One of the greatest challenges to the musician and
artist is getting your music heard and getting some
recognition and familiarity associated with your name.
The internet is one of the best (and cheapest) tools
in the artist's arsenal for doing this. This month
we look at using the internet and "MP3" technology
to help accomplish these goals.
MP3 is a music compression format that is very popular
means of exchanging music on the internet. Just
visit mp3.com and you'll see that even the big boys
are paying very close attention to this technology.
In fact, they're shaking in their corporate booties
trying to figure out how they are going to control
this technology (but thats another story).
Any song can be "encoded" in MP3 format. MP3 also
offers a variety of sound quality levels for encoding.
These range from very poor quality to CD quality
reproduction. Once a song is encoded in MP3 format,
it can be distributed over the internet to an audience
of over 100 million listeners around the world.
The MP3 file is made avaiable for download. Listeners
download the file and have their own copy of the
song which they can play any time using MP3 player
software. If words like "pirating" and "copyright
infringement" are dancing through your head right
now, stay with us, we're about to talk about these
very important issues.
Alright, time to discuss the strategy. The strategy
is simple, from each CD you have, pick a couple
of tracks, encode CD quality MP3 versions, and make
them available on every web site possible on the
internet for free. There are many sites that will
accpet your MP3 submissions and make them available
to their visitors for download. If you have your
own web site it should also include some full length
MP3 music. The idea is to get as much exposure for
the music as possible. Get as many people to download
your music as you can.
Now, lets talk about pirating and copyright infringement.
Many people feel that MP3 technology is hurting
the recording industry because of these considerations.
This is a very big topic to tackle. For the sake
of brevity, let me just make a few key observations.
Just 20 minutes ago I took about 60 seconds of my
time and found pirated MP3 versions of some of Celine
Dione's music on the internet. It was super easy
to find. I hear her career is going quite well just
the same. In Celine Dione's case, she may be losing
some relatively small amount of money in sales due
to MP3 music. Alternatively, she may have made a
few extra sales because people were able to find
her music, on their own time, listen to it, and
decide they really wanted the whole CD for their
CD player. Note that Celine Dione probably never
authorized internet MP3 versions of her music. Yet,
IT IS OUT THERE ANYWAY. It will happen to your music
too if you gain enough recognition. If you are not
at that stage, there really is no down side.
The best thing that can happen is that lots of people
download and play your music. Hopefully they'll
make some illegal copies for their friends and tell
them all about you. The point is, you will be known,
remembered, HEARD, and talked about. This is fantastic
(and expensive) publicity for free. You will win
fans from all over the world by exposing yourself
to a much broader fan base. There are other advantages
as well. For example, I guarantee you that soon
you will hear of some band that got their big break
because some recording exec. heard their music on
the internet and gave them a call. What if you went
to a record lable or distributor and told them that
you had 10,000 downloads of a certain song and 1067
people emailed you asking where the CD was available?
Give it away and they will pay you for more. Netscape
built an empire on this philosophy - so can you.
Let them copy and distribute your music. If they
do a good enough job, your phone will be ringing
soon! Remember, the internet and MP3 are your friends.
They level the playing field somewhat between you
and big label artists and allow you to do things
you would never be able to afford otherwise.
Now, down to the nitty gritty. A great place to
start your adventure is mp3.com. They have all of
the software you need to encode and playback, as
well as a wealth of articles on the topic that will
go into depth on points we have only glossed over.
mp3.com will aslo accept your MP3's and make them
available on thier site (which gets a huge number
of visitors). There are a great many websites that
contain links to free MP3 music, just do asearch
under "MP3 free music" on any engine.
