NoiseTrade Enables Artist Interaction and Perks for Fans

Illegal file sharing and music downloading have been ongoing issues for years. Developing technologies and programs have made it easy for the average person to download music for personal use without the consent of the artist, regardless of legality or ethicality. However, online entities exist where one can find and legally download a variety of music. NoiseTrade is one such safe haven for music-lovers.

By its own admission, NoiseTrade is a win-win deal — as their website says, “Fans get free music. Artists connect with new fans. Everybody wins.”

Artists can sign up with the program and upload their music to the NoiseTrade website. Fans can then download that music for free, whether it’s a single song or an entire album.

“The biggest benefit is actually for the artists — for marketability and audience expansion,” said Daniel Nelson, a sophomore Cedarville student who said he has been finding music with NoiseTrade for about two years.

And he’s right. NoiseTrade helps artists to distribute music online so their fans can then promote it. The site sends fans’ e-mail addresses and postal codes to the artists so they can inform and get to know their fans. The website also offers a donation system through which fans can support their favorite artists monetarily.

However, artists aren’t the only ones who benefit from NoiseTrade; fans get some serious perks, too — free music.

A freshman at Cedarville, Jillian Philyaw, who subscribes to the site’s newsletter, said she checks out bands on the site that she thinks she might like and has found many new artists through that process.

Some of the popular downloads on NoiseTrade right now are from artists such as The Civil Wars, Jenny and Tyler, Five Iron Frenzy, Great Lake Swimmers, Andrew Bird, and Trip Lee. Yet one of the great things about NoiseTrade is the plethora of unknown artists with talent just waiting to be discovered.

“I found multiple new artists,” Nelson said, “and it’s given me a lot more access to the underground markets, which I think are often better.”

Fans get free music. Artists connect with new fans. With NoiseTrade, everybody wins.