The Internet's Contribution to Music

The Internet has brought a world of opportunity for independent musicians, from promoting albums online to collaborating with other artists. The web has made so many breakthroughs in advancing music, I don't even know where to start.

The greatest contribution, is websites, they have given the music world its ability to promote indie music globally with ease. In the past (before the web) it was very difficult for musicians to gain international recognition (almost impossible without doing a world tour). everybody has the ability to publish there own website at very little or no expense, creating an outlet for artists to produce and distribute there own albums using online stores and conventional mail. The web is also a great place to advertise for upcoming gigs.

Words have to be the most powerful contribution, just think right now we have tutorials articles, and ebooks to answer any musical question, and if you can't solve your problem with these, post a message on a popular forum and someone out there will be more than happy to share their opinion on the topic. These forums are networking artists from all over the world to share ideas with each other.

Good Feedback

Getting good Feedback can be difficult to find, if you ask friends and family to critique your work, often they won't be honest in giving you useful feedback. Where as receiving opinions from strangers (visitors on the web) is the kind of valuable critiques you want.

Networking Capabilities for Artists

The Internet has also allowed artists to collaborate with each other in song productions, mixing and development of software synthesizers, giving musicians a giant resource of free soft synths and samples to use in musical collaborations of their own.

CO-producing songs over the Internet is now possible. I have heard of many different ways to do this, some companies claim the technology is out there to be able to jam in real-time, I have not been able to figure out how to do this, but I have heard of duos building identical studios, in different locations and being able to e-mail song ideas back and forth over the web successfully. In any case I'm sure that you will soon see some very interesting advancements in the networking field of the Internet for artists.

Merchandising

There is a handful of companies, like Cafepress.com to name one (there are many others out there), that offer a low cost solution of merchandising for your band. Simply design your bands logo and get shirts and other products printed on a per item basis. Set your own profit margins. Make money both selling merchandise and gaining recognition through your merchandise, ever so varied location, a fan wearing you band shirt could potentially be anywhere in the world with your bands logo displayed on it.

The Gear Trade

Instead of having to hunt through garage sales for used musical equipment places like ebay are a great solution. Buy and sell cheap audio equipment to stay updated. I have many friends that use this theory sell off relatively new gear and get a good return on your investment(provided you sell it well the item is still popular, and then buy the new "latest and greatest" out there, in the end costing you the difference between your old, and your new equipment, which can be viewed as a small fee for a great upgrade.

The Internet has become and will remain a vital tool for the music industry. In the past, our technologies of today were considered impossible, just as the technology of tomorrow seems impossible to us today