[atlantaprog] Re: To the bands of ARIA:

This whole field is in constant flux, but right now, there are only two games in town as far as I'm concerned - CD Baby & MySpace.

Online CD:

We've only recently signed up with CD Baby, and haven't done anything with the yet. But the anecdotal evidence I've seen is that they rock! Or upcoming release will go through them for sure. They seem to have a good handle on the internet market these days.

CD Street did a good job of fulfillment (via a bit of code we put on our website), but last year, they drastically downsized their business model and I don't have high hopes (in fact, they may have been acquired by another company, I can't recall). We used The Orchard for online distribution to places like Amazon, etc. They do the job, but I wouldn't say they're anything special.

Mp3 hosting:

My Space is fast becoming the de facto standard in online promotion. Almost every band out there has a myspace account now, and it's educational to perfuse the "friends" list of many of them. I've been on the music commottie at Eyedrum for almost a year now, and every single act from anywhere who contacts us for a gig - from the grungiest teen punk rockers, to the most sophisticated touring jazz acts - sends us a myspace link. Ignore it at your peril.

I've heard positive things about garageband,com, but being in the trenches of music booking these days, they don't seem to have much of a presence.

I miss the heck out of mp3.com (the way it was). They had a truly viable way for someone to make a living in music completely outside of the "real" music industry. I have a friend who ran a small ambient music label out of mp3.com, with a couple of dozen releases from a bevy of ambient luminaries. All of these releases were only available as an mp3 "DAM" CDR and he sold enough to make a living! That's why Vivendi swallowed them up and nuked them.... their approach was seen as a real threat to the status quo (forget all of this talk about illegal filesharing - a viable online distribution source that was out of their control was a bigger threat to them and they squashed it.

On Mar 1, 2006, at 1:23 PM, Wade S wrote:

I know that several of you guys are in bands, so I thought I'd ask:

How are you guys promoting your bands online?
What works?
What doesn't work?
Do you even feel like it's worth it to spend the time setting up accounts with these places?

Here are a few places I've tried and the results:


Online CD stores
----------------------
www.cdbaby.com - They seem to be the best. It costs about $35 to set up an account, but we've sold a lot of CDs with them.

www.bathtubmusic.com - Signed up last year, no sales.

www.merchpurch.com - New company, just signed up last week. First 100 people to sign up can sign up for free. It's too early to tell how well it will work, but I've met with the guy who runs it and he does have some good ideas. Plus, it was free.


Places to post your MP3s
----------------------------------
www.secondencore.com - you can post 3 MP3s for free. I don't know how much traffic they get.

www.myspace.com - How many of you guys have accounts there? It seems like everyone is signing up for myspace these days, but I don't know how much it really does for you. we're at www.myspace.com/cobwebstrange if anyone's interested in checking out our page.


There are lots of other places that I've signed up with over the years, but I can't even remember them all (which could give you some idea of how well those worked out). I'd really like to hear about what you guys have found works or doesn't work.
-Wade

http://www.cobwebstrange.com

www.myspace.com/cobwebstrange





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