The old music business is fading and it's a good thing. Artist's are now reclaiming their art and greatness. The music business had a big shift in 1985 when major music companies were no longer run by Artistic Executives, they were run by accountants.
Watch and listen as Frank Zappa gives you his take on the decline of the music business.
Want to know where you go?
Check out:
Tune Core
SoundCloud
ArtistShare
Broadjam
Plus, there are a truck load of music social networks.....
There are a lot of social networks online and more are created each and every day to compete in niches such as dating, pet owners, and sports fans. Knowing which ones will provide you with the resources and interaction you need to market your music is hard.
To help you get started in that process, here are ten of the best music oriented social networks currently on the Internet (that are not MySpace). If you are in a band, these are absolute must use sites for the promotion process. You should have accounts on as many as possible, at least to explore and test out their features.
MusoCity - This social network is designed around the concept of bringing together fans, musicians, artists, venues, and retailers. You can sign up for free and start sharing profiles, music preferences, and local stores to see what might be going on in your area.
Flotones - This site provides resources for fans and artists to interact with their material. Its main feature is one that allows you to promote your content through cell phones with wallpapers and ringtones. You can do this through your MySpace profile, at your shows, or on a website.
Sellaband - The Sellaband concept was controversial at the start but has turned into a surprisingly agile idea that has grown exponentially since its launch. The idea is that fans and listeners become the producers, investing money into their favorite bands to give them a recording opportunity. The investors get a small cut of the profits and the artists get a chance to record their music, as well as pick up half of the ad revenue from their music being downloaded.
Last.fm - This classic and extremely popular music networking site allows users to keep track of what music they listen to, then search for new music based on their past listening habits. Other features include the ability to listen to new music, learn more about artists, find people who have similar tastes, find local shows, create charts of top songs, and publish any of this information to a different website. Artists can upload and promote their music and videos for free.
Haystack - Another social network that allows users to search through and create their own music preferences lists, Haystack brings musicians and fans together with free, shareable videos, images, music and review content.
Mercora Radio - The social network at Mercora allows you to listen to music for free through its online radio service. It allows you to search your own hard drive as well and broadcast all legally purchased music on a radio channel to the world. Bands and artists can create their own playlists, mixing their tracks with favorites from other bands.
Sonific - The sonific interface has two sides. Side one is devoted to allowing musicians to upload and share their music through widgets on the Sonific home page. Side two allows users to access and listen to that music for free, wherever they want to put it - either on a blog, a social networking profile, or a different website. Direct downloads are not allowed.
Midomi - This site combines the same popularity of regular music social networking with some interesting and exciting new technology that allows people to actually search for songs and artists by humming or singing part of a song. It is the perfect way to find that song that you just cannot remember the name of. While it is not quite as streamlined for artist use, the novelty of its design makes it a probably contender for future growth and expansion, perfect for getting in on the ground floor of now.
MOG - This social network allows you to find new music to listen to by filtering through peoples’ profiles with custom search parameters. You will also find news, music reviews, streaming audio, TV features, and YouTube clips. Imagine MySpace Music as its own site with a few new features.
iJigg - This site allows you to comment on other songs and share your own favorites or home made tracks. The rating system allows people to decide what becomes popular and there are two different account-types - listener and artist.
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