There are many great places you can turn if you want advice and tips on how to promote your music on the Internet. In today’s post we thought we would list a few and tell you a little about them.

Know the music biz
An online community and resource centre for independent artists and musicians. The goal of this website is to make available the information for artists need to build a sustainable career in a changing music industry. It has a wealth of articles written by individuals who really know their stuff. Highly recommended.

Ariel Publicity
Description: The “sound advice” area of Ariel Publicity provides some great advice articles to help motivate and guide your online promotion strategy. Ariel Publicity is a “Cyber PR” company who really have their finger on the pulse. We highly recommend signing up to the bi-weekly “sound advice” bulletin.

Buzz Factor
Description:The buzz factor offers music marketing and promotion tips for songwriters, musicians and bands. Bob Baker, acclaimed author of the “Guerrilla Music Marketing Handbook” among other titles, writes it.

Today we post an  article we recently submitted to Music Nomad, a great directory of resources for independent and unsigned artists. It concerns how to submit your music to Podcasts!

Podcasts are yet another example of the great new online channels available to musicians to promote their music and develop their fan base. For those living under a rock, a Podcast is an internet audio show delivered to listeners, who can listen online or download it to their PC, mobile phone or MP3 player. Listeners can also subscribe to particular shows and receive new shows as they are made available. One can consider Podcasts the internet’s answer to traditional radio, except better in many ways. Better because they are more accessible to independents, far less costly, they are global, exist for every genre and always after new music! To get your music played on podcasts, you will first need to make your tracks available for podcasters to find, and then contact them and let them know you are interested in getting your music played on their show. This mini-guide should hopefully give you some idea of how to do this.

First things first, get your tracks ready for listing!
Almost all podcasts require music to be submitted in MP3 format, so convert your music files to MP3 if necessary. Most podcasts will not use a bit rate in excess of 128kbps, so you can be comfortable using this bit rate. Recording quality is important, so make sure you submit the best recording that you can get your hands on.
Then a good idea would be to add ID3 tags. These are little bits of information (or metadata) about a track that you can attach to an MP3 file. This is not compulsory, but enables you to package your MP3 in a more attractive way. There are numerous ways which you can add ID3 tags, but the easiest way is to edit them in Widows Media Player or iTunes. Right click on the name of your track, and chose the “advanced tag editor” (“Get Info” in iTunes). You will now be able to add information to your MP3, such as the track name, artist name, cover art etc. In the “notes” field you also have the chance of added your MySpace, email address etc.

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Greetings ladies, gentlemen, comrades and fellow humans. Just a quick post today to say that there is now a new “page” on the Record Union blog. This page is entitled “online promotion directory” and features a list of services which we think are useful for aspiring independent and unsigned artists which are looking to use the online environment to their advantage. We hope that this will help artists find out about new services which can help them expand their fan base and generate exposure for their music. It contains links to blogging services, podcasting services, tools to make your life easier, online marketing tools and links to online promotion advice. The directory will be updated whenever we find new service to add, and if you would like to recommend services to add to this directory, or think we have missed something out, please contact the Blog Team at dogblog@recordunion.com. We will also be writing more articles dealing with online promotion advice here on the Dog Blog, which you can find by clicking on the “promotion advice” categories section (on the right of your screen). Happy time!