Before retiring the laptop for the night, I’m trying out two online tools at the suggestion of Mashable, which put together a killer list of social media sites geared specifically to musicians.
First up is Twiturm, which allows users to upload music directly into a tweet, as opposed to simply linking to an outside site. It does its job, but I’d prefer some kind of media player imbedded directly into the Twitter page. Creating an imbedded media player is exactly what I thought I was doing when I uploaded Fall ’09 EP. Wrong. All I was doing was tweeting tracks, one at a time, and pissing off of Followers by clogging their TweetDecks. I really just don’t see the point. I just assume tweet a link to ReverbNation.
BandCamp is a rad site. Like it a lot. Like Myspace, it provides you a profile to showcase music, list shows, etc, minus the clunky controls and annoying spam. You can post your songs for download, charging whatever you wish (Free is an option, too), even a “Pay What You Want” feature for those gracious listeners who feel compelled to drop a dime into your digital guitar case. The main issue is BandCamp wants WAV files, which are massive and take forever to load. Granted, the sound quality is better with WAV, but I got through just one song before I grew antsy. You’ll need some time with this one.
Still, the reigning champ is ReverbNation. No site provides as many features and direct “marketing”.