iTunes gives you a thirty second sample of a song. But who can tell from thirty seconds if it’s a song they want to buy? iTunes is not the place to find new music, and it definitely does not help people who are just starting out.

Bandcamp is the place for that. Their philosophy is: you can’t sell your music if nobody has heard it. The header from their website gives a great description: “Viral distribution. We give your fans drop dead easy tools to share your music with their friends, and most importantly we do it in a way that drives traffic back to you.”

On Bandcamp, everything is free. You enter your username, email, and bandname. Then you upload songs. Every song can be listened to in full, in high quality, for free. Then, you can sell your songs in any format (Bandcamp does it for you) at whatever price you want. Bandcamp makes spreading and selling your songs very simple.

This is definitely a great resource for independent musicians trying to get into the music industry. Every other creative medium has a way of getting itself out: vloggers have YouTube; bloggers have Tumblr, Blogspot, etc.; photographers have Flickr; artists have Deviantart… Musicians didn’t have anything until Bandcamp.