If you play in a band today, having a strong online presence is of the utmost importance. More and more people are looking to the internet for their primary source for discovering new music. Thanks to the internet, the playing field between signed and unsigned bands has been leveled and you no longer need a million dollar marketing budget to influence large numbers of people around the world. With good marketing skills, some knowledge of Photoshop, and some good old-fashioned hard work, your band can reach millions of potential fans by harnessing the power of the Internet.

The key lies in promoting your band in the right places, and it’s not always easy with the seemingly endless stack of websites offering MP3 hosting, free promotional services, and promising to give your band all the exposure in the world. Sorting out this mess and trying to figure out which ones are worth it and which ones aren’t can take quite some time. While signing up to as many sites as possible will benefit your band, I’ve sorted through the garbage and selected the top 7 websites your band should participate in, at least.

My space (myspace.com) – With more than 250 million users and growing daily, MySpace is the world’s largest social networking site. It’s almost a requirement for your band to have a MySpace page. In fact, many popular bands are promoting their MySpace pages more than their official websites. Also, fans are now more likely to visit a band’s MySpace page instead of their official website for news updates, photos, music, and more.

Facebook (facebook.com) – Very close to MySpace in terms of having an incredibly large volume of users. Although it’s a little less music-oriented than MySpace, there’s no reason why your band shouldn’t be a part of a website that has over 150 million users. Facebook offers many services for artists that make it easy and simple for them to update their followers. Many indie bands overlook the benefits of being on Facebook, don’t be one of them.

ReverbNation (reverbnation.com) – This highly underrated website has a wide variety of features ranging from mailing lists to distribution services. Although Reverb Nation is not as popular as some of the other music sites, it ranks as one of the top ones due to its ability to grow. You would be hard pressed to find another website that is willing to share half of its ad revenue with its artists. Remember what I tell you; THIS is the format of future record labels with the crash of CDs and the rise of shared music. Get on board with these guys right now!

imem (imeem.com) – Another great social networking site that allows users to upload their favorite music, videos, blogs, photos and more. With 25 million visitors a month and 65,000 new registrations a day, it’s important for your band to become part of this growing community. They have also struck deals with major record labels to share ad revenue with them, opening up the possibilities of future ad revenue sharing with independent artists.

Last FM (last.fm)- With more than 21 million users and hot on the heels of Imeem, Last.fm is one of the largest communities of music fans on the Internet. With Last.fm you can set up your own radio station and add your music to other stations on the website. The site even helps independent musicians by recommending their music to people based on their current taste in national acts. This is a great way to tap into national acts to gain new listeners!

I like (ilike.com) – iLike is a highly interconnected website that links to many other social websites like MySpace, Facebook, Bebo and more. iLike is used in conjunction with many other companies and applications such as Apple’s iTunes. Once you post your music on iLike, you can manage your presence on Facebook, Ask.com, Orkut, Bebo, Hi5, and more. Over 200,000 of today’s leading artists use iLike to manage their web presence, so join us and see what they can do for your band.

PureVolume (purevolume.com) – PureVolume has been one of the leaders in music hosting since 2003. The site contains mostly rock bands, but all genres are welcome. They offer a paid Pro service that in my opinion is not worth it, but you have to take advantage of the free version.

While this list only includes the top 7, your search for free internet deals should never stop. My band was involved in MySpace in the early days of the website’s development. I could never have seen MySpace grow to astronomical proportions all those years ago, so I’m glad I was in on it in the beginning! Spend your time researching promotional sites and sign up for as many as possible. You never know what the next MySpace will be, and having your band’s name on as many websites as possible will improve your credibility, search rankings, and popularity. Get to work!