Web gives pop artists one more venue

You may not have heard Geoff Byrd singing on the radio. But on the Internet, he’s a star.

As a fledgling pop artist, it’s difficult for him to get radio airplay, especially at a time when “urban music” and hip-hop are what top the charts.

So he posted his music on GarageBand.com, a San Francisco-based Web site that allows independent artists to distribute their music for free.

Byrd has had four No. 1 hits on the listener-rated music site, helping him develop a fan base. He has been hired for several gigs and received queries from scouts for major record labels and film directors. And he signed a contract with an independent label.

GarageBand.com started in 1999 as a record label but went bust in early 2002. Since its revival in its current form, it has more than a half-million registered users and a catalog of well over 200,000 songs.

College and Internet radio stations pull music from GarageBand.com. In an agreement with Microsoft, the site’s top artists are featured and sold on MSN Music. GarageBand has also placed some of its popular artists on Apple’s competing iTunes digital music Web site.

GarageBand added podcast technology this spring, allowing artists new ways to reach listeners. Users can have music or messages from favorite bands automatically downloaded, or podcast, to their digital music players.

And amateur deejays can assemble podcast “radio” shows that are like “what radio used to be,” says Tamara Conniff, executive editor of Billboard magazine.

“You’d listen to a deejay you related to and he would play cool new music,” Conniff says. “Radio is not like that anymore.”