Bandcamp provides you with a free home for your music and gives you all the tools to promote it in this Web 2.0 world. Their approach to promoting music on the internet has made me question how good our band’s approach is on various topics such as: search engine optimized track pages, quick streaming and downloading of music, clean album layouts, and stat tracking for music plays.

Upload your music, cover art, and custom header graphic to your page, which is clean and ad free, unlike Myspace. Your discography is displayed while fans can stream your music and read your track description, lyrics, and links to your other websites or band blog. Check out their video below.

Say you want to learn more about a particular track, you click on it and it goes to the track page, where your can describe your individual song more in detail. Then you can download the song in various formats and charge your own price. When the music is downloaded it is tagged correctly with artist name, song name and song art. Their example shows an artist giving away a free 128k mp3 version of a song and letting fans name their own price for a higher quality version such as AAC or FLAC. This is great because I always hear DJ’s complaining about low quality mp3’s and not using them in their sets. Give consumers options.

The stats look awesome, and the buzz section shows all the places on the web where your code is embedded and how many plays per track. Great way to join in conversations about your music. Connect with fans, acknowledge their effort.

The feature I enjoy the most is the ability to promote your music with their “Share” option. Choose where you want to share your music on sites such as Facebook, Myspace, Wordpress, and Twitter. Within a click you will be provided with a link or code to promote your music on various sites.

Even if you have distribution, I think Bandcamp can be a useful tool. Promote free songs, EP’s or mixtapes. Each track gets it own URL making it great for search engine optimization. Your music is your content and the more music you make and describe thoroughly, the better your fans can find you when doing searches on Google or Yahoo for instance.

My only question is how long before this service is no longer free. They offer great utilities for indie musicians which makes me wonder how long it will remain free. Their site says they are “experimenting” with revenue models and might charge in the future by taking a cut of download and merchandise revenue from artists selling over a certain amount per month. Until they decide, the service is free and I plan to try it as an outlet for future promos.

With so many music conferences being held, Music Pin has thrown its hat into the arena with their service. Music Pin is a digital marketing company, based out of West London, that provides promotional tools to labels and artists to maximize their exposure through download cards and their online media platform.

The simple fact is they provide a way for you to give out promotional cards with pin codes to redeem your music online. They manufacture it and its the job of the artist or label to sell it. They deliver you the pincodes and host the content on their site.

Here is the video from Derek Sivers that has a great interview with Nayo Abidoye who discusses the service in more detail.

The content essentially links to your websites and social network links. For example, the fan goes to the Music Pin website and redeems their music. The fan receives an html email with the download link and the email also contains a list to your social network profiles, blogs and websites.

I would love to promote my music through this technique. Fans can download my music and at the same time find links to my indie music marketing blog, Twitter account, Myspace page and mailing lists. Put this in comparison with someone purchasing through iTunes only. They click, buy and the transaction is over.

As an artist or label, they give you a campaign report to see who your fans are. Great marketing idea. You can load up from 1 to 20 songs: sure beats carrying Cd’s. The main advantage is you are making a fan go to their computer and potentially bookmark your webpages or follow you on your favorite social networks. Bridge the gap between the distance with fans and artists. Let the fans get to know you.

The price currently is stated at 500 cards for 300 pounds, which is roughly $426, with price breaks for higher quantity orders.

I like the fact you can use it for promos or demos, or sell them to fans, depending on your purpose. I like the versatility also: sell them after your shows or use them when you go out and network with others during your daily encounters. This packaging might get you some extra attention and spark the curiousity to want to hear your music.

Music packaging is what is intriguing to me. By changing the way music is delivered to the fan, we can introduce them to more than just a song, but our brand and mission.

The Midem Conference of 2009 brought together labels, publishers, artist managers and many more to offer their opinions on the changing music industry.

This video contains some great interviews. It starts out with Micheal Eaton who is the Business Manager of Eric Clapton and CEO of MusicLore Limited. Then Bruce Flohr adds his insight. He works for Red Light Management/partner, and ATO Records.

Midem is the world’s music market, digital and mobile professionals gather to do business.

Topics discussed were very interesting. Their is a talk of a power shift favoring the artist. This in turn creates more responsibility for their manager. The job of a band manger is changing rapidly and becoming more of a brand manager. Skill set is changing and the concern is artists are demanding more out of their managers.

The artist is demanding more out of the management. They want you to do it all: I want you to be my manger, be my label, be my merchandiser and digital aggregator.

Even smaller operations can discover areas to focus on when creating a foundation for your band.

What is your demand from your current management? Are they providing you the utmost representation as needed in this shifting music industry? What do you want your manager to be in charge of, or can a major label provide this for you?

It’s going to be interesting how majors and indies approach artist management in 2009.

Fried Roots is currently in the promotion phase for its “Lost In India” release. Trying to create a buzz can come through several different channels. Merchandising is our next experiment. If we can create some quality T-Shirts at a low cost, we can bring in some extra money for our music label. Screen printing our own shirts seems like the plan we are looking for.

Here is an excellent video that describes how easy it is to create your own shirts. As an independent music label, we want to control every aspect of our business and this fits along with our plans, plus it is fun. Get creative with logos, and promote online through different social networks and social bookmarking sites to stimulate album sales and spreading your band name.

The importance of music marketing is to keep up with the different techniques you encounter and implementing them in your operation. Here is an informative video just describing different aspects on how to get your music heard.