The web is changing the way musicians are marketed, and the way artists and fans connect. If you are in a band or into music merchandise, you need to check out Tunipop. Currently in beta, Tunipop bills itself as “the online source for discovering all forms of music-related fan gear and interacting with other members.”

Tunipop is not a retail outlet or a source for CDs, DVDs or digital downloads. Rather, Tunipop strives to help fans easily find official sources of available music merchandise like T-shirts and posters. It also helps artists market their fan gear more effectively.

The Merchandise Resources section directly links artists to apparel printing, on-tour merchandise and fan club management services, just to name a few.

The site will soon have about 5,000 pages of content which will mainly consist of artist listings within Tunipop’s Go2Merch directory. Coldplay, Elvis Costello, Alicia Keys and the Beastie Boys are some of the artists represented. Tunipop will eventually grow this directory through user-generated artist listings.

Future site enhancements include a syndicated blog, news, links and feature sections. A mobile version of the site is also in the works.

Tunipop wants to be a player in a $6 billion global market. They appear to have some traction, having beaten MySpace to the punch thanks to MySpace’s decision to delay their music merchandise push until later this year.

Tunipop has an interesting angle worth exploring, so check out the site or watch for it on your favorite band’s MySpace or Facebook page