A Song A Day

If you’re just starting out as a musician looking to use the internet as a promotional tool, there should be one question on your mind. It’s not, how can I make money? And it’s not, which social networks should I be on? Rather it’s, how do I get my music heard?

Social networks like Myspace may have millions of users, but it’s increasingly hard to get any of them to listen to your stuff if you don’t already have some kind of public profile. But there are other ways you can use the internet to get your music heard, right this second.

1. Amiestreet
I’ve written about Amiestreet before, so check that post for the background. Upload your music to the site now and within hours someone will be checking it out – and maybe even downloading it – because the way the site works means new releases are always actively sought out by the community.

2. The Sixty One
The Sixty One is a kind of online game for music fans. In a similar way to Amiestreet, the Sixty One community seeks out newly uploaded music to build points, which earn them privileges on the site. It’s fairly involved, but all you need to know is this – put your music on this site and people will listen. The more listeners you get, the more artist points you earn, and the more tracks you can upload.

3. Podsafe Music Network
The Podsafe Music Network allows artists to upload music that producers of podcasts can then use on their shows, safe in the knowledge that the content is legally safe for them to feature. If you own all the rights to your music, upload it here and within a few hours your tracks (if they’re good enough, obviously) will be being broadcast on someone’s podcast. Okay, so you may only be reaching a couple of people who tune into X Pat Radio (an example of a show that’s featured some of my music), but it’s a start – and the process is effortless.

4. P2P
Join a P2P community like Demonoid, create a torrent of your tracks, and add it to the torrent community. If you tag it well and create a useful description that mentions a couple of established bands you’re influenced by, community members will check it out. Everyone likes free music after all. Just make sure you play by the rules.

5. Give your music away
Sounds like an obvious idea. But just offering your music for free on your website isn’t going to automatically attract thousands of listeners. How do they find out about it?

This particular solution is slightly more involved (and will cost a little bit of money), but it proved to be very effective when I tried it. I released an album last year, which I distributed through Tunecore. In the week leading up to the release date, I offered the entire album for free download on my website. To make people aware of this offer, I created a small ad announcing that the new Fakesensations album was available for free at fakesensations.com (I was lucky to have a good quote from an NME review of a previous release of mine, which made the offer sound even more intriguing).

I then distributed this ad to a couple of relevant music blogs (in this case SixEyes, Culture Bully and Arjan Writes) via BlogAds (that’s the bit that costs some money). During that week, over 100 curious people clicked through from the ad and downloaded the album. Again, not a life-changing amount of listeners, but amongst that 100 could be one or two people who really love what they hear and start spreading the word. At this stage, that’s really all you need to get the ball rolling.

Popularity: 21% [?]