By Chris Palmer

So, you want to be involved in the music industry?
As the famous and often misquoted Hunter S. Thompson quote goes: "The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."

Never has a truer word been spoken! This business reeks of bad business practices and bad people who take our dreams and trample all over them. Things have changed recently though with the advent of digital distribution; with up to the minute stats and accounting that allow us to keep track of how our music is selling and how our fans are reacting to it. The time of the indie musician is here at last. Most of the big stars have pulled out of their contracts with large music corporations and started creating and moving their own product. Many great tools have been made available to us muso's, that allow us to handle our own business affairs and create and distribute our music with very little hassle.

All of these websites and tools have become easy to use within our social networks, like Facebook and Myspace. These are 2 of the best tools for making your music heard. They both serve very different audiences though. Facebook is mostly about your friends and closer acquaintances, your peeps who understand the meaning of "local is lekker". They are essentially your core base of listeners who are generally prepared to handle the constant spamming and badgering that some muso's throw at their friends. Some will be genuine fans who enjoy your music and love your sound, while others will support you because they believe in what you're capable of and because you're a good friend.

Myspace, on the other hand, is more about international friends and acquaintances. Myspace is a great way for new acts that are breaking in their own area to get some broader exposure. It's also a great way to test how your material is received in the world, and it can be a huge reality check when you see just how many bands and artists are clawing away at their tiny piece of the pie. Their are millions of DJ's and bands on Myspace. Therein lies the biggest challenge in the music business today. How do you get to the top of the pile? How do you get noticed? Like any game or sport, it works on a percentage basis. You work it and work it, practice and practice, until, slowly but surely, you work your way through, level by level.

There's a great tool available now that ties all of your social networks together, providing constant stats and measures of how well you're doing. It's called Reverbnation (http://www.reverbnation.com). Reverbnation has everything that an Indie musician requires. For a small fee they will host all of your music on the top ten digital download sites in the world, allowing you to keep all of your royalties. They track your stats, such as track plays, crowd attendance at gigs, click throughs from the many widgets they provide, fans and even video plays. They include both your Myspace and Facebook fans. They even include emails and fan-reach programs, to run your mailing lists. They have a press kit section, allowing you to create a great press kit, and keep track of all the venues in your area so that you can send the press kit out and get booked for gigs.

Reverbnation runs a host of charts, aligned in both genre and area, to keep track of how you are doing. You can check how high you are on a chart locally, globally in your genre or globally in all genres. They use a term called band equity to tally your score every day. Band equity is made up of track plays, widget hits and new fans. Each has a cap so that if one climbs without the others, you equity doesn't climb. It's a great system for keeping track of your art as a business. These tools are all invaluable in working out where you need to concentrate your energy. You can see, with a few mouse clicks, exactly how much work needs to be done in each area of your business; to keep climbing the ranks and carving out a successful career for yourself. Never has it been easier for an independent muso to help themselves on the way to their dreams. Let's face it, nobody cares about your music as much as you do, right? And with the right business tools, the sky is the limit.

So, get your music out there. Get your friends and fans to paste it everywhere on the web. Get well known, get famous and make some money with your art. These days you only have yourself to blame if you aren't making it or getting heard. And we all love to make some noise...