GUITARS GUITARS GUITARS: Vying to be the Internet's complete guitar destination, Guitar.com offers practical information for guitarists, including product reviews, industry tips, etc. It also features articles and interviews on today's hottest guitarists and guitar-oriented bands, as well as classic and legendary guitar players. Create by Epigraph Entertainment, the site is heavily loaded up with baner ads and sponsor logos, especially from Guitar Center's site, Musician's Friend.
EAT 'EM UP: Tunes.com, a privately-owned (meaning they kept all the stocks to themselves) online music site creation and design company (including RollingStone.com, AquireTunes.com and DownBeatJazz.com), has been purchased by Emusic.com. Owners of Tunes.com recived approximately $130 million worth of Emusic.com stock and a seat on their board. By filling Tunes.com sites with Emusic links they hope that the 1.5 million/month viewers of the some of the Internet's most frequently-visited networks of music-oriented Web sites will help sell some of more than 50,000 MP3 tracks for sale at Emusic.com.
ATOM-BOMB: Another site for indie artists is Atom-Bomb.com. "Posting your work on the site is quite easy. Just download and return the submission form with the appropriate format of your work, and Atom-Bomb.com will take care of the rest". They are actively seeking submissions from bands and solo artists, filmmakers, TV and Radio stations. According to the agreement, they get to use your music for all knids of promotion and marketing of the site, which can enefit you, and you get 50% of net profits off any or your music that is purchased from the site. They will post audio files, band photos and bio info, and offer feedback directly from Atom-Bomb.com's online community. The LA-based indie band BuzzBox say they benefited enormously from being featured on Atom-Bomb.com. And they take care of all the digitizing/scanning/posting stuff (go to www.atom-bomb.com to download the agreement forms).
INDIE MUSIC TIPS CD-ROM: Kathode Ray Music is putting together a CD-ROM of over 1000 Indie Music promotion tips, to be distributed free at music conferences and other industry events throughout the US. Submit something that they can use and they'll include your contact info and web site URL on the disc absolutely free. Go to http://www.indiebiz.com/cdrm for complete info.
PLATINUM ONLINE CATALOG: Indie label Platinum Entertainment, Inc. will be offering their entire catalog for free digital downloads online at their website HeardOn.com. Artists including Pete Townsend, The Beach Boys, The Band and George Clinton will all be free to consumers, along with recordings of clssics from Beethoven, Mozart, and most other major composers. In addition, unsigned artists can are encouraged to post their music, with the most frequently downloaded artist each quarter guaranteed a record contract that, they say, will be worth a minimum of $250,000. Interestingly worded, but worth $250,000 to whom?
THE DUCK KNOWS: Have a guiat or music-oriented website? Ducks Deluxe, creators of Dr. Ducks Ax Wax and Ducks Deluxe Guitar Strings, is offerring to rate music websites and award them with one of three different "Duckys," to be linked on their "Ducky Hall Of Fame." Go to their website, http://www.ducksdeluxe.com, and read the qualifications required to enter your site. If you meet their rules, send an email to ducks@ducksdeluxe.com with the name and URL of your site... and good luck!
SPIKE RADIO: SpikeRadio.com is a rich multimedia site, with heavy use of Flash and Java (taking over my entire screen when the index page comes up). The magazine-style music and streaming radio site features everything from hot, up-and-coming music artists to Japanese tatooing, as well as record reviews, interactive cartoons and global youth-oriented travel information. They also regularly offer live Webcasts of concerts and club performances by artists and DJs, including english DJ Paul Oakenfold from Hollywood's dance club Vynyl.
CD(MP3)NOW: CDNOW, the web's busiest online music sales site (averaging 800,000 visitors a day looking for CDs, tapes and videos) is now offering more than 60,000 MP3 downloads for sale at their site. With music from top independent labels such as Beggars Banquet, Ichiban, and Del-Fi, CDNOW downloadable tracks range from Stereolab to Bach to Patsy Cline to Duke Ellington to Beck to Jerry Garcia (now THERE'S a compilation CD waiting to happen). Downloadable tracks range in price from $1.49 to $3.49 and new downloadable tracks are added on a regular basis.
100% earBUZZ: Here's a new business model: 100% to the artist. earBuzz.com has announcing that 100% of the revenue profits received for the purchase price of artist's CDs will be forwarded to the artist. With more and more websites generating a greater portion of their revenue from banner ads, some sites have been giving artists a piece of their ad revenues (including IUMA and MP3.com). earBuzz, however, is the first to announce that they will not take any peice of the CD sales. What a great idea! Attention, multinational media conglomerates - how about turning your record companies into loss leaders for your film, TV and print media companies (after all, without content, what are they to do...)?
earBUZZ also has an interesting feature on Apple Computer's website (http://www.apple.com/publishing/music/earbuzz), which includes info on the company's vision, indie music and an interview wirth the company founder Don Kimenker.
WEBTIPS: Free Sites?Alot of indie music sites are offering "free" pages for bands to post their MP3 tracks, photo and bios. The reason for the sites to give this stuff away is simple - they want as much content, especially MP3 content, on their site as they can possibly get. MP3 is the most searched for word on the Internet right now, and when they can generate enough hits on their site they can charge money for advertising (and posibly attract attention from some of the larger deep-pocketed portals and entertainment sites that might buy them up). But what are you getting? Usually, your getting another page for your music online, and you want as many of them as possible. But these sites usually require that you have some computer facility to digitize and convert your own audio to MP3 files, scan and format your images to their specs, and enter your text. All of this, even for me, can take a while using many these website's forms and browse buttons.If you're not very computer literate, you're going to need a friend - or a professional - to get this stuff posted for you. Or just concentrate on a number of sites available that will do all of this for you - for a fee (ranging from $20 to $200). And watch out for sites that offer "limited time" free memberships, read the fine print about how long they can use your music for promotion FOR FREE (some of them require lifetime use), and check to see how much they will pay you if they sell any of your music. And MAKE SURE TO KEEP YOUR PUBLISHING AND COPYRIGHTS! |
© Music Connection Magazine 1999.