The (Nearly) Ultimate Music Posting Guide

For several years, indie and established musicians relied on MP3.com as their primary off-site music host. While there were a small number of other similar sites, and MP3.com had its share of problems, it was still THE place to get your music posted. It also allowed artists and music fans to create "Stations" where customized playlists could be created and shared with the world. Vivendi Universal eventually bought MP3.com and ultimately shut it down only to rebuild it as a site for "established" artists, leaving all of the indies out in the cold. Since that time, other services have gone away as well. Some have come and stayed, some come and gone, some came, went and returned again. Each has a different set of pros and cons. Each offers varying methods of hosting, streaming and promotion of the uploaded music. Some have perks like contests, calendars, blogs and mailing lists.

What is this?
This post is not a tutorial, rather a resource list of places to make music available for download. I will provide as much detail as possible, with as little editorial content as possible.

Who is it for?
I know there are some bands that have their sites hosted at AstaHost so this is for you. It is also for forum members that may be web designers who create sites for musicians.

What software do you need?
There have been a few posts in the forum about CD ripping and mp3 converters. The most recent of which can be found here. http://www.astahost.com/index.php?showtopic=3615&hl=

music.download.com - CNET purchased much of the MP3.com system and is gradually becoming as comprehensive as MP3.com once was. Like MP3.com, submissions must be approved by the music editors after they are uploaded. Unlike MP3.com, the approval process is much more stringent. This keeps a lot of silly, inappropriate and nonsensical junk from crowding the servers and artist lists. Also, music.dowload.com has the highest standard bit rate of every service I looked at, requiring all submissions to be a near CD quality 192kbps. Streaming is not yet available, but is apparently on the way. So far, the site is purely about music, not tour dates, blogs, CD sales or playlists. Just an artist bio, link to the artist's official site and up to 50MB of free, downloadable music. Registered users can rate songs on a 1-5 star scale. All free.

MySpace.com - The popular online community also has an extensive MUSIC section. As an artist, you get image hosting, a blog, a tour dates section, link to your official site, artist bio and an XML audio player with up to 4 of your songs on it. The streaming audio quality is 128kbps and the player is among the easiest to use. MySpace is primarily designed for interaction with other MySpace users, enabling artists to send messages, post comments or send mass bulletins to their friends and fans. Free.

purevolume.com - Purevolume is sort of a free-for-all music community. Though you will find up and coming national artists and some established stars, mostly anyone with a few minutes and some noise in mp3 form can have a Purevolume page. There is an approval process for new members but you will find plenty of hobbyists posting homemade tracks only for fun. You get an artist page, gig list, photo area and a pretty good streaming audio player. Basic package is free. Premium accounts are available.

GarageBand.com - The original premise of GarageBand.com was an annual contest to determine which act would be signed to the GarageBand record label. Anyone could submit an original song for free and have it reviewed to climb the charts toward winning. Now you either have to pay to upload a song or do enough reviews to earn uploading credits. You also get standard gig listings or you can pay for extra gig promotions. Your mp3 can be 128kbps or higher and their help section is useful for making sure you encode your music properly. A basic page is free. Premium services are available.

IUMA.com - One of the longest running Internet artist communities has had a bumpy ride over the years, from server problems to occasionally disabling artist submissions. Still, you get a basic artist page and if the server is working right you can upload a few 128kbps mp3s. Though, I've had nothing but trouble trying to download mp3s from IUMA.

SoundClick - One of the first services available to artists is also still at it. Though they never really seemed to get a strong footing and they suffer from a rather dated look, they still offer a community feel. User-created stations, similar to mp3.com, are a highlight. Streaming is available to everyone but you must be a registered member to download mp3s.

Sonicbids - Premium service with a free trial period. Sonicbids lets you create a full online press kit and give talent buyers the ability to book you right there. Non-registered users are free to listen to your 160kbps mp3s, watch Real or Windows video, see photos, a bio and calendar. Take the tour. Read the pricing carefully.

Starpolish - Good free alternative to Sonicbids for bio information, a great mailing list tool, and calendar. Music is limited to three song clips, not complete songs. They maintain a great resource list for developing your career.

There are several other smaller sites to consider. I will add to this thread in postings to come. A good example of how an independent artist uses these sites can be found on the Free Downloads page of captivating Nashville singer/songwriter, Serena Matthews' web site.


CORRECTION: Starpolish DOES allow full songs. Three of them.

Music.Lycos - Allow unlimited free downloads of their archives. However, for some reason the site seems to be having technical problems. Legality wise, it is unknown how the downloading of free (e.g. Basement Jaxx) songs.


--mik

Helpful. I love surfing Purevolume for new bands and stuff.

launch.yahoo.com

Tons of music videos for free, but it only seems to work on IE

You can also download music from www.limewire.com . You can download music, videos....... from limwire.
But you first have to download something from limewire.

nice list, but it would be cool to know where to find royalty free and "free" music, for use in projects in games, freewere music, has in most sites listed music inst freeware, wich is not good for independent game makers like myself...wish i had help from an audio artist...

This is not a website for downloading music, but rather a peer-to-peer network accessed by the downloadable program.

This is often illegal, which makes your post in violation of Astahost's TOS.

Just FYI, most of us know about P2P already. Don't discuss it here, this is all legal talk.

Well I am not really able to enjoy the things you have mentioned in your post because I am on a slow old

dial up connection
Which I am using to connect to the internet every time. But I know Internet is a great place to find

what you need (legal OR illegal) if you know how to search for it.

Recently there is a flood of sites that are tagged as "Web 2.0" there is also some sites that are
Good. But many are just for wasting the time. I read Tecchrunch blog often by Michael Arrington, I have
found a site where you can upload music files up to 8 MB.

What I liked is that it says that you can upload anything (They are claiming that it is legal but I

really don't know).You will get a blog, your personal profile pages etc. They also do have something

called a Tunefeed Player it is a web based audio/mp3 player that you can integrate to other
Websites OR to your blog if you have one.

I think it is the best way to share music as it allows you to integrate stuff via their web based music
player you can stream music directly, so if you have a blog just add the tunefeed player and people can
hear your songs. But I don't know whether people can download songs from this site.

OH!, I forgot to add that it do have full RSS support so you can get updates about the things you are
Watching.

Here is the address of the web site : http://www.tunefeed.com/
http://www.tunefeed.com/

You can distribute your music on P2P networks, for free of course!
You will not get into any legal trouble for UPLOADING your music on P2P networks because it is encouraged on the Gnutella systems.

Just make sure if you have any music on your computer, you still have the original CD.

If you want, you could put music on your web site if your hosting organization/company permits it. Usually they don't allow copyrighted music that you don't have permission to post. But your own content should be okay, just ask first in case.

But P2P is not organised as the specialised services mentioned above, findiing stuff is more defficult.