses some of my photos on the site. But he’s still not to great, because lyrics … Andy Osenga lyrics on Google don’t get you anywhere near him. [Or, for that matter, near andrewosenga.net, which is a problem Chris Hubbs and I should fix...]

Great: well, hell, no one really comes to mind. Leave suggestions for good band sites in the comments.

Folks, I know … this shit is hard. But it makes you money, so you better work at it.

I’m going to take a brief respite from rattling off my 2006 New Year’s Resolutions to kick off my Best Practices category with an entry about the iTunes Smart Playlists I use while seeding Last.FM with data. This is based largely on the playlists that Dougal Campbell shared long ago when I discussed iTunes re-rating on my Weblog.

Radio Airtime Smart Playlist

Match any of the following rules:

• Playist is Great But Forgotten
• Playist is Heavy Rotation
• Playist is Least Often Played
• Playist is Least Recently Played
• Playist is Randomizer
• Playist is Recently Added
• Playist is Top Songs of the Last Month
• Playist is Unrated Songs

Limit to: 3584 MB selected by random.
Match only checked songs.
Live updating.

I limit Radio Airtime to 3.5GB so I can use it as a source for syncing to my iPod nano. You may choose to leave this size restriction off of your Radio Airtime, as well as the limitations you’ll see below. If you don’t use size as a limit, I suggest using song count limits—anywhere from 50-100 should work for you.

You’ll also see below that I use Genre is not Podcast in all these playlists; I don’t want Podcast material to show up here, even though I listen to them from time to time. I just don’t want those to show up in the midst of a music set—hence the limitation. Your mileage may vary.

Great But Forgotten Smart Playlist

Match all the following rules:

Limit to 512 MB selected by random.
Live updating.

This provides me with a list of good songs I might not have heard in a while. Sometimes, I twiddle with the amount of time since I heard it, but given that this is a pretty large list, it doesn’t get exhausted quickly … in fact, there’s stuff on there that hasn’t been played in two months. Remember, as this is updated live, songs get pulled off of it, and the list randomized every time.

Heavy Rotation Smart Playlist

Match all of the following:

Limit to 512 MB selected by most often played.
Live updating.

This throws back at me the stuff I’ve listened to a lot in the life of my iTunes library that I’ve listened to in the last week. Unfortunately, I’ve never found a way for the selected by clause to be “most times played in the last week”, because that would provide me a true heavy rotation. Oh well—this keeps the really great songs coming up all the time. [There's a reason that I call this Radio Airtime. ]

Least Often Played Smart Playlist

Match all of the following:

Limit to 512 MB selected by least often played.
Live updating.

This provides me with stuff rated at least three stars [my "listenable" threshhold] that I’ve just not played very often. Sometimes, this sparks a desire to break out an album I haven’t listened to for a while.

Least Recently Played Smart Playlist

Match all of the following:

Limit to 512 MB selected by least recently played.
Live updating.

Like the Least Often Played, this serves to drag up old stuff. The combination of the two is what makes Radio Airtime work in bringing up stuff I’ve not listened to in a while that I don’t just love.

Randomizer Smart Playlist

Match all of the following:

Limit to 768 MB selected by random.
Live updating.

This provides a random element to the playlist; this is how my crappy-rated songs ever see the light of day.

Recently Added Smart Playlist

Match all of the following rules:

Live updating.

This keeps the new stuff I add in the mix. I often listen to this playlist by itself as well when getting to know the new music I add. [If you want to see what my new music is, check out my Musiclogging entries on my Weblog.]

Top Songs of the Last Month Smart Playlist

Match all of the following rules:

Limit to 512 MB selected by random.
Live updating.

This is another way that I keep the good, fresh stuff in my ears. As I’m constantly adding new music, this gives me a month to let it steep. This is another playlist that I sometimes listen to on its own.

Unrated Songs Smart Playlist

Match all of the following rules:

Live updating.

When I add new music, I use this playlist until it’s over; I have it in Radio Airtime only because I might screw up sometime.

Do you use similar Smart Playlists to provide yourself with good mixes? If so, I want to hear about it! Also, please feel free to cuss and discuss my ideas below. Again, I want to thank Dougal for his suggestions—they’ve been really helpful.