Taking Music on the Internet by Storm! How it All Started.... It was a dark and stormy night.... Okay, so it wasn't so dark, and it wasn't so stormy. But Midnight Rain Productions and it's project web site, RainMusic.com did come about as a result of the stormy persistence of one independent musician, pianist David Nevue. In 1995, Nevue created what would now be considered a generic web site to sell his solo piano music. Although he found little success at first, he became determined to find a better way to introduce his music to new customers. This resulted in a new site in 1996 called PianoForte, a pianist resource center designed to introduce a pre-targeted audience to Nevue's music. This site was a moderate success, and sales improved. Throughout 1996, Nevue continued to experiment with marketing strategies until he stumbled upon an idea that generated several CD orders in a single week. For the next few months Nevue continued to refine this idea, combining it with other promotion techniques to in effort to determine what combinations worked best. By the fall of 1997, CD sales were coming in at a regular pace. After two years of trial, error, and experimentation, Nevue's music promotion strategies had proven themselves. David was selling dozens of CDs online each month. Knowing his promotion ideas could save other musicians a great deal of time, effort and money, Nevue wrote and published How to Promote Your Music Successfully on the Internet, a guide to internet music promotion that he continues to update twice per year. By late 2000, the RainMusic.com project expanded to include The Music Biz Academy, a web site Nevue developed to help other musicians find success online, as well as the Free Sheet Music Guide a means of targeting piano music lovers. The latter web site receives over a half-million page view per month. Other active projects include MusicDistribution.com, and GetSheetMusic.com. Today, Nevue continues to build on his online music success. He quit his day job in November of 2001, and now spends his days (and sometimes nights) developing his music, his online business, and of course spending time with his family. David Nevue's music is now heard by thousands of new listeners every day - all via the Internet. Nevue is just one more example of how, in today's digital world, an artist does NOT need a major label recording contract to have a successful carreer as a musician. Home