MP3.com

the ULTIMATE MP3 Site

by Shelley Jacobson

The arrival of the MP3 sites, or Motion Picture Experts Group, Audio Layer 3 technology is certainly stirring things up a little in the industry.

Many other MP3 sites have emerged since the initial MP3.COM site was launched....example.. Virtual Tunes, even Tucows which is known for their shareware software has jumped on the band wagon.

These sites are impressive, but in my opinion, the MP3.com site is the best site for indie musicians with MP3 tunes available. The site is very useful to it's members by providing them with viewing stats of the artists actual page, download stats, etc...I'll cover the services they provide further on in this article.

For those of you who aren't familiar with MP3 technology, I'll briefly describe it so that you don't think I'm referring to R2's cousin. ;-) MP3 technology lets you compress and send audio files close to cd quality over the internet. Within 20 minutes, the average system can download a song from any MP3 site.

On the MP3.COM site, artists make some of their material free and available to the public, hoping that they will generate some interest amongst listeners and hopefully sell their cd.

This is definitely shaking up the music industry (which is a good thing since it is so opposed to change and helping out it's fellow artists). Just think of it this way, remember when you used to go out and buy a single of the tune you really loved on the top of the charts, well now it's possible to download that single from the MP3 sites.

The good thing about all of this is that the MP3 sites can be a sounding board for indie artists to test new material and slowly build their fan base.

If an artist signs up with M files up with is Paintshop Pro.

Make sure your .jpg files are of the following dimensions:
Song Pic: Pixel Dimensions: 70w X 70h.
Band Pic: Pixel Dimensions: 270w X 180h.
D.A.M Cd cover art: Pixel Dimensions: 1435w X 1425h @300 DPI resolution.
(Making sure all of your files are saved as jpeg files)

If you find this a little too confusing, you can access actual info on how to create these types of files at the D.A.M. CD admin section of the web site. If you just don't have the time to deal with this, then simply send off your material to the MP3 site and they will encode the files from your cd, and upload your art work for you.

Once they approve your work, you can make a D.A.M cd available to the public. If a cd sells for $7.99, you will receive $4.00 for every copy sold.

I have my material available on their site with my cd "1000 Miles' (www.mp3.com/shelleyjacobson) and my songwriting project with Toby Darling.(www.mp3.com/darlingjacobson) Even though I haven't sold a truck load of cd's, our tunes have been getting excellent exposure with two of my co-writes with Toby, Halloween and Crazy Feeling, reaching the top 10 of their genre for over 3 weeks....not too shabby if I do say so myself! I've also had a few radio stations email me from the web site requesting my cd for rotation on their programs.

So even though you have to make a song available for free download, the rest of your material receives excellent exposure to over 6 million visitors to the site each month. (You usually get around 300 hits per month to your site)

The exposure you receive is priceless, not to mention the feedback you receive on your songs with the daily stats.

Country artist Mickey Dean was signed to an indie deal after posting his song "Big Rigs" at MP3.com.

I think that this service is beneficial to the indie artist. It gives us a louder voice to cover a much larger area, and it also allows us to monitor what material is strong and weak which is a very powerful tool!