New Music Biz 101: Free Track Giveaways

posted in: Features

Ever since the rise of the independent artist, free track giveaways have been a promotional tool rapidly increasing in popularity. Artists are giving away free CDs, MP3s”anything that can get their music to the masses. However, music is an artist’s most powerful asset, so why not use it to it’s full potential.

A lot of musicians are handing out free music like its nothing, just for the sake of exposure. Although this method isn’t completely ineffective, we think there is a better approach.  If someone is interested enough in you as an artist to listen to your music, you’re going to want to know who this person is and engage them as a potential fan.  You need to connect with them on some level, collect their email address, encourage them to join your Facebook artist page, get their phone number, etc. Bottom line: you need a way to reach out to these potential fans in the future. Luckily, there are a few tools out there that can help you with this.

Nimbit, Topspin, and Bandcamp are a few Web sites that help artists make more out of their free track offerings. They provide online tools that allow you to capture user data with every free giveaway. For example, in order to download a free track from one of these sites, a person must provide their email address. With some of the available tools, fans must provide their name, zip code and email address. This gives artists a sense of where their fan base is located which can be invaluable for touring purposes.

When you’re on the road, use mailing lists or download cards to capture user data. Maintaining fan connections for future marketing initiatives is vital to the success of your future releases. For those who don’t know, download cards provide your fans a unique key that they can enter into a Web site in exchange for a download. The best way to distribute these items is to make an announcement during your show that you have free download cards at your merch table, available for anyone interested in picking one up. This way, not only do you only give a download to those who like your show enough to go get one, but you also got the fan to go straight to your merch table.

We hope this gives you a better idea of how to better utilize your music to your advantage. Let us know if you have other suggestions that we didn’t mention in the comments section.