A Guide to Cyber PR for Musicicans

Todays musicians need to learn just how important of a role the web will play in their bands promotion. You can do an innumerable amount of things to earn your band exposure, collect fans, send out mass notifications, and earn money. Here is a quick getting started guide to a musicians online PR.

First and foremost, get a Myspace Music Page (Unless you already have one). Myspace sets the standard for online band promotions, and will act as your home base. It isn't necessarily the best, but it has the largest number of users, a great amount of customization, and the ability to sell tracks online(which we will cover later). You get a four track limit, unless you befriend a MySpace affiliate, BoDog.net. Make them your friend, and you get a fifth song for your profile.

Second, go to ReverbNation.com, and set up a profile. Reverb Nation is similar to Myspace, except this entire website is dedicated to musicians. Reverb Nation has a plethora of tools available for the online musician. From music players you can spread accross the web with your music, the ability to get on facebook, and a fan reach widget which lets people add themselves to your email list from your web page. They also have a show schedule widget with map and directions to your shows that is much more functional than the myspace tool. Your music will also be available on the Reverb radio, their website's streaming radio station. You also get a complete statistic section to see how many people are playing your music, from where, and a complete age and gender demographic of who is listening to your music, and submitting to your email list. Pricless.

OK, so you have an online prescence, with promotion, and graphs to understand your bands growth. Now, if you have a digital version of your bands logo, and maybe even a catch phrase, take them to the site, www.spreadshirt.com. Spreadshirt offers you a free printing service of t-shirts, hats, bags, underwear, anything. You pay nothing, and you actually earn about a 30% profit off of every item sold, and you are spreading your seed in the digital and real world. Promote your spreadshirt store from your myspace page, and you can sell from your main hub.

Now you can set your tracks up to be sold. There are two major websites that can enable you to sell your tracks, and both differ greatly in their pro's and con's. I suggest you use both, but you decide what works best for you. The first is SnoCap.com. SnoCap is a free service where you uplaod your tracks, create albums, and then have a digital store, capable to be linked with myspace and reverb nation to sell your tracks online. They take a pretty sizeabe commission from each sale (for every .99 song, you make roughly .59), but its more than your making now. Your SnoCap store can be displayed on your myspace page, just under the songs you are allowing to stream.

The other site is TuneCore.com. TuneCore works similar to SnoCap, but doesn't take a comission, and gives you a barcode for your album so it is retail ready. For a small charge your album can be placed in iTunes Music, Windows Media Player Music Database, and RealPlayer. People can also purchase a physical CD, rather than just a downloadable version.

So there you have it. You now have a great head start to an oline enterprise, and your band can start maximizing your success on, and off, the internet. Enjoy!