Music Promotion Services To Get Your Music Heard
If your music is ready to go, you really need to make sure it gets heard by the right people right away. As a dedicated do-it-yourself-er, I know the temptation to, well, do it yourself. After all, you are less expensive.
Or are you? What is your time really worth? Do you need to be doing all the legwork in promoting your music?These resources are here to help you. They are reasonably priced, and they offer three different models for music promotion on a professional level. Don't get me wrong, you have to keep pushing at every door, even if you use the services. But they will give you much more exposure. I think they are each a good investment. Here they are, details are below:
- TuneCore - gets your music tracks into Itunes, Rhapsody, Napster, and other online music download sellers. You keep all the profits.
- musicSUBMIT - an online promotion service to get three demo tracks to radio stations, blogs, reviewers and magazines.
- Artistopia - an online community bringing independent musicians and industry professionals and buyers together.
TuneCore is geared towards selling your music online.
If your songs are not currently on Itunes, Rhapsody and the like, TuneCore is for you. What they do, simply, is make sure that people can hear and purchase your tracks on the online music download services you choose.
If you have your music on CD Baby, you may have already signed up for digital download sales. If that is the case, you don't need to change anything. If not, consider this service. For an annual fee of around $20, and then one dollar for every online store you choose to submit to, they will put your album online. If you are just submitting one track, the annual fee is around $10. What is the advantage of doing this through TuneCore?
The answer is that they take no commissions, so you get the entire payment. In the case of Itunes, that is $.70 per song or seven dollars for a full album (11 songs or more). Other online services pay slightly more or less. Streaming services, such as Rhapsody, only pay you if someone downloads the track. If they stream it, meaning that they listen in the software without downloading a music file, it's considered promotional.
When you choose which service to submit your music to, keep that in mind. I still think it's worth it, but not everybody chooses to submit to Rhapsody or Napster. TuneCore gives you complete control over which services you submit your music to.
I have had a CD on CD Baby, and have earned much more from downloads than from actual sales of the physical CD. You must have your music on these online sites, you absolutely must. TuneCore is a fantastic way to take control of that.
Click here to sign up with TuneCore
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musicSUBMIT - an all in one online music submission service
MusicSubmit is awesome, here's how it works. Let's say you have a fantastic track that you want to get on the radio, to be reviewed, to be heard. Submitting it can be a very labor-intensive chore. You've got to track down hundreds of radio station music directors, blogs, reviewers, and so forth. This service does it all for you.
The submissions are done by genre. It is not simply a one size fits all. They choose the blogs, stations, podcasts, reviewers and so forth based on the style of your music.
Detailed reports about where your music has gone will be e-mailed to you on an ongoing basis. You can check your online account with them for a full report of progress. Nothing is left to chance, you will know exactly where your music is being submitted.
This is a promotion service, not a sales service. It is going to get your demo music to the right ears. Make sure that you have preferably three solid tracks ready to go. You should also have a web site or My Space (or similar) music page. Obviously, the more and better materials you have, the more serious and professional you appear. And you will need an e-mail address, of course! That is where you will receive responses to the music you have submitted.
The pricing reflects the amount of submissions they will make on your behalf. At the time of this writing, they were charging between $35 for 100 submissions, $99 for 400 submissions and $210 for 800 plus 200 bonus submissions. Alternatively, you can have a monthly submissions subscription for around $10, which gets you 25 submissions a month, or 50 submissions a month for $17.50.
They also can professionally write press releases and bios for you and your band to go with the submissions. If you don't have MP3 tracks, you can send them a CD and they will extract the MP3s from it for you.
This looks like a terrific service and timesaver. The investment is very modest, and the benefits are real. I feel that the people that run this site are responsive to the clients, and have created something extremely useful.
Click here to learn more about and sign up with musicSUBMIT.
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Artistopia is an online music community
Artistopia is the place for independent artists to manage and advance their careers via music marketing and productivity tools, peer-to-peer and peer-to-industry collaboration, and fan base ramp-up and communication. Join today for free!
Here, artists post their music, and industry people discover it. The purpose of the site is networking, so that independent music finds its voice and finds its audience. The way your music is promoted is through your artist page. The web site allows you to effectively present all information about yourself, including credits, awards, press releases, photos, gig listings and so forth. Needless to say, your music is also encoded and available.
There are two subscription options: free and paid. The free one, naturally, is limited in scope. It basically is a full presence on the web site, without any active promotion beyond that presence. The paid subscription, $99.95 as of this writing, is much more proactive. It includes creating e-mail press kits, managing fan lists, keeping track of professional contacts, publishing newsletters and so forth. The free option may have other advertising on your music page, while the paid option is completely ad free.
Similar to my space, perhaps, but with the benefit of being a more serious and professional online venue, Artistopia may be worth a serious look. I can't stress enough how important it is to get your music heard by everyone who can make a difference. Persistence opens doors that you never thought were openable.