by J.Herv

Last week I wrote about how blogs are altering the landscape of music marketing. Sure, it’s still word-of-mouth, but its word-of-mouth writ large. The truth is that a good blog gives an amateur music fan access to a readership base in the millions. Not saying that it will find you, but if I Google a band I see on a playbill and get a blog, who knows what can happen. Back in the Eighties, when I was growing up, unless I worked for a magazine or at an independent music store, my only recourse for getting word out about a band was just to tell people about it one-on-one.

Of course blogs aren’t the only things on the Internet revolutionizing the way music is marketed. This week I take a quick look at two more avenues. The first area is music recommendation sites, the second area is the way bands can use the Internet as an arena to market themselves.

First, the recommendation sites. Have you ever been to last.fm? It’s fascinating. The whole site is founded on the premise that if you and I like 9 of the 10 same artists, odds are we will like 11 out of 12. By downloading a ’scrobbler’ all the music I listen to on my computer is uploaded to last.fm. The servers crank through what I have listened too and both connect me with ‘neighbors’ and create a recommendation radio. The concept is to build a network of like-minded music fans and then direct you to new music based on what they are listening to that you aren’t.

And it works.

For me, I discovered the now-defunct band Neutral Milk Hotel while listening to my last.fm recommended radio. Unlike Amazon.com, whose recommendations are pretty good too, I don’t really have to do anything. The ’scrobbler’ takes care of tracking what I am listening to, building recommendations and connecting me with neighbors all on its own.

Pandora is another music recommendation service using the internet to help users discover new music. Pandora was born out of the Music Genome Project, which broke down songs and artists into several different bits of “musical genetics.” The Pandora radio player works very simply. You feed it with an artist or song and it searches a database for songs and artists with the same music ‘genetic’ code and plays them.

Recommendation sites like Pandora and last.fm are yet another way in which the Internet is changing the way marketing of music happens. In the case of last.fm it’s still word of mouth but it’s word of mouth that moves at instantaneous speed across geographies.

Bands are increasingly embracing the internet as a way to get the word out. Everybody knows the story of Wilco making YANKEE HOTEL FOXTROT available on their web site while they were searching for a label, but I was more interested in how a young, new band might be using the internet as a vehicle to promote themselves.

The Beggar’s Guild are a great rock band from Atlanta. They started playing together in January of 2006, and have embraced the internet as a way of getting their name out there. I talked with T.J. Edmond (Beggar’s Guild frontman) and drummer Jon Chalden about how the band sees the internet as a vehicle to market themselves.

Both Chalden and Edmond praised MySpace as a vehicle to communicate with their fans. According to Jon, “MySpace is like a free website, press kit, press release, and communication tool for both business and fan interaction.”

Another thing Jon points out is that MySpace and other sites make it easier to identify fans that might like the band. They can check out pages of similar bands and send ‘friend requests’ to their fans to check them out. I’ll admit I discovered the British duo Mesh-29 this way; they saw me as a friend of David Gray and sent me a message on MySpace. I have loved them ever since.

T.J. also pointed out how powerful podcasting can be as a tool. He says, “Manchester Orchestra has done a brilliant job of this. They started a video podcast when they went into the studio to record their record last year. Fans could download the video and see them recording in the studio. Now, they put out new episodes almost weekly. Fans can watch on YouTube, Myspace, or on their ipods.” (note: check out the Manchester Orchestra podcasts on YouTube here.)

According to the guys, they do most of their booking now with the internet as well, sending bookers a link to their MySpace page or utilizing a site like sonicbids.com. So in many ways, the band is able to take charge of things they used to need a label to do for them.

I keep thinking back to The Long Tail. The cost of production and distribution is so low now that music lovers are literally being flooded with content. They are moving faster and faster into niches but they still need something to help them find what they really like. Sites like Pandora and Last.fm help users by connecting them with music similar to what they have already proven they like. But perhaps more importantly is bands like the Beggar’s Guild using the internet to communicate with fans and to attract fans who might like their music. A band that goes out of it’s way to connect, not just with a&r reps, but a fan who might like them because they like another band they are playing with is a pretty powerful filter as well.

There is no better time than right now to be a music fan. Creative people are embracing music like no tomorrow. But more importantly through the work of amateur and semi-amateur music bloggers; by utilizing recommendation sites; and through the tireless efforts of bands using the vast and powerful new vehicles like MySpace to promote themselves, despite the explosion of content, it has never been easier to find something you like.

Just check out how I ‘discovered’ the Beggar’s Guild. Read about them on a blog; checked out their MySpace page, where I downloaded a free CD coupon; found their next gig on Upcoming.org, went to the show, loved it.

By the way, please check out the guys in the Beggar’s Guild. They are a great band worthy of your attention. As Jon Chalden put it to me, “We are and always will be a honest band focused on what we believe in. We will never chase trends or cater to something we don’t feel is right for us. We just want to be a great American rock-n-roll band. Pretty simple, huh?!!”

Yup, Jon. Pretty Simple.