Indie labels find gold in bit torrent sites

There’s big traffic on bit torrent sites tracker sites.If you listen to the big music labels and Hollywood, you’d think that these are places where determined thieves congregate to so musicians and actors great harm. While these sites do provide the potential for harm, they also provide opportunity to boost business.

If you’re a small label or indie band, you often live by your wits and are forced to think outside of the box to make ends meet. You have no promotion budget. So, why not reach the millions of music fans who frequent the bit torrent sites and offer them a free sample? You may find that those who like your music will pay a reasonble price for more. That’s just what are growing group of indies are doing:

…. latest is a label called Honor Roll Music, which is promoting one of its popular acts by buying ads on isoHunt, the popular BitTorrent site. The ad links to a torrent file so people can easily download the music of the band, Awesome New Republic. Of course, if the major record labels had their way, these creative promotion techniques wouldn’t be allowed. Sometimes when we talk about innovative business models, defenders of the old system say that those are fine, but there’s no reason to change copyright or stop these lawsuits because those models still work. Yet, this shows how that’s not true at all. (Techdirt)

Bit torrnet is an increadible efficient distribution channel. It has as much if not more potential to do good as it does to do harm. Offering a free song to fans and encoraging them to share it should be a no brainer for the marketing suits at the big labels.