Antler

Advertising and selling music on the web · Sunday November 22, 2009 by Rudolf Vavruch

I was surprised to discover how little some musicians know about the possibilities for advertising and monetisation the Web offers them. You don’t even need to know much more than how to use a web browser to make the most of these many of these services.

Everyone knows about MySpace and Facebook, and arguably every band should have a presence on both of them. There are also MySpace alternatives such as Virb to investigate.

There are a gazillion other music sites carving out their own niches such as Pandora, iLike, lala, MOG, Spotify to mention a few.

However, personally I think the following are the holy trinity of music sites that every band should have a presence on:

Last.fm

The original idea behind Last.fm goes like this: you install a program that watches the action in your music player (Rhythmbox, Winamp, iTunes, etc.) and saves what you listen to a your account on the site. Then based on what people with similar taste enjoy it recommends other bands you may enjoy.

From a band’s point of view you can upload tracks for users to discover your music online. There is a pay to play scheme flowering there.

My recommendation: If your band page does not exist yet (they get automagically created when someone listens to a track of yours), create it. Make sure there are sexy photos of you and that the write-up is informative. Suggest bands you might be similar to. Upload some tracks for users to get to know you with, possibly even give them a track or two to download so they can listen to it over and over again until it is enscribed on their brain. Lastly make sure that any MP3s you release are tagged properly so that Last.fm can pick it up.

The Sixty One

Using game mechanics the creators of this site inspire users to discover new music and to push—Digg-style—their favorite music to the top of the pile. They have a store where you can buy music from artists as well.

My recommendation: If you’re not on there, get on there now. Upload your tunes and interact with your fans. It’s a great way to expose yourself to a wider audience.

Bandcamp.com

You have a beautiful website, and you want your fans to listen to your music and be able to buy high quality music from it but you don’t have the know how, the hard drive space or cash to pay for the service. Enter bandcamp. They provide the platform for fans to listen to music and to buy a number of different file formats from you. The site isn't geared to be browsed or explored, rather it is intended that you link to your band’s page directly from somewhere else.

They give you a lot of options for how you want to sell your music. Set price, name your own price, certain types of format for free / different price, etc.

My recommendation: If you don’t have player and store on your website (and even if you do, bandcamp is worth a look) check them out.

Other things to do

Tag your MP3s. Seriously. If you put any music in MP3 (or other file format) out there at all, do yourself and everyone else a favour and tag them properly, that means your band name and the song title minimum.

Give your listeners a few free full length tracks to download, even if they are lower quality. Unless you have a deal with a major record label that can pay your way onto radio, or you regularly tour all over the world, where else are people going to hear it? Why restrict your listener base to only those that can make your gigs? Give fans the benefit of the doubt and let them get to know you.

If you’re looking for a way to distribute your music in blog posts or send people links they can listen to, I recommend having a look at SoundCloud, one of the best music distribution sites I have come across.

At the end of the day it is all about marketing yourself and providing potential fans with an easy way of getting to know you and existing fans an easy way of getting their paws on your music, and the sites mentioned in this post provide a great way to do that.