Alright independent rapper, it’s 2010, if you’re not using the internet as a major part of your promotion plan then you’re not really doing anything in music. “But Dozh, I don’t have a big budget like that to pay web designers to do all my stuff right.” My answer to that is quit thinking of reasons you can’t do something and start thinking of what you can do. The web is full of sites that can help you bring your music to the world and the best part is…they’re FREE! The fact that you have a small (or non-existent) budget is the very reason you need to be on as many free sites as you can. Why in the world in 2010 would you (hustler, pusher, driven young future rap superstar) not take every advantage you can to maximize your chances of success?
Start with these 5 FREE sites to help you promote your music. These sites do a variety of things like let you upload your songs to sell as tracks or ringtones, receive online radioplay, get tools to use for your own website (you do have a website right?), and most importantly make you as visible as possible to fans or potential fans.
Bandcamp is quickly becoming the “go-to” publishing platform for artists & labels because it’s easy to use, they have minimal “white-label” band sites and widgets that are easy to customize to any color scheme, and they are completely free. You retain all the rights to your music, and they can even put your tracks on iTunes for you. They have a killer statistics section that will tell you how many plays & downloads you’re getting, where those fans came from, if they skipped the track or listened all the way through and more. Band sites are also optimized really well for search engines so your name will come up more in google searches etc. If you don’t have a bancamp site get one NOW.
Note: You will have to know how to convert your files to .wav, .aif, or .flac format to upload to bandcamp. This is actually pretty easy using iTunes, learn how to do it here
Reverbnation calls themselves the “leading online music marketing platform” serving over 500,000 artists, managers, labels and venues. They provide a whole bunch of free solutions and tools to help artists in the areas of “web promotion, fan-relationship management, digital distribution, social-media marketing, direct-to-fan e-commerce, fan-behavior measurement, sentiment tracking, web-site hosting, and concert booking and promotion.”
The thing this site is best for is all of it’s tools and statistics. They have a big collection of widgets you can use on other sites like your myspace & website. These widgets play your music, videos, show photos, tour dates, collect fan emails, and even showcase any press you’ve received. They also track detailed statistics on each of these widgets that can give you a lot of information on who’s interested in your music. All FREE.
This site is an on-demand radio service. They have “the world’s largest online music catalogue, with free music streaming, videos, pictures, charts, artist biographies, concerts and internet radio.” It’s easily the biggest online radio service, and it’s free to submit your music to it! Indie rappers should be on this site because the filtering and recommendation features make it so music is played for fans who already like similar artists.
Artists & labels are able upload their own music for streaming and Last.fm gives you weekly airplay statistics. You can also choose if your music is to be made available for streaming only, or for purchase or free download.
This is a social music network where fans share music they like with other users. It’s the main music app used on facebook (meaning if you have a page on iLike your music can be shared by people on facebook), and over 50 million people use ilike on facebook and other apps throughout the internet. Do you want your music to be where 50million people share music with eachother? Of course you do, that’s why you’re going to make sure you have a profile on this site.
This is still, in my opinion, the best site for selling and distributing music and other content for mobile phones (i.e.: ringtones, wallpapers, etc.) They have an easy to follow format, you can upload a song and slice a section to be made into a ringtone and offer it to the public either free or for a couple bucks very easily. They also have handy widgets that you can use to offer ringtones on all your sites. Again, this site and service is completely free. Selling ringtones not only makes you look a lot cooler, it helps spread your music in yet another format without tapping into your cashflow.
Advance Hip-Hop 