Promoting your music?

[Makingamonster]

So this really has nothing to do with Recording, but I finished an album and sort of want to promote it. don't really know what to do, I see lots of places out there willing to take your money, but I am guessing many are scams.

Any ideas? places to start? cheers.

[EGS]

Google

[jmitchell1532]

Depends. Nowadays, many sites offer free memberships (myspace, reverbnation, last.fm) to get your music out there. A lot of industry pros use Sonic Bids; it's kind of like a myspace made up entirely of musicians, A&R, labels, promoters, and clubs. It costs like $5 a month for the basic membership.

[Makingamonster]

Thanks, I actually had a membership at Last FM and listen to it every day, but never knew you could actually just upload music.

Thanks, I will also look into sonic bids.

[Sergeman]

Ok, my 2 cents worth:

1) Facebook... go make a profile and then make a page so you can make you fans become members and pass it on.
2) Myspace... even though html-speaking it's a big mess, it still has the potential to get you hundreds, thousands or millions of people to listen to your music.
3) Try to get your music on iTunes... you might want to consider joining CD Baby or something like that.
4) Get on YouTube! Make videos of your songs with the lyrics in them. Also, make recordings of you and your band (or just you) doing some acoustic versions or playing live in any way. Maybe upload some video (if you have any) of the studio sessions.
5) Last suggestion... don't spam. Don't get "fans" on myspace and stuff by just sending them generic messages by the thousands. I've never met someone who appreciates that.

Hope that helps.

[DigiTechSupt]

There are many, many places on the internet to get great info on marketing, distribution and promoting your music.

http://mashable.com/2009/02/19/music...rketing-tools/
http://arielpublicity.com/blog/
http://musically.com/
http://newmusicstrategies.com/
http://evolvor.com/

You can follow links on the above sites for even more promo opportunities.

For digital distribution check out:

http://www.cdbaby.net/
http://www.tunecore.com/
http://www.reverbnation.com
(Reverb Nation is also a great platform for promotion, including email lists, widgets, song players, street teams, etc.)

http://www.garageband.com/ is good for getting reviews of your music.

[RegenerationMix]

Youtube and itunes are probably your best bets.

Chris