Ron Suarez's dashboard

We're using sample data here from our partner Toolshed, who uses Loud Feed to promote for 30 independent labels, with 10 of those in the top 15.

In the Loud Feed back-end go to Manage > Albums, then click the "Album of Interest" from the list and you'll see the single album edit page, shown here below. (Your name would appear instead of "Toolshed Digital Media Marketing.")



For the sake of completeness we're including screen shots of the rest of the  screen below:

 

Sales Metadata Included


If you check "Promotable" then the entire song is made available from Loud Feed. Otherwise only the "auto-generated" 30 second sample is included in the feed. "Sellable" tells stores and sales widgets to include this song as content that can be added to a shopping cart. Formats available can also be included to indicate the availability of physical inventory.

 

Advanced Album Metadata


 

RSS Album Feed Code
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<rss version="2.0" xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1....">

 <channel>

  <title>Paul's Boutique</title>

  <link>#</link>

  <copyright>(c) 2009 Capitol Records</copyright>

  <description></description>

  <category>Hip Hop</category>

  <managingEditor>Beastie Boys</managingEditor>

  <language>en-us</language>

  <generator>LoudFeed</generator>

  <image>

   <url>http://loudfeed.s3.amazonaws.com/asse...</url>

   <title>Paul's Boutique</title>

   <link>#</link>

  </image>

  <itunes:image href="http://loudfeed.s3.amazonaws.com/asse..."/>

  <itunes:author>Beastie Boys</itunes:author>

  <itunes:summary></itunes:summary>

  <itunes:category text="Music"/>

  <itunes:subtitle>Listen to tracks from the album 'Paul's Boutique'</itunes:subtitle>

  <itunes:keywords>Music,Paul's Boutique</itunes:keywords>

  <itunes:owner>

   <itunes:email/>

   <itunes:name/>

  </itunes:owner>

 </channel>

</rss>

 

Albums Include Songs
 

Loud Feed back-end entry Song data
When you click "add a song" from inside the Albums > Manage edit page for a single album you will see the following screens for adding and editing song MP3s and related metadata.



 

Advanced Options
When you click "Advanced Options" in the sceen above, it expands to include the following:



 

THIS IS AN ADVANCED TOPIC FOR THOSE WHO ARE ALREADY BLOGGING (soon we'll be creating screen recordings to illustrate topics like this)

A widget can carry your blog posts. But, before you add a feed to your widget, think about what you want to be "feeding" through and why.

You can have all your blog posts come through as a "Feed" into one of your widgets. But, instead of having everything come through, consider breaking up your blog posts by category. Then, create successive blog posts in a category that relates to the widget's specific promotion and just that category will come through. In Wordpress, for example, you can get the URL for a category feed simply by adding "/feed" onto the end of the URL you see in your browser after you have clicked on a particular category.

HERE'S HOW TO CREATE A CATEGORY FEED FROM A WORDPRESS BLOG
In my other company (MediaRica) I set up a Wordpress podcast blog for Michigan Technology News. They report news for several different organizations, one of which is Great Lakes Entrepreneurs Quest (GLEQ).
MOUSE OVER THE LINKS TO SEE THE FULL URL's IN YOUR BROWSER
When you go to the blog at http://mitechnews.mediarica.com and click on GLEQ under categories you get http://mitechnews.mediarica.com/archi... - then, by simply adding onto the end of that URL you can get this category feed: http://mitechnews.mediarica.com/archi... - it is one of those things that is not widely documented, but incredibly simple, once you learn it.

So, if your managing multiple genres or styles of music, you could have each of several promotions focus on a particular style. Then, if you're blogging about different styles in one blog, you can create a category for each style and map each category feed to the appropriate widget.

Thus, after your widget is launched and fans have pasted it onto their blogs, your new category feed posts will update info in those widgets, which have spread throughout the Internet.