I am still somewhat surprised how so many bands, even in tech savvy San Francisco, still are not doing all the basic things that are needed to establish a platform best suited to efficiently take advantage of the Internet.

Here are the very basic items I still see bands/musicians not doing:

1. Website. You need a website to be the hub of an information related to your band. Just having a myspace page will not cut it. Or just using facebook. These tools will change constantly, but your website will be your center, always.

2. Email addresses. Use the band’s website for your email address. Drop yahoo, gmail or whatever strange domain name you may now be using. Matt(at)VolumeEleven.net is what I use here, even though I have other person emails. Same concept.  For convenience you (or your tech buddy) should be able to set it up so your band email runs through your yahoo or gmail account.

3. Web chatting. You need to be engaged with fans on certain chat rooms related to your genre or musical interests. This is one of the major advantages the Internet has to offer – connecting people over dispersed geographical areas. To not fully take advantage of this opportunity is just about being lazy.

4. Offering downloadable songs for sale (or donation) directly through website (or also myspace). Obviously getting music on iTunes and CD Baby is important because it will be the only place some people will go, but we all should be trying to get people comfortable with getting songs directly from artists so artists can keep more of the money for themselves and not give it up to these 3rd party online distributors. Interested purchasers of your music will go to your website anyway, so having them obtain songs there too makes sense. They can pay with PayPal.

5. Set up a band PayPal account so fans can purchase songs or merch from you without having to submit their credit card info.

6. Creating a place where fans directly can interact with you. Not just myspace, but something else too. This can be twitter, a blog part of your website, anything that provides fans the means to directly communicate with the band or certain band members. This also correlates with #4.

7. Give away some music on your website, but get something in return. Usually an email will suffice for this exchange. You can even be non-obvious about getting this info by offering a free song or two that will be emailed to someone, or emailing someone a password to the downloadable music page.