The idea is simple. Anyone with a video camera can get seen and heard. On YouTube, every minute, 10 hours of content is uploaded globally. And it is music bands, reveals YouTube, that are making more noise than other categories. In particular, Indian bands.

“More and more bands of Indian origin (based in India and outside) are using YouTube as a platform to get noticed,” says Sakina Arsiwala, international manager, YouTube. “While small-time musicians are looking for any kind of exposure and exploring all kinds of avenues online, established music artistes use it to be in direct dialogue with their fans.”

The growth rate across all categories “is very healthy” and although YouTube will not quantify it, the online video-sharing site had more than 200 million unique users worldwide in October 2007, according to Comscore.

The benefits of getting heard online are plenty. “Earlier, time and energy were spent trying to convince record companies to sign them. Here, artistes have an audience space. That’s the kind of leverage budding musicians enjoy,” says Arsiwala.

For musicians in the making, added visibility may be the biggest factor. For others, it is a growing fan base and generating new online advertising revenue streams or even releasing music albums online. “I have people from Brazil commenting on my band’s videos and when you think about the global reach public portals have, it’s amazing,” says Allan Ao, lead guitarist of band Cactus. “After we did the song for Anurag Basu’s television drama Love Story, we made a trip to Delhi for a concert and were surprised by the number of people who had heard about us there, all thanks to the videos up on YouTube,” adds Ao.

Even record companies are moving away from the old conventional ways of finding new voices. “We have a contest in the offing where music lovers can put their videos online and people will be invited to vote for them on YouTube,” says Nitin Shetty, head of operations, Phat Phish, which has its own channel on the site.

Other video-sharing sites like MySpace and Last.fm are doing equally well. Calcutta band Span member Neel Adhikari has been using Myspace for two months now. “I started my own page because I saw how easy it was for people to listen to new bands and new songs. There are two reasons why an artiste would feature his music on a video-site. One is because there are record deals in the offing and someone wants a demo. The other is because you need a purpose to create music, and MySpace becomes that purpose,” says Adhikari. “It’s great when you wake up one day and see there has been ‘40 listens’ of your song,” he adds. His page has been viewed by 1,100 people already.

Another reason why YouTube is being used as a marketing tool is because of its reach. It allows embedding on third-party sites. And, it’s not just the music videos that are making all the noise.

Behind-the-scenes content and live footage also find their way up the digital ladder. Like Paul McCartney, who consistently uploads music videos and exclusive backstage footage. He even created a group for Nod Your Head music videos (Nod Your Head is the closing track of his 2007 album Memory Almost Full), which now has 71 videos and 466 members — an example of how stars engage their audience on YouTube.