Frankly, it is hard to find a downside and we have tried. (God knows, we've tried!).

However, it will cost $35 plus the cost of five albums ($5), along with the cost of posting them to the US ($5), to find out if you are going to sell anything or not - and that means the first four albums sold will show little or no profit.

But after that - it is all profit - up to $10 per CD - and that beats anything you have ever earned from a mainstream label.

We do not recommend too many services, but this one is in our view, OK!

Although CD Baby does give your a sort of web presence, it is mainly a method of distributing your product, and not in itself a showcase of  everything you can do.

For that, you probably do need your own web site, but before we move away from CD Baby, let's have a quick butchers at its offshoot - Hostbaby - which you can find at http://www.hostbaby.com

HOSTBABY

First off, this is a complete service - and I do mean complete! Everything you could ever need on a web site, including your own e-mail list mailer, a concert calendar,  a guest book, a feedback form, auto-streaming audio, and much much more, is provided, and for a ridiculous low monthly price of just $20 (which equates roughly to just £11.50 sterling every 30 days).

So how does this all work? How simple is it to operate and what does it look like?
Well Hostbaby, claim that anybody can design and upload their first site in less than an hour, without any knowledge of computers simply by using the Hostbaby Wizard, so I thought I'd give it a try!

The Hostbaby Wizard opens a basic layout which starts by asking you some simple questions - such as your name and a slogan or title for your site (let's take "Jim Liddane - The Sound Of Soul" for example).

If "Jim Liddane" has not been registered, then I automatically get to become www.jimliddane.com - which is cute.

Following this, you get asked for contact information (e-mail address, phone numbers, postal address etc) so that your fans can contact you, before the Wizard moves on to the next item, the Calendar.

Now obviously, if you are a performer with the occasional booking, this is the chance to advertise your gigs on the web.  But if you are not performing live - you can simply omit this feature from your site, and shuffle on to the News/Journal section.

Here you can pen your own daily diary if you so wish, or simply bring your fans up to speed with the latest news about your songwriting and recording.

Next you get to upload your Graphics. These can be cartoons of yourself, the artwork from your CD, your band logo, or whatever. You do have to have these images on your computer already of course, but uploading them is child's play - simply click a button and your artwork is on the web.

This is followed by your Photo Gallery. Again, you must have the photos on your PC, but once you have, it is just a matter of clicking the button, and there you are for all the world to admire.

Next, you get to show off your Music!

First off, you are asked to name each song, list the performer, and (if you wish) print the lyrics. Then you  can upload the song itself.

The recording can be on a WAV, MP3 or FLAC file, and again of course, it has to be already on your computer. It also should be the full-length version but not to worry,  because you get to choose exactly how much you wish to make available.

For example, you can simply limit what the visitor can hear of each song you have uploaded by deciding how many seconds he gets to listen to. Not only that, but you can decide which part of the song he gets to hear (e.g. omit the intro - play just the chorus etc).

Alternatively, you can opt for allowing the visitor to listen to (but not download) he whole song on broadband (which is hi-fi) or the whole song on modem or low-fi. (Incidentally, you can also allow the song to be streamed - in other words, to be played continuously - if you so wish). Finally, you can permit the listener to download the whole song if you like.

The important thing to remember is that you are always in complete control of what your visitor can do, and like every other option available - you get it to happen simply by reading a question, and clicking an answer.

Now it is time to write your own biography, and this can be as long or as short as you wish.

Finally, you get to choose the design of your website - in other words the "look".
At this moment, they have about 40 different designs available - Hostbaby say they paid top website designers $25,000 for these templates - and some of them are remarkably good.

As you look through each design, you can click a button allowing you to see what your site would look like if you choose that layout, and you can further vary these layouts by changing such things as the colours, typefaces used etc.

Incidentally, you also get your own e-mail service included, so no need to use Yahoo, or Hotmail or AOL any more, and you get an impressive e-mail address - something like jim@jimliddane.com

Eventually (or 50 minutes later on my experiment), you get to click the magic word "Publish", and lo and behold, you are up there for all to admire (or indeed, mock).

Once up, you get a professional webserver logs showing every detail of people visiting your, site - how many hits per day, the most popular pages, what they were searching for at Google when they found you, what they downloaded, and more.

If you want to see some examples of what other writers have done using Hostbaby, try

http://ricksuchow.com

http://lindseykelly.com

http://chrisrichardsmusic.com

So, that's the bumf, but how does it rate?

Well, the sites generally look great, and for under £12 a month (which is after all, only 40p a day), this has to be great value. It is also so simple to get started. As long as you can type - you can generate a web site.

Like CD Baby, Hostbaby has been very thoroughly designed, to do what it says on the box, and do it without too much hassle.

I must say - I was impressed!

OTHER SITES

Up to now, we have looked at putting yourself on the web, selling your CDs through CD Baby, or setting up your own dedicated website via Hostbaby. But of course, there are so many other sites to put your songs om - so - let's surf!

Soundclick.com was established in 1967, and unlike CD Baby, it features both major signed acts such as Janet Jackson and Phil Collins, as well as new unsigned artists. At last count, it offered almost one and a half million songs for download, which makes it a very substantial operation indeed.
Soundclick's free services include

· artist page
· unlimited song uploads
· private message board
· gig calendar

while, if you pay a monthly fee of $9.95, you get additional features thrown in, such as flash page, ad-free, background radio, 320 kbps mp3 option, 40MB/song uploads, deep-linking etc.

Incidentally, they offer an extra service which promotes your site and your music, starting at $4.95 per month, but the important thing to remember is that if you like - you can simply pay nothing - upload your music, and take it from there.

Music must be in MP3 format - but not to worry - Soundclick offers free MusicMatch software, which converts your music to MP3 format, and is very simple.

Upside It is a well-organised, long-established site. It is also free, and the presence of name acts like Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel should attract more potential buyers than most download operations. It is also simple to get going and with a number of major labels working with the site - then if you get onto the Soundclick charts which are compiled on the number of people who log on to play your song - you may very well get noticed by a big player.

Downside It is not so much a commercial as a promotional site, so opportunities for making money directly are more limited although  there is a good shop facility.

Moyst.com is one of the newer sites which offers downloads for sale in both song and ringtone format.

This site is free to join, and each ringtone or song downloaded (which costs the music fan £1.50) earns you 20p. The more you sell, then the higher up the Moyst Unsigned chart you get, and on a weekly basis Moyst will submit the Top 10 to their database of record labels, publishers and management outfits.

Songs can be submitted in any form you wish, though obviously, if you want to submit on the web, you should have the material on MP3. However, unlike a lot of sites, Moyst accepts postal submissions also.

Upside You can make money from your songs, and if you are successful, your work will get noticed, and get promoted.

Downside At 20p a song, you will not get rich overnight, but as you have no overheads whatsoever - it is all profit.

TrackSeller.com offers writers who have a website, the opportunity of  enabling downloads of their songs via a third party.

TrackSeller charge no set-up costs, there are no monthly costs and no registration fees. You can register an unlimited number of songs and files with Trackseller at no cost and you can charge what you like, with TrackSeller taking just 11.5% for each real sale you make.

(Technically you do not even need a website of your own, because there is a search facility on the TrackSeller site which enables anybody who knows you have a song on the site, to look for it and but it directly).

Upside Free to join, and the percentage you get to keep (88.5%) is generous.

Downside We think you really do also need a separate website of your own. TrackSeller is possibly more suited for those who do not want the hassle of operating a download and cash-collecting system on their own site. It is not all that  simple to get started although TrackSeller claims you could have the first song up and available for sale in less than two hours.

Broadjam.com is closer to Hostbaby.com than any other site we've seen. It is not free, but for $19.95 a month, you can

• Sell your music downloads from your own website
• Use your own domain name (such as www.jimliddane.com)
• Host up to 250 songs with unlimited streaming
• Post 50 photos, 30 albums and 8 videos, and offer song downloads for sale at 99 cents each, of which you get to keep 80 cents.

Like Hostbaby,  you simply choose a template for their library, and off you go. The templates incidentally, are well-designed.

Continued