Most successful artists have their music available at iTunes and eMusic.  If you are not familiar with eMusic, you’ll be pleased to know that they are the largest retailer in independent music.  They are likely a vital source for your success.

Getting listed at eMusic is very simple at Music Forte.  But you will need to have a UPC (barcode), as well as ISRC for the songs.  A lot of artists stop when they hear that, because they are not prepared to spend the money and go through all the forms and paper work. 

If you don’t have a UPC, you can purchase one at Music Forte for very cheap.  If you don’t have ISRC for the individual tracks, we will purchase them for you!  Are you worried about exclusive rights?  Not to worry, because Music Forte does not ask for it.

Watch the following tutorial, and you’ll see how you can be set up for digital distribution in a matter of minutes.  After you view the video tutorial, get started!

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There are a lot of ways to promote music online.  There are more and more networks opening up every day offering additional outlets for music promotion.  But no matter where you decide to promote, you should always do your best to milk it for everything it can provide to you.

Quite often unfinished projects are from lack of motivation.  But if you are able to push through, or better yet, if you are able to rebuild the motivation that got you started in the first place, the rewards can be great.  That is why we’ve put this list together of 10 great tips for promotional success at Music Forte.  It is not intended to be the Holy Grail for achieving fame and fortune.  It is here to help you follow through and get more out of your efforts. 

Fact: Music Forte provides a great ecommerce platform with an amazing conversion ratio.  Simply put, shoppers who visit our ecommerce site, follow through with their purchases quite often, resulting in very little cart abandonment. For this reason alone, Music Forte is a great place to send your visitors for sales. 

Remember that it is the small efforts that combine to make your marketing and promotion effective.  So rather than read through just picking out the bits that seem interesting to you, do it all!  There are just 10 steps, and once you have completed them, you can have some peace of mind, knowing that you’ve taken care of the basics.

This list is not made to benefit Music Forte.  This list is to benefit you.  Remember, Music Forte is NOT an ad-driven site.  You will not find any ads in our social network, and you will not find any ads on your profile pages.  Music Forte is here for your benefit and is FREE to use.

Without further ado…

1. Complete all your profile details, especially your photo(s).  Aside from being an ecommerce site, Music Forte is a social network of indie artists and their fans.  We are continuously building to target the correct fans with the correct music.  When you leave out any of your details, you are missing out on current and future opportunity for finding that new audience.
2. Upload your music.  It may sound like a no-brainer, but artists come to the site, talk about their new album in the forum and how people can listen to it for free at MySpace.  That’s great, but MySpace does not sell music; they stream music.  Music Forte provides streaming AND sales, and it can be hosted on any website (including MySpace).  If you don’t upload your music, you are not providing a clear path to your product.
3. Take part in the forums.  Posting is great..  But if you don’t feel like posting, at the very least you should read posts from other artists.  It is an invaluable resource from musicians who talk about promotional tactics, where to get radio play, how to design your CD and much much more.  If you have a question about Indie Music, do a search in our forums, or simply post, and you’ll not only be answered, but you’ll be building profile awareness throughout many areas of the network.
4. Price your music and album.  Your album price is determined by the total of your track prices.  You can set each track price individually.  Once you have done that, you can also offer a discount on the full album price.  This encourages shoppers to buy the full album rather than just a few mp3 files.
5. Build a playlist.  Even if you have uploaded several albums, make a playlist.  You can include as many songs as you want from as many different albums as you want in a single playlist.  Or you can create an unlimited number of playlists.  When you create a playlist, you are given a unique URL that will instantly load your music from any website.  And it only takes up a few words of text on your website. Get your visitors to click that link, and they will have an immediate presentation of your songs and albums.  This is the first step in getting the visitor to our storefront, which is completely non-competitive.  In other words, we DON’T promote the sales of other artists when your visitors are checking out.  The focus is always on YOU!
6. Use a widget.  Any playlist that you have created can be loaded into a widget with a custom skin.  This allows secure streaming of your music from any website.  Music Forte has taken great precautions to make sure that your music cannot be ripped with pesky download applications.  The Music Forte widgets all provide a link directly to your sales page.
7. Allow Twitter integration.  If you are not visiting Music Forte all that often, you can turn on the setting so that your Twitter updates automatically post to your Music Forte profile page.  This keeps the content fresh, so that your site is visited more often.
8. Share.  Many areas of the site have sharing capabilities.  For example, if you post a gig, there is a one-click sharing utility that will allow you to post the information to multiple networks.  You’ll also find this in forum posts. 
9. Distribute.  Music Forte also provides eMusic distribution.  After you have uploaded your album, be sure and maximize your distribution by including eMusic as a distribution source.
10. Give it a test drive.  No matter where you promote, you should visit your site as if you were the consumer.  Try out the playlist link or widget and follow it through to our storefront.  Are you happy with the appearance and functionality?  We think you will be.  But choose the storefront that you think is most enticing to complete a sale and stick with that.  Offering too many options can be confusing for your visitors and fans.  Give them one clear direction that is easy to find and follow, and you will see an increase in sales.

There is much to see at Music Forte.  The following is just a small sample of a playlist link and a widget that has loaded the same playlist. See how the function and follow the process to the checkout store.

Playlist Link Example: (this playlist focuses on several artists, where as yours would focus just on you)

Listen to our new hit song!

Widget Example: (there are many skins to choose from, and you have full control over the order of song presentation)