In 2009 alone, the “unsigned” self-distributing bands sold and got paid from streams from over 65 million songs and albums earning over $32 million dollars from iTunes and other digital download stores.

As an artist and composer, you make and perform music: Here are some easy ways to get discovered and sell more music.

Cover Popular Songs
Cover versions of songs sell well. Known songs have a built-in audience already. People looking for “Let It Be” or “America the Beautiful” know what they want. If you “cover” (record your own original version) of these songs you create a way to get discovered and make money. Also, naming your song the same name as a more popular song allows it to surface when people search (however, you do want to be careful as to not make a potential fan angry at you for tricking them into listening).

Record Holiday-Themed Music
Music tied into or about a holiday sells well. For example, “spooky” Halloween sound effects or “scary” themed music sells enormously around Halloween. Christmas music sells really well around the Christmas season. This ties back to covers: a cover of “White Christmas” or “Jingle Bell Rock” can fund you through the rest of the year. Don’t forget other, perhaps neglected holidays throughout the calendar-there is no doubt the world needs a great Groundhog Day or Columbus Day anthem. Be sure to name your songs with easily searchable words.

Searchability
Stores have millions upon millions of songs, and most customers use the “search” function in the store to find music, so take advantage of it: put words in your album, artist/band and song titles that will help you show up when people search. Are you a mariachi band? Put the word “mariachi” in your name. Is your album a collection of nature sounds? Consider words like “forest” and “natural,” and so on. This is a gray area: if your music sounds like Bob Dylan, don’t necessarily use his name, but you could use words with association, like “folk.”

An Eye Catching Art Design
A great album cover can catch someone’s eye. If you can’t create your own design, hire a designer to give your music more than just a pretty cover; they can give your music the visual image that completes your project and draws people in to listen.

In iTunes, Create an iMix
An iMix is a playlist that you’ve chosen to publish and make available to others in the iTunes Music Store. So create an iMix (or many iMixes) with a few of your own songs (say three or so) and other songs (we suggest 9 or so) by more popular artists in the same genre. In addition, give your iMix an interesting name like, “Music to Break Up To,” or “Songs that Morrisey Wishes He Could Write.” Clever titles catch peoples’ attention. The more iMixes you seed into iTunes, the higher the probability you will be discovered. Don’t forget to RATE your iMix to increase visibility!

Album Reviews & Ratings
STATISTIC: Albums in iTunes with customer reviews sell 33% more than albums without them. Be sure to rate your own album 5 stars, and when you review it: that’s a great place to describe the album and the sound. If you happen to have reviews about your music (from blogs or magazines), you can re-type them here.

In addition, ask your fans and friends to write reviews-the more reviews the better! Reviews add legitimacy and influence purchases.

Tell a Friend
You can send album reviews or playlists or iMixes to anyone from within iTunes via the iTunes “Tell A Friend” option. Just click on the “Tell A Friend” link in the iTunes store (located next to the album art), enter an email address and iTunes does the rest.

iTunes Affiliate Program
With the free iTunes Affiliate Program, you can link and sell your own music (or anyone’s else in the iTunes store) via any Web page or email. With each sale from iTunes that originates from your affiliate link, you will earn a 5% commission on all qualifying revenue generated (IMPORTANT: terms apply, so be sure to check them out). This means that off of each qualifying sale, you will get paid a percentage of the money paid to iTunes by an iTunes customer, if that customer came from your affiliate link. To get started, visit this page: http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/itmsLink- Maker

For more information on how to become an iTunes affiliate for free and how to use the program, visit this page: http://www.apple.com/itunes/affiliates

Make Easy Weblinks to Your Music
iTunes has recently added a feature that makes it easier for you to easily create web links directly to your content in the iTunes Store. You can link directly to any artist/band page using the convention: http://itunes.com/artistname and you can also link directly to albums/singles using the convention: http://itunes.com/artistname/album

Make a Video
You, your friend or a relative have an old video camera, probably even a digital video camera. You can even rent one for a few dollars a day in most areas. Heck, use your cell phone, but MAKE A VIDEO! Put it on YouTube, put it on iTunes, put it on every free streaming video or torrent site that will take it. Post the links on a blog, tell your friends, put it on MySpace, and spread the word.

For an expanded version of this article and much more vital info, please visit

Besides the obvious sites like Facebook(), MySpace() and Twitter(), musicians should leverage the opportunities available to them via the sites listed here. We’ve found five amazing sites offering better self-promotion opportunities, meaningful ways to connect with fans, more ways to avoid starving for your art, and resources to help book more gigs.

1. OurStage

We already think OurStage has a rockin’ iPhone app, but the site is even better for indie artists looking for an audience. Musicians can upload songs and videos to the site, select the categories they want to compete in, get a music player, spruce up their artist page with photos, and connect with friends and fans.

Because OurStage is focused on getting your music heard, you will be pitted against other indie artists in one-on-one and ranking battles that users judge. The more votes your song or video gets, the higher your ranking. Plus, the highest ranked song and video, across all channels, each month earns a $5,000 and $1,000 grand prize respectively. There’s also sponsor prizes and exposure in festivals or magazines for highly ranked artists.

The OurStage Marketplace is a spin-off of the main site specially designed to connect all types of venues with artists to mutually help each other book gigs. If you’re a starving artist struggling to book a gig, you can turn to the marketplace to apply for open gigs of all sizes, and create a custom electronic press kit (EPK) to get noticed for your abilities. Venues make the final decision on whether or not your band is a good fit, based on fan ratings and the EPKs, but the marketplace gets your foot in the door.

2. Last.fm

Last.fm’s player will play your tracks to listeners who enjoy similar music, and the more your music is the played, the more it gets recommended. Plus, as an artist you have your own page complete with biography, photos, videos, albums, tracks, events, news, charts, and journal. Your fans can create the page with or without you, but chances are you’re better served claiming your page and using it to promote events, add your links, find out more about your listeners, and engage with fans.

Last.fm’s advantage isn’t just their userbase, but also the tools they provide artists to help spread the word, track stats, and get paid. Since artists get real-time air play stats, they can look at instant reaction stats to find out what songs listeners skip or love. Plus, Last.fm’s Artist Royalty Program — no label required — pays you directly every time your music is streamed, so the more listens, the more cash you earn. It’s not a lot of money, think a fraction of a cent per play, but it’s an effort-free way to earn royalties per stream.

3. iLike

Artists of all sizes can get access to a universal dashboard to manage their page, and view basic fan stats on social sites, iTunes, Ticketmaster and the like in a post once, publish everywhere fashion. Pages() come with unlimited song uploads, bulletins, blogs, video, photos, events, and albums. Fans are able to add your songs to their profiles and indicate whether they’re attending your shows.

iLike also has iCast, a relatively new feature that makes creating multimedia bulletins a snap. Bulletins can include text, photos, audio, and video and fans receive updates each time something new is posted. iCast also supports mobile photo and video sharing with fans.

The benefits of using iLike for all-in-one page management include the single dashboard with stats on new fans, top songs, and profile adds. Essentially, iLike gives musicians the tools they need to keep their web presence fresh and stay current with a comprehensive view of how fans are supporting their music across the web.

4. eListeningPost

Long story short, you can upload your tracks and sell them anywhere you can share links or embed HTML code, like MySpace or your official band website.

You have control over price (.79 – $1.19 p/track), currency type, and whether or not songs are protected (ie. with DRM restrictions). Since eListeningPost doesn’t take a cut, and users buy directly from you via Paypal, you’re making up to 94% of the sale price from your content. Good deal, right?

eListeningPost does come with some nifty tracking tools, so members can get insight into number of plays per country, and purchases per region. Plus, there’s certainly no shortage of badges for promoting your profile, songs, and fan club, so you can get the word out pretty much anywhere you want online.

eListeningPost isn’t completely free to use. Even though they don’t take a cut of your sales, they do charge a one time setup fee of $45 and a $9/mo subscription fee. So make sure you can promote and sell your work before you sign up with them.

5. Champion Sound

The site ChampionSound.com, which was once a DJ booking agency, is under new ownership and is now specifically designed to make promoting your band a social and mobile experience, ultimately making it easier for you to notify your fans of your news and events. The fresh out beta service is a free to use promotional marketing force with three main features: mass email manager, guest list manager, and mobile app.

The mass email manager lets you handcraft your entire message with text, images, and video for sending impressive emails to your fanbase. Artists can then track email campaigns and view opens, clicks, forwards, and bounces. Of course, members can create custom lists, and even add an email subscription widget to their MySpace page or website for fans to add themselves wherever they happen to discover your music.

Champion Sound’s guest list manager offers a quick and effective way to promote and manage attendee lists. Artists get buttons to take with them across the web, fans can sign up by clicking on the button, and guest lists are maintained real-time and can be accessed on the fly from your mobile phone.

The mobile app makes it painless to add new contacts you meet while on the go to any one of your email subscription lists. And since you can access your always updated guest list from the app, managing performance attendees is that much easier.

There’s a bunch of features coming soon that will make it even easier to get your band noticed. You can expect Champion Sound to add SMS messaging to your fanbase in March, as well as shout-out options to Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and iLike towards the end of this month.

The power that these websites have cannot be underestimated. On YouTube Susan Boyle went from “weird lady next door”, to overnight singing sensation literally…overnight! Lily Allen took matters into her own hands when she was starting out and used MySpace to boost her musical career. The rest as they say…is history.

Most recently the rise of Justin Beiber can be attributed to videos posted on YouTube that gathered such a following that he’s now mobbed by teenage girls everywhere he goes. Not a bad thing for a young boy of 15!

Of course there are many more examples of how singers and bands have used social networking and viral marketing to explode their careers. Some intentionally and some unintentionally.

So How Do I Get Noticed?

First of all…Get In There! You can’t get noticed if you don’t have an online presence. Just get started. Sign up, upload, do whatever it is you need to do but get going.

Take advantage of everything social networking sites offer. Free marketing tools, listings of gigs, contacts in the music industry can all be found, as well as entering your music in talent shows and contests.

The “Big Boys” of the online media world are obviously the most popular and can provide you with amazing exposure, but other websites can be tremendously helpful in ways the others cant.

Websites dedicated soley to helping musicians and other aspiring artists might be a more productive fit for you. These sites have you in mind and offer the tools needed to promote you and your music. This can all be done for FREE!

And don’t think that one website alone is the answer to your dreams. Why not be a part of many? Spread the word over many sites. Link your profiles on each site and create your own media network. Once you begin to build up a fan base you will be amazed at what people will do to help you and your music. Your true fans will help promote your music online and bring in even more new fans. On and on it goes.

Treat your fans with respect. Upload new content and keep it fresh. Have contests and giveaways on your sites and get your fans involved. Maybe even consider having a contest where you play a gig at the winners school, house or party.

The name of the game is getting noticed. Your options are limitless as far as promoting your own music, but the biggest step is just getting started.

Taking that first action towards your goal of having your music heard is the most important thing you can do right now. Your motivation towards your music will pay off in many different ways as long as you stay persistant.

Your fans are out there….find them!

Since cavemen banged two sticks together and called it music (just a guess), there have been an unlimited number of ways to promote the music of a solo artist or band. Some are very creative and effective, while others are…lets say, a little less effective (cavemen were terrible promoters).

It is true that a lucky break here and there can do more than any kind of promotion you can think of, but if you aren’t getting your music out there you have no chance. Video sharing sites are making stars of laughing babies, crying weirdos, bad dancers and keyboard smashing kids… so why can’t you get noticed for something that is actually good?

You can!

The one thing they have in common is that people have decided that their videos are worth sharing with their friends and family and it spreads like wildfire. Or as is better known on the internet…they become VIRAL! What does this mean to you and how does it help you promote your music online? If you’re a musician and you want people to spread your music like a virus you need to get it out there, in the hands and ears of people who will turn around and pass it on to everyone they know.

You need to give away the music for free! It’s a simple concept. Give away a free sample, get the listener hooked, get them coming back for more, sell them more! Easy. Well…not so easy, but not rocket science either. Have you ever been to a grocery store on sample day? Of course you have, and I bet at some point you ended up buying one of the products you sampled, can you say…cheesecake? You need to find a website that will give you the tools to promote your music online and for free. Most musicians are struggling to pay the rent and buy food, never mind have an advertising budget, so anytime you can promote your music for free…you need to do it, and do it now!

Of course this all assumes that you want yourself and your music to get noticed. Not everybody wants the millions of dollars, worldwide fame and rock star lifestyle…but if you do, you need to get on one of the web’s fastest growing independent music promotion sites.

With iTunes you really need to promote yourself within the walls of iTunes, and this goes a long way to help you sell and grow your fan based across other sites.

Here is a step by step process on how to promote yourself within iTunes. Please remember that this does take a lot of time, but overall can really get some great results.

Step 1 – Sign up to iTunes and Buy Some Music

The first thing you should do is signup and buy some music (your and your friends), this gets you familiar with the process of buying, plus this will come in handy when you ask your fans to buy your tracks later.

Step 2 – Create at Least 5 profile accounts

Did you know that with each credit card that you register with iTunes you get 5 separate accounts? iTunes designed it this way so families in one household can all use one card.

All profiles are kept completely seperate and not interconnected. One of the profiles will be use by you as your main account, but you can use the other 4 accounts to help promote yourself.

TIP: While you are creating these profiles: Think about your target audience – who are they? Older dudes that like prog rock, or teenagers that like Britney Spears? Create profiles that would fit the types of people who like your music. Choose a name for each profile so they each have an individual personality. Give them distinct personalities and even imagine where they might be from.

Step 3 – Review Other Artists

With each profile – individually begin to review other people’s music. You definitely want to review three or four other artists that have nothing to do with you or your genre so choose some of the artists that have influenced you or artists that you like and create some reviews.

Step 4 – Create iMixes

You will need to create 2 categories of iMixes:

1: iMixes that have nothing to do with you and your music

Examples:

• Best of Madonna
• Great local bands from your hometown
• Best of Bob Marley
• Best of the 1970’s

2. iMixes that INCLUDE YOUR OWN MUSIC

Create mixes that include your own tracks with other complimentary tracks (artists you get compared to and who you are influenced by that sound good when played next to your songs). When you create iMixes think of yourself as a DJ or a curator and piece together thoughtful lists.

TIP: Add some of the top sellers from each week in your genre and style as buyers will already be looking for the top sellers when they come to iTunes.

TIP: You should create an iMix at least one time per week per account.

Step 5 – Vote for iMixes

Make sure you vote on as many iMixes as possible. Vote for your own iMixes using all of your profiles.

COOL: iMixes that begin to pick up votes rise to the top where other buyers will begin to respond to them and purchase your iMixes.

A Note about iMix voting: People who are key users who are also heavily promoting their own music sometimes can be competitive. They may try to vote your iMixes down so that the iMixes that they have created rise to the top.

What my friend says about this: Being malicious on iTunes is awful. Don’t give other people bad reviews. Stay away from this type of negative behavior. Just focus on your own voting and contributions.

Step 6 – Master iMix Sandwiching

When you create an iMix, you want to sandwich yourself between hot chart-toppers in your genre, and add artists that already have five-star reviews.

For each iMix, make it at least 20 songs, but you can go to 40 or 50 songs. To stay on top of the charts for your iMix, you must get the most votes and the most stars.

TIP: Don’t forget to vote for other people’s iMixes so it looks like you are well-rounded.

This is where registering different credit cards and different personalities so you can actually log in and vote for yourself comes in handy.

Step 7 – Remove Unpopular iMixes & Update Them

If your iMix fals below three stars you should take your iMix down from iTunes, add some new tracks to it, and then add it again as an updated iMix.

It will take a few hours for your updated iMix to show back up into the iTunes profiles, but you don’t want to have a poorly rated iMix sitting in the iTunes system with your music in it.

How To Update an iMix: In order to update an I-Mix: Click on the arrow on iTunes. Then click on “update,” and add some new tracks,

TIP: Don’t rename your iMix

iMixes are good for a whole year, so you want to make sure that you start voting, when it goes back up. It takes between 6 to 12 hours for a newly edited or a new iMix to show up.

Here’s The Wrap Up:

For each profile you create: Their iMixes to match their personality:

1. Create then wait for your iMix to show up.

2. Log in as each of your different reviewers and users.

3. Vote five stars from each of the profiles you have created.

4. Start watching your music sell

5. Go in two times per week and create new iMixes.

6. After a while to stay in the most recent, you must continue to make new iMixes. Vote, vote and vote.

7. Remember, you must log in and submit votes for each of the iMixes with each of your separate accounts and many sepearte times. This is the most time consuming part of the process, but if you do this, the rewards and the sales will pay off deeply

8. Log in and vote for: Was this review helpful? And click yes per account. This will help your iMix move up the charts.

9. When you make an iMix, don’t only include the chart toppers, but also include what appeals to you as a listener and what the fans of this iMix might actually like.

10. Remember, you are creating a useful contribution to the iTunes community. The key is make iMixes on Mondays because on Tuesdays the new release schedule will kick in and that’s when your iMixes will show up