I just created an account on bandcamp.com, and I'm uploading my second CD to it. This site is FANTASTIC. I'd put it right up there with CDBaby in terms of a company "getting it."

You put your music up, people can listen to the songs online, and people can download the songs in a variety of formats, and you decide how much to charge, from free to whatever. The site gives fantastic stats - for each song, you can tell where the person came from (what site,) whether they listened to the whole song or not, how much of the song they listened to, and all kinds of other cool stats.

I'm going to try an experiment. I'm going to put my second CD on bandcamp and I'm going to offer the following pricing model for each song:

128k mp3 file - free
Higher Quality file - 50 cents or more (user decides)

Entire CD, high quality - $5 or more (user decides)

This will enable anyone to choose what they want to pay for my music. If they want it for free, they can have the lo-fi 128k mp3 files. In return for the free download, they enter their e-mail address (and zip code) for my mailing list.

For people who want higher quality music files and/or want to help support me and my music, they can choose their own price, from 50 cents per track on up, or from $5 for the whole album on up.

This combination of giving your music away (in exchange for user e-mail addresses and zip code) as well as offering your music in a higher quality format to fans who can name their own price is, to me, probably the best way for an unknown artist to get their music out there. I'll let you know how it works out for me, good, bad, or otherwise.

Richard MacLemale
Music = http://www.richardmac.com