Musicians United Resources

 

 If you're a musician that's fairly new to the internet, you can now begin using it's power to further your career.  I have some suggestions that will point you in the right direction to get started harnessing that power.   That's a big part of what Musicians United Resources is about, musicians helping each other.
 
To start, you want to set things up that will allow you to have people contact you with much less risk, get your music on the internet and conduct the business of your musical career more efficiently.  The very first thing you need to do is get a web page or full website up.  You could go with a page, or pages on one of the music services sites like SoundClick, Download.Com, or the like if you prefer and I would recommend them as long term promotional tools in any case.  You can find links for them in the "Promote Your Music" pages on Musicians United Resources. 
 
My preference is a full website...the link for my band's website is below my signature block.  I'm using free webspace and a very easy "what you see is what you get" or WYSIWYG site builder that's right on the provider's site.  I will probably buy webspace when it makes good, economic sense but for now, free webspace is the sensible option.  It's available, with various on-site building page editors, most of which are quite easy to master.  I've used:  http://xbuild.com, http://tripod.com, bravenet.com, sythasite and many others.  I like synthasite and xbuild for  ease of use and slick appearance.  They also use inobtrusive text advertising rather than big banner ads at the tops of the pages or pop-up ads which I absolutely hate.  With a pop-up blocker you don't get them but you want your site to be as user-friendly as possible.
 
For uploading sound files, the most accessible format is mp3 and it's sort of an industry standard.  What I've done on my site is to upload the files to fileden.com and link to them.  Again, this is free webspace used for site storage.  I have signed up for an account so I can keep everything organized and up and running but only at the 'free' level.  This gives you control over access to the files.  You keep the songs there and link to them from the website.  There are, once again, many providers of free web storage, I use fileden because it's easy, allows a large file size and is music-friendly.  When you sign on to an account there for updates, you get 2 or 3 pages of advertising.  If you just scroll to the bottom of the page, there's a skip button to move you forward.  These ads are how fileden makes it's money.  Again, they have paid versions available.
 
When you build a website, the site editor offers many widgets (functional tools) that you can choose and customize.  One will be for 'contact' which is a blind email link.   The webspace provider sends you an email containing the text the person contacting you wants to send.  It does not provide them your email address.
 
If you decide to go with any of my suggestions and run into a problem, just post a line on the group message boards and someone from the management team or active membership will help you out.