Well Brian,

I actually have a 4 prong approach that I employed that I feel really catapulted my music exposure.

I first of all used Paltalk as I talked about in my original post at the start of this thread. It helped me to learn where Dj's posted their play lists on line, so I could find out who the Dj's were in the markets I wanted to be most effective in, Let me take my music directly to the people, and introduced me to thousands of people from all over the world. Helped me to find radio stations that wanted my kind of music, just a number of things that made me that much more aware of today's market.

Secondly as I have already posted, I use a Compilation Cd to release music to the Dj's that have an interest in my genre, which happens to be country. The comp goes out to over 1400 DJ's world wide, and it costs me $75 to get on it, and i send one out every 3 or 4 months. The average comp from what I have seen is about $250, and they go out to a lot less people. Still that's a lot of exposure for a few dollars.

Third, between Paltalk, and my own research, I have built quite a list of DJ's that support my music. The research include everything from the Indie Bible ( which wasn't all that great ), to, finding radio stations in my genre at places like itunes, Live365, Shoutcast, and many other searches for independent radio stations world wide. When I found a station that fit me, I sent a letter of introduction, told them a little about who I was, listed some of my accomplishments, my web page, my MySpace, and asked if they would accept a submission of my music for consideration of air play. Most of them were very receptive.

Last but not least I posted my music on any free ( and some places the fee was pretty low but I wont be doing that in the future )website that had a country music category. last time I counted there were 50 or 60 of them.

I might add I read anything and everything that has to do with marketing music.

That's about it. I think your actually doing real well, and as I have stated before, you have to do a lot of little things consistently well, and it wont happen over night.

I believe your placement in the John Lennon Contest will open some doors of opportunity when it's all said and done.

It is really hard to layout a blue print in this day and age, that fits everyone all the time, but if your genre's country I can tell you this will take you pretty far down the road.

I don't think anyone is going to be able to find success soley in an online environment. I think the real money will be made playing gigs, and selling merchandise at those gigs. There's no substitute online for that.

Good luck Brian, I expect to hear your name again some where real soon.





http://www.billydarnell.com

http://www.songwriterservices.biz