Top Ten Places for Musicians to Promote Themselves Online

Ten years ago, the prerequisite to being a successful musician was signing with a record label. Fans raced to stores to purchase the debut albums of their favorite bands or solo artists and the compact disc was the trendiest music medium. Today, CD sales have dropped and numerous fans have learned that downloading their music, either legally or illegally, is the ideal method for obtaining the music they love. Despite hindering the sales and profits of some of the world’s most famous musicians, this Internet phenomenon has opened a giant window of opportunity for up-and-coming musicians to gain exposure. Below are the top ten places on for musicians to promote themselves online

1. iLike.com – iLike is the Internet’s leading social music service where over 45 million people share music recommendations, playlists and concert alerts. Many artists use iLike’s Universal Artist Dashboard to reach fans and spread their music virally while managing their presence across multiple channels. These channels include some of the Web's leading names in social networking such as Facebook, Ask.com, Orkut, Bebo and hi5. Industry experts estimate that more than 200,000 leading artists from every genre are now using iLike’s multimedia blogging tools to gain exposure across the Web and communicate directly with their fans.

2. MySpace Music– MySpace is one of the biggest social networking sites for people who live for music, providing a remarkable opportunity for musicians to gain online exposure. Using a MySpace Music profile, musicians are free to upload their music for their fans to discover and download. Essentially, MySpace Music creates a gateway for music to spread virally throughout its social network, where other MySpace members can explore the music videos, featured playlists and top artists of the MySpace community. Having a presence on MySpace is a great way for musicians to make a name for themselves and can open a number of doors to the heart of the music industry.

3. Last.fm – Last.fm is also one of the world’s largest and most respected social music platforms for upcoming artists to get their brand seen by a giant online community of music lovers. Last.fm operates under a system of “scrobbling,” where the name of the song a member listens to is sent to Last.fm and added to their music profile for others to see. Millions of songs are scrobbled every day, helping fans figure out which songs they listen to the most while helping artists spread their music at the same time.

4. OurStage – Thousands of listeners visit OurStage.com every day to discover the best new sound in music. OurStage lets the fans vote and decide which songs and musicians deserve to rise to the top. Any musician can earn the popularity points required to gain recognition in one of the Web’s most visited online music communities. Besides the exposure, musicians with the most votes are also eligible to win prizes, which serves as an added incentive to upload music to OurStage.

5. MP3.com – MP3.com is a tremendously popular place for musicians to promote their music online, where the chances of artists getting loads of traffic directed towards their music are always in their favor. Musicians who upload their albums and songs to MP3.com attract tons of new fans looking for a free outlet to their favorite artists and bands. Word spreads rather quickly throughout this online source for digital music, opening a number of doors for any musician seeking recognition.

6. OurWave –OurWave.com offers a unique way of helping new artists gain exposure for their music, by featuring every artist in the OurWave community on the front page of the website. OurWave attributes the power of this fascinating feat to a randomly selected system that alternates the promotion of different musicians over time. Members of this emerging community are free to create an artist profile, upload their songs and notify friends and fans when they are planning to attend an event or posting new songs, providing even greater publicity.

7. PureVolume – Music aficionados developed PureVolume for two sole purposes – to help emerging artists promote their songs and to help die-hard fans find them. Together, these missions evolved to form one of the Internet’s most widely recognized social music sites where musicians, listeners and fans can create profiles enabling them to interact with each other and share the music they love. Each artist on PureVolume has a profile containing basic information, music updates, photos and music for streaming, and each of the songs on an artist’s profile is available for download at no cost.

8. Facebook –Musicians can literally advertise themselves on Facebook by making their own band page and having fans join their page as “Facebook fans.” This popular method of self-promotion helps musicians reach over 200 million active Facebook users by creating a presence that connects and engages fans through downloadable music. A Facebook page is a public profile enabling musicians to upload and share their songs with a growing online community that works in conjunction with Facebook Ads to spread the word even further. This is definitely a powerful tool for online promotion.

9. iTunes – Although many musicians use this method to promote themselves or their band, iTunes may not be the best place for an emerging musician to start. The reason for this is that despite having the ability to upload songs and sell them on iTunes’ distribution network, it can take a long time before a musician gets approved and accepted to the network. Granted, iTunes remains on our list as the top ten places for musicians to promote themselves, mostly because iTunes pays musicians for the songs they sell, as opposed to just spreading them across the Web. Musicians should always keep in mind that iTunes does take $.35 for every $.99 song a musician sells.

10. GarageBand – GarageBand.com helps fans discover the music they love by allowing them to review the bands within the ever-growing community. With over 100,000 songs already reviewed by GarageBand’s members, musicians registered to the site are gaining a tremendous amount of exposure. GarageBand offers every registered musician the freedom to upload their tracks, have them reviewed by fans and use those reviews to climb to the top of GarargeBand charts. With enough positive reviews, bands and solo artists involved in the community also earn contest entries, so think of it as a bonus.