I've done a lot of web work recently while promoting various events. So I thought I'd share some of my news along with my website updates for today's blog.
Photo by Snicker Furfoot
I was in Austin, Texas last weekend for the Sherwood Celtic Music Festival. It was a blast though a bit exhausting. I look over my schedule before the weekend. As a result, I had four hours of back-to-back shows. I was exhausted by the end of each day. It was fun playing Gunns & Drums and Brobdingnagian Bards, but I didn't really get to relax and enjoy the festival. That was disappointing, but also a good lesson to review show schedules when they come out.
The Hobbit Day Music Promotion
Saturday was also Hobbit Day. In between shows at Sherwood, I watched the charts to see how my big Top the Charts promotion did. The event was tremendous success on Amazon. I was #1 on several charts and even topped out at #464 of all MP3 singles there.
You can see the complete report here. I spent the days before the event getting my Hobbit Birthday Song website in order and promoting the Chart Topping event.
Yesterday, I even updated the Brobdingnagian Bards Lord of the Rings music page which highlights our old CD Memories of Middle Earth. That website was wayyyy out of date. I fixed most of the old links and updated the additional pages on the site. Hopefully, it's a wee bit more useful now.
To finish up my hobbit music promotions, I put those two CDs on sale in the Celtic Music CD Store. You can save 20% on Memories of Middle Earth until December 1st.
Fixing Websites
I had quite a few website problems over the past week. My wordpress accounts are getting overrun by bots. So my website host is complaining a LOT. I migrated a couple websites and added a cache plugin to hopefully fix some of these problems.
The newly updated websites include:
- Marc Gunn, The Celtfather
- Celtic Music CD Store
- Celtic Music Magazine
- Halfway to St. Patrick's Day
- Irish & Celtic Music Podcast
- Celtic Christmas Music
- Irish Song Lyrics
- Bards Crier Music Marketing
- Jennifer Gunn Fine Art
Photo by Snicker Furfoot
New Music from Brobdingnagian Bards
I also made a few updates to the Brobdingnagian Bards website. This weekend, we announced that we are currently recording a new album. We also have plans for at least one other show in 2013. We are hoping to be at DragonCon. And now that I think about it, we should probably do one other Austin show for the CD release of our next album.
All in all, there's more coming from the Brobdingnagian Bards. So make sure you subscribe to the mailing list on our website, Like us on Facebook, and keep an eye open for the next Brobdingnagian Bards Podcast.
Celtic Christmas
My Celtic Christmas Podcast was not a casualty of server problems, but I am working on it nonetheless. Farpoint Media decided to stop hosting podcasts on their servers. So last week, I migrated the website to a new host. Now I'm slowly transferring MP3 files to my Celtic Music Podcast host as well. It's taking some time though because I can only upload so many files to Libsyn at one time.
The move is already looking promising though. It seems the podcast has become a top search phrase for Celtic Christmas since its move. That inspired me to get back to work on my Celtic Christmas compilation CD that I was hoping to release this year. I don't have a lot of time to get this in order though. So here's hoping I can get it done.
Celtic Invasion of Scotland 2013
Preparations are underway for the Celtic Invasion of the Highlands of Scotland in 2013. The basic itinerary is now online. Over half of the seats are now filled. So if you're considering it, get your deposit in ASAP to reserve your spot. That's all you need to make it happen.
You won't find a more awesome way to travel the world than with my Celtic Invasion Vacations. With most groups it's all about the money–“How many people can we pack on a bus?” My trips are down-to-earth and personal. I believe that it's not about what you see, but who you see it with. The folks who join me agree. As a result, we see great sites, but we take our time doing so. We soak it up when we get there. And we move along when we are ready. It's brilliant!
If you have any questions, just talk to me and I'd be happy to share more thoughts about it.
Well, that's about all the updates I have for now. Thanks for listening.
