This post was authored by FMC intern Danny Weiss. Full video after the jump.

We’re fast approaching the time of year for reflection. What was great in 2011? What’s going to rock our world in 2012? With that in mind, we thought we could take a look back — and forward — at some startups aiming to give artists new tools to navigate an evolving digital marketplace.  

At the 2011 Future of Music Policy Summit, we gave four innovative startups a platform to present their services and pitch them to a panel of artists and stakeholders. The informative (and often hilarious) presentations showcased solutions that would hopefully make the lives of musicians less complicated.

Musician and designer collaboration platform Creative Allies featured new ways for artists to tap into their fan base and crowdsource creative projects like poster and t-shirt designs. A presentation from Tracktrack.it founder Phil McCarty highlighted the new service’s ability to watermark audio files, facilitate online artist collaboration and prevent premature album leaks. Facebook plug-in RootMusic (the makers of widely used and loved BandPage) and interactive image service Thinglink both seek to give artists new ways to monetize their online presence. Check out the presentations and panel discussion below or over on Vimeo.

In addition to the services featured at Summit, we’re excited about a couple of other platforms that musicians can use to take care of digital business.

CASH Music is a nonprofit org that provides free open source code to musicians, helping them bolster their online presence with beautifully written and robust code for email lists, tour dates, social feeds and more: “What Wordpress did for bloggers, we’re doing for musicians. We’re building a free and open platform that’s available to all artists, designed in partnership with the artists and labels who are members of our organization.” Go follow CASH lead @JesseVonDoom on twitter — he’s the man.

Vibedeck also provides free resources to musicians to create customizable landing pages and monetize their content on a variety of platforms. Ranging from Soundcloud and YouTube to WordPress and Facebook, Vibedeck’s free service makes selling music online simple and does so at no additional charge to the artist. 

We think 2012 will be a banner year for start-ups focused on helping musicians help themselves. Got an app or service we should know about? Tell us in the comments below.