Local musicians turn to Internet to distribute tunes

By Jenn Heinold
Herald Staff Writer

Warren Throckmorton loves to write and record music, and wants people to hear it.

But the Grove City man has no intention of promoting his music through live performance, and isn't hoping to make money from it.

"I have another career," said Throckmorton, who is director of counseling at Grove City College. "I'm not going to tour. I'm mainly interested in making good music and distributing it."

Throckmorton and other local musicians are finding listeners through the Internet.

Sharon rock musician Steve Dunch has several Web sites for his music. He posts biographies, photos and reviews, and a link to an MP3.com site so people can listen to some of the music of bands he has been involved with, including EL34, Psycho Cafe and C2K.

"It's easy and you can reach a lot more people without leaving the house," Dunch said.

MP3.com, based in San Diego, announced in late June that it had reached one million on-line listeners. The announcement came as Throckmorton had the number one song on the Christian Easy Listening chart of MP3.com.

Throckmorton's song, "Play with Me," was first posted in January.

Throckmorton recorded a compact disc with studio time his wife gave him as a birthday and Christmas present.

"It's the gift that keeps on giving," he said, "I just wanted to put some songs down that have been in my head for a long time, but it's taken on a lot bigger scope than that."

Throckmorton has a tracker on his Web site, which allows him to measure the amount of people that visit his site and see where the visitors are from.

"About half of the visitors are from outside of the U.S.," Throckmorton said. "I get e-mails from all over the world -- people just wanting to talk music or review a song. Some say how much my music has touched and impressed them."

Throckmorton chose to use MP3.com to distribute his music because it was one of the biggest sites, both in the number of artists and songs. MP3.com boasts more than 1 million songs, some by big-name artists like Madonna and Sugar Ray.

MP3.com lets the artist decide whether or not to charge users for downloaded music.

"The site that I used is free (to the musician)," Throckmorton said.

The company also has a royalty program in which the artist pays a monthly charge but gets a percentage of the proceeds for each play, he said.

Throckmorton's site gives the listener the option to stream or download his music.

The differences between streaming and downloading music are permanence and price. When a song is streamed it can be heard once and is not saved. Downloaded music is saved to a computer hard drive and can be burned to a compact disc or mini-disk. Because downloaded music is permanent and controlled by the person who downloaded it, many musicians charge for downloaded files.

Throckmorton's site also has both a traditional CD and a Net CD available to purchase. The Net CD is less expensive because it is saved to a computer's hard drive. It can be burned to a CD later.

"The fees are reasonable when compared to purchasing a CD in a store, and it helps to get over the conundrum about musicians making music on the Internet and not getting compensation," Throckmorton said.

Dunch does not charge his listeners. "It's more about having people listen to the music," he said.

Tony Paglia of the coffee house pop band The Orchid Pool has his band's CD available through insound.com, a site that specializes in distributing independent artists. He uses the Internet not only as a way to distribute his CD but also to meet other music enthusiasts.

"I am able to find a lot of like-minded people who are into this kind of music," said Paglia, of New Wilmington.

Paglia has an independent Web site with information about the band, and an MP3.com site with songs for people to download.

Dunch encouraged up-and-coming musicians to use the Internet but advised that they should not get discouraged too early on.

"Be patient," Dunch said. "It doesn't happen over night."

"Check out other independent artists' music on-line, and be supportive of other acts, because we all are in it for the love of music," Dunch added.