The traditional process of marketing a band's new release can cost PR companies working for major record labels an extremely large amount of money, as the merit and potential profit to be gleamed from an artist's new album will go to waste if it does not gain enough exposure to its target market/audience. Press coverage (in suitable genre magazines or newspapers), radio airplay (again, on appropriately genre-focused radio stations) and advertisements on television, radio and posters can all help promote awareness of the new LP. At the time of writing this, the clearest example of a successful marketing campaign of a major artist is for Paul Weller's newest release, 'Sonik Kicks' (Island Records/UMG), which has permeated through print, poster, radio and television adverts as well as reviews in national newspapers to wide public awareness.
However, that procedure of promotion has been changed dramatically in the internet age. Professional websites and social media involvement, as well as digital distribution services such as iTunes, Bandcamp, Soundcloud, Myspace and Facebook mean that music has become incredibly accessible. Thus advertising has begun favouring digital (eg banner adverts on Vevo channels) rather than print mechanisms, and focusing on fan interaction whilst keeping traditional promotional methods (such as posters and radio commercials) as a secondary, low-key factor, particularly if the label is unwilling to pay for a large scale campaign.
Through digital means, the promotion of new music in the online world has become increasingly cheap and easy, such as viral campaigns, spreading through the word of mouth social network. The most famous example of this is OK GO's (a band much celebrated for their ingenious music videos) treadmill video for 'Here It Goes Again', which propelled the band to fame through a simple low-budget video uploaded to YouTube. This demonstrated how home made videos can propel small acts to worldwide fame without the wide scale, corporate-led marketing procedure.
However, for non-mainstream acts, the problem is not protecting their product from piracy, but the predicament of obscurity. Whereas some bands turn to excessive touring to get their name 'out there' in a very physical way, free social media (such as Facebook) can be used to connect with the target audience, songs can be provided for free (through websites like Bandcamp), and thanks to the reduction of costs in hardware and software needed for filming a music video (promoted/released on YouTube), it is now possible for a song to reach fame without spending very much at all.
