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Once you've learned the secrets of the pros, you can also use the Web as a promotional tool. "Apart from the way that the website helped to get us noticed, it's also a great way to back up the promotion that we do in the real world", says Seb from Stargirl. "All of our flyers and posters have the website address on it. Whenever we do a road show, radio or television appearance we always make sure that the website is mentioned. People that are interested in us will check out the site, which gives us the opportunity to tell them more about us, and to join the email list". Barry Ratcliffe runs BURBs (http://www.burbs.org.uk), a site dedicated to UK rock bands. "The web is an amazing resource for a band to promote themselves", he says. "It's worldwide coverage, 24 hours a day, all year round. Instead of a bland black and white promo pack, bands can create a fully interactive experience that expresses their beliefs and style in a way never before possible". The Internet is a truly democratic place, and a well-designed Web site can bring your music to a lot of people's attention. There are hundreds of sites that you can persuade to link to yours, and E-mail makes it easy to keep in touch with your audience. The best way to promote your music on-line is to let people hear it, and the key is MP3, a way of compressing music files to reasonable sizes. Using a technique known as Perceptual Audio Encoding, MP3 can compress a CD-quality WAV file to approximately one-twelfth of its original size without losing too much quality. Professional musicians will be able to tell the difference - particularly on acoustic instruments, which tend to suffer from noticeable phasing in MP3 format - but the average punter is none the wiser. At around three or four megabytes per song, an MP3 file can be downloaded in a few minutes using a normal computer and modem, and the software to play the files is free. The biggest player in the world of MP3 music is American site MP3.com (http://www.mp3.com), which was recently floated on the US stock market for millions of dollars. The site boasts more than 250,000 visitors each day, and recently inked deals with high-profile artists such as TLC, Tori Amos and Tom Petty. The site's Artist Sign Up page is fairly persuasive - "No cost! Get fans! Sell more CDs! Get famous!" - and more than 10,000 artists have made their music available on the site. In a recent interview with Getsigned.com (http://www.getsigned.com), Michael Robertson of MP3.com explained how the site works. "We built a system where any artist in the world can sign up with MP3.com", he explained. "We host all the files, build the Web pages - all you've got to do is fill out a form describing your band and the members and where you live and so on, and we do all the rest for you. You don't have to worry about band lists or costs. It's all free". MP3.com also provides a service called Digital Automated Music, or DAM. This gives bands the ability to sell CDs from the site, and MP3.com takes care of the manufacturing and shipping in exchange for a 50% cut. Some artists are critical of this, however, as the 50% doesn't include shipping costs - if you sell your CD for a fiver, MP3.com actually charges around twelve pounds to UK customers of which you'll receive £2.50.
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