In the third paragraph I’ll let you know how you can advertise for free in two major music publications, but first….
Imagine that all of your district’s teachers are assembled for a PD session and the head of IT tells you they will be rolling out an all-new tech infrastructure that will work flawlessly, save workload, and harness technology to make everyone’s jobs easier. If you’re a veteran teacher you’ve heard this several times before and the result was always months of glitches, bugs, and extra work, often followed by junking it until the next great idea came long, right?
In the last year, SBO+ and our sister magazine MMR Magazine heard this same speech (and had the same reaction!). Our publisher. Mike Lawson has spent so many hours in a basement room writing computer code that he looks like a vampire. Over the last several months, the new technology has been rolled out and the result was (for a while)…. chaos. Articles disappeared, author names and sometimes titles were deleted, sales came to a halt, and magazine issues were severely delayed. But, thanks to Mike’s midnight coding and a total team effort, we are emerging (gradually) into the promised future.
What does this mean for you? While there are lots of features that apply to those of us producing the magazines, there are some incredible features just for you. Such as:
– Anyone who logs into artistpro.media and completes their profile gets $1,000 of free advertising in SBO+ or MMR Magazine. This can be used for print ads, digital banners, or email blasts. If you have a local product, your email blast can be focused only on specific zip codes at a lower cost. When I heard about this, I was a little skeptical so I created a personal account, and about 15 minutes later a $1,000 credit was posted to my account!
– Once into the portal (yes, it’s all free) you get access to all of the research tools that a major corporation would have. Here are a couple of questions I asked the tool and in minutes got a detailed action plan for each of them. I was even able to select how much detail I wanted in the plan (BTW, I found the “Detailed” option to give the most usable advice):
Q: I don’t have enough woodwind players in my middle school band. How can I fix that?
Q: I wrote some pieces for my school band, orchestra, or choir. How can I get them published?
Q: I was just told to start a marching band. How do I do it?
Q: The boys in my choir’s voices are changing. How do I adapt to that?
Q: I have invented a great accessory for marching bands. How do I market it?
Q: I’m a high school band director who was just told to start doing a spring musical. How do I do it?
Q: I’m thinking about being a music education major. How are the job prospects after college graduation?
Q: I’m struggling as a music teacher. How do I get help?
Q: What are the employment prospects for music instrument repair technicians?
Q: I’m an experienced music teacher but I need a mentor too. How do I get one?
Q: I’m quitting my music teacher job. What other career opportunities in music are available to me?
Q: I’m a music teacher but need leadership training. How do I get that?
Q: How can I use AI effectively to teach my chorus students?
Each one of these inquiries gave me a detailed roadmap with hyperlinks to relevant articles and sources.
What makes this tool different and more useful to you?
If you put any of these inquiries into a generic AI search engine, you get lots of information that is irrelevant to music educators. Our tool has been “fed” 160,000+ sources, 25+ years of articles from SBO+, MMR, and other relevant music sources. It surveys real-time economic data and live tariff rates. So, if you want to know how to improve your concert band intonation, it will pull information from the 44 SBO+ articles going back over 25 years on concert band intonation and also give you links to each of those articles.
Obviously, there are still bugs to kill in our new system (please be patient!), but it represents our commitment to you. For over a quarter century, School Band and Orchestra Magazine, and now SBO+ have been devoted to bringing music educators relevant and timely information and tools for free. Between our offer of $1,000 worth of advertising and providing you with this extraordinary research tool, SBO+ is committed to serving you for many years to come.
