As a singer, the most important aspect of your Internet presence is your audio samples. But uploading and downloading MP3 and WAV files on your website is a clunky mess. Simply put, the whole process can be ugly.
First off, the files are huge and can take a long time to download. Some people will figure out how to listen to them only by downloading them to their computer, a commitment they might not be willing to make. Others will manage to listen to them online but, no matter how many times you explain the process, will fail to get them saved to their hard drive. Not to mention that if you don’t know how to use HTML, or at least how to upload something via FTP, you will have a hard time updating your website with your new tracks.
It’s no wonder, then, that classical singers are slowly starting to explore what independent artists of the non-classical variety have been knee-deep in for a long time: the realm of online music hosting.
The options are dazzling. There are more websites offering to host your songs for free than anyone without a dedicated Internet marketing team (and, oh yes, there are such enterprises) can keep up with. And different sites offer different features, such as fan mailing lists, sale of digital downloads, and integration with other sites. So, how to choose? Here’s a quick rundown of some of the most popular options.
Bandcamp
A relative newcomer to the field, Bandcamp.com is quickly becoming a favorite of indie musicians—not only because of its streamlined interface, but because artists can sell their music as digital downloads, keeping all the money after the PayPal Premier deductions.
Bandcamp has a very clean look and is very simple to navigate. This is probably in no small part because it has only a few features: music, album art, lyrics, streaming files, and downloading. The creators are anticipating adding more of the usual band site features, such as upcoming performances and the like. Time will tell if this will clutter up the interface or if it will retain its slick, no-junk look.
Bells and whistles aside, there are several aspects of Bandcamp that make it the preference of so many indie musicians. First of all, unlike most sites that accept only MP3s, Bandcamp accepts only high-quality sound files such as WAV or AIFF. Since the files are offered for sale —with your approval and PayPal information—Bandcamp wants listeners to be able to purchase the highest quality file possible.
But that’s not all. According to your preferences, fans can download your music for free or in exchange for an e-mail address to add to your mailing list. You can also opt to allow users to download just the low-quality files for free, but pay for the high-quality ones (you also set the price) or to get any quality for free—or not be able to download at all, for that matter.
Embedding (hosting your song on this site but displaying it on another, such as your professional website) is extremely customizable. Your Bandcamp page is not really intricate enough to serve as your professional website in and of itself, as there is nowhere to display your résumé and other professional information. However, it could be used as the “music” or “listen” page of your website.
ReverbNation
If Bandcamp is the epitome of cleanliness and simplicity, ReverbNation is its complete antithesis. It has so many features that trying to take advantage of them can be bewildering. It does everything: music, bios, mailing lists, photos, status updates, blogs, merch store, upcoming shows, fans, banner-maker, street team . . . I’m already feeling stressed out. But the brilliant thing about ReverbNation is synchronization.
ReverbNation.com doesn’t host all your material by itself. Sure, you can upload your songs and photos, but many of your bonus features are synched up from outside websites. Your videos, while they are played in a ReverbNation window, are really just embedded from YouTube. Your “store” is a collection of fancy links to sites that actually do sell your merchandise, such as your t-shirts on Zazzle (What, you don’t have your own t-shirts? Come on, be a rock star!) or your album on CD Baby.
While this may seem at first like laziness on ReverbNation’s part, it is actually its greatest feature. Most of us don’t have all our material centralized in one place. We belong to several different websites and are loath to upload and upkeep everything on yet another site. Here, many features are automatically synchronized. ReverbNation links up easily with Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and your blog, so that you don’t have to update your profile every time something changes. It gathers up your fan statistics from your other sites. Your status updates can be synched with Twitter, MySpace, or Facebook, and your blog can be imported.
ReverbNation may seem like the perfect substitute for a professional website, but there are a few hurdles. First of all, the site is obviously geared towards the indie rock circuit. The look is pretty punk, and some of its biggest constituents are live music venues—rock clubs, coffee shops, and the like. No opera companies—at least, none that are active accounts—although there are a few “unofficial pages” for Carnegie Hall and the like. ReverbNation is largely overlooked by classical musicians, perhaps for just these reasons. However, it could be a very useful tool for the singer on the Do-It-Yourself career path, such as those who create their own performance opportunities.
iLike
Most readers will probably best know iLike.com because of Facebook. iLike is the default method of posting a song to a profile in a Facebook comment box. It’s also the application that gives people those little boxes on their profiles where they have mini-pictures of all the artists they like. Like ReverbNation, you can add a tab to your Facebook page (remember Facebook profiles vs. Facebook pages, CS May 2009?) that will display your iLike info.
iLike will import your YouTube channel directly rather than make you link videos one at a time like ReverbNation. It also has a handy little tool that will sync your upcoming performances with your MySpace calendar—something ReverbNation has not managed to do with any elegance. Beyond that, there are the usual features: upload your music and photos, etc. Although, strangely, there’s no place for biographical information.
iLike has been giving me problems from day one. First of all, I was not able to claim my name, because these fools seem to be convinced that someone else is Amanda White. (Cretins!) No, not because someone else had beaten me to it and gotten my screen name. Instead, iLike, with its Internet sensor-bots, had somehow come across music by another person named Amanda White (probably not even her real name) and would not let me claim my own identity. So I am forced to list my domain name and slogan—“Amanda White (not just another pretty voice)”—which is, frankly, kind of annoying.
In addition, I’m completely unable to get the icon version of my profile picture to exist. I have a picture in my profile, but in place of the little icon that shows up on mosaics of “Artists iLike” on people’s Facebook pages, I get the default gray silhouette. How amateur. I’ve tried everything to fix it—even wrote iLike’s tech support, but received no help.
And one other weird problem with iLike: they have a blog feature, but you can’t import your blog from another site. It’s not that hard, iLike. It’s probably the easiest thing to synchronize. Am I really going to host my blog on iLike.com? Because people will really take what I have to say seriously then? Sure.
iLike is mostly handy for its partnership with Facebook. After all, if someone wants to share a recording of you with her friends, you want to make it as easy as possible. Unfortunately, the odd combination of features they do and don’t have is inconvenient for the self-promoting classical singer, and the interface is full of pitfalls.
MySpace
We covered MySpace some time ago (May 2008). I’ll give you a minute to go read through your back issues. No, really, go ahead. I’ll wait.
Done? Good. So, MySpace: what’s changed? Where is MySpace now that Facebook has seemingly completely overshadowed it in the realm of social media?
Well, Facebook has not overshadowed MySpace in the realm of music promotion. You see, no one really wants to be your fan on Facebook. They’ll do it to be nice, but they don’t really get anything out of it. On MySpace, however, everyone wants to be your fan, because it’s a mutual connection. It boosts their status as well as yours, and more people will hear your music.
Because MySpace has a very unprofessional feel to it, with friends, creepy strangers, and bands posting random comments all over your page, it does not make a very good professional website. However, people worldwide still use MySpace, and you’ll have the stats to prove it. Although I haven’t updated my blog there in over a year, it gets as many hits as my current, updated, more professional blog. My songs have thousands and thousands of plays—something I can only dream about for my Bandcamp site. So while MySpace may not make the best impression for opera companies, as far as getting yourself heard, on MySpace people are listening.
These are only a few of the myriad of sites available to promote your music. There are many, many more and, like those featured above, they all have their strengths and weaknesses. So, which to use? Well, it depends on your specific intentions, but the real answer is all of them! Create profiles and upload music wherever you can, then focus your attention on maintaining and perfecting whichever you find to work best for you. None of these sites will replace a full, professional website, but they can take care of the hardest part—hosting your music, making it easy to play and download, and getting people to listen.
