Since citizensound set up, we have been providing more and more help to artists: From old school A&R services to fanbase management, from songwriting help to brand sponsorship and revenue generation ideas. Which is why we set up our Artist Development division.

Then we met MIA ROSE, a talented singer/songwriter and a youtube phenomenon. Besides being the most subscribed to musician on youtube in the UK, she also features on the Top 5 all-time list globally on youtube. Since she started 3 years ago, she has had over 100 million views on the net, with each video she puts up gaining well over a 1m views. Her fanbase is 50% teenager, 50% adult. A brand’s dream.

And then we met around 7 weeks ago and hit it off.

So here we are representing her. Paul Martin worked with MIA ROSE in the studio alongside honorary citizen and producer Tyrell to record her Xmas single. The citizen Nick Watt meanwhile got moving on the management of the digital presence and online revenue strategy with the help of new citizen Martim. Our Lisbon based citizen, Mariana Duarte Silva, started handling things in MIA ROSE’s home country Portugal. Meanwhile, Simon and myself got working on the brand opportunities.

citizensound as A&R, executive producer, revenue generator, promotional agent, digital strategist, fanbase co-ordinator and a lot more. Yet critically, it is the energy and ideas of MIA ROSE herself that makes this really work.

Ideas flow from her as easy as popular songs and videos. Plus she is open to ideas fro mus and her fanbase too.

In the last six weeks we have organised:

• A competition for 5 London based fans to join her for a day out in London (Thanks to Visit London, The London Eye, The Original Tour open top bus company, Ripley’s London). A 6th fan turned up all the way from Poland!
• Live video chats, the first of which got 27 countries online (from U.S and Peru through Europe to India, Dubai and Malaysia) and 8,000 messages in 90 minutes.
• Fan competition to design the record sleeve for the Xmas Single.
• MIA ROSE being signed to Models 1, the most respected model agency in the UK under their celebrity division

But to promote the single, we needed a video. Thanks to friends out in Brazil, MIA ROSE headed off to Rio to shoot an atypical Xmas video.

Last night the video went up on MIA ROSE’s youtube channel.

Here is the video:

In the first 12 hours, this video has achieved these stunning stats:

8,372 views

1,513 ratings

In only the first 6 hours, this video achieved:

Number 2 - Top Rated Today - Music GLOBAL

Number 2 - Top Rated This Week - Music UK

Number 8 - Top Rated This Week - Music GLOBAL

Number 3 - Most Discussed (any topic) Today - UK

Top 50  - Most Viewed Today - GLOBAL, UK, Germany, Canada

Top 100 - Most Viewed Today - Brazil, Poland, Czech Republic, Sweden, Netherlands, Spain, Ireland

Now the trick is to convert online popularity into sales for this hugely popular youtube artist.

No marketing budget, no machine. Just MIA ROSE, us and her fans spreading the word.

Might not involve safety pins and shouting, but still VERY VERY DIY.

Artists are increasingly embracing Twitter as a great way to connect with their fans. But its not just its simplicity as a communication tool that is attracting ‘celebrity’ users, it can also be a useful tool in helping you grow your fanbase.

US indie band Jimmy Eat World accumulated some 200,000 new Twitter followers in just over 30 days around their recent US tour, by encouraging their fans to use a specially built Twitter site that allows them to chat to other concert-goers at the gig they are attending. To use the system fans simply send a tweet to @jimmyeatworld, followed by the date of the concert they are attending, allowing them to be part of the twittering for that specific show. The band have also recorded one of the recent gigs and are selling it as a souvenir of the tour to its fanbase via it’s twitter site, offering it up as a $8.99 download in a range of formats - MP3, Apple Lossless, FLAC, and WAV.

The band now have almost HALF A MILLION fans following their tweets…

Writing regular blog posts for your fans is not up everyone’s street. But who said you had to write?

Kanye West’s blog is a great example of what you can do by developing a visual approach to blogging. Kanye regularly posts up images and videos that have grabbed his interest - be it some arresting architecture, a You Tube clip of a new track he likes, a cool new pair of trainers…or some bootlicious ladies!

A few months ago we posted up a picture of the anatomy of a modern musician/music manager that showed how complex their role has become. Tom Williams (a New York based online marketer and publicist) has tried to map out the complex role that social media plays in a bands overall business strategy. What is interesting is not just the range of social media tools that you need to able to manage these days (and his diagram is by no means complete), but also how many roles each tool plays in delivering the strategy…

Tom states that the SIX goals of a social media campaign should be:

1. reach more people
2. keep the fans informed
3. allow people to sample the music
4. sell their music and merchandise
5. provide content that people can pass-along to their friends
6. engage the fans to keep them coming back for more

Whether you like it or not fans expectations have changed in terms of the type of relationship they expect to have with their favourite acts these days – many of today’s fans expect Access All Areas from their favourite artists, so the need for Artist Generated Content is key in how you communicate with your fans and build loyalty.

But where do you find the time to keep all of your fans informed on what you are up to? Whether your life is made up of endless recording, touring and promotion work, or you’re trying to fit in your musical career in alongside a day job, connecting regularly with your fans can seem like just another task that can wait till tomorrow, or the day after…

Artists, managers and labels generally buy into the concept of Artist Generated Content, but in practice find it hard to deliver. Now this may be down to how you choose to communicate.

Writing a regular blog post is not for everyone, so what other simple methods can you employ to regularly communicate with your fans and make the whole task a little bit easier?