Helpful Web Resources For Those in the Arts

Updated 10/13/07
To our many artist friends: This page will no longer be updated after January, 2008.  Best wishes to everyone!

We've found that these web sites and web-based services stand out as either unique or unusual, especially economical, or just by filling their niche in a particularly useful and effective way for artists.  Some are commercial services, but many are free or offer free options.  The listings are continually updated and expanded as we find new and useful sites.  Please send us your suggestions.

( * = most recent additions)
 

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General: 

• Creative Commons provides terrific new license tools with which artists can release to the public some rights to their works, while still reserving others.  This is especially useful for works that are promoted on the internet, or subject to sampling or remix by other artists.  The Creative Commons web site offers comic strip style narratives and Flash movies to help understand these new tools and their uses.  Highly Recommended!
   

• Have you considered translating your artist information for different cultures?  Lingo24 is a completely Internet-based, full-range language services company with a sub-specialty in web site localization - accurately translating web pages while preserving the intended message and style of the original.   Alternate versions of existing documents or pages can be created, or entire web sites translated into another language or multiple languages.  Lingo24's worldwide network of branches and people means that there is very likely a Lingo24 translator available who is a native of the culture you wish to reach - an invaluable asset.  Two tiers of pricing are offered depending on the grade of translation needed, and, unlike many translation services, Lingo24 actually publishes their basic rates online and gives firm advance quotes.  Secure online payment can be made in any international currency by credit card or PayPal, so the whole process proceeds very quickly.  With a media client list that already includes MTV and the BBC, this company is attracting lots of the right kind of attention from the international community.
   

Digital Delivery:

• The Payloadz.com digital delivery system from PayPal offers artists and musicians a very clean alternative for sales of digital content of all kinds.  Payloadz offers a simple, reliable, and inexpensive way to market your products from your own web site, with top grade file security and instant payment management through PayPal.  An introductory account hosting up to 5 megabytes of content is free, and beyond that you can choose either a flat monthly fee, or a very reasonable percentage of sales fee option.  Payloadz also offers free placement in their Online Media Store if you choose, and additional visibility through their own product-sharing "affiliate" program, so that others can help sell your products if you wish.  All things considered, Payloadz.com presently gets our recommendation as the general digital content delivery system of choice.
   

• MusicDock.net, a digital media company from Germany, is especially oriented to sales of online music downloads.  Users can create an online downloads shop of their own, selling individual tracks and/or complete albums.  Your shop can be either free-standing, or customized to match the theme of your main web site and used as a "page".  There are no upfront costs or monthly fees for a basic account - MusicDock claims only a percentage of each sale.  Hi-Fi mp3s up to 320kbps can be uploaded, as well as WMA and AAC audio file formats, and full WAV files too.  Purchase payments are handled through PayPal, so international currencies are accepted, and shops can be optimized for various currencies.  Smooth.
   

• Artists-First.net is an online e-commerce service that allows bands and labels to sell their music from their own web sites, with buyers charging purchases either to their credit card (via PayPal) or direct to their mobile phone bill - currently a unique option among digital sales companies. Artists-First also provides sophisticated tools to register and maintain contact with your fans.  Combined with some very innovative thinking about new music marketing strategies, this company may have THE state-of-the-art online music sales program on the planet at this time.  Check it out.
   

• 1-2-3 Music Store is software that allows musicians and record labels to sell song and album downloads from their own web site 24/7, and keep ALL the profit.  This web 'store' is a fully developed system in a box, ready to plug into your site - no programming knowledge is required.  They'll even install it for you if you wish for a small fee.  It's suitable for both individual artists and labels, can handle unlimited titles, and is very reasonably priced.
   

Publicity:

• Ego ID tags and tickets are a COOL new way to promote your concerts and music products.  These colorful 'dog tag" style ID tags turn your band name into a fashion statement.  They can also be encoded with bar codes that allow fans free downloads, or other perks like merchandise discounts.  Check it out.
   

• A carefully crafted Press Release can gain you lots of great publicity in a single stroke.  PRWeb.com is a popular online newswire service that allows you to post a press release for free.  You may also pay a small amount to gain higher placement in the day's listings if you wish.  PRWeb's posts are syndicated to numerous major trade publications, blogs, and private member journalists - very effectively getting your message in front of news people who can then relay it to their own audiences.  You'll find onsite tutorials and examples to help with composing and submitting a proper press release, and every submission is reviewed by live editors, who will contact you if needed with additional suggestions to maximize your post's effectiveness.  There's a bit of a learning curve, but once you master the art of press writing... who knows what might happen next.
   

• * Another great press option for musicians is BeatWire.com  "Announcing your CD release, upcoming tour or any other music- related event has never been so easy.  Just send us your press release and we will deliver it to thousands of top music journalists, radio programmers, freelance reviewers and Web site editors."  Quick and easy, moderately priced, and managed by real humans.  Beat Wire will also write your release for you for a modest fee.
   

• You can post free notices of upcoming events of all kinds nearly anywhere in the world through Upcoming.org, an established online service newly acquired by Yahoo!.com.  Quoting the site: "Upcoming.org is a social event calendar, completely driven by people like you. Manage your events, share events with friends and family, and syndicate your calendar to your own site."  Yahoo has announced big expansion plans for this service.
   

• Another free service of this kind, Zvents.com also allows you to easily publicize many kinds of events, from music to visual arts, food to sports.  After a simple registration you can create a new listing for any geographic area.
   

• iFanz.com is a fan database management service that lets you send professional level communications to your entire fan base with a single mouse click.  Rich Text, HTML, and full-action video "net spots" are available.  You can expand your fan base with targeted mailing list demographics, sell your concert tickets online, set up your own e-commerce merchandise store, and email to a list of up to 100 names for free.  More new features are added frequently.  This company was started by the McCartney family (yes, of Sir Paul fame).  You can bet they know how to handle a fan list!
   

• Need some live feedback or peer and professional reviews of your music?  Check out Mixposure.com, a showcase for artists looking for internet exposure and critiquing.  Sign up is free for up to five songs.  You can also contribute by writing some reviews yourself!
   

• RadioDirectX.com Radio & Media Promotion has a new low cost service called DigiDirectX that allows radio and club DJs to instantly download broadcast quality files of your songs for immediate airplay.  DigiDirectx makes your music available to hundreds of Internet Radio Stations and Podcasters, as well as to conventional AM/FM and Satellite Radio Stations, without the effort and expense of mailing out hundreds of CDs.  Instead, the DJ's find your music on the RadioDirectX web site, along with a one page info sheet.  You'll receive direct feedback on your music, and you can log in anytime to see who has downloaded your songs.  This could be a hot one!  (A tip: Just promote your single best song, or two at most, and then wait for feedback from your stations.)
   

• Want to increase your online exposure without lifting a finger?  musicSUBMIT.com offers full web promotion services for musicians.  This is by far the most comprehensive service of its kind in the online music industry, and many artists are reporting effective results.  Very reasonable too. 
  
  And musicSUBMIT.com now offers a Syndicated CD Sales program that can place live song play links and buy links for your CDs with literally hundreds of potential online sales outlets.  Check out this new program at: http://www.musicsubmit.com/quicktour/CDSaleTour/index.cfm
  
   

Music and Musicians:

• * Submit your music free to the Podsafe Music Network, a new free promotional service for podcasters, listeners, and artists that lists only Podsafe (licensed for podcasting) music.  This could definitely get you heard in some new places.
   

• * Would you like to have your music distributed digitally by iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody, Sony Connect, and others?  Tunecore.com will get your music into these sites for a very nominal fee, and takes none of the profit from your sales.  They also provide other useful services such as low cost CD duplication, printing, and band merchandise, and there is lots of great information on the Tunecore site to help you promote your music.
  
  Note:  See also Nimbit.com and CD Baby, below.  You must have only ONE contract for digital distribution to the same retail outlets, so do your research and choose carefully.
   

• A comprehensive site for one-stop independent artist music business management, Nimbit.com of Massachusetts offers numerous high quality services for a single, nominal monthly membership fee.  Offerings include CD and ticket sales online and at gigs with credit cards, digital online distribution, personal music web site hosting and management, email marketing, radio promotion, CD duplication/replication, printing of promo items, sales accounting reports, and more.  Nice work Nimbit.
   

• One of the finest places to sell your CDs online is CD Baby.  They will warehouse your physical CDs and fulfill orders with online credit card payments, create a dedicated web page for you, and include you in their online catalog which is searched over 150,000 times per day.  Presence in their catalog also lists your title automatically in the Super D CD distribution database, a terrific free plus for distribution.  In addition, all CD Baby CDs are eligible for digital distribution through iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody, Yahoo Music, and numerous other major digital download services, and are listed in a major distribution catalog serving 2,400 brick-and-mortar record stores.  CD Baby takes a very modest fee for their services, and pays artists their profits weekly.  Very highly recommended.
   

• LiveWire Musician is a web-based management software program "for artists, labels, and managers to book and track gigs and tours, communicate with fans, manage radio and press promotions, and track radio play", all in one place.  Because it's web based, you can access your LiveWire account from any computer with internet access - great when you're on the road.  You can also easily import your contact lists from other sources, and then broadcast your emails and newsletters to all of your fans and venues direct from LiveWire.  Even if you don't travel, this kind of organizing power makes a musician's life much simpler.  LiveWire's basic account is free.
   

• A very cool new way to tag up with other musicians is MusicianMix.com.  You can browse or search their musician database by geographic area, instrument, genre, age, gender, experience level, and/or intention, such as whether they are looking to start/join a band or just jam.  Then, you can hear them play by listening to their online sound samples.  If you like what you hear, get in touch by instant messenger or through MusicianMix's private messaging system.  You can even get weekly email updates of new musicians who join MusicianMix and meet your search criteria, so your search never goes out of date.  Good for instructors and students finding each other too.  There are other cool features - check it out.  Update 9/2007 - This site is apparently gone from the web - too bad.
   

• * BandMix.com is a similar musicians wanted and musician classifieds service with terrific features for musicians.  They are also paired up with a new site called GigLeader.com that allows you to register your band for hire in a genre and geographically searchable database.  There is no fee for the basic signup, and customers searching to hire bands can contact you immediately.  Very cool.
   

• Magnatune.com of Berkeley, California is an internet-based record label offering an intriguing new "open source" model.  Their web site features preview listening and downloadable albums that are value priced by the buyers.  In addition, Magnatune provides commercial licensing representation and media exposure for their artists, and many are finding successful licensing placements for their material.  The one downside - you must allow your music to be sampled and remixed by others.  That's the nature of "open source".  To learn more, visit their website.
   

• 22over7.org in the United Kingdom also has an unusual and promising new idea - why not sell shares in your band?  They offer a ten-year extendable plan to host your music and handle and track the sales of your shares and downloads to fans and supporters.  Shareholders receive the right to download every piece of music you produce, now and in the future.  How's that for built-in fan loyalty?  The UK based service is presently available to bands and share purchasers in 45 countries, using currency conversion through PayPal.
   

• An expanded version of the "shares" idea is being offered by ArtistShare.net.   ArtistShare allows fans to directly support and participate in their favorite artist's creative process, through innovative products that let fans follow the artist's work while it's still in progress.  Branded, limited edition, collectible items are created during each project, and each piece is registered to an individual fan/participant as their personal property.  Artists can sell advance shares in their projects while still in potential, thus receiving part of the proceeds from their creative works up front to fund the work.  It's a fascinating business model that is catching lots of attention among established music professionals.  There are some significant names that have signed on already, and likely to be many more. 
   

• June 2006 note:  A recent advent in the Web Hosting world is that many modern shared hosting services, like the ones listed in our Web Hosting section below, now offer basic "site builder" software included with their hosting packages.  These proprietary programs provide a simple user interface that allows you to construct your own web site online from a set of selectable templates, by just filling in the blanks, so to speak.  It's quite simple to do, although the results may not be exactly what you would choose if you had carte blanche.  But while your site perhaps won't be state of the art, it's enough to at least get you started at very low cost.  Some of them are even fairly sophisticated, and you can gain experience that will be valuable for constructing your "main" site later on.  So the whole purpose of this paragraph is just to alert you to check with prospective web hosts when deciding whether and how to build your first site.  You might find that they provide something usable to start off with, for free.
  
   

• If you decide to go the full HTML route, one less demanding alternative to learning a major HTML software package is EZGenerator from Image Line Software.  This is the same company that produces FL Studio music creation software, and many artists report very satisfying results using EZGenerator with a minimal learning curve.  EZGenerator was actually developed by Image Line for their own internal use in creating their company web sites, but they've now made it available as a retail product.  A free downloadable trial version is available on the EZGenerator site.
   

Other Resource Sites:

• * ArtPromote.com  Explore thousands of art galleries, museums and artists sites from around the world. Browse by subject, medium, movement, nationality, music genre and more.  Add your own link free.
   

• ArtBeacon.com's own Resources Page with numerous useful web links to various U.S. state and local Art Councils, Art Leagues, Associations, Clubs, Directories, etc. plus galleries, vendors, and legal help with grants and copyrights.
   

• Compo10.com maintains a very useful and comprehensive comparison chart of many independent music host sites on the internet.  It's in spreadsheet format showing each one's features, page loading speed, Alexa traffic ranking, membership cost if any, etc., so you can view the various plans side-by-side.  Here's a direct link: http://compo10.com/MusicHosts.htm 
   

• For some helpful and objective user reviews of many of these same music hosts, visit Paula Lynch's page: www.armydiller.com/musichosting.htm
   

• Priscilla Hernandez, Singer/Songwriter/Illustrator also has a great Resources section on her site for both artists and musicians.
   

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Suggest Valuable Sites...  Have you found an especially valuable or useful service for artists on the web?  Send us their URL for review, and perhaps we'll add them to this list.  Please also send us any user experiences or feedback you may have about the services we've included above.  This helps us improve the quality of the list.  You can email us here:  Contact Neon Egypt

Thanks, and Best Wishes For Your Success!

 

If you've found something useful here, and you'd like to help support the research and maintenance of this page, donations are gratefully accepted!  Thanks -  Neon Egypt and Phenomaly Arts

 
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Note:  While we judge or have experienced each of these resources to be valuable services, we of course cannot offer warranties or guarantees of their future performance or products.  As always, investigate options thoroughly, and use your best judgment when making purchases or agreeing to contracts.  - Neon Egypt

Some of the products and services listed above have affiliate programs, and pay Phenomaly Arts a referral fee when a new customer finds them through this page.  These are just a small percentage of the sites featured here, and these programs play no role in a site's selection for inclusion.  Our goal is simply to share the most useful and valuable products and services we've found.  We verify that each site offering a referral fee maintains the same price whether a customer finds them through our page or by any other path, so our information always remains free to our visitors.  - Phenomaly Arts

Web Resources for Artists and Musicians
Copyright 2005, 2006, Neon Egypt / Phenomaly Arts
 

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