ABSTRACT
Today, no music-related web site is complete without offering some music, either for download or streamed to the user’s computer. In his book How to Promote Your Music Successfully on the Internet, author David Nevue stated, “if you want people to buy your music online, you’ve got to give them a sample of the goods.” The question becomes how much audio? Should you provide samples of songs, entire songs, a few songs from each album? Nevue stated that some artists may not feel comfortable giving away their product, whereas others, including some major acts like Radiohead, are comfortable giving away their music if it increases their fan base and they can make up the money on concert tickets. The industry standard for online e-tailers is to offer 30-second samples of some or all songs on an album, but Nevue believes that song samples should be longer, up to two minutes, “enough for your potential buyer to get into the groove of your music” (Nevue, p. 29).
