It seems to me that there are too many people/companies running new online – music related – sites that purport to help bands gain action. Aren’t these sites just a pain and a hindrance?
Don’t they just eat up your time and drag you away from doing something more productive?

I suggest they are mostly a waste of time and should be avoided.

How does it go….

“Why don’t you sign up to our great new site (run for your gain only) and upload your music, maybe a video or two, fill in a biog and away you go”

Also called the ‘Give Us Your Content For Free’ proposition.

Of course having an online presence is totally necessary, but choose wisely where you sign up and who you give your content to. Bear in mind the more sites you have the more sites you’ll have to manage and keep up to date. A site that is stale with old with out-of-date content will give the viewer the impression that nothing is happening.

So where do you go from here…

Your own artist/label website: Definitely. Own your data and respect your subscribers.
MySpace: Having a presence on MySpace is pretty much a given…. for now anyway.
Blogging: Definitely. Blogger, Wordpress etc.
Twitter: Yes. Easy to post and relay people back to your own site.
YouTube: A no brainer.

After the above, for me, it all gets blurred and unclear. Last FM, Jango etc. I’m not saying the above is it – the list to end all lists -  I’m just saying… You can have too much of a good thing, can’t you?

I’d love to hear if anyone has any comments or thoughts or has any other suggestions.

Please tell us what works for you.

All for the common good you understand.