How to Protect Music Uploads in WordPress

Your music is your art. The realized expression of your creativity, emotion, and hard work. It’s what makes you stand out. It’s your product. It’s only natural that you want to protect it.

Unfortunately, the truth of the matter is that you need to consider anything posted online for preview to be publicly accessible. It can be copied in one way or another and can’t be completely prevented.

AudioTheme Agent 1.2.0 Released

AudioTheme Agent 1.2.0 includes a number of improvements to make it even easier to get help when working with our themes and plugins. The new version is available via automatic updates or can be downloaded in your account on AudioTheme.com.

Priority Support

It’s now possible to submit support tickets directly from your admin panel. When you visit the AudioTheme Agent screen, you’ll see a new “Help” tab with a form to send us an email directly.

Australian Alt-Country and Folk Musician

Artist Spotlight: Sam Newton

Singer songwriter Sam Newton is a storytelling folk musician from Sydney who takes full advantage of traditional country and blues foundations to build both free wheelin’ and carefully constructed songs. A staple in the Australian Alt-Country scene, his hooks and poignant lyrics will stay with you long after the music finishes.

I recently caught up with Sam to learn more about the types of songs he writes, how he writes songs, who his influences are, where he draws inspiration and why he highly recommends AudioTheme for serious musicians.

New Pricing, New Products, and Next Generation AudioTheme

It seems like forever since we’ve been in touch and unless you’ve been watching closely (or chatted with us in support), you likely haven’t heard much from us, so we wanted to let you know what we’ve been working on and what’s coming down the pike.

New Pricing

One thing we’ve always disliked about the WordPress economy is the feeling of being nickel-and-dimed every time we needed a premium feature provided by yet another add-on. It’s one reason our licensing system centered around the AudioTheme plugin, but in many ways it limited us.

Eventually it came time to rethink our approach and figure out how we could pack value into each purchase without breaking your bank or nickel-and-diming you into the fetal position, while remaining sustainable as a business.

To accomplish that, we decided to reduce the price of our self-hosted themes to a standard $69 and made plans to introduce a bundle late last year.

A Micro-landing Page for Introducing Your Ideas to the World

Say “Hello World” with Billboard

Thoughts are fleeting. Research. Content. Branding. Tweets are here today and gone tomorrow. Navigation. Photography. SEO. Status updates rapidly disappear the second they’re published. Design. Code. Email…

Getting started is overwhelming. It doesn’t have to be.

From idea to website, Billboard is the quickest way to introduce your concept to the world using WordPress.

A Unique Quintet of Multi-Instrumentalists

Artist Spotlight: Elephant Revival

Elephant Revival is a unique quintet of multi-instrumentalists blending elements of gypsy, Celtic, Americana, and folk. Brought together by a unified sense of purpose, Elephant Revival communicates the importance of harmony among all living things and uses music to unite us in ways that no other medium can.

We recently caught up with Bridget Law—Elephant Revival fiddle player—to learn more about the band, how songs are created, what inspires them musically, and what they like most about using AudioTheme for their website.

How to Customize Footer Credits in WordPress Themes

Footer credits—also known as footer text—refers to the text shown at the bottom of a website. Changing this text in WordPress themes is a common task and is the focus of this article.

In most cases, a site’s footer credits display a copyright symbol, the current year, and the name of the site. In WordPress themes, it’s a common practice to display a link to the theme being used along with the name of the creator. Keeping these links in your WordPress theme can be valuable for the creator and is a good way to support their efforts and business.

Let’s look at two methods for customizing the footer credits in your WordPress theme.

Gig Cards: The Ultimate Networking Tool

Imagine you’re playing a gig at a small venue. There aren’t very many people around but you can tell that those who are there are enjoying your music. After you finish your set, someone from the audience walks up and asks for your card.

A few years later you get a call from the same guy who explains that he happens to work at the White House, and he thinks the President would really like your band.

It seems like a ridiculous scenario, right? Except it’s not. That’s exactly what happened to Pat McGee back in the 90s.

Reward Fans and Grow Your Email List Using Content Upgrades

Content upgrades — bonus content that people can access in exchange for their email address — are the new hot trend in email marketing and growing an email list.

There are a number of benefits of having an email list to market your music and promote yourself as a musician. Content upgrades work well because you have the full attention of the person viewing your content and thus they are more likely interested in a related freebie. This is something Seth Godin calls permission marketing.

Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers. – Seth Godin

In a previous article, we touched on how to build an email list and why you should. One key point in that article was that you need to offer something of value to your prospective subscribers. In this article, we’ll discuss how content upgrades are an effective way to provide value by rewarding fans who subscribe to your email list.