With the recent Myspace Music relaunch, a pivotal question has been posed to indie musicians: what kind of distribution is right for me? As an indie artist and label owner, having your music online is pivotal to any band’s success. You can reach a global audience and increase fanbase size by creating mailing lists and article submissions to multiple directories.

Many musician friends of mine were happy to see Myspace get a shot in the arm so to speak by bringing attention back to their network. They wanted to be part of this distribution launch and signed up for Snocap and asked me if it was a good move.

Snocap allows you to set up a store instantly and sell your music on your profile page. The key thing here is that the service is Free, however, Snocap makes their share of profit. According to Snocap’s FAQ page: “SNOCAP charges a transaction fee of $.39 per download that includes all the costs of providing the SNOCAP MyStore: the bandwidth, storage, audio fingerprint license, PayPal and payment management costs, customer service, etc.” In my eyes it is a pretty steep cut. You are forced to raise your prices on a single or album just to recoup the cost of setup.

Songcast offers 100% royalties and places your music with major online retailers such as iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody and Napster. This is critical for our operation. We used to have our major releases just on our own website and you have to work on getting fans to find your store.

Songcast charges $5.99 a month for unlimited album upload. You will be spending some money here but your fans can feel more secure spending their money on a trusted storefront and it helps add some credibility to your operation. That is the tradeoff I was looking for. We have sold more albums because we were on iTunes than when we were selling off of our own site. Food for thought.

With selling music online their is always going to be some cost, you just have to place yourself in a position that can reap you the most profits with the least cost.

Establishing your online presence in a Web 2.0 crazed world is critical for any music operation and their success. This list provides different avenues each artist can tap into to increase their visibility online. These different target areas allow you to focus your marketing energy towards different social networks and forms of music promotion.

Developing a marketing strategy is easy. With all the tools out their for independent musicians, all it takes is some effort.

Web Hosting

Purchasing your own domain hosting and establish your brand name. Your own hosting gives you more flexibility to customize your site and expand by creating forums or blogs. I prefer Bluehost because of my experience with their customer service and control panel. Bluhost gives you all the scripts to setup a WordPress blog in minutes.

• Bluehost
• Dot5Hosting
  
• HostMonster

Free Blogs

Promote your music by any means. If you choose not to buy your domain name and hosting then you should take advantage of any FREE blogging platform. Establish your brand name. I like Blogger because you can start a blog for free and use your Adsense code to make extra marketing revenue while blogging. Nice to see out of a free blog site.

• WordPress
• Blogger
• Weebly

Music Distribution

Upload your music to major online retailers such as iTunes, Napster and Amazonmp3. Choose distribution service if you currently have no marketplace for your album then promote over various social networks. I prefer Songcast because of its unlimited album upload, free profile page, widget/link maker and 100% royalties.

• Songcast
• Tunecore
• Catapult
• Routenote
• CD Baby
• Watunes

Mailing List

Setting up a mailing list is essential for your music operation. You can manage a small fanbase and create a better chance of selling your music to your list. They signed up so they are interested in your art. I chose Aweber because of their track record and awesome features allowing your readers to stay tuned to all your news.

• Aweber

Music Profiles

Upload your music for free. Create profiles and add friends, allowing them to hear your music and read on your band news and tour info. Bandcamp is my favorite. They have a clean profile page to upload your music, collect emails, allow fans to download album fully coded with cover art, and it is all for free. You can sync up your page with your Paypal account and sell the music for whatever price you choose.

• Bandcamp
• Myspace
• Ourstage
• last.FM
• Soundclick
• Facebook

Social Bookmarking/News Sites

Write a post on your blog and then submit them to these news sites. Great way to promote your band and get free traffic.

• Friendfeed
• Digg
• Delicious
• Twitter
• Yahoo Buzz
• Propeller
• Reddit
• StumbleUpon
• Technorati

Music Licensing

Submit your music to these sites and they help connect you with placing your music in television and film projects.

• Sound Exchange
• YouLicense
• RumbleFish
• Pump Audio
• BeatPick

Online Music Collaboration

Collaborate online and network with fellow hungry musicians. Work on music together and have twice the promotion. Network!

• MixMatchMusic
• Bojam
• Valooza
• TuneRooms

Music Resources

Participate in different music arenas and find your comments leading to great unique visits later. Share your knowledge and market.

• Music Think Tank
• Audible Hype
• Know the Music Biz
• Future Producers
• Taxi
• Hypebot

Article Traffic

Display your expertise, write articles and create free profiles. Great for backlinks to your site and generating extra unique visitors to your site.

• Ezine
• Squidoo
• HubPages

Create Free Widgets

Free widgets are great. Spread them across your music profiles and promote your content. Add one to Myspace and get fans to your website.

• Clearspring
• Sprout Builder
• Widgetbox

Free Press Release Sites

Creating a press release is a great way to establish your credibility. Press releases are great to add to your Press Kit and help spread your name online.

• OpenPR
• Express Press Release
• Free Press Release

As an indie label partner and musician, these websites and services have made it possible for me to sell albums in a digital world. The key to this is finding a nice mix of promotion. Once you develop a consistent plan of attack, your marketing will become an asset instead of an obstacle.

Songcast is a music distribution service that places your music with major online retailers such as Amazon MP3, iTunes, Napster and Rhapsody. As digital distribution is changing, Songcast has been adding great new features to keep up with the social networking times.

Currently Join Songcast and they will place your music with iTunes and the new Amazon MP3 and provide you with an Amazon Widget. These widgets are great for covering all your social network profiles like Myspace or Facebook and even on your free Songcast profile. Cover as much marketing ground as possible. Once your album is on iTunes here is a great link maker site for your album.

Hip Hop Distribution will keep the independent artist informed on new ways to market your music and empower the independent movement.

Hip Hop Distribution is here to discuss issues relevant for indie musicians. Music distribution has become very easy to attain and earning a living as a musician is possible. The main obstacle for musicians is keeping consistent marketing plans during times of being understaffed or unorganized. Speaking from personal experience, nothing in this music industry comes easy.

As an independent musician and label partner in Fried Roots, distribution was the initial obstacle. Fried Roots has used services for distribution such as Songcast and Tunecore to get our music with different major online retailers, and they work just great. Since iTunes currently is the #1 digital music US retailer, we felt that our music needs to be seen by that large of a domestic and international base.

Once your music is submitted with a distribution service or you set your own store up with options like easybe 1-2-3, you still need to direct traffic to your album. Use social networks like Ourstage, Myspace, or FutureProducers to promote your music in various arenas. From personal experience, I have learned alot from speaking with fellow forum members on sites. Use your FREE resources.

The great part of this is hip hop distribution can be packaged for multiple stores, such as iTunes, Rhapsody, and Napster. The main view point with this is you don’t know what music store all of your fans prefer when it comes to listening to and purchasing your music.

Cover your ground and expand your music to other stores to reach as many people as possible. Sell your music worldwide and give yourself a chance to make it.

Fried Roots has released a new album by Lost Thought called “Lost In India”. The music was produced by Shifty J and Lost Thought in the Fried Roots Studio.

The album contains songs recorded by Lost Thought in India and Los Angeles. The writings were created starting from takeoff at LAX airport, landing in Mumbai, and even random thoughts in a Taipei layover, eyes capturing the world.

The goal of this album was to display the creativity contained by two independent label partners and reach a broader audience with our dedication to smooth hip hop lyricism and head nodding instrumentals.

This is an example of our distribution. Fried Roots signed up with Songcast because we feel its the best way for our music to reach main stream audiences for such an affordable price.

Keep posted for more news with Fried Roots. Feel free to visit our “Releases” section and download a couple of FREE Fried Roots albums: “25nyne” and “Expec“. 25nyne is an instrumental album produced by Shifty J and Lost Thought and Expec is a free album from our other Fried Roots artist Spec. Enjoy!