StereoGrid Offers Free Hybrid Solution For Online Music Promotion

StereoGrid has released the second version of their "music delivery network," a service that combines distribution of music to bloggers and press and a song widget that's embeddable on blogs and websites. It's a well thought out service birthed in the noisy, spam-filled world of hip hop media. Though no company can solve the problems hip hop media faces on its own, StereoGrid has built a robust service that is now expanding beyond hip hop.

I recently spoke with StereoGrid founder and CEO Andrew Zarick who explained the context for its creation. Zarick began blogging at 100 Best Rap Songs in 2008 and had the experience common to hip hop bloggers of being inundated with promotional material. He also quickly became aware of the now well-publicized reality of hip hop blogs receiving material from major label marketing departments only to be attacked by legal representatives of those same labels. These related realities of hip hop media deeply informed the development of StereoGrid.

StereoGrid Music Player

StereoGrid's basic services are free. Artists and their representatives can upload music for distribution and create a release announcement which is then made available to bloggers and members of the press that have signed up for StereoGrid's service. Artists can also distribute to their own press list via StereoGrid with all emails bearing the return address of the artist. This allows artists to easily send out a professional product that features their own branding while taking responsibility for the integrity of their list.

Zarick says that at one point they did a poll of music bloggers and found that poorly formatted, unprofessional submissions were their biggest complaint and that's one problem that StereoGrid solves. Of course, the biggest complaint I encountered in my eight years in hip hop media was the tendency of artists and publicists to send promo material to every email they could find, even when given a preferred email address for such submissions. But StereoGrid's approach to branding helps focus that issue on the artists and publicists themselves.

StereoGrid also offers a music player for all submitted music that allows for the download of individual songs in exchange for an email address or, if the uploader prefers, the song can be limited to streaming in which case a buy link then appears on the widget.

For artists who participate, stats are available to the artist rather than being usurped by file download sites that offer easy distribution while also surrounding the song with all sorts of ads. A unique twist is that data is also being maintained for artists who have yet to set up accounts in a sort of trust that will become available when they join. Detailed distribution reports are currently available as a premium service as are branded music widgets for artists that are putting out tracks in conjunction with brand support.

Bloggers and press who participate receive a number of benefits. Transparency is provided when they post music uploaded by artists and marketing departments which may become useful in future bouts with major labels whose various representatives sometimes work at odds. But, in a unique twist, bloggers and press can also upload music that they receive, making that music available in the system as well as giving them a player for use on their sites. It's the kind of hybrid thinking that I'm not at all surprised to see emerging from the world of hip hop blogging.

A variety of stats also exist for web publishers and a StereoGrid drop box, viewable in this post, allows for direct submission to one's blog or website.

StereoGrid offers a unique combination of options that previously required the use of multiple services. I think it's definitely worth a look for any artist or music marketer distributing tracks to the media for promotional purposes as well as for distributing to fans on their own sites.  It also looks like a winner for music bloggers and press that participate.

Hypebot Features Writer Clyde Smith maintains his freelance writing hub at Flux Research and music industry resources at Music Biz Blogs. To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.