Musicians Month

Hello OurChurch.Com webmasters,

As you've probably heard by now September is Musicians Month at OurChurch.Com. Music has an amazing way of helping us worship God and express our deepest emotions. All this month we're focusing on helping Christian bands, musicians, and gospel groups advance their ministries by making better use of technology. But even if you're not involved in a music ministry, chances are you'll still find some of what we're doing helpful to you.

Please post comments and questions concerning this newsletter in our forums. You can also view this message on the web with color and graphics in our newsletter archives.

IN THIS ISSUE
1) Save on Silver
2) Free Publicity for Your Music
3) Free iPod Nano Giveaway
4) Uploading Music in Beacon
5) Website and Marketing Secrets for Musicians



1) SAVE ON SILVER
If you’re operating a website for a musician or band you’ve GOT to put samples of your music on your website. You can do that with a Platinum, Gold, Silver, or Bronze hosting package at OurChurch.Com. To help make it possible for those of you with free sites or the Domain Package to upgrade, we’re offering a year of the Silver Package and a year of the Ad-free Option for just $219 – a savings of $141. If you were thinking of upgrading to or renewing the Bronze package, with this special you can go Silver and Ad-free for less than the Bronze package and Ad-free Option.

This special offer is open to everyone (not just musicians), but it’s only available this month. If you don’t have a site at OCC, go to the hosting section of our site and click the “Build a Site” link in the menu to get started. If you’ve already got a site, click the “Order & Renew Premium Options” link on your webmaster page to take advantage of this special discount.

2) FREE PUBLICITY FOR YOUR MUSIC
We believe having music on a musician/band site is so important that we are recognizing and rewarding every musician/band hosted at OurChurch.Com that has recorded audio on their site with a link on our Musicians Month page. If your musician/band site includes recorded audio, drop us a note in our help desk and we'll add a link to your site to the list of featured music sites within a few days. The sooner you contact us the higher up on the list your site will appear.

3) FREE IPOD NANO GIVEAWAY
OurChurch.Com is giving away a free iPod Nano to the webmaster of one musician/band site. The 1 GB iPod Nano holds about 250 songs or 15,000 photos, weighs less than 2 ounces, and is valued at $150. To be eligible, musicians/bands must host their site at OCC, have recorded audio of their original music on their site, and notify us through the help desk by September 30, 2006. The drawing will be held October 1, 2006 and the winner's name will be disclosed in an announcement later that day. To enter, send us the name and URL of your band/musician site through our help desk.

4) UPLOADING MUSIC IN BEACON
We’ve made it easier than ever for musician to put recorded music on their website with our Beacon web builder. We’ve increased the size of files that can be uploaded using the “Upload Graphics and MIDIs” function to 5 MB, so you should be able to upload most MP3 files through this page rather than using FTP or the cPanel file manager. If you have any questions or need any help with this, let us know through our help desk.

5) WEBSITE AND MARKETING SECRETS FOR MUSICIANS
We are also turning our attention to musicians in our Christian Web Trends Blog this month. Find out the 12 Things Every Band Website Needs and read how Christian musicians are using MySpace to build an audience and stay connected with fans.

Thanks for hosting your website at OurChurch.Com. Please post comments and questions concerning this newsletter in our forums.

In His Service,
OurChurch.Com

top

- andre