Tips and Tricks for Promoting Your Music Online

Having gone through the trouble of recording, releasing and promoting three indie label albums over the past eight years, I thought it would be a good public service to go over some of the tips and tricks I've picked up over the years for getting the word out there about your music, album or band. My latest album, Tales Out of Night School (Helper Monkey Records) was released in the fall of 2008 and is available now at iTunes, Amazon, Napster, Rhapsody, and pretty much any place you'd buy music online.

If you have a full-length album's worth of music, you might as well get it commercially released, rather than selling CDs out of the trunk of your car or giving away MP3s. There are several companies that offer to do this for a fee/percentage of sales, but by far the most professional is The Orchard (many people also like CD Baby, but it took them way too long to get into digital distribution, and it's really more for hobbyists than serious musicians).

> Dan Ackerman at The Orchard

This is my artist page, but note that it's not really aimed at consumers. The Orchard doesn't do physical CD distribution anymore, but selling a digital product through outlets like iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody, etc. is really where you want to be. Below are some examples of where your album will eventually turn up once it works its way through The Orchard's distribution chain.

> Tales Out of Night School at the Amazon MP3 Store

> Tales Out of Night School on iTunes

> Tales Out of Night School on Rhapsody

Book authors can "game" Amazon in lots of ways to drive up sales rank and get additional attention on the site. But Amazon's MP3 store doesn't even support keyword tagging, so for musicians it's a little bit harder.

The main things you can do via Amazon are to get a few friends to submit reviews and ratings for your album. I also put together a few Amazon "Listmania" lists, pairing myself with related artists.

> Dan Ackerman's Amazon Listmania lists

There are a ton of me-too Web sites out there for artists to upload tracks, create profiles and share their work. Unfortunately, most of the people visiting these sites are other musicians looking to promote their work, not music fans looking for new artists.

MySpace and Last.fm are exceptions, as the majority of traffic there are people who are legitimate music listeners, and you may find a very receptive audience.

> Dan Ackerman on MySpace

> Dan Ackerman on Last.fm

Once you're in the distribution chain, your music should eventually show up on Last.fm automatically, but it's fairly simple to jump the gun and upload it yourself. You can also add "buy now" links to Amazon and iTunes. MySpace Music supposedly works with SnoCap, The Orchard and other partners to let fans buy tracks directly from your MySpace page, but I've never gotten that to work properly (only one of my older albums is available to buy via MySpace).

Here are some of the other online music portals where you can set up a profile and upload tracks:

> OurStage

http://www.ourstage.com/fanclub/danackerman

Has an interesting monthly ranking contest for different genres, but the audience seems to me mostly other musicians.

> Reverb Nation

http://www.reverbnation.com/danackerman

Good mostly for its handy widget, which I use on Facebook and the official Tales Out of Night School Web site.

> MOG

http://mog.com/danackerman

Intended mainly for music fans to create their own personal favorites pages for others to see, so make a page and list your own stuff.

> PureVolume

http://www.purevolume.com/danackerman

Another fairly generic site where you can create an artist profile. Nice, clean design, but seems relatively under-populated, and lacks a big "buy it now" button for your album.

 Stay tuned for more updates, and more tips and tricks for promoting your music online.

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