Torrent platforms endorse artists, bundle their album with downloads

Torrent site uTorrents has started to backing an artist called PAZ and is bundling every download with his album. It is not the first site to do so. The Pirate Bay, Frostwire and Vodo have all started small scale promotional work. TPB, for example, regularly promotes artists on their homepage.

More and more artists conduct in experiments using torrent platforms to get exposure for their products. Torrent portals can be a good way for bands without the backing of a label to spread their music and make their claim to fame.

The vast majority of indie artists that try their luck posting their songs on file-sharing networks are hardly downloaded, as they receive little or no promotion. Marketing artists has been the traditional strength of the labels. It appears that some of the torrent portals are trying to fill that void.

Speaking to Torrentfreak, Bittorrent spokesperson Jenna Broughton says: “There is a group of creators out there who are interested in using new distribution methods to reach a very large and engaged audience online. So, we are excited to continue working with creators who want to develop business models that work in today’s digital age and leverage the power of the BitTorrent platform.”

As a potential marketing channel, uTorrent indeed has some power to leverage. Each month, its client is downloaded hundreds of thousands of people. It is good to see torrent portals shifting to more legitimate actions. Acting in this way, torrent portals may perform a function of a gatekeeper, helping to filter new talent from the large crowd of new artists. It is likely that once the initial word is spread, the emerging starlets will sign up with the labels for the offline side of their business.