We could probably list about 100 places in a list of places to upload your music to, but unless you have a dedicated promotional team working for you then you're not going to have much time available to keep 100 different sites updated with your latest news and latest tracks. So what 10 places are nearly essential in having a web presence for your music. From our experience we have gained the most listeners from this list of 10 sites and therefore we believe they are a must for uploading your tracks. They are in no particular order.

• SoundCloud - This site has some great looking widgets which allow you to paste your tracks elsewhere and we especially love the comment system where you can comment on a specific point in a track. Upload upto 10 tracks on a standard free account. If you want more you have to pay. But the amounts for a free account are pretty decent.
• ReverbNation - While you cannot directly upload your music on Facebook, by using ReverbNation you can easily post your music to your Facebook account using their Facebook Apps. You will probably get some listeners through ReverbNation too and get to use lots of their cool features.
• TheSixtyOne - Upload your music and the name of the track stays hidden for 24 hours. Members of the site will spend their credits on liking your track, if lots of members like your track you're going to get on the front page. This site is a great way to get listeners and ultimately new fans.
• OurStage - Upload your music into their monthly contest and you will be paired up randomly with other tracks for people to vote on which one they like the best. More votes get you to the top of the leaderboard and ultimately to win prizes at the end of the month.
• Jamendo - This site lists tracks that have been released under a Creative Commons license, if you've made yourself an album there's no reason why you can't upload a few tracks to promote your other music. Maybe place some of your older tracks on there to draw in some new fans.
• MySpace - I doubt that anyone with an internet connection hasn't come across this site. It is almost essential to have a web presence here. Upload your tracks into the MySpace player, design your page and keep the MySpace blog updated with important news about your music.
• Imeem - Create an artist account here and you can upload your tracks into their huge database of music. It is also a very social site allowing people to share music with each other.
• Last.fm - People who have the Last.fm application installed can share with friends what they've been listening to, but if you sign up for an account you can upload your music and it will appear on your artist page and be discovered when people search for similar musicians to ones that they already like.
• SoundClick - Upload your music to the SoundClick community and you'll be placed into the charts for each genre, you'll also get an artist page to link to your other social network accounts.
• iLike - Allows you to upload your music and more, apparently there is 50 million people using the service so it's a place you can't ignore. Also allows you to paste your music into Facebook like ReverbNation does above.

We know there are more sites out there to upload your music, but these 10 are our choice if you haven't got the time to upload to them all. So go get uploading your music and gaining new listeners and fans.

If you want lots more sites to upload to, check out the site Uploading My Music.

As a musician you will probably want to keep your hearing in tip top condition, but sometimes all that clubbing, going to concerts and general listening to loud music can take it's toll on your ears and as a musician your ears have probably taken some damage.

Today I found a nice little application in the iTunes app store which allows you to test your hearing straight from an iPhone or iPod touch and it seems to work pretty well. Currently the app is available for free (it was paid for very recently) and is called uHear. I thought I would post about this because as a music producer, I think the results can be applied when creating mix downs and it is nice to know how well your ears are functioning anyway.

The app is split up into 3 sections as listed below.

• Hearing Sensitivity (Takes 6 minutes) - Assesses your ability to hear at different frequencies. It does this by playing certain frequencies over and over at different volume levels At the end it gives you a little graph displaying your hearing abilities over different frequency ranges.
• Speech in Noise (Takes 1 minute) - This test measures your comfort level for understanding speech in the presence of noise. It gets you to set the volume of some audio of a someone speaking and then you lift up the background noise until you can just about hear the words clearly.
• Questionaire (Takes 2 minutes) - A simple questionaire that just asks you questions about your hearing, this section is not that interesting as the top two but good if you think you might have hearing loss.

Why Is This Useful To Musicians

I thought that the Hearing Sensitivity test is the most interesting test as it gives you some good details about the frequency range of your hearing for each ear. Here are my results for this test...

My results found a few problems in the lower frequencies, I'm in my mid 20s and according to this app I am experiencing some mild to moderate loss already. Firstly this makes me want to look after my ears a bit more (I admit I do listen to loud headphones and rarely think about the consequences). Secondly it makes me think about how I can apply this new knowledge about my ears frequency response to my music production.

If the app is correct and I am experiencing this slight loss in the lower frequencies, should I compensate for it when I am producing a mix down of a track? Am I turning up the bass sounds and lower frequencies in my tracks too high for people who are experiencing less loss of hearing compared to me? Maybe I should be slightly reduce these low frequencies in my mixes to compensate?

The only problem I can think of with this app is that the results will vary slightly depending on the headphones you use. Therefore make sure you do the test again on a different set of headphones. This is also a nice way to test the frequency response (to your ear) of any headphones you have.

Anyway I thought it was a nice test and worth a mention on here as it is a good thing for any musician to know about as they might be able to apply this new knowledge in their mix downs. It's also a free app too, so there is nothing to lose and it might make you look after your ears more too.

uHear website
iTunes Link to uHear
YouTube Video on App