If you just finished recording an album, you know how expensive the process can be. Even if it was a low-budget home recording, you still spent your hard-earned money and time completing the project. The first thing on your mind now is how you can make some of that money back or repay yourself for the costs. One of the best ways to make this money back is to give part of it away for free. Make it completely free.
Why Should I Give Songs Away For Free?
Why should you do this? It’s very hard or next to impossible to sell your album to people who haven’t had a taste of it. How often do you buy a product without having any idea of what you are buying? There has to be a reason that you are making the purchase and it works exactly the same with music. No one is going to buy your album or come to your show without hearing you first. Put a few songs out on the Internet that people can access for free. I’m not talking about streaming songs on Myspace either. Allow listeners to download entire tracks for free and don’t charge a penny. The main goal should be to get those songs onto the iPods of listeners who visit your site. Get those songs on their personal playlists, not just your Myspace page.
Let Songs Spread Like Fire
If you’ve written good music, the news will spread. This is the beauty of how easy it is to pass digital files from person-to-person over the Internet. All of the digital piracy and music sharing that major record labels hate can work to your advantage. Let people steal your music. Encourage people to steal your music. If they like what they hear, they’ll pass it on to others. In return, your band will gain popularity and people will buy your album.
Get Started
1. Setup a section on your band’s website so that people can download high-quality MP3s of your songs. Myspace allows users to download your songs, but I wouldn’t recommend this method. Myspace uses poor downsampling techniques that will make the quality of your songs pretty awful. Setup your own website so that you can share 320kps MP3 files that sound great.
2. Use file-sharing sites to distribute music. Yes, use the same sites that people are getting busted for to pass your own music around. You don’t have to download or share any illegal music on these sites that will get you in trouble. Get an account and put your band’s music on there. Let people pass it around.
3. Make a stack of CD-Rs for your shows and let people take them as they please. They don’t have to be fancy, just blank CDs with your band name written in marker. Even if you have CDs for sale on your merch table, give away a free sampler.
Why This Works
People love free stuff and they love to talk about it. Your music will be heard if you open it up to people. This is what many indie record labels do to spread the word about new releases. They give people some songs off of the album for free to catch interest and build buzz. Your band should be doing this too. One single song download could turn into 10-15 people or 1,000-50,000 people listening to that song.
