What happens when you combine social networking with marketing, life-streaming, and an upcoming album release? You get a carefully laid out strategy for marketing a band online. You also get the premise behind the Republic Project, a new site touting a new model for artists to connect with their fans.

Emerging from private beta this week, the Republic Project allows artists to post pre-album content for marketing purposes with the ability for fans to pre-order content online. There’s a heavy emphasis on video, as artists can create life-streams of the album-making process, or a series of videos detailing their tours. In this way, fans become a part of the entire process surrounding the creation of the album, giving them more reason to become vested emotionally and monetarily in the finished LP.

This is a tactic that has been utilized by artists and music labels for a couple of years now, but the ability to do so required a team and a succinct marketing ploy that outlined the various social media sites required to create a cohesive and effective strategy. The Republic Project has combined several aspects of unique social media marketing methods in order to provide a DIY approach for artists.

The Republic Project is open to any artist, and artists can charge anywhere between $2.99 to $9.99 for their albums. Artists can sell individual songs as well. Content is made available in DRM-free MP3 format, which can be downloaded by fans. The Republic Project makes money by charging the fans a flat service fee of $1.99.

Conceptually, I like the potential of the Republic Project. I think it’s important for bands to find more ways in which they can engage fans and turn that into revenue. However, the commitment required for bands to maintain the content they would post on the site can be a daunting task and the lack of automated features for the redistribution of the content makes it that much more time consuming.

Including some additional integration with other social media sites would make it easier for both artists and fans to better leverage the larger social web for the purpose of pre-album marketing. This would ultimately lead to larger revenue-generation for the bands.

What is most interesting to me is the way in which the Republic Project will play out in the changing world of digital music sales and marketing. We’re seeing the emergence of a few new models for bands and artists to try out, working on both marketing and direct sales tactics. Major labels are easing up on their willingness to experiment with such models, giving them a wider range of options for future renditions of digital music.

As we’ve seen with Amie St., there is a growing need to put more control into the hands of both the artists and the fans when it comes to the sales and marketing aspects of digital music. Time will tell which format works best for all parties involved, but a think there will be multiple formats that find their way to the forefront of the digital music revolution.