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[PostPre]

As a freelancer, getting people to look or listen to your work is step 0. For sound design, there are a veritable crap load of websites out there, which complicates things! So then, which music website is right for you? Well, read the rest of this post and make an informed decision.

SOUNDCLOUD
www.soundcloud.com
My website of choice, and probably the most prominently used by the public. Post up your work, comment on other people's tracks like crazy, and you will have a following guaranteed. Sharing to groups is a great feature; this allows you to show your track directly to those interested in your genre or style. Upgrading your account is unnecessary and costs $$, but comes with some nice features, including nice music playing widgets for your website, more space, and more comprehensive tracking of listeners.

THE SIXTY ONE
www.thesixtyone.com
It's like an MMO, but instead of clicking on fantastic creatures for EXP, you listen to music for EXP! As a listener you get daily music listening "quests", level up, and gain more features. As an artist, it's super easy to get set up and discovered due to the way the site plays randomized tracks based on genre. Selling downloads is integrated into the site, which is great if you'd like to utilize that. Give this one a try, a good number of people have gotten recognition from this site. Keep in mind that the first $20 you make will go to the website.

MYSPACE
www.myspace.com
I think most of this company is no longer operating, so... choose this if you're feeling strangely eclectic.

INDABA
www.indabamusic.com
This site markets itself as a complete solution for musicians. It's very nicely designed and uploading is a breeze. They also do their own licensing and contracting, so you can get your foot in the sound industry's door pretty quickly if you play your cards right. If you start using this heavily, expect to pay $$ to upgrade your account, as a free account is pretty limited.

BEATPORT
www.beatport.com
HUGE for electronic music and DJs. Has a section where you can upload packs of loops and SFX, which is pretty dandy. Not too applicable towards video game music, though..

8BITCOLLECTIVE
http://8bc.org
It's down at the moment, but this has always been a great place to post chiptunes and chiptune-inspired stuff. The community was active and there were no $$ required. Hopefully this comes back soon!

BANDCAMP
www.bandcamp.com
A very easy to use storefront for independent musicians. But that's all it is: a storefront. If you just made the OST to a well selling game, you can put it up on bandcamp and get a lot of purchases. If you're not well known, you must advertise yourself somehow. RoeTaKa expands on this:

If you think "my album is killer, when it goes on bandcamp I'll see a cash flow!" that is pretty wishful thinking without hype and awareness of it. People usually try to big up their releases with previews, some sort of (internet)radio play and other means...it's easier for bands that can make gigs and properly promote their releases. Danny B obviously can swear by Bandcamp because Super Meat Boy was so successful and people knew the soundtrack was available.

JAMENDO
www.jamendo.com
Another website that allows people to browse and license tracks you put up. I've not heard much about this one, but users here have made $$ from it.

PUMP AUDIO
www.pumpaudio.com
A website that can get you licensed insanely quickly with its huge client and user base. Their acceptance process can take 6 months to a year.


I'm sure I missed a bunch, so let's discuss. I'll be updating this post as new sites are posted.

[Calum Bowen]

Hey - great thread! It's nice to see people actively starting up discussions here!

I only use soundcloud (and a very very old 8bc account). I find soundcloud is great for getting heard - its where i'm most popular but most of the people listening to you are other artists. Very little work comes direction from soundcloud. That said, for collaborations, finding other great music, it's brilliant!

I use youtube a little, but have yet to get it to a position where people really come across my videos. They're all about 50-200 views. Anyone with a successful music youtube channel got any suggestions on how best to up your visibility?

I've used others like audiojungle for a little while - I can't comment on it properly as I left after a short while. I made about £10 but they have a policy that you can only redeem your money after something like £50 so in a way I never made any money from it. It's a slow game that is dominated by few but it's worth having stuff on there if you're looking to license  tracks. Incidentally how many people here license tracks through sites like that in order to get money outside of custom made soundtrack jobs? I only do the latter but perhaps i'm missing out on some more steady income. Thoughts?

Also, facebook pages. I have one, it has about 15 likes. Has anyone else found facebook helpful? I usually use my personal profile to post my music.

I can't really think of anything else I frequently use to host my music. I can see this becoming a potentially very interesting a fruitful discussion for many of us who wish to up their game with this respect! So let the opinions flood in!

[eyeliner]

I'd like to know your thoughts about Jamendo.

[RoeTaKa]

Cool thread

Hey - great thread! It's nice to see people actively starting up discussions herIncidentally how many people here license tracks through sites like that in order to get money outside of custom made soundtrack jobs? I only do the latter but perhaps i'm missing out on some more steady income. Thoughts?

I was once advised to try out Pump Audio for licensing music. I've been meaning to do it for a while but have been forgetting and busy. Licensing can be a great thing if you're getting heard and instrumental music is highly sort after. One thing I was thinking of doing in the future was making a rather large album of music tailored for licensing which would range from ambient, catchy pop, new world etc and then start sending it out. It's good because you don't have to be well known it just has to do the trick, kinda like some game soundtracks I guess.

Personally I forget I even have a soundcloud, like you said it's mostly an artists hangout. Good for some but not for me really.

For gaining publicity youtube and facebook do have their advantages especially if you don't have money to advertise yourself. It's just so convenient for the average user. Obviously if you know a lot of people and are in some circles it's good to spread the word out that way but apart from that the best thing is to get out of your comfort zone and please people. If you're adament about your own original music, for every 10 you do...do 1 mix of something extremely popular, why not? If it interests people you get a like, or a subscription and then you're in their feed. For remixes, do a video response to other popular channels with related videos as you might get some hits from that. Find a forum where you think that mix will get discussion or appreciated, encourage them to follow you.

I know some people that pay for advertisement and boom they've got a lot of attention, that's the market we live in. But pushing the boat out and finding those fans is important I think, even if it's nothing to do with music. If you play a lot of games or something then try youtubing your playthroughs or stuff like that, just another thing to think about.

Probably went a bit off topic but meh, it happens.

[TristezaOrange]

Wow, nice thread, I had no idea about indaba and thesixtyone.

In my experience SoundCloud will not offer a lot of promotion for your music. I do have a Soundcloud page ( http://soundcloud.com/electric-sound-continuum in case anyone's interested) but as already said it's mainly frequented by musicians, unless you have a widget embedded on another site, in which case you had visibility on that other site and not SoundCloud itself. But it's a GREAT service and I have a Premium Solo account there. PRO-TIP: If you want to post direct downloads from SC to forums etc. just put the extension ".mp3" (without the quotes) at the end of your link.

I also have my music on Jamendo and I actually made some money there when a videoclip maker licensed one of my tracks for use in his video. It was 20 euros but it was still nice of him. Jamendo is great actually.

I have created a Tunecore account. For a fee, TuneCore distributes my one LP and one EP on iTunes, Zune Music, Amazon, Amazon On Demand etc. It's a great service if you want to make your music available commercially. Also made 15 dollars through TuneCore from sales on iTunes etc. I bought a plane with that money. 

Bandcamp is AWESOME. I have my EP and LP on there too. I have the EP priced at 3usd (never sold a single one TBH  ) and the LP for free for a limited time. Funny thing is that when I uploaded the LP I purchased 20usd worth of download credits from Bandcamp (1000 downloads) because I was under the impression that people would download it like hot cakes! (since it is free and pretty good in my very biased opinion  ). It has been on there for 2 weeks and it has been downloaded a grand total of 20 times. So don't run and buy download credits straight away (you get 200 for free anyway) if you're not Radiohead or something. Check the service out for free to start with.

If I have any more insight I'll return!
 

[JackMenhorn]

For Bandcamp you refresh to 200 credits each month as well. 

[TristezaOrange]

For Bandcamp you refresh to 200 credits each month as well. 

Ah thanks, didn't know that!

[Muuurgh]

What are some of y'all's experience with BandCamp as far as getting any kind of income?  Danny Baranowsky swears by it, but well, he's Danny Baranowsky.  It's really encouraging to see VG OSTs in the top-selling and most-recommended tabs, but how do lesser-known composers do?

[RoeTaKa]

Like anything else you really gotta find ways to advertise your work. Even if you made a soundtrack to a game that got some attention, people might not know you're selling it on bandcamp. But hopefully the internet might do that for you

If you think "my album is killer, when it goes on bandcamp I'll see a cash flow!" that is pretty wishful thinking without hype and awareness of it. People usually try to big up their releases with previews, some sort of (internet)radio play and other means...it's easier for bands that can make gigs and properly promote their releases. Danny B obviously can swear by Bandcamp because Super Meat Boy was so successful and people knew the soundtrack was available. A friend of mine called Shnabubula who does a butt load of music releases his work for free and has made a good amount simple from the pay what you want option. I'm not very well known but have made about £200 from Bandcamp and I hadn't done much to advertise or get it known by the right sort of crowd, not bad at all. I only really thought about properly releasing stuff at the end of last year and have learned a lot about how to make something like Bandcamp work for you.

[PostPre]

I've updated the OP with more sites and advice. Lots of good knowledge in here!

[PostPre]

Bump! I think a lot of confused people posting in this forum could read this topic!!

[Chris Koźmik]

Do not forget www.indiegamemusic.com it's the only website (I found so far) that is friendly to the game devs, not just to musicians. It's the first stop when I look for music for my games.