LAST.FM
If anyone who is a Last.fm member has ever listened to one of your tracks on iTunes, or on their ipod, it has been scrobbled [which on their site means “counted” or “tracked”], and you already have a profile on Last.fm. It’s weird to go to this site and find a page about your music that you didn’t know existed, along with fans posting comments etc. And it’s on the wiki principle, so anyone can update the info on the page.
So here’s what you do, you create an account as a label on Last.fm, and claim yourself as an artist. Then you may upload your original tracks and cover tunes to their system for airplay in their radio stations. This site actually creates radio stations according to an artist reference you give them, and they derive who is similar to whom with some type of analysis I have not taken the time to figure out. But it’s cool because you download the Last.fm software which can function either as a stand alone player, for you to listen to music that they send to you based on your “seed” for the station. OR it can work in conjunction with iTunes and scrobble what you’re listening to. So if you have uploaded your music to their playlists, then hopefully when someone starts a radio station of a similar artist, your songs will be played on that custom radio station. You can also designate any or all of your tracks that are originals to be a free download for people. [ It might be a good idea to choose one of your best songs to offer as a free download on your various profiles like this one, reverbnation, and MySpace. ] So if you connect this to your iTunes, and then play your tracks a lot in your iTunes you'll get more scrobbled songs, and your count will go up. And you want your count to be up because everyone who goes to your last.fm page can see how many plays you’ve gotten, and how many listeners you have.
PANDORA.COM
This is another site sort of like Last.fm but even cooler!! Pandora.com has a system of analyzing songs based on hundreds of “genomes”, which an actual human being will attribute to your music. You must send them a physical CD, and if they like it, they will analyze it and add it to their playlist. I sent them a CD, and after about a month, when I would type in “Worldwide Groove Corporation” into their interface to start a radio station, they had analyzed our music and knew what style to play. [They gave it characteristics like “latin influences”, “electronica roots”, “slow moving bassline”, “downtempo influences”, and “laid back female vocal”.] Then after about another month, they would actually put our songs in the playlist with the other stuff similar to ours. There’s no guarantee you’ll get added, but if you do, then when other people listen for artists similar to you, they might hear YOUR music, and it’s always accompanied by links to iTunes and Amazon so people can BUY your music.
[Hi all, Ellen here. I've decided to take a very long handout that I created for my college students and break it down into a series of blogs. This is a summary of what I know about promoting yourself and your music online. If you or someone you know is a self released artist who doesn't necessarily have a plan of action after the CDs are manufactured, subscribe to this blog and read the series. I'm breaking it down into bite sized portions. ]
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