Independent music promotion can be a hell!!
Oh yes, music promotion can be a hell.
As an independent musician you face different challenges than those signed to a label. Surely, you got all the freedom in the world, but there is a main problem concerning this job: How can I promote my music?
You might have written the greatest hit of all time, but no-one will buy it, if no-one knows of its existence.
So, what do you do? You must find a way to promote yourself.
The problem isn’t that are no ways to promote your music, but rather the exact opposite. There are so many ways to promote your music and it is difficult to choose the right ones, since all of them are going require a certain amount of your daily time. This means that you have to find those that are most useful.
There is a very powerful tool in your arsenal. This is Alexa.
Alexa is a web information company that holds traffic statistics for all domains. Just type the name of a domain and you can see its world rank.
Why should you do that? When choosing among so many networks and online communities you want to be most active in the most productive ones. The only way to compare this is through Alexa.
So for example, let’s check out MySpace, which is considered the number one site for music promotion. Alexa shows the following results: http://www.alexa.com/data/details/main/myspace.com
- Myspace.com has a traffic rank of: 7
- Speed: Slow (63% of sites are faster), Avg Load Time: 3.3 Seconds
- Other sites that link to this site: 335,770
MySpace is number 7 on the world record! This means that MySpace should indeed be your number one stop for music promotion.
MySpace is usually choice #1
Of course, MySpace is pretty straightforward choice, but Alexa is more useful for less obvious ones. There are many communities which are not famous like MySpace, but, nevertheless, have a high traffic rank. Jamendo for example, ranks in position 10.940: http://www.alexa.com/data/details/main/jamendo.com
Jamendo is a music community that allows you to upload and download full albums under a creative commons license and it can be a powerful promotion tool. Before, finding in Alexa its rank, I couldn’t tell whether this was a good choice, since you can’t tell how many members and traffic a community has, simply by its looks.
Of course, Alexa ranking is not the only way to judge whether a site should be part of your promotional campaign. There are other factors, like the kind of people that hang out in a community. A very useful site for this comparison is this: http://social-networking-websites-review.toptenreviews.com/
In this address you will find the percentage of users under 18. For example in Bebo 54% of the users are under 18. So, if you are playing, let’s say, classical music, maybe Bebo wouldn’t be a very good choice, since not many teenagers listen to classical music.
Furthermore, perform a little research on the subject, like how easily you can make friends and what kind of music is most popular on the various networks. ShoutLife.com for example is community that you can make friends very easily. From the moment I signed up, I got requests every day. However, it is a community dominated by christians. I play electronic music, so this is not a problem. But maybe this isn’t the best place to promote your new black metal band 
