Posted by: mlapora on Mar 29, 2008 - 11:21 AM

I, once being in a band myself, was looking for guidance on how to get my band's music onto major music services like Rhapsody, iTunes, Napster, etc. The first step is very easy, simply submit your CD or Album to CD Baby.

CD Baby is an aggregator, re-distributing their content to several online digital music retailers. Upon submitting your CD to CD Baby, within about 2-3 months you should see your submitted music appear on those services. Unfortunately the online retailers can take awhile to get independent label submissions added.

There are a couple of different routes you can take, where you can submit a purely digital distribution, or submit CDs that will be sold on CD Baby. Specifically with Rhapsody you can point people to listen to your band for free once your band appears on Rhapsody.

If you have created a website, or just simply want a link to give people to be able to stream your music; I would recommend the use of our playlinks. To make it just a bit simpler, we have a tool for creating links to go on websites, in IM conversations, on blogs, etc. You can find the tool here. Input whether you want a link to your artist page, or to a track itself. If a user is clicking on a track link (for example: http://www.rhapsody.com/goto?rcid=tra.9492279&variant=play), the link will automatically bring the listener to the relevant rhapsody.com page and begin playback with our online player.

If you would like some alternatives to CD Baby, here is a comprehensive list of some other aggregators with which to publicize your music.

So to all you burgeoning acts out there looking for a great way to hand out your media in a web world, we welcome you to use rhapsody to its fullest capacity. And good luck in your endeavors.

Thanks,
Matthew Lapora
Program Manager, Web Services