MUSIC

Service Music – The Wonders And Woes Of The Web

It is all coming together now. You have a demo, you are working around town and getting some service music interest from professional management, you are building a buzz – so let is get that site up and running. That will be your New Millennium Business Card, so to speak.

At this point in your progress as a band and as a business, you need to make decisions carefully, especially ones that will obligate you to make monthly payments. Take it easy on the budget. For your independent artist website, for now, you really do not need to pay the extra amounts that the hosting companies charge for streaming audio (and video). If you have a three- or four-song demo, you will not be putting more than one full-length tune on your site, plus some 10- or 15-second clips of the other tunes as enticements. You do not need a streaming audio server (in addition to the server that handles your pages and graphics) for this small amount of bandwidth and potential traffic.

The streaming servers are definitely needed when you have a full-bore music site with albums and albums of material, videos, etc. All you need to do now is make the mp3 files a component of the service music or audio page, whatever you want to call it; the people with broadband connections (getting up towards 30% of American net households, as opposed to 75% in South Korea, for example) will get the file fast enough for it to play as if it were streaming anyway. The old-timers on phone modems (who are still in the majority in the U.S. by a wide margin) will be informed by a polite note on your page that they should be patient, as it might take a few minutes for the song to download.

What happens for any site visitor, fast connection or slow, is the same thing: if they have a media plug-in properly installed (QuickTime or Windows Media Player on PCs, QuickTime or iTunes on the Mac), it will play the file as soon as it can. If the visitor has no plug-in to handle the mp3 file, the file will download completely (again, either quickly or not so quickly) and the person will be able to play it with a standalone mp3 player, of which there are plenty, free and low-cost ones, too.

You need your site to reflect your band or whatever kind of act you have, so as the designated webmasters learn more and find additional free graphic and design resources, they need to keep the site evolving. Have an overall theme that you will stick with, of course, as you do not want to confuse your fans with a new look every month (or week, if you are really getting into it).

Now, when you got your hosting plan to go along with your domain name, you would have received e-mail addresses, too – 10 or 20 or 100 or even an unlimited number, depending on your plan and its cost. This is the part of the address that comes after @ or at sign; you will now be able to create e-mail accounts for whatever members or departments you need. All the band members, just for the sake of consistency and PR, should get (and use!) a band domain e-mail address; it is easy to configure your present e-mail application to pick up the mail from your new mail server (probably what is called a POP server, although it might be IMAP, like AOL mail). All the good e-mail applications will be able to sort this new mail into a special folder so it can be kept separate from ones regular, non-band mail.

This is all part of a bigger plan. You now need to think about how you are going to drive people to your independent artist website. You need to put your bands URL (Unique Resource Locator, your Web site address) on all your materials – business cards, drum cases, stationery, flyers, CDs, tapes, and so on. You will need to find allies on the Internet and join what is called Web rings, groups (or circles, to stay with the metaphor) of like-minded people who refer visitors to one another. Bands in your genre may or may not want to share fans, but look around the Internet and you will find that many do. There is also a great deal of upside to linking to and from other artists, in and out of your genre. It all helps.

There is a lot to this, being a working band. But if it is what you are on the planet to do, then you might as well do it as well as you can and leave something of value behind you when you check out. Since nothing that ever goes on the net ever disappears, getting the music up now gets you a head start on your gift to posterity, know what I mean?

About the Author

Greg Joes – We provide marketing and promotional services to clients seeking exposure in the music business. We provide Independent Artist and labels with the means to service their records to industry insiders and potential new fans.

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