Once we started on this project, we started looking into other things that we could do for free, or cheaply, to minimize the outlay. Firstly came the website. We initially had a hosted website which was fine. However there is a hosting cost involved (especially if you want to stream music) and it was static. In order to update it, once person had to be responsible for it and had to be sat in front of their web editor software, so it didn’t get updated very often. So we ditched it in favour of a Blogger hosted site. With some gently tweaking, Blogger can be used to create an excellent site. Its very quick and easy to update and it can be done anywhere you have web access, by anyone that wants to share the job. You can post via email if there’s something you want to get up there quickly, and fans can follow it via RSS syndication. You can incorporate Twitter feeds, and even use it to distribute new tunes or video clips as podcasts.
The second stage was to add ourselves to iLike. ILike.com is a fabulous site for those creating music and for those looking for new music. Its completely free, and once you have a page and have uploaded songs to it, it will create a music player for your website, provide a Twitter interface, publish a gig calendar for the band, get tou on iTunes and publish an artist page on FaceBook. The best bit is you only have to update information in one place, and iLike can update the rest of your pages automatically!