Musician & Band Resources

This is just a page listing some randomly interesting and/or useful things for bands and musicians looking to record, distribute, or promote their music. It’s fairly unorganized, as I just add interesting things I happen to come upon from time to time. (Let me know if you find something outstanding that’s missing.)

eBooks

Classic ebooks that cover a LOT of ground for musicians.

The 20 Things You Must Know About Music Online – A nice eBook by the brains at the New Music Strategies blog.

The Indie Maximum Exposure List – A FREE music promotion guide/ebook for independent and unsigned artists created by Ariel at Cyber PR.

The Indie Band Survival Guide – Once free, this solid ebook now costs money.  Ah well.  Other nice “how to” guides here as well.

Free Music

A few great places to find free, legal, music downloads.

eMusicspacer – Get 25 FREE mp3s just for signing up for a trial offer. A no-brainer…just be sure to remember to cancel before you’re charged.

Free Music Monday – Mashable’s Free Music Monday offers 10 free downloads from up and coming new artists. Good stuff.

Free Song of the Day – Amazon’s Free Song of the Day and other “Mp3 Specials” offer some solid new music for discovery.

Web Hosting

Some solid web hosts for bands building websites.

1&1spacer – This is the web hosting company I used, mostly ’cause it’s the cheapest. Cheap domains and free private domain registration. However, beware, they sometimes seem to have trouble with WordPress-powered sites (which GarageSpin is).

GoDaddyspacer – One of the most well-known hosting companies. It’s a lot more expensive, but very solid, and has higher quality service.

HostGatorspacer – An excellent web host. Cheaper than GoDaddy, but still a little pricey. Some of my more techie friends love these guys.

Blue Hostspacer – A younger upstart, it’s cheaper than GoDaddy and HostGator. Blue Host also seems to specialize in WordPress-powered sites, which is cool.

Music Hosting

Some solid music hosting, distributing, “widgetizing” sites.

SoundCloud – INCREDIBLE music (and sound) hosting and streaming service, with loads of widgets available. Great free options, even better paid options.

BandCamp – Another awesome music hosting service, which also includes the ability to sell and distribute digital music, plus give it for free in exchange for an email, plus provide the backend to your own “music page” on your website or blog. Awesome.

Reverb Nation – Yet another great music site. TONS of widgets. Promotion opportunities, sales opportunities, learning opportunities. There are also song/band/music charts that you can benchmark yourself against. Absolutely worth checking out. (I’m currently using their music widget in my sidebar.)

Nimbit – Ugly name, great company with great services. Their “music store” widget is the best available, in my opinion, and can be implemented as a widget or as an actual band page. Sell music, merch, ‘n’ tickets, etc. If you’re a WordPress user, they have a WordPress plugin that “turns on” a music store with a click. Nice.

BandZoogle – Solid site dedicated to providing musicians and bands with a one-stop shop music/site hosting, including a number of promotional tools as well as integration with social networks. Good stuff. (Thanks, Drew!)

Music Licensing for Cover Songs

Get permission to post, sell, and distribute your cover songs.

Limelight (SongClearance.com)spacer - Clearing your cover versions of songs for selling via CDs, digital downloads, and ringtones couldn’t be easier with Rightsflow’s music clearance service, Limelight.

Harry Fox Agency – Harry Fox has been around for years and years. Its licensing process and reporting functionality is more antiquated and complex, but it’s another way to clear your cover songs.

Pay-for-Play Platforms

Get your music heard for pennies.

Jango – Sort of like a smaller version of Pandora, but provides solid opportunities to pay for “plays”, solicit feedback from artists, and develop a community. Great for research and fan base growth.

TadCast – Place your music in videos, and pay per listen or per click. It’s the first service of its kind, as far as I know. Very cool.

GrooveShark – A lot like Jango. Pay to have your song pop-up for people listening to music like yours.

YouTube Promoted Videos – Pay to have your YouTube video(s) appear in the top right corner of video pages for some quick, paid exposure.

Viral Music Promotion

Spread your music like a contagious virus.

Wildfire App – A really incredible service for any business or artist of any level or size, that takes care of all the backend technology stuff to help you launch an awesome community-building campaign. Super cool.

Disrupt.fm – A very simple, but powerful app that’s focused on enabling in-post audio listening/sharnig/buying via Facebook walls. Very clever little app, worth trying out.

CD Manufacturing/Replication

Old school manufacturing for old school distribution via the “compact disc”.

MixonicadCast – A new, smaller CD manufacturing player.

DiscMakers – A bigger CD manufacturer. I get their catalogs all the time, and they sure look purty. They offer quite a lot in the way of added services offered by partners. Worth checking out…that is, if you believe people use CDs anymore.

Oasis CD – Another bigger CD manufacturer. They also offer quite a lot in the way of added services offered by partners.

iTunes Distribution

New school distribution directly into music fans’ iPods/iPads/iTouches/iEtc.

ReverbNation – Offers TONS of services and widgets; iTunes distribution is just one of them.

TuneCorespacer – Focuses on the art and business of music distribution through iTunes.

CD Baby – Awesome company. iTunes distribution is offered as a side service to their CD distribution service.

Amazon.com Distribution

Amazon is like iTunes…for all non-Apple digital music players.

Amazon’s CreateSpacespacer – Make your music available to millions of customers on-demand as a CD and MP3. No setup fees and no inventory needed! Get started now.spacer

Market Research

Getting insight to help you make smart promotional marketing decisions.

SoundOut – Get fan feedback to learn what kinds of fans like your music, what your best track is, etc.

Music Collaboration

Social music creation and collaboration.

Indaba Music – One of the best music collaboration sites. Start your own project, solicit free collaboration, or paid projects with “auditions”. Remix popular artists’ songs. Great, great community.

Kompoz – Strong collaboration community…but not quite as solid technologically. Keep an eye on it, though.

Aviary – Aviary is new to the world of online music sequencers and remixes. However, they are SO GOOD at everything else — free online design software for image editing, sound design, and all sorts of stuff — that they already have a great built-in community, and are sure to be able to leverage their resources and people to grow it into something impressive.

Facebook Band Pages

The best ways to present your music on Facebook.

ReverbNation – Once again, they’re showing up in this list. Their Facebook Band Page App is one of the top three available. (It’s actually the one I’m using currently.)

SoundCloud – Another great Facebook Band Page App builder (among many other service provided).

Nimbit – Yet another great Facebook Band Page widget builder (again, among many other services provided).