I'll make you famous. No, wait! You make me famous! Can we do that instead?
November 14, 2011 7:18 AM Subscribe
What have you liked enough about your digital music distribution choice to recommend it to others?
I would like to make some music available, and am sorting through some of the options. We don't play live, so I'm not convinced a model where you pay upfront/monthly would be right for us without sustained promotion.
I should note that making money is secondary for us. It's more important to us to make the music as widely available as possible.
I think the ideal model would be to purchase ourband.com and set it up with sharing widgets, links to videos, and a pay-what-you-want mechanism. Songs either would be available for download (as well as streaming) on the site, or streamed on the site and available for download through something like Rapidshare? We have a couple of Kickstarter-style incentives (bonus tracks, color prints of EP artwork, even though no physical disc is planned at this time) we could send to anyone who donated enough.
Downside is, I don't know anything about doing any of that, past uploading videos to Youtube. So any reassurances or warnings regarding the difficulty of any of that -- as well as information about cost of hosting/payment processing/domain/etc. -- would be appreciated.
Option B seems to be Bandcamp or something like it. We could follow up with higher-paying pay-what-you-wanters via e-mail for bonus tracks and artwork. They get you your URL, they host ... it seems pretty attractive. Looks like you can embed widgets, although it's not clear whether you could put text before some of them so it's not just a group of buttons. Looks like you pay 20 percent of sales for the privelege, including paypal's fee. This seems like it would be pricier than the first option but easier, obviously. But I have no idea how much pricier it would be.
A third option would seem to be the Tunecore family, where you pay something small up front and usually another fee monthly, but get 100 percent of royalties. I haven't signed up, so I can't seem to see what artists' pages look like regarding links and widgets. Probably you get more per song/EP/LP via this model -- I think you get something like 60-70 cents per track -- but I'm leery of the fixed price. I'd rather someone have the option to pay us a smaller amount but actually download the music, and then hopefully share it, than try to figure out whether they want to pay the same for our song that they would for Lady Gaga's. Being on iTunes and Amazon and Spotify is appealing, but anyone likely to find us there, I'd think, would already know about us.
And then there are the other models I don't know anything about. And other ideas for promotion I haven't considered.
Any guidance on this would be much appreciated.
I would like to make some music available, and am sorting through some of the options. We don't play live, so I'm not convinced a model where you pay upfront/monthly would be right for us without sustained promotion.
I should note that making money is secondary for us. It's more important to us to make the music as widely available as possible.
I think the ideal model would be to purchase ourband.com and set it up with sharing widgets, links to videos, and a pay-what-you-want mechanism. Songs either would be available for download (as well as streaming) on the site, or streamed on the site and available for download through something like Rapidshare? We have a couple of Kickstarter-style incentives (bonus tracks, color prints of EP artwork, even though no physical disc is planned at this time) we could send to anyone who donated enough.
Downside is, I don't know anything about doing any of that, past uploading videos to Youtube. So any reassurances or warnings regarding the difficulty of any of that -- as well as information about cost of hosting/payment processing/domain/etc. -- would be appreciated.
Option B seems to be Bandcamp or something like it. We could follow up with higher-paying pay-what-you-wanters via e-mail for bonus tracks and artwork. They get you your URL, they host ... it seems pretty attractive. Looks like you can embed widgets, although it's not clear whether you could put text before some of them so it's not just a group of buttons. Looks like you pay 20 percent of sales for the privelege, including paypal's fee. This seems like it would be pricier than the first option but easier, obviously. But I have no idea how much pricier it would be.
A third option would seem to be the Tunecore family, where you pay something small up front and usually another fee monthly, but get 100 percent of royalties. I haven't signed up, so I can't seem to see what artists' pages look like regarding links and widgets. Probably you get more per song/EP/LP via this model -- I think you get something like 60-70 cents per track -- but I'm leery of the fixed price. I'd rather someone have the option to pay us a smaller amount but actually download the music, and then hopefully share it, than try to figure out whether they want to pay the same for our song that they would for Lady Gaga's. Being on iTunes and Amazon and Spotify is appealing, but anyone likely to find us there, I'd think, would already know about us.
And then there are the other models I don't know anything about. And other ideas for promotion I haven't considered.
Any guidance on this would be much appreciated.
Best answer: I've had a good time distribute using Tunecore for iTunes (worldwide) and Amazon MP3. Fixed yearly cost, and I get 50p (I'm in the UK; iTunes tracks are 79p over here) per download.
I've also used Record Union, but only for Spotify distribution. They take 5% of your revenue, but as Spotify effectively pays you nothing at all, they're taking five percent of zero, so that's fine.
I've heard good things about VibeDeck, though, and I reckon they might fit your criteria perfectly.
posted by armoured-ant at 7:53 AM on November 14, 2011 [1 favorite]
I've also used Record Union, but only for Spotify distribution. They take 5% of your revenue, but as Spotify effectively pays you nothing at all, they're taking five percent of zero, so that's fine.
I've heard good things about VibeDeck, though, and I reckon they might fit your criteria perfectly.
posted by armoured-ant at 7:53 AM on November 14, 2011 [1 favorite]
As a consumer I love to see a Bandcamp page because I assume that when I buy music there a decent portion of the proceeds actually go to the artist. I will deliberately choose to buy there over iTunes when possible.
However, I can't deny the ease of use of iTunes and I like what Jairus mentioned above. If there's no restriction on putting the music in two places at once then I think that's the way to go.
posted by komara at 8:00 AM on November 14, 2011 [1 favorite]
However, I can't deny the ease of use of iTunes and I like what Jairus mentioned above. If there's no restriction on putting the music in two places at once then I think that's the way to go.
posted by komara at 8:00 AM on November 14, 2011 [1 favorite]
Best answer: Past a certain sales threshold, Bandcamp actually lowers its split. They are very easy to use, though I can't--for the life of me--figure out why they haven't yet enabled a mass upload feature.
A group that I volunteer for recently did the Kickstarter thing and had a great run with it. They ran with the idea by adding Google Checkout buttons to their site at various levels ($5, $10, $25... etc, w/ rewards) and then set up a password-protected subdomain on their site, which contained the tracks and some bonus goodies. They added approved users on a per-day basis. It is a solution that can be built and hacked together, but it isn't easy at all.
Though I haven't personally used TuneCore, Trent Reznor has. Here is his glowing review, but I'm not sure if it's 100% what you want to do.
And I'd very firmly and strongly recommend that you host your own album on your own site at first... do not deal w/ Rapidshare/Megaupload etc. The right web-host will be able to help you with password-protecting directories and uploading files, even if it just seems like it's trivial. And, of course, we're here too. :)
posted by raihan_ at 8:25 AM on November 14, 2011
A group that I volunteer for recently did the Kickstarter thing and had a great run with it. They ran with the idea by adding Google Checkout buttons to their site at various levels ($5, $10, $25... etc, w/ rewards) and then set up a password-protected subdomain on their site, which contained the tracks and some bonus goodies. They added approved users on a per-day basis. It is a solution that can be built and hacked together, but it isn't easy at all.
Though I haven't personally used TuneCore, Trent Reznor has. Here is his glowing review, but I'm not sure if it's 100% what you want to do.
And I'd very firmly and strongly recommend that you host your own album on your own site at first... do not deal w/ Rapidshare/Megaupload etc. The right web-host will be able to help you with password-protecting directories and uploading files, even if it just seems like it's trivial. And, of course, we're here too. :)
posted by raihan_ at 8:25 AM on November 14, 2011
Being on iTunes and Amazon and Spotify is appealing, but anyone likely to find us there, I'd think, would already know about us.
You'd be surprised. I have fans that first found me by browsing through iTunes (and they are more likely to actually purchase music than fans I make through Facebook, MySpace, Jango, etc.).
I use CD Baby because there weren't as many options available when I first started selling music. A friend uses TuneCore, and is happy with them. Their pricing/sharing agreement is structured a bit differently, but I think they are both fair (just not compelling enough to warrant a switch, IMO).
posted by malocchio at 12:23 PM on November 14, 2011
You'd be surprised. I have fans that first found me by browsing through iTunes (and they are more likely to actually purchase music than fans I make through Facebook, MySpace, Jango, etc.).
I use CD Baby because there weren't as many options available when I first started selling music. A friend uses TuneCore, and is happy with them. Their pricing/sharing agreement is structured a bit differently, but I think they are both fair (just not compelling enough to warrant a switch, IMO).
posted by malocchio at 12:23 PM on November 14, 2011
As a consumer I love to see a Bandcamp page because I assume that when I buy music there a decent portion of the proceeds actually go to the artist. I will deliberately choose to buy there over iTunes when possible.
Nthed. I don't have itunes, and actually loathe it. As an Australian, Amazon mp3's are unavailable to me. I looooooove Bandcamp and I've made many impulse buy album purchases when it's priced under the ten buck mark. So easy, and if the band is good, you get to pick what file format/encoding standard you want, too.
posted by smoke at 1:47 PM on November 14, 2011
Nthed. I don't have itunes, and actually loathe it. As an Australian, Amazon mp3's are unavailable to me. I looooooove Bandcamp and I've made many impulse buy album purchases when it's priced under the ten buck mark. So easy, and if the band is good, you get to pick what file format/encoding standard you want, too.
posted by smoke at 1:47 PM on November 14, 2011
Response by poster: Thanks very much to all of you. Some very compelling advice here.
posted by troywestfield at 9:35 AM on November 15, 2011
posted by troywestfield at 9:35 AM on November 15, 2011
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posted by Jairus at 7:33 AM on November 14, 2011