Crawdaddy! The Magazine of Rock

Remember how the internet was supposed to be a magic bullet to good bands passed over by major labels? It was the promise of direct distribution, control over your fate, and best of all, no jerk in a suit telling you how to rock and how to roll. Depending on the web tools you use, that still holds true unless revenue is your measuring stick. Suddenly lame looking MySpace is still a viable option, though it is in decline. Facebook lacks proper music-related tools but musicians are finding ways to make it happen, using sites like Reverb Nation, which tie in okay to the Facebook universe. But what about radio?

We lost terrestrial radio to corporate Clear Channel and their stupid Aerosmith fetish. Satellite Radio is an option, but don’t expect to break there if you are a new band. Internet radio—makes total sense—has an indie edge and a feel for the new and emerging generations of both listeners and musicians. In the land of internet radio, Europe’s Spotify is quite hot, and for good reason—it is like iTunes, only the songs stream from a server instead of your hard drive. That means songs are on demand and free (with ads, which you make go away for a few quid). On demand tune-age is something Slacker and Pandora and most of the others lack unless you go to the contaminated waters of peer-to-peer. Spotify is gearing up to launch in the States, and it will be big, no doubt. read more