Written by Enniv ZarfMetaverse Music
There are a lot of great resources for musicians online outside of Second Life to use to promote original music. I have been exploring all the different possibilities and still discovering more. So I figured I should list them here just in case if you have missed some. And if you know of any other good resources, by all means list it in the comment section here in the article.
There's a good list after the jump so be sure to click on the read more link to read the whole article.
First of is of course the ever popular Myspace - www.myspace.com...
...Musicians as well as other artists of media genre can create a profile to promote themselves. The positive aspect of myspace really is just its popularity. Nearly every musician online has a profile so it's a great way to network. Feel free to add me there www.myspace.com/paulkwo. Your profile page can be manipulated pretty much almost in its entirety custom to your liking as long as you know how to do it. The drawback of the site is the limited amount of music you can upload.
Next we have The Sixtyone - www.thesixtyone.com which I discovered after reviewing a few musicians in Second Life. The cool thing about this site is that your fans can bump you up. It's a neat little program that gives you a little more reach. Personally I think it's more fun for your fans then for you. It is also definitely much more pop/rock oriented. The other drawback is that you really only get to upload a very limited amount of music onto the site. You get to upload more after being bumped. But for me personally it's not very effective since classical oriented music don't fare all that well there to begin with so I am capped. Feel free to bump me if you like at www.thesixtyone.com/paulkwo.
The site I am now very fond of is Reverb Nation - www.reverbnation.com. It really is a one stop music marketing and promotional website for artists. It's virtually unlimited in the amount of music an artist can upload. It connects itself directly to an artist's myspace page as well as facebook and other programs. It's got a bunch of cool widgets to use. It has very professional management tools of fans and promotional tools. It even have a gig finder to hook artists up to venues. The majority of their site and tools are free. There are some really advanced additional tools that you can pay for. But usually when an artist actually require those tools, you would already be making some money which would easily pay for any of those. I am absolutely a fan of Reverb Nation now and I've uploaded a huge amount of my music up there now. Feel free to listen to my music at www.reverbnation.com/paulkwo. Join as a fan of mine if you like too!
Facebook - www.facebook.com is gradually developing things for artists to use such as their artists page. But they are definitely very underdeveloped and isn't really all that friendly to artists. But if you have an established facebook profile, it's still a great way to do more networking. My profile is at usc.facebook.com/profile.php?id=3434939
The best program I think to sell music is CDbaby - www.cdbaby.com. It's a pretty affordable way to sell music and gets your music at a huge amount of websites, more then Reverb Nation's program. Though CDbaby is just slightly more expensive then Reverb Nation when it comes to CD releases, mainly they take a tiny little bit of commission on every sale. But they do also allow hard copy sales which Reverb Nation doesn't do. And they do sell. They are very well established and people do visit CDbaby looking for new music to buy. I have sold hardcopies and MP3's there before I even started promoting it myself. Check out my album (will be albums in a few weeks) at www.cdbaby.com/all/paulkwo. If you want to join as an artist, you will need to visit their artist site which is CDbaby.net
A few other marketing possibilities for artists are:
1) Blogger.com - Wordpress.com - LiveJournal.com - Xanga.com - Friendster.com
Blogging is really a great way to keep your fans up to date with all your happenings as well as get to know you a little better on a personal level. That always helps keep them as your fans when you add more personal touch. Though of course you do run into the problem of revealing too much and upsetting people. So be sure whatever you blog about, it's still in line with yours or your band's brand.
2) Podcasting @ iTunes and other podcasting sites
I think podcasting can be a very beneficial way of building a fan base. I record all my live music concerts and then I post them up as podcast episodes on a very regular basis. Of course if you do cover songs you will run into rights issues with ASCAP and BMI. But if you do all originals, consider doing some sort of podcast episode every now and then! Let your fans who missed you live catch up with you on your podcast!
3) Indaba Music - indabamusic.com
This is a very neat site where you can collaborate in recordings with artists from around the globe. It's a great resource and all the programs are free there for you to use so why not take advantage of it. It's like google documents for musicians. It really is a neat website. Visit my Indaba Music @ www.indabamusic.com/people/paulkwo
4) SNOCAP - Snocap.com
I personally have had a bad experience with this site mainly because it never worked. Nothing played properly on that site for me so I eventually just canceled the account. Their customer support was totally useless. But if you get it to work, it's a good way to sell some music.
5) Twitter - www.twitter.com
Twitter is a simple way to just keep people posted of your latest activities. The most beneficial thing is that a lot of sites allow for an importing of your twitter so it'll simplify you updating people about your events and activities. Mine's at www.twitter.com/paulkwo
6) LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com
A very good networking website that's business oriented. But you may still find some really good music connections there. My linked in is at www.linkedin.com/in/paulkwo
When you have set up all these sites, be sure to post it to your Second Life profiles to let all your fans know to join you there also.
If you have any of your own suggestions, feel free to comment here and share with everyone!
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