Hey RO'ers I'm looking for some advice here as far as the music business goes and need some input on the three questions that are in bold. To give you a little background I started my own independent label about a year ago and have produced one album and am currently working on another two, as I am typing this. It has taken me over a year just to find and acquire the right artists that I would like to work with, and I am constantly doing one thing or another as far as my label is involved. About a week and a half ago I set up yet another website to get more of our music out to the world. My thinking was that people go to different sites when they are looking for new music so we had to have a few different ones set up as our hosts. Well, I noticed that in just the short amount of time that this site has been up we have gotten over 300 visits and almost 900 total plays of our music. "If this were you would you all consider that to be something good?" I am always on the internet, when I am not in the studio, trying to promote our music and I found that although some of the plays that we have gotten come from all over the world and this country, most of them have been coming from right in our own backyard. My question is "What ideas can you all give me so that we can continue to build a fanbase locally and get people to take notice of our music?" I have decided to take about three songs from our current project and just hand them out as promotional tools for our summer album release, along with flyers letting people know who we are. When telling people about this idea I get mixed replies. Some say that it is a good idea, and others say that although it is a good idea I should charge money for the "sampler" and not just give it away. I realize that ultimately the decision on what to do rests with me, however, I would like to get some of our music out so that people will take notice and look for the album when we are ready to release it. "What are some of the things that you all have done to build that fanbase in your own local areas?" I find that there are a lot of artists in the area, and I would like to make my label and the artists who are with me stand out above the rest of the crowd. Any advice would be greatly appreciated as always.

BigTrey~President/CEO - BG Recordz
http://www.bgrecordz.com
http://www.tagworld.com/bgrecordz