Update! I have begun to receive spam to the dedicated email address which I had provided to Artistopia. Since this is the ONLY site that I used that specific email address for, this is the only site that could have allowed it to be compromised. They either sold my address to spammers, or allowed it to be leaked. AVOID them like the plague, unless you like spam in your inbox. My original review is below.

Artistopia is another music site offering limited free band profiles, with the option of upgrading (at a cost) to a full profile with enhanced features. The free account allows up to three tracks and three photos, and your profile is supported by numerous ads. The site (and profiles) aren't much to look at - it feels a little dated. The band directory can be browsed by genre, but not by sub-genre. They actually list the subgenres, but I could not figure out a way to browse by them. So if you are involved in electronic music, for example, you will be lumped in with every other artist who happens to play a keyboard... from bubble-gum synthpop acts, to techno ravers and gritty grinding industrialists.

Their terms and conditions are very vague - there is no mention of any distribution rights, or cancellation clauses. All it really covers is their lack of responsibility with-regards to site access, and of course the obligatory release from liability should they get sued for any copyright infringement. I was a little leery to sign up with such an open-ended set of terms. What kind of rights are we assigning them as artists if we upload our music? Their privacy policy states that they don't collect and share visitor information, but doesn't mention whether they sell or share personal information submitted by bands. Hmmm...

Registration requires that you choose a username and password, submit your personal contact information, and confirm your email address. Once you confirm, you can start updating your artist profile. After adding my biography info, it returned me back to the "My Console" page, and then everything froze for a second. Something on the page triggered a new window in Internet Explorer (I generally use Mozilla), and the Artistopia page on Myspace loaded into it. Maybe I accidentally clicked on a link to it while the page was frozen - I'm not sure. Just as I was closing out the unwanted new window in Explorer, I got notification that my anti-virus program detected the Win32/PolyCrypt virus. What the heck? I don't know if it was Myspace or Artistopia or just a false warning, but it didn't make me feel very warm and fuzzy inside.

I sent it to the virus vault and continued on my journey to update my Artistopia profile. Uploading music requires that you first add an album. You can't just upload individual tracks, unless you associate them first with a fake release. The form asks for an "album number". I'm not exactly sure what they are asking for, so I tried to put in the label's catalog number, but the field is limited to three digits. So I just put in "1", as in the first album I added to Artistopia. I have no idea if that is what they are asking for.

Once your album has been added, you can upload the front cover, back cover, and "disc cover". I don't know if by "disc cover" they are referring to the art on the disc face, or the traycard. I just uploaded the front cover and left it at that. To upload songs to your profile, you first enter the detailed song info. I was surprised to see them ask for the actual sub-genre of the track, since earlier I had found no way to browse by sub-genre. Uploading my track took a couple of minutes and there was no progress bar to indicate how far along the upload was. They also didn't provide any sort of guidance for the bit rate or quality of the song to be uploaded, so I went ahead and added it at the basic 128kbps. That's lower quality than I usually like to distribute my music at, but I figured with their vague terms of service, I felt a little more comfortable giving them a lower quality MP3 to exploit.

Overall, I'm having a hard time seeing the benefit of registering for their "Professional Indie" plan at a cost of about $100 a year. It provides several bonus features that are supposed to help you further promote your act, but I'm not convinced that driving additional traffic to a profile as lack-lustre as my Artistopia page is going to lead in a high rate of fan conversion. I'm already more impressed with the interface and flexibility of free sites like Virb and ArtistServer. None-the-less, a free band profile is a free band profile and Artistopia is another valid channel for attracting new fans, even if it leaves out some of the bells and whistles found at the Web 2.0 music sites.