Full Disclosure: I’m a stumbler. I’m a stumble addict. I’ve got a stumble habit. I’m a stumbleholic, stumblelover, and a stumblemaniac. I can’t help it.
It all started about four years ago when a friend of mine said, “OMG, you’ve never tried StumbleUpon? It’s awesome!” So, of course, I looked it up online and created an account. It was like I discovered the internet for the first time. I became obsessed. I’d wake up at 2am and drag myself over to my computer desk and start stumbling until the sun came up. There is so much weird, wonderful, and fascinating stuff online and StumbleUpon helped me find it. Nowadays, I try to keep my late-night stumbling to a minimum, but I still stumble almost every day.
I’ll get to the stuff about how musicians and StumbleUpon are like chocolate and peanut butter in just a second. For those of you who have never tried StumbleUpon . . .
What is StumbleUpon and How Does it Work?
StumbleUpon is a basically just a magic button (
Stumble!) you can add on to your web browser. Every time you click this magic button, something new and interesting shows up on your screen. Pretty simple right?
StumbleUpon says this on their website:
“StumbleUpon helps you discover and share great websites. As you click Stumble!, we deliver high-quality pages matched to your personal preferences. These pages have been explicitly recommended by your friends or one of over 15 million other websurfers with interests similar to you. Rating these sites you like (
) automatically shares them with like-minded people – and helps you discover great sites your friends recommend.”
http://www.stumbleupon.com/aboutus/
Why You Should Care About StumbleUpon as a Musician
There are two great reasons:
1. Stumbleupon is a music discovery tool, and thus it can help you get discovered. You can submit your music videos, web pages, blog posts, streaming tracks and more to StumbleUpon. Any content that lives on a live webpage can be stumbled. When you submit a page, there is always the potential that thousands or even millions of people might stumble across your content. The better and more viral your content, the more likely it will get more views as it receives more () “thumbs ups.”
When you have the StumbleUpon toolbar enabled on your browser, all you have to do is click the ‘thumbs up’ button to submit any web page you are currently browsing. You can also submit URLs to StumbleUpon manually here: http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit
If you’re interested in how to get more mileage out of your StumbleUpon submissions, check out this article: Tips & Tricks for Submitting to StumbleUpon
2. StumbleUpon is a great way to find sharable content. Do you ever have a hard time thinking of a Facebook. Twitter, or blog post idea to share with your fans? Worry no more! Set your preferences in StumbleUpon and start stumbling based on your taste in music or anything else. I use StumbleUpon almost everyday to come up with interesting tidbits about music and music news to share with CD Baby artists. (And now you know my secret. Use it!)
Do you use StumbleUpon to get exposure for your music? Do you use StumbleUpon to discover content to share with your fans? Share your experience in the comments below.
Chris Bolton
Sell Your Music on iTunes and More!
