STEREOKILLER: YET ANOTHER PLACE TO PIMP YOUR BAND

With the demise of MySpace — and, let’s face it, the constant shittiness of that platform to begin with — the market has begun to fill up with alternatives designed to help bands pimp their wares.  You probably already know Stereokiller for their music premieres, myriad reviews, forums, and social networking profiles, but the long-standing metal site has just introduced brand new custom band profiles.

A few weeks ago I wrote a lengthy missive on why bands and record labels should stop using MySpace in favor of the much sexier, sleeker and efficient BandCamp, and I definitely stand by that. Lots of bands and labels have been using Soundcloud lately, as I’m sure you’ve all seen from some of the embeds we’ve been posting. Soundcloud is a bare-bones platform with even less visual clutter than Bandcamp and some really neat sharing and social features, although from what I can tell it doesn’t offer the music sales platform that Bandcamp does (although feel free to correct me here; I haven’t researched it extensively). ReverbNation is yet another music delivery platform, and while band profiles on that site display plenty of information they just always seem cluttered to me and I find the aesthetic unappealing.

Enter Stereokiller’s new custom band profiles.They include embeddable music players, the ability to “Become a Fan,” messaging, downloading, a blog for updates, show listings, a tab for videos and more. Basically it’s like MySpace without all the ridiculous visual garbage and clutter and with one uniform layout, and  best of all it actually works. Fancy that. Check out a sample profile to give it a spin.

The one thing that Bandcamp has over Stereokiller is the ability to sell downloads at any price (or free, or “pay what you choose”). Maybe Stereokiller will work that into a future version, but for now there’s no reason not to sign your band up. Do it.

-VN