Pirate Bay has always been under fire from record executives and big name studios in Hollywood because of the supposed harm it does unto their business, but it seems that independent artists and musicians beg to disagree. TorrentFreak is reporting that almost 5000 independent artists have signed up to be promoted by the world’s largest torrent site, with the exposure given to them creating a large boost in name recognition.

Of course this being Pirate Bay, the promotion comes with a price – the artists need to offer something in return (an album or whatever) for their prospective audience. George Barnett, an artist who signed up for the promotion service when the Torrent site rolled it out earlier this year, says that he has experienced a boost in fans – 4,000 new Facebook fans and over 85,000 views for his video.

During an interview with TorrentFreak, Pirate Bay’s Winston said that the promotion has been a huge success. “Thus far we’ve done 14 regular campaigns in 3 countries each and 8 worldwide promotions. When we started the project the plan was to do a few worldwide promotions a year, but the submissions have been too good. So now we’re gonna do the worldwide promos every weekend and some regulars every now and then.”

This new type of distribution and discovery changes the rules somewhat. Before, artists had to rely on studios and big name labels to get their name out in the wild, today independent artists who don’t want to sign with major labels and compromise their integrity now have a bigger and better tool to market themselves. The rules for discovering and promoting music and videos are changing – and a torrent site is leading the way. Who’da thunk it?

Source: Torrent Freak