Greetings from your new DMEC music industry expert. As a musician, I’d like to kick off my first blog posting with some information around how musicians currently use technology to increase attendance at shows, promote their music, and break into the industry…without the hassle of actually having to play in front of a studio executive. Let’s start from the beginning…say you are a new artist, just wrote and recorded your first few songs (using these iPhone apps), and want to let your friends know about your talents. Where can you post them? Well, myspace and a facebook fan page are the obvious places to start. But assuming you have decided to monetize this hobby and have published a CD with a bar code (through discmakers.com), you can work through cdbaby.com to stream your songs on lala.com, amazon, zune, rhapsody, and itunes, and even have your songs appear at the top of a google search (through lala). Yeah, if you have a bar code, it’s just that easy. In fact, you could probably belch into a microphone 35 different ways and those unique sounds could appear on itunes within a month. If you would like a review of those belches to show up on itunes, you could drop $75 and have radioindy.com write one for you. (It is important to note that you do actually have to apply to get your songs on pandora or most other radio programs.)

Now, say you actually recorded legitimate music and aspired to perform at a bar or club …where should you start? Well, you could always conduct a google search to find the local venues, and email the bar managers individually (then harass them in person when they don’t respond), or you could pay a small monthly fee to sonicbids.com to conduct an extensive search of not only local venues looking for musicians, but also festivals and competitions. If you were successful in securing a gig and wanted to inform all of your closest virtual friends on facebook, myspace, and twitter of this momentous occasion, you could set up an account on artistdata.com, enter the date, time and location of the event, and artistdata would automatically send an announcement to all of these sites and update any music calendar you may have.

And success! You have made it! Or have you? “I’m tired of the bar scene,” you say after 3 shows. “It’s time to take it to the next level.” As an impatient musician, overconfident in your abilities, you can then pay an annual subscription of $300 to taxi.com to have the opportunity to submit your songs ($5 for each song) to music industry executives looking to sign you (or a more talented version of you) and place your music in ads, movies, and TV shows.

So good luck and remember that if after 2 or 3 submissions, you still haven’t made it, there’s always the magic of a viral youtube video…