Indie Band Survival Guide Blog

Besides the latest site updates, there are also some new links on the Indie Guide. Here are some of the latest additions:

Beatport: Distribution for electronic and dance music

Data Disc: CD and DVD duplication and packaging

Insound: Online store for indie musicians

Tumbplay: Mobile content provider

bopaboo: Salesplace for DRM free music

Zigned: Digital distribution and merch salesplace

Overplay: Musician network for promotion and exposure

We’ve just pushed through a fairly big site update of IndieGuide.com. This was more of a look-and-feel update, giving more room to the information on the site, and changing some of the visual elements.

We’d love to hear your comments, so check out the site, and feel free to write us.

Meanwhile, we actually have a lot of features planned in the next week, so be on the lookout for the changes. More as we work on it.

Disc on Demand handles low volume CD & DVD printing projects with fast two-day turnaround. They offer CD duplication services as well as jewel cases and inserts.

There are no setup fees for printing projects and no minimum amount on CD orders. CD label designs can be printed in black or color with text and images. They don’t use stickers and the labels are guaranteed high quality and smudge-proof. There are six different styles of CD inserts to choose from and eight packaging options. They have paper wallets and flexible plastic jewel cases. With your online account you can manage all of your songs and album artwork and easily reorder projects in a few clicks.

If you try Disc on Demand, we want to know if they helped you make CDs or DVDs quickly at an affordable rate. Leave a site rating and a comment for other indie musicians here.

If you need help designing your own website check out Freelance Designers, a directory of graphic, web and logo designers.

Fill out the search bar detailing the type of design services needed, your budget, the project deadline, and specify a location if necessary. There are nearly 11,000 graphic designers and 13,000 web designers listed in this directory. Along the top of the page you can find links to more directories of companies and individuals who can help you with your website or press kit like search engine optimization experts, photographers, and flash animators. Check out the more detailed list of services you can search through here.

If you check out Freelance Designers we want to know if you found a good designer to help you with your web projects. Leave a site rating and a comment here.

Why bother signing up only with iTunes when a service like IODA can make your music and videos available on twenty four online and mobile distribution sites?

On this site you can encode and send your music in over a dozen formats to please all types of listeners. The artist dashboard gives you total control over all of your media and your copyrights. Besides distributing to other outlets, IODA lets you create your own storefront where anything from your catalog can be sold directly to fans. Check out the Promonet which is a promotional music distribution network. It will help you send songs to podcasters and bloggers who are always looking for new music. You will also be able to view real-time statistics about your sales and song plays.

If you give IODA a try, we want to know if they helped you distribute your music. Leave a site rating and a comment here.

MediaPost features marketing and online advertising resources and news directories. Some references on here are specific to the music industry, but even the more general sites can be helpful for your own marketing campaign.

Click on the Publications button and you will see topics on the left hand side. The Performance Insider and Social Media Insider topics will have news sites and blogs for you and your band. Check out the demographic and media research reports to target your campaigns to the right audience. The site has a community of marketing professionals who could offer you help or advice. If you want in-person marketing information there is a calendar of events and conferences that you can attend. And if you are looking to hire a professional, you should post a job listing on the classifieds page.

If you try MediaPost, we want to know if it helped you with your own marketing projects. Leave a comment and a site rating here.

Here are a few of the newest resources added to the Indie Guide:

Better Than The Van: Find a free place to stay when you’re on tour!

Events Listed: Promote events on all your social media profiles

eReleases: Press release writing and distribution services

MasterWriter: Songwriting software

Free Ear Trainer: Free ear training tools and exercises

Marcato Musician: Software to track band communication and gigs

sfcLive: Weekly podcast and internet radio station

PRFree offers free press release writing and distribution services. The company is backed by a huge global wire network called Eworldwire that sends out thousands of press releases everyday.

Through this partnership they have a huge network capacity, allowing for a high volume of releases to be publicized daily. Many free PR wire sites use e-mail as their main, or only, source of sending releases. But PRFree uses more methods like satellite, syndicators, aggregators, media databases, search engines, and more.This gets your news in the hands of more people and can increase the effectiveness of your press releases.

If you give PRFree a try, we want to know if they helped you get free publicity. Leave a comment and a site rating here.

Vimeo is a video sharing site that lets you host your own videos for free. You get 500MB of free video space every week.

The services offered here are similar to YouTube, but there are some additional useful features. The site keeps back-ups of your files so that you can always download them again or even allow your viewers to save a copy. There are more specific privacy options on Vimeo. You can password protect your videos, so only those knowing the code can view them. This would be ideal if you wanted to host special content only for members of your fan club or other VIPs. You can even hand select other users to be the sole viewers of your media for even more control. They support HD videos for great quality and you can share them on social networking pages and your own website.

If you give Vimeo a try, we want to know if you liked their video features. Leave a comment and a site rating here.

GoldWave is professional and affordable audio editing software. With it you can edit, mix, and play audio. You can also record speech or music and add special effects.

Try using this software to record and edit your own podcasts in addition to your music. You can also digitally remaster your old songs with their noise reduction features. GoldWave lets you save files in a number of formats including wav, wma, mp3, ogg, aiff, au, vox, and more. If you have issues with the program its help file is integrated with tons of extra online information. Buying this software will run you about $50, and all further updates of the program will be free. There are also a bunch of free helpful plug-ins on the site that will work with this software.

If you try GoldWave we want to know if you liked it and would continue using it for your audio editing needs. Leave a comment and a site rating here.