I know lots of musicians and am friends with many of them. Because of my own background as a harmonica player, most of them also play this instrument.
I have been observing how musicians cope with the new realities in the music business for a long time (www.techdirt.com is a great blog for copy right and business model discussion) and would like to share one example of smart promotion that I came across today.
Brendan Power, an unconventional harmonica player from New Zealand living in England has posted a video of the solos he played in the album "Back to back", recorded with another extraordinary harmonica player, PT Gazell, from Nashville. It is a 5 minute clip with splashes of the songs. In the background, the cover of the CD, it is about the music.
Brendan is giving his music (and PT's) away in a way that makes his fans happy and doesn't hurt anybody. Hopefully, people will hear the best parts of the album, like it and feel encouraged to buy it. And Brendan gives them two ways to do that: either through his website or through PT's. As the people at Techdirt say: give fans a reason to buy and they will do so.
http://www.brendan-power.com
http://www.ptgazell.com
And probably Brendan can do this because this is an independent CD, not linked to restrictive big label contracts.
