ORIANS: Internet, music sites help DIY musicians bloom

Piracy in music has been an issue since the dawn of the Internet. However, regardless of your stance on music piracy, the Web is a great tool for the DIY musician — and that's not limited to indie and punk bands. Any genre can get in on the amazing resources the Internet has to offer.

Bandcamp.com is a website many bands are using now to distribute their music. It allows for bands to take in donations for downloads instead of set prices. Of course, it also allows for setting prices, as well as free downloads. It's a wonderful way to get your music out there to a large audience. A quick browse through the artists page gives you an extremely diverse range of acts spanning most all genres. I could spend hours downloading music from these bands.

Kickstarter.com is also a great tool. It allows creatives (writers, musicians, artists, etc.) to submit proposals. The accepted proposals are submitted to the Kickstarter community, and funding is garnered through the awesomeness that is crowdsourcing. Many bands fund recordings and production of CDs through Kickstarter. If the full funding goal isn't made, have no fear, investor: You will get your money back. If it goes above the goal, that just means the artist gets to put out a better product. Donations are based on an incentive scale, giving out gifts/services for each money amount. Andrew Huang of Songs To Wear Pants To and Your Heart fame ended up selling his banjo (lovingly named Ban Jovi) to an extremely supportive fan to support the creation of a music video.

MySpace is still a fairly legitimate tool for bands. Its interface has always been modestly media friendly, allowing bands to upload photos, music and video, often without many limitations to space. In fact, MySpace originated as a music-only service.

Purevolume.com is another music-themed social media site from the Web 2.0 boom of the early 2000s. My favorite part of Purevolume is the random band generator at the bottom of the website. Enter in a genre or two and it'll give you a random band that fits into your desires, ranging from small indie acts to larger national acts.

And finally, for the touring bands, there's Indie on the Move. It is by far the best DIY touring social media site out there. Across the country, bands and venues alike are putting shows up that need bands and musicians to play. Knickerbockers and Duffy's have used Indie on the Move to fill up shows. They also offer an email service that sends out show announcements in cities across the country. Often these shows are aimed at specific genres or draws. It's a great tool for finding out about shows, and artists are able to offer reviews on venues. This is probably the best part of Indie on the Move: It's saved me from playing absolutely terrible venues that wouldn't pay artists.

There are gigabytes of resources out there for musicians to grab. Despite my extremely pretentious and cynical view on the music industry, now is the best time for DIY musicians to grow and flourish. So have at thee and make something awesome of yourself!

neilorians@dailynebraskan.com