The big music news today is that The Charlatans are giving away their fourth album for free via download on Xfm’s web site. Why? They don’t make enough money via CD sales anyway, and giving away the music for free, they reckon, will give them a bigger fan base and increase the number of people paying for their live gigs, buy their merchandising and increase the chance of getting soundtracks.

This follows Prince’s recent controversial decision to allow the Mail on Sunday to give away a copy of his new album with every copy of the paper. His reasoning was that he barely sells any CDs anymore and the cash he got from the Mail, coupled with the PR the stunt generated just before his string of concerts at the 02 in London, was well worth it.

Getting more people to gigs seem to be an important part of growing your business as a musician. I spoke to up and coming vocalist Cecilia Stalin, formerly of the excellent Swedish jazz band Koop. She said the best channel for CD sales is actually the gigs themselves. People who see artists live often want to bring back a memory of the gig or continue listening to the music once they have a better feel for the artist.

Cecilia does offer a few songs via her web site but says that nowadays it is almost expected that artists will give away at least some music for free today in order to grow. However she refuses to give away entire albums as there is no guarantee that people who download the music will come to see her live. One alternative to the free downloads are sites such as Spiralfrog where advertisers pay for the music you download for free (unfortunately this site is only available in USA and Canada at this point).

But obviously the most difficult part of making it big as an artist is successfully getting your music out there. There are plenty of sites where unsigned bands can showcase their music, however some of them seem to have a whiff of desperation about them and few professional musicians would want to be seen on them. On the other hand, sites such as Our Stage, a democratic X-factor style competition where fans can vote for their next big band, have taken social networking to the next level by giving fans the power of making (and possibly breaking) a new artist.

One such successful example is the French artist Soko who, thanks to her fans, ended up being a radio favourite and number one iTunes download in Denmark after one of her songs I’ll Kill Her had become a favourite on YouTube. In a similar vein, we’re hoping that B Raymond & The Voicettes, the unsigned band who won the competition to soundtrack the new Brylcreem ad, will see similar success now that they have been put in front of a much wider audience.

Maybe the next step from simply uploading your video or song to MySpace or YouTube could be to broadcast your gig live, via peer to peer technology with Selfcast. Following the (alleged) success that Sandi Thom had by doing gigs in front of a web-cam, and seeing as live concerts are being given in Second Life, it doesn’t feel like it will be too long before this is explored by the music industry.

Thanks to pittigliani2005 for the image of the jukebox.

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