Just a little something about what we are trying to do - there are tons of resources out there for new bands to get their music out there -- and there are a few blog articles dedicated to telling musicians how to utilize social media and free marketing - which is all well and fine, I mean people are looking for places to start. What you don't see a lot, especially an aggregate source, is artists talking about what they've done in order to build their own social presence. What a lot of people don't understand is that artists (of all mediums) have to become social media experts in a trial by fire, really - no one is there to hold their hands for the most part. We're trying to create a blog that will allow bands to see how people who were in their shoes are doing it. In addition to the techniques artists are using - we'll also be including information about the benefits of signing up with Listener Approved.

We started interviewing artists starting in late December of 2010. Grouplove had just released their Colours EP and I managed to get ahold of Ryan Rabin of Grouplove and ask him some questions about using 

LA: Well - to start off with, when you first decided that you were going to create music and that you wanted people to hear your music... what were the first thoughts that went through your head? 

GROUPLOVE: Well, at first there was never a solid decision to get people to hear the music, as we just initially enjoyed hanging out as friends, but eventually as we started playing more and more, we ended up recording some songs together on a whim. I think the first thoughts were, "hey we like these songs that we've been messing with, lets record them for fun". It was not a very pre-meditated thing.

LA: Which social media outlets did you know were available and how did you go about utilizing them?

GROUPLOVE: Way way down the line after we had finished recording our EP, the first place our manager/music blog surfing extraordinaire took the music was to his friends that had music blogs. Everything else stemmed from that. The songs got blogged about, re-blogged, and we started playing shows and slowly started developing our online identity... all the obvious stuff: put up a myspace with some songs, put up a facebook, and eventually we were taught how to use twitter.

LA: After setting up your various profiles, what methods did you use to get your music "out there"? (Professional help, blogs?)

GROUPLOVE: We sort of did it all backwards, the song got out to some blogs first, just friends of friends who like the music, and then from that we were urged to build up our profiles so that people finding the music on the blogs could go to some central places to see/hear the band.

LA: What is your philosophy on becoming a self-made social media expert for a band coming along in the social media boom?

GROUPLOVE: As long as we can represent ourselves accurately through social media (our myspace, our own blog, our twitter, our website www.grouplovemusic.com), there is really not right or wrong way to go about it. The way we utilize those things  (or in our case our managers utilize them, as we're still quite new to all of it) is as an offshoot of our own personalities, ie: the things we put up on twitter, myspace etc, the best way to use it is as an extension of ourselves and our music. And the rest is just important day to day informative stuff, tour dates, song and video posts, album updates. We're not overly obsessive with it, because the focus has to be on the music first, but we're always open and willing to play with new and exciting ways to utilize social media, as long as it (not to sound like a hippie) stays true to the music.