If you are an upcoming musician but do not know how to promote your talent, don’t worry. There are websites that will do it on your behalf. Over the past few years, a number of online platforms catering exclusively to such individuals have come up. Some of the popular ones are SoundCloud, ReverbNation, Bandcamp and Qyuki. These platforms help share original compositions and enable artists to sell original tracks.
IndianRaga.in
IndianRaga is one of the most recent additions to this list. It is a platform to promote Indian classical music online. The website works on a ‘freemium’ model, says Sriram Emani, co-founder of IndianRaga. “Musicians are free to create a profile and use the site to promote themselves. Musicians who are seriously pursuing professional opportunities can become featured artists of the IndianRaga network by entering our selection process. Featured artists will have access to educational and mentorship resources, and they will be able to apply for professional opportunities,” Emani adds.
IndianRaga’s first selection process is currently on, called the IndianRaga Fellowship. The application fee is $25 and is currently open to musicians in the US and Canada. Emani says there are plans to expand to other regions.
Fee: IndianRaga has a paid subscription model, and a set of ‘opportunity application fees’. All musicians can create a profile for free on IndianRaga, and upload up to five songs. There is also a paid subscription model, which allows you to upload more songs and to follow and connect with mentors, other musicians, and organisations on the network.
ReverbNation.com
For musicians serious about their career, ReverbNation offers digital tools to promote their music and connect with fans. It allows you to create, manage, and track all digital campaigns. Further, for musicians looking at making music a remunerative business, the platform offers a facility to help fans stream and download songs from online music stores.
Fee: While the basic plan is free for artists, a fee of $19.95 a month is charged for emerging artists. This fee includes unlimited song uploads, digital distribution releases and apps such as Gig Finder, which helps organise performances for appropriate audience at a location. For a fee of $41.67 a month, all these features and a custom iPhone Fan App is available for upcoming rock-stars.
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SoundCloud.com
SoundCloud is like Facebook for music. Users can like, comment and share music from artists. It can be linked to other social networking platforms. Artists can create profiles, which are followed by their fans.
And similar to Twitter, fans get updates on the artists they are following. One can add friends and view each other’s music streams.
SoundCloud can be accessed from anywhere using the official iPhone and Android apps as well as hundreds of creation and sharing apps built on the SoundCloud platform.
Fee: The service is free for users to upload content up to 120 minutes. For additional content, users have to pay a fee ranging from ^29 a year for 240 upload minutes to ^250 a year for 36 upload hours. For ^500 a year, one can get the complete package with unlimited hours.
Bandcamp.com
Bandcamp is a similar platform to promote professional musicians, and it offers music at a high quality formats such as FLAC and Ogg Vorbis. It helps optimise search engines for their own content, helps sell within Facebook and easy distribution.
Fee: At a fee of $10 a month, one can avail of the premium services that include private streaming, Google Analytics to view who's linking to one’s music and assistance in creating your own domain name.
Qyuki.com
Newer social platforms like Qyuki help artists to showcase and share their work. Users can not only learn from experts and get recognised in their career, but can also view content posted by masters in the field.
The difference
What set these portals apart from the generic ones like YouTube? They offer a wider range of resources to artists to manage their original content, while helping connect with fans and distributors.
What do users say
Musicians also feel these portals have been beneficial. Ashwini Mishra, a hip-hop artist from Mumbai, says portals such as SoundCloud have made it easier to share music online. “Some of the portals like ReverbNation also give an opportunity to interface with the online distribution channel iTunes,” he adds.
Echoing a similar view, Vandana Srinivasan, a Chennai-based musician says it is not about choosing one over the other. “It’s about using all of them together and that is what helped me most.”