When a new major label album is dropping it is hard to not know about music business. The independent artist makes the TV late night circuit, record stores are plastered with posters for promoting the CD, the single plays on the radio non stop for a few month before the release, magazine spreads and sometimes even radio and TV commercials. Of course most find this blanketing annoying, but it is obviously the most effective way to sell records. Even if a person is not all that interested in the band before hand the advertising blitz piques curiosity. Ideally any band could have access to major label publicity machines. Even though this is not possible a smaller band still has many options for promotion that will not cost them millions of dollars.

A great resource available to bands is provided by Trackbuzzer: the independent artist website which keeps track of what you are listening to on your computer. The site is going through some rapid changes as they expand. In order to use their promotional services you will need to create a label page. This is easily done through a few simple steps. Most bands who self release create some sort of faux label to give themselves more credibility.

Once you have created a label page Trackbuzzer offers two types of promotion: Banner Ads and Power Play. Banner Ads are exactly what they sound like. The banner ad will be displayed on your artist page and label page as well on targeted users Trackbuzzer pages. The users who will see your ad are selected based upon your selection of similar artists. Top fans of the artists you pick will see your ad. You also choose the duration of your ad campaign. The ad can be shown to as many listeners as possible or you can stretch your dollar by just showing your ad occasionally. The campaigns are priced very fairly: you pay one cent for an impression. The site sells in blocks between 2,500 and 60,000 impressions, so you‘ll pay between 25 and 600 dollars.

It is valid that many people tend to just automatically block out banner ads in general so it could be argued that this form of advertising is worthless. This happens to all advertising, people will ignore it. That is why you bombard your potential audience. After a few viewings they will want to see what your band is about. If you have picked your similar independent artist well enough then they will probably get interested in your band and maybe buy a CD or check out a show. At very least they will tell a friend about the group and word of mouth is really the best kind of promotion you can get.

Big label resources may be out of your reach, but sites such as Trackbuzzer are working for the little guy to give them a fighting chance. For such a low price not much can be lost for just trying the service. Trackbuzzer could be your first opportunity to start a successful internet promotions campaign.

For more information see following links:
http://www.trackbuzzer.com
http://www.trackbuzzer.com/services/
http://www.trackbuzzer.com/promotions/