Podcasting as a Music Promotion Tool
Podcasting as a Promotion Tool
As podcasting's popularity continues to increase, it's value as a promotional tool, especially for emerging musicians continues to increase. Creating a podcast is easy, and with podcasting’s increasing popularity comes increasing competition into the podcasting market for companies wishing to provide you with their podcasting services.
Podcasting itself is a very simple concept, and consists of only a few steps:
You start by recording your show or song and then convert it digitally into an MP3, or WMA file. Your bit rate for music should be of high quality so set it at least 128k or better. There are also many quality computer programs available for audio editing, for the addition of sound effects, verbal commentary, volume control, and more.
After creating your audio file you then upload your podcast to a web hosting or file hosting service.
Next you must create a syndication feed (often called RSS) which is essentially a description of your content and a link that points to the content. Your description should be kept as precise and enticing as possible, you are selling yourself here to many possible listeners, and most people will read this before ever deciding whether or not to download your content. There are many free services available for creating your RSS feed; most notably there is FeedBurner.com.
These are the two basic steps to creating a podcast; they’re quick and simple. Once you have created your content and your feed you are free to distribute your feed over the Internet.
For up and coming musicians podcasting is both an cheap and easy promotional tool; for those who are not very do-it-yourself tech-savvy types there are several free all-inclusive podcasting services, which are often supported by cut-in advertising, and there are many other great low-cost options available which are often advertisement free. Not only is podcasting easy and cheap, but it is also a great tool to be able to reach niche markets, which is especially valuable for new indie artists and bands. Nothing is more important to aspiring artists and bands than to get your name and sound out there to your new audience.
The most important part of promoting your podcast is to make sure that you get yourself listed in as many web sites that are dedicated podcast directories or portals. Podcast directories and portals provide you with lots of targeted web exposure. It’s virtually impossible for someone to find you during a web search, but by listing your podcast in one of the many podcast directories/portals, you are ensuring that your audience will be more easily able to find you.
Although it seems counter-productive to give away music for free, podcasting is an important and invaluable tool for artists to get out name, and sound, recognition. With a web audience ever hungry for music entertainment, reaching out to your niche audience has never been easier.
David is a freelance writer and chief editor for PodcastFerret.com, a human edited podcast directory, where you can find feeds, download, rate, and comment on podcasts.
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