You can be making incredible music, but if no one knows about it you probably won’t be making it for very long. Having a good project name is the first step to getting publicity and having your music heard by a large amount of people.

Don’t be difficult. It has to be easy to pronounce and say over the phone. Try to avoid using numbers for letters (leet speak) since it will confuse people. Yes, there are exceptions like “!!!,” μ-siq, and whatnot, but the object is to make it easy for the press to write about you and for people to talk about you. While you’re welcome to choose a difficult name, it’s only going to make the rest of your publicity efforts that much harder.

Steer clear of profanity. While James Fucking Friedman has a somewhat high profile, whenever he gets listed in local papers that don’t allow profanity they star out either the entire middle word or just use stars after the F. People will get confused–”Did they star out ‘Faggot,’ ‘Fucking,’ or ‘Fellatio’? Should I Google for James Star Star Star?” Also profanity limits the types of publications that will feature you. While XLR8R and URB are magazines that are pretty laid back about their language, you might one day discover that your music has an interesting crossover audience (be it mountain climbers or acoustic engineers) and you want to make it easy for those types of journalists to approach you and write about you and your music.

It sounds good. Pick three of your favorite names. Say them out loud. Ask some friends what they think and notice how they respond. Do they laugh out loud when you’re aiming for a super serious image (”Abfahrt Hinwil” might cause some giggling)? It may sound obvious, but electronic musicians who tend to work alone and communicate through their computers could use some IRL human feedback once in a while.

While Peter is away I thought I’d visit a topic central to what CDMu is about, but rarely visited: Procuring Music. We (and by “we” I do of course mean “you”, powerful yet supple reader) spend rather a lot of time analyzing and discussing the tools and processes for creating music, but don’t seem to touch on the end product quite so often. Tomorrow I’ll be reviewing my favourite program for organizing and playing music, but for now I’d like to share a couple of sources for new material, and open up the comments to as much linking, pimping and self-promotion as you can muster. The fruits of CDM readers’ labours have been hidden away in the CreateDigitalNoise Share Your Work forum for too long. It’s time for some front-page love.

Personally, I rely almost entirely on friends (both web- and meatspace-based) for my musical enlightenment. Occasionally I’ll do the rounds of MP3 blogs, generally stopping at Aurgasm, 3hive, Stereogum and more recently The Hype Machine, but more often I let those more musically inquisitive than I do the filtering and feed me the best bits. Most of the artists I’ve “discovered myself” recently were through music video blogs such as No Fat Clips and Ticklebooth.

For music purchases I’m tending to use label sites much more than services such as iTunes Music Store. Having a seperate account for each niche-label isn’t the most friendly setup, but I feel like more of my money is making it to the artist, and the label sites and releases are definitely more fun and personable.

I enjoyed the leadup to Hybrid’s most recent release “I Choose Noise“. First came the single “Just For Today”, released for free download on the Hybrid Sound System site. Then came the “I Choose Noise EP“, containing 2 extra tracks as an MP3 single for £2, which was followed, finally, by the full album release for £8 as MP3 download or £8.50 for a “cd exclusive” including live DVD. All of the downloads are DRM free, format-shiftable, share-with-your-friends-able, 320KBit MP3 files. Lovely.

To get an idea of what other CDM readers and contributors are listening to, check out the CDM group on Last.fm (and join up if you haven’t done so already). There’s also the Today I have been mostly listening to… thread, which could do with some reanimating. That’s only a tiny cross-section of the CDM readership though, so I’d really love to hear from those who are making and releasing music. Sources of free legal tracks we can copy and share with friends are great too, of course.

I hate ending on sour notes. So, instead, let’s look at some positive opportunities for music distribution. Indie labels and music makers alike on this site I know have no love for Digital Rights Management, but let’s look at some alternatives, from Mozilla-based iTunes alternatives to music on sticks (and reasons to dump iTunes).

You may have heard a lot about the InterWeb, a new network that magically connects people around the world through their Compute-trons. You might have heard about its powers to promote music, perhaps by an ill-researched story yesterday where I stupidly pointed to a UK artist who will go unmentioned here. (As it turns out, which I would have known had I bothered to, um, read, all of the following did indeed happen: “girl produces webcast from basement,” “girl gets fan following,” “girl makes it big,” “girl signs record deal,” “girl hires publicist.” Just in the reverse order. It doesn’t explain why anyone listened to a publicist in the first place, or which “punk rockers”, exactly, wear “flowers in their hair”, or why Sandi losing her cellphone made her want to go back, inexplicably, to both 1977 and 1969. Plot of Back to the Future IV? Moving on.)

Surprisingly, though, the mainstream music press, fawning over faux-indie Scottish pop singers and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, have missed the Web’s one major success story. Here it is. I’ve tried to translate to the language of vacuous promoters, because I know as a journalist we can really never get enough of that. Ahem. (Let me get in character for a second.)

It was in the early years of the 21st Century when a bird of a different feather got to realize a dream. His name is Waldo. He’s a Congo African Grey parrot, with a rich, silky voice that has been compared by fans to “a jackhammer being ground in a compactor.” But, unlike some parrots, Waldo wanted to share that voice with the world.

In 2001, everyone wanted to get rich on the Web. In 2006, everyone wants to be a rock star. There’s a musical gold rush now, filled with tales of artists who have made it big through non-traditional, online promotion, like the perpetually-hyped MySpace success story Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. The challenge: separate real potential from fiction.

One-man DIY band Brad Sucks was a Web rock star before being a Web rock star was cool. Who else would title his album, brilliantly, “I don’t know what I’m doing.” Last week, he was interviewed by GarageSpin, one of my favorite music blogs. He talks about how this got started in 2001, how the DIY spirit in his forums has built his fan base, and, most famously, how his creative commons approach (steal his music, make remixes) has helped spread his music. (For a label that has helped champion that approach, check out Magnatune.) My favorite quote, on his gear setup:

I try to hate all my gear equally at all times to keep the balance of power in my favor. Once gear detects weakness such as having favorites, it’ll break down and quit working right away.

At the other end of the spectrum, this week UK artist Sandi Thom released her first single on RCA, complete with music video. What makes Thom interesting is that she managed to snag a record deal by performing a “virtual tour” from her basement; RCA even signed her in front of her webcam, once they saw her audience rocket to six digits. The song is pretty good, though Sony BMG’s Website has pretty much killed any indie Web spirit. My suggestion: steal the idea, but skip the label. I’m also still working on the idea that her song “I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker”, filled with nostalgia for the good ‘ol days of hippies and writing letters in the mail before she was born (she’s 24), was inspired by losing her cell phone, but I’ll go with it. Fortunately, the boot-stomping rhythms are great, she has the right voice for this.

(Note: This whole thing sounded a bit like a publicist’s creation to me when I first read it, especially since Thom doesn’t have her own personally-crafted site like Brad Sucks. Sure enough, see comments: it sounds as though the whole “Sony BMG stumbled upon the site and signed a contract” a fake. That said, drop the gimmick, do a real webcast, be a real indie band, and please, sing about something other than your lost cell phone. Although, that could make a really great country song . . . hmmmm. Oh, and also, Create Digital Music doesn’t really exist, either. There is no Peter Kirn. Peter Kirn is the fictional creation of a group of interactive media moguls. When we get bought out by MTV tomorrow, that will all have been all staged, too.)

Anyway, the real bottom line: people didn’t tune in because it was a gimmick; they tuned it because it made the Web feel a little more like a live performance. So, sure, Rolling Stone and major labels might be honing in on the gimmicks in the brave new world of Web promotion. But the dynamics of potential fans reading the Web are what’s really powerful, and there are plenty of role models with good ideas, just waiting to be copied and improved upon. I’m holding out for the crazy, experimental artist who makes it big on the Web without an ounce of pop. (Hey, Sun Ra had a label deal. I wish I were an Arkastra member with flowers in my hair.) Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m getting back to Last.fm’s CreateDigitalMusic group radio station.

No, Microsoft isn't giving away free songs made in Apple GarageBand — that's the other Garageband, as in Garageband.com, a site with peer-reviewed music from unsigned artists. CNet reports
that MSN will distribute Garageband.com music.

UPDATED:

• MP3.com redux: All of the free songs acquired when
  Garageband.com absorbed the defunct site MP3.com will go on MSN Music unless a muscian has opted out
• Free or fee, everybody: Garageband artists will be able to submit
  songs to Garageband.com to be downloaded free or purchased on MSN. All current and future artists will be available for free or fee on MSN music, unless
  they opt out of the deal. This is a big difference between MSN's stance
  and Apple's iTunes; right now there's no simple way to get paid music
  on iTunes without a label and no way to get free music on iTunes
• Featured artists: MSN will
  be featuring links to top Garageband.com artists on their site, and on radio feeds
• Track record: Garageband does have an impressive track record: they've gotten many of their artists signed, and one even went double-platinum
• WMA vs. MP3: Only for-fee music will be offered as Windows Media files; the free music will be in MP3 format, just as on Garageband.com.
• Windows-only: Because MSN Music is powered by Windows
  Media Player and IE, other players, iPods, Macs, and even browsers like
  Firefox are all left out in the cold, even for MSN Music-hosted MP3s. Mac users and other browsers should stick to
  Garageband.com, where you can download normal MP3s or buy good,
  old-fashioned CDs published by cdbaby)

My current take: this is all good news for musicians, because
unless you're one of those featured artists, this deal is entirely
non-exclusive. It's a chance to promote or even sell your music on a
huge Website. If we're lucky, Apple will follow suit, and then our
music will be on both MSN and iTUnes.What's your take?

Hit comments and let us know!