It could be argued that offering free streaming of your music is a replacement for radio.

Consider that radio played music at no cost to the listener.  In most cases radio had tremendous reach into the community.  If your song happened to get on radio and was successful, your song was heard for free by thousands of people every week.  After getting to know a band’s product (i.e – the song on the radio) a listener may be compelled to become a customer of the band.  But it took that exposure to the free sample to sell the product.

Streaming your music for free isn’t really a new concept then.  The web is just replacing the radio as the broadcast medium.  You stream your music with the hopes that enough people will hear it, get interested in the free sample and like it enough to buy the product.

What’s different is that radio served as a brand, a broadcaster, and a filter.  There was a symbiotic relationship here between bands and stations.  Cool new music strengthened the radio brand and the radio brand strengthened the clout of a band in that market.

By simply streaming your music away on your site, you lack a branded filter.  In other words, each band is like it’s own mini-radio station.  But with hundreds of thousands of them across the web.  Hoping a new consumer finds your band is like a finding needle in a hay stack.  You aren’t identifying with a symbiotic relationship.

The web is wonderful for its ability to distribute content at low cost.  But the power of a branded filter is still real and needed. Look to all of the great blogs as an example – they become filters for content on certain topics.

If you’re reading this and thinking of how you can be involved in music – consider the act of being a filter for a genre or your local market.  The medium of broadcast has been the only definite change.  The need for branded, broadcasting filters is still real indeed.

Update: A reader rightly pointed out to me that I didn’t provide any advice on how to act here.  I reread the post and clearly see their point.  So… there are two action items here.

1.  If you aren’t an artist but you are interested in getting involved in music in some way here’s an idea: become a web-based filter.  The benefit of the web is that it’s less expensive to start a hub there than it is to start a radio station, it’s less regulated, and you can play whatever you want.  This last point is a benefit to bands as well because many great artists aren’t “radio friendly.”  That’s no problem on the web if you become a filter for your specific genre niche or your market.   Artists and managers still have a need for filters to associate with but there aren’t that many out there.  Go start one and drop me a line when you do or drop me a line if you already have one.

2.  If you are an artist or manager – I’d keep your eyes out for the local filters that aren’t radio stations, especially if you aren’t a “radio friendly” band.  When you come into a market, drop a line to your best fans in that area and ask how they find out about shows.  In most major markets I have found underground message boards, blogs, and connectors through communicating with our hard core fans there.  These connections can be more effective than traditional broadcasters for the power of “Word of Mouth” they offer.

Here are a few examples of various size and style:

1. Charlottesville Indie music – http://www.nailgunmedia.com/blog/
2. San Francisco Indie music – http://www.playinginfog.com/
3. Orlando Blues music – http://www.meetup.com/roadblockbluesjam/

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