Your Music Online 2.0

The online music world changes about every 3 months.  We’ll keep this post up to date. Below are resources that have been tried and tested. Let us know if you find something for us to add.

The Big 3: YouTube + Twitter + Bandcamp. YouTube for content, Twitter (Facebook) for connections, Bandcamp (or SoundCloud!) for digital music.

How many piles of teen girls/cash must Justin Beiber consume before you realize that YouTube is every artist’s golden ticket? It’s a no brainer today. A new fan will hit Google then YouTube, or, arguably the other way around. Video is much more engaging than audio alone. And when we say YouTube we mean any video content, not only YouTube specifically. Make your content interesting, it doesn’t have to be you singing into a web cam. It can be cool, it can be original, it must me be true to you, and to succeed it really needs to be.

Twitter is your immediate link to your fans. Be a philosopher, be a provocateur, be whoever, just add to the conversation rather than making it your monologue. Twitter is more personal than Facebook in my humble opinion, and if used correctly, can tap into your fans by giving you an ongoing conversation with the people who care about you the most. 3 daily tweets is all you need. More in the NRP book.

Bandcamp is an amazing free service for musicians looking to spread their digital music in the post-MySpace days. You get to upload high quality music files (wav, flac, etc) add pdf and other add ons if you’d like, and distribute your music via a pay, free for email, or just free model for your fans. USE THIS SERVICE IT IS GREAT.

Soundcloud is slick, easy to use, and has a young innovative team of people behind it. They are determined to make Soundcloud the first choice in sharing your music online. You can emmbed thier widgets into many different sites and users are able to comment on the track, download it if you let them, and other expected options. Soundcloud is becoming increasingly popular and many bloggers now have a “Submit Your Song By Soundcloud” widget, which is always useful.

—NRP—

Social Networking:

Do we really need to explain why you should be on fbook? 8000000 billion million kagillion users should be reason enough. Your audience probably uses facebook and will be better connected to you their than most other social networks. Be on Facebook.

Sharing Your Music Online:

Google Music is a new big deal. They’re offering users a pretty good deal. Up to 20,000 songs, up in the Google Cloud and they’re offering artists straight access to them for a one time fee of $25 in their Artist Hub. That is pennies compared to what you can spend spreading your music throughout iTunes. We’ll see how powerful this tool gets.

Grooveshark has an extensive musical library and a lot of users. Grooveshark has an upload your music feature which adds your songs to the huge pool of artists. Users can then make playlists, favourite your songs, share and buy your music. Think of Grooveshark as another avenue to spread your music rather than make any money.

Oooh big hi-res pictures, user quests, and a great interface make the SixtyOne one of my personal favorites for music as a user. Users can comment, favourite, share, and download the music you add to the pool. The Sixty One feels different because it presents itself as more about the music rather than the advertising revenue. The site caters to new music not so much older stuff and it’s just plain cool. Join up.

Canucks only! Sorry the rest of the world. CBC Radio 3 is the “cool” channel and a must if you’d like to be placed on the radar of the national broadcaster. CBC Radio 3 has all the usuals (bio, pics, upcoming shows, etc) but they do it in a much more pleasing way.

This service provides your music to independent radio podcasters around the world. It is a fantastic way to spread your music to new ears around the world. Signup is easy and you can sell your music on their network as well. Remember to list your music in the right genre or you may be overlooked.

This is a hugely popular website. It’s main use for you should be as an educational tool. Sign up is easy, and there are the basic modifications (wiki style) so you can tailor your band’s last.fm site to a point.

Digital Distribution Options:

Tunecore is an online aggregator. For a price, they will place your music digital music stores. *Check out their prices page for details. They deal with all the major players in digital music. They have gotten bigger and bigger over the last few years and are now the first choice for many artists.

ReverbNation is a multifaceted site and fast becoming a one stop shop for independent musicians. They have mailing lists, widgets galore, twitter integration, electronic press kits, and also digital distribution.

 

Managing your content:

With so many sites featuring your content updating each one would be a pain, but luckily for you there’s ArtistData. They let you update your sites with new blogs and shows. No music updates yet. They’ve won numerous awards and personally speaking have been an invalubale time saver. They offer 3 tiers of service starting from FREE to around $25/month. There are still some bugs but this team is very open to suggestions. Sign-up here.

Measuring Your Hype:

A tracker of your Fans, Plays, and Comments over your many different websites. They have a great looking website and are looking to put even more analytic power in artists hands. Facebook Fan pages, Last.fm plays, YouTube views, it’s all there plus many more. Check out how, and when, people are finding your music. This information can be then used in different ways. Check out which online music portal is working and concentrate your efforts there, or perhaps create more content for other sites to get more views. In any case, Next Big Sound is an important and popular tool for musicians soon.

This site ranks and finds the most blogged, downloaded, and buzzed about music from all over the internet world. It’s a new kind of chart versus the archaic Billboard Nielsen Soundscan ones. While many smaller bands may not make the monthly or weekly top 10, they can realistically crack the daily charts and genre specific charts. I’ve seen it happen, and it can only be a momentum boost. You can subscribe to their email but We Are Hunted still caters to music seekers versus music makers.

A music blog aggregator like no other. It trolls music blogs (new indie music typically) and provides a list of what people are talking about. Hype Machine has a search function allowing you to search your band or search band’s that you may sound similar to, to find bloggers that could give you press.

Take Control of Your Music
Voyno