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This article is from the alt.music.* List of Known Newsgroups FAQ, by Brian Edmonds edmonds@cs.ubc.ca with numerous contributions by others.

09 How To Create a Newsgroup For a Musical Artist

The purpose of this mini-faq is to help people who want to create newsgroups
for their favourite artists/bands avoid the flamefest of alt.config, and the
poor propagation of alt.music. Taking this route will require an investment of
three months to a year before you have a newsgroup, but if the fandom really
exists, then it will be worth it.
1. Create a mailing list. For a list of mailing list providers, see
http://www.cs.ubc.ca/spider/edmonds/usenet/ml-providers.txt.
2. Advertise it every few weeks in the appropriate related alt.music and
rec.music groups, and in rec.music.info. An informative and well
written advert of a paragraph or two (with clear subscription
instructions) will be more likely to attract positive attention than a
"Hey, join my k00l list" type posting.
3. While it is growing, familiarize yourself with the Big-8 newsgroup
creation guidelines, found in news.announce.newgroups. Reading
news.groups for a month or two will also be helpful. Make sure that
you stay active on the mailing list to maintain a steady traffic and
keep people interested -- interesting lists grow fast.
4. Wait until your mailing list has a few hundred members. I would
suggest 200 as a minimum, and 500 being almost a sure thing.
5. If the list never gets this many readers, then there probably aren't
as many fans on the net as you thought. At this point, you can go
propose an alt.music group, or (more sensibly, I think) stick with the
mailing list.
6. Submit an RFD for the group under rec.music[.artists]. Come up with a
good name, and make sure the RFD/CFV are posted to your mailing list,
and encourage members to vote. If you can get a few hundred yes votes
from the list, then you're almost guaranteed to get a group with
worldwide propagation.
7. Suggestion: arranging to turn the mailing list into a gateway for
newsgroup once created will help in avoiding negative votes from
members of the list who cannot receive news directly.

If you're new to finding/creating musical resources on the net, check out the
following FAQ:
o http://www.cs.ubc.ca/spider/edmonds/music/musical-info.txt
o send email to majordomo@edmonds.home.cs.ubc.ca with the following line
in the body of the message: get faq musical-info.txt

 

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