For the Professional Musician -

Many websites will give you a free page where you can offer MP3 streams or downloads of a few of your songs. Some have even offered to pay anywhere from five cents down to a fraction of a cent for each time your song is streamed or downloaded. The Featured Artist section of this website is similar to those other websites in some ways, but very different from those websites in other ways.

Most of those other sites hope to sign up thousands of musicians, so their process is automated as much as possible. If you can figure out how to create an MP3 and navigate their forms and templates, you can get your song on the web. No one (other than the listeners) makes any distinction between professional artists with proven talent and amateurs with no experience. In this website’s Featured Artist section, you deal with a real live human being. We don’t want thousands of artists. Instead, we want personalized relationships with a few hundred talented musicians. So your streaming video doesn’t get lost in a sea of mediocrity. The Featured Artist section will always remain small enough that a visitor can browse through every artist.

Most important, those other sites stream audio, while this site streams video exclusively. You get a web page all your own where you can stream up to three songs on video. You don’t have to worry about preparing the video for streaming or uploading your video. Most artists will mail their video to us on a miniDV tape. We convert it to a QuickTime movie, create your page and upload your video to our server.

We don’t form any judgements about the quality of your music, but we do check to make sure your music fits in the broad categories described on the home page. And we do pass judgement on the quality of your video. It doesn’t have to be broadcast quality, but we don’t allow any shaky handheld home movies - unless the subject is a killer musical performance.

If you already have your own acceptable video, the only charge is a small, negotiable set-up fee ($50 or less - depending on the amount of work necessary to prepare your video for streaming). No monthly charges - no matter how often your songs are streamed.

If you don’t have any video yet, we’ll help you learn how to “do it yourself.” Or you can deal with a video production company. There are many videographers around the country who will tape two or three of your songs in live performance for a reasonable price.

If you are located in the Southeast (or tour through the area) you can contact our own video production company - R.A.M. Video. We will tape you - with or without an audience - using three cameras and capturing audio from the soundboard. The basic shooting and editing runs about $50 per song. And we waive the set-up fee for R.A.M. Video clients. There may be additional charges if we have to travel to your location. Of course, our work always carries a satisfaction guarantee. If we can’t create video to your satisfaction, you don’t pay. Period.

Speaking of money - we can’t make any promises at this time, but we will make every effort to set up a system where you can share in any ad revenue generated by this site. As you know, a website needs many, many visitors to create ad revenue. So let’s concentrate on building the traffic to this site for now, while keeping in mind the ultimate goal of sharing revenue.

If you want to learn more about getting your video into the Featured Artist section, just send us an e-mail with a short description of your music and details of any existing video.

Thanks!

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Copyright 2004 J. Stephen Robertson