I confess - I use P2P sites occasionally. Mainly to get obscure Dylan bootlegs that I just wouldn’t be able to get my hands on elsewhere. One torrent site I visit recently posted a bulletin on its homepage directing visitors to download some music uploaded by one of its regular users. That was about three weeks ago, and as of today the album has been downloaded 134 times.

134 people - that’s nothing to get hugely excited about in the grand scheme of things. But nonetheless, if they all have 3 friends they recommend this band to… Well, you get the idea. Even if only a third of those downloaders take the time to visit that band’s website, and only half of those that do sign up to their mailing list, that’s still a healthy 22 people added to the fanbase for very little work.

It’s clear to me that independent musicians should not shy away from uploading their music to P2P sites. As reported recently in the Wall Street Journal, certain US radio programmers are even looking at what’s popular on the file-sharing networks when making decisions about their playlists!

So I added my current album to this torrent site, wrote a description that mentioned a few well-known bands I think I’m similar to, and waited. By the end of the week I’d had a modest 23 downloads (my torrent wasn’t announced on the homepage, I hasten to add!) But that’s certainly more people than downloaded it when I blanket spammed my Myspace ‘friends’.

The key is obviously to write a description that will show up when your target audience searches for torrents/files (for me, it was fans of the Zombies and Saint Etienne). Very much a “if you like them you might like me” strategy. Simple, but it does actually work - and you’re getting your music out there effortlessly.

Robert Wyatt – Shipbuilding

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