Saturday, September 26, 2009

Isound.com

This week I decided that I wanted to write about what I feel is an overlooked web service site for musicians. The site is called "Isound." While the site is increasing in popularity, it is not used nearly as often as last.fm, myspace, or youtube.
If you are unfamiliar with Isound, it is very similar to the sites that I listed above. Like myspace, it gives you four free slots to use for different songs. If you wish to increase the amount of music that you are allowed to put on the site, you can become a "LOUD Artist." The LOUD service allows you to upload one hundred songs, it also enables a blog, more photographs, occasional front page recognition, and top placement in searches throughout the site.
Another thing that I like about Isound is that it offers accounts for people whom are not musicians. These accounts are called "Listener" accounts. Listener accounts act much like Artist accounts, except that you cannot upload your own music. Instead, you select a playlist and stream it from an artist account. I feel that this allows people whom are not necessarily musicians to feel like they are involved in the community as well. The other sites that I listed do have such accounts, but I believe it is a nice feature to have for such a site.
At the moment, I feel that this site is not the best site for marketing. I do believe that it would not hurt to have a presence there either, especially if you are an artist or a label. At any given time you will see that there are usually a few hundred to a thousand listeners online, and ten to one hundred artists. Despite these small numbers, I do believe that the site receives a lot of unregistered traffic that is unaccounted for in the front page statistics. My account had a song with six thousand plays, yet I only had four hundred friends. I highly doubt that my listeners listened to that particular track that many times even though it is quite nice. You are guaranteed to appear in searches in this site, and it is quite efficient, unlike myspace's search. There are several ways to search for artists, just like any search engine. You may search by name, genre, first letter of the name, and location. For the most part, I think this would be an effective (and affordable) way to reach a niche audience. If you want more exposure, Last.fm or a professional website of your own would be a better choice, in my opinion.
I had been introduced to this site a few years ago through one of my music theory teachers. From personal experience, I found the site to be an enjoyable use. I landed a composition job through having a presence on here. I compose for gaming developers on occasion. I also found the account management tools to be very straightforward and efficient.


- Derek Jenkins

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