What's the best way to give an album away for free

[Lost In A Name]

My band was thinking about putting the entire album up online for download, but I'm not sure of the best way of doing that. I'd like to be able to zip up the entire album and put it somewhere easily accessible online, so people can click one link and all 10 track will download. Unfortunately, I really am not sure how to do this. Any suggestions?

-Danny

[flask]

http://bandcamp.com/

[apsterling]

http://bandcamp.com/

Quoted for truth.

[DMc1616]

Quoted for truth.

agreed.

[SvennyBoy]

I agree with them, that or winrar the shit and put it on any of the sites that host files

[Burn That Shit]

set up a stand outside your house, preferably near the sidewalk to attract more consumers, and then just leave copies of the CD there. honors system, you know?

[SD_John]

http://bandcamp.com/

:)

[Alex_Burton]

The idea's too new to have really proven results, but I'd side with most people on this thread and say bandcamp. It has the convenience of posting it as a pay-what-you-want download, so people can get it for free, but hey you might also make a few bucks. Best of all it harvests emails for you. Definitely take the plunge and give the record away, but at least get emails for it.

Also, try giving away single tracks via http://www.tweetforatrack.com/ and build your twitter followers.

[Lost In A Name]

Awesome, thanks so much everyone, I've got everything set up at bandcamp.com and it is perfect for what I wanted to do. People can download the entire album with just one click, and even get our cover art, as opposed to having to download each song individually. I like that I can require email addresses too, that is great. If anyone is interested, check it out and grab our album here www.lostinaname.bandcamp.com

Also, I'll have to check out that Tweetfortrack.com site too. We'd love to grow our twitter presence. Thanks so much everybody, I love this community/forum - everyone is so helpful (:

-Danny

[Lost In A Name]

Also, what's the best way to promote the free download in this forum. I know I've posted something in the "wrong" forum and get yelled at by everyone once, haha - I definitely don't want to be "that guy" and alienate people, but I also really want to get the word out. Any suggestions for this forum? Or elsewhere for that matter?

-Danny

[ignition]

They do "Free Music Friday" posts on the front page. You could submit yours for that.

Please send any new submissions to reviews@absolutepunk.net with "Free Music Friday" in the subject line.

Submissions should include your band's name, title of submission (and whether it is a full length, EP or single song), myspace or website link, and similar bands for the "recommended if you like" section. Please upload it to a downloading website such as mediafire or megaupload and send that link.

[Lost In A Name]

That's a good idea, I'm going to submit us for that, thanks!

[snowboarderkid]

Man the album sounds good, nice job.

[flks511]

You guys are putting out a new album? I'm definitely interested.

[scormier2]

Downloading the album now. Sounds awesome so far.

[ninthandash]

Try clearbits.com if you think your userbase will be tech savvy / into torrents.

[Lost In A Name]

Well thanks so much for all the help, and everyone who is downloading the album. Bandcamp is working great so far. The nice thing is that we're getting e-mails and zipcodes for every download, and we've had a couple hundred downloads already in only a couple of weeks. Starting off small, but but hopefully that will turn into thousands soon (: - Also, for anyone that is interested, we are doing a two week midwestern tour in which we have a food drive at every show and donate all the food raised to the local food pantry/ homeless shelter in that city. We are planning on giving half off of our merchandise to anyone who brings food. What do you guys think of the idea?

-Danny

P.S. I love this forum, everyone is so helpful. Thanks everyone for that (:

[theguy77]

currently in the process of uploading my band's shit to bandcamp. this site seems really legit, it's exactly what a band needs these days. i like that they make it easy to get emails from fans who download your music, to me that is 10 times more valuable than money

[ignition]

Bandcamp is amazing. I love being able to pick the format/quality I want to download in, and always knowing that you're getting correctly tagged files w/ the artwork and everything. Being able to give a few $ directly to the artist is nice, also.

[Last NightsVice]

Also, try giving away single tracks via http://www.tweetforatrack.com/ and build your twitter followers.

I'm using this. Thanks!

[BandsOnABudget]

If you're interested in handing out physical download cards as promotional tools as well as allowing to let your fans get your music for free, BandsOnABudget.com has a wide array of digital download services. We will print you our IndieCards and host your digital content free of charge. Your user profile also allows you to change the content you have stored on the site at any time. Check us out at http://www.bandsonabudget.com

[bradsonemanband]

i finally set up a paypal account so we could link it to my band's bandcamp profile. i just set it up as "pay what you want/email address." i'm interested to see how well that works out for us. hopefully we'll make a couple bucks now.

[drewxmagid]

band camp.

[Jimtendo64]

Gotta agree with everyone here, Bandcamp is simply an amazing and easy to use tool so yeah...

http://bandcamp.com (http://www.bandcamp.com)

[theguy77]

i finally set up a paypal account so we could link it to my band's bandcamp profile. i just set it up as "pay what you want/email address." i'm interested to see how well that works out for us. hopefully we'll make a couple bucks now.

make sure you specify in the description that "buying" it for $0.00 is an option. i did that and got a lot more downloads.