Releasing your music on the bit torrent network for people to download can help get you some free publicity and I have a few tips for those who are starting to upload their own music through the torrent networks and sites such as The Pirate Bay that can help distribution and get people downloading your tracks.

• 1. Write a readme file and include information about any of your releases and where you can get them from, include web addresses, myspace accounts and any other way in which they can find out more about your music. Save this as a txt file so everyone can open it just by clicking on it.
• 2. Place a good track as the first one in the torrent by numbering them in the order you want them in. I’ve noticed that most people download the first track to see whether they like your music before downloading the rest of torrent, so make it a good one that shows off the style and quality of your music that you produce.
• 3. Make sure you can seed the torrent well and ask friends to help you seed it. Also encourage other people to seed for as long as possible in your descriptions and readme file. If you don’t want to leave your computer on over night, make sure you upload the torrents to these sites early in the day, so some other people can seed through the night to other locations around the world.
• 4. Describe your music to people by telling them the closest style of your music in the readme file and the descriptions on the torrent sites and even in the title of your torrent, try to go as broad a style as possible to get the most people downloading it. For example I used Electronica as my category. Also maybe give a few bands that your music sounds like, for example some of your musical influences.
• 5. Encourage people to distribute your tracks, tell people they can use your tracks for podcasts, youtube videos, radio stations etc as long as they credit you as the artist. Tell them that it’s legal to distribute for any free and uncommercial projects. You never know you might just get someone who wants to use your tracks on their popular podcast or radio station. It’s free exposure for your music.

Hopefully these quick tips I have learnt and thought about may go some way to helping you make the most of using torrents for promotion. If anyone has any other tips they think will be useful to others that should belong here, please add them to the comments of this post.

Article written for Rhythm Creation by Edward Cufaude