Selling your music online

thomasross20

What's the best outlet and how many of you have done this? A simple upload of tunes, no faff, widest audience etc... 

Just been reading these articles:

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/internet/3453593/how-sell-music-online/

http://www.musicradar.com/tuition/guitars/5-places-to-start-selling-your-music-online-448979/5

So it looks like there are websites that put your music on lots of platforms (Google Play, iTunes etc) - I always thought you had to upload directly to iTunes, Google Play etc. So that's good news anyway!

Snap

Tom, (eyup pal, hows it hangin etc etc)

I've done a couple of collaborations with chaps who've sold them commercially. Depends what you want to do I suppose, but there's bandcamp and Spotifiy, and I guess the latter is best potentially for exposure. Spotify will direct you straight to a number of agents who can handle it, you just go onto their FAQ part and follow the links, I think.

It seems to me that the best way to go is through an intermediary - after all this is what they do for a living so the main ones will get it right, I would have thought. I think it's one of those things though, at which you can throw endless amounts of money. I know of people who ahve set up their own limited company to promote their music, but that seems a bit over the top for me, being a hobbyist and that,

John_BlackWolf

In the past I've used Xarnia, CD Baby, Horus music. All offer a similar service. Just choose the one that appeals most to you, Some will be no upfront cost but will take a percentage, other you'll pay a one off fee and keep 100% of the royalties.

It is possible for music to be rejected from the stores themselves, It will need to be up to a certain quality standard (whatever that means) and you will likely have to submit artwork made to a certain specification.

John_P

I've used cd baby a couple of times - simple enough and I'll use them again next year when I do another album.   I'm determined to make it when not if.

thomasross20

My stuff is more "demo" based instrumentals - very rough. I just wanted to put it out there but if it needs to be professional standard... 

Glad to have some replies on this at last...!

I reckon percentage of sales is preferable to fixed fee unless you're a rock star!

thomasross20

Snap - I forgot about Spotify... but they don't upload your own music like CDBaby would..?

Top of my list so far:

CDBaby, TuneCore.

CDBaby looks like the one to go for. Unless I'm mistaken, no money up-front. They take a 15% cut of sales. With Tunecore there's an up-front fee for albums/singles and you get 90% of sales. Just checking out the site now - hopefully they advertise on a bunch of sites like iTunes as I wont be setting up my own.

horse

It depends a bit on what you're trying to do. If there's people who will look for your material to buy it then itunes / amazon become essential. If you're more looking to share your music in a community / networking way then reverbnation, soundcloud etc might be good options?

stuartryanmusic

Tunecore is a great service as they will get it onto i-Tunes etc for a small fee, you collect all the royalties directly from them so no faffing around. I've used them for many years and it's really well put together.

Fretwired

Turning it round the other way - where do you buy new music from - I'd vote for Bandcamp. I buy quite a lot of new music in the knowledge the artist gets most of the money. I've become friends with a few of the artists on there who swear by the platform - one in particular sells thousands of albums and has now made music his full time career.

PolarityMan

We just put our album out via cd baby, only uploaded last week and its all up and online ready for launch day (which is today)

Hertz32

Cdbaby is by FAR the best way of doing it, much as I like using spotify they are criminals for what they pay artists. There's a reason certain artists refuse to have their material on there. Youtube adverts pay better, if I was you I'd have material on CDBaby and Youtube with a single or EP on spotify for exposure. 

Grunfeld

Anyone use bandcamp?

I've bought a fair bit of music from there.  No idea how good it is for the artists but it's pretty good to buy from.

PolarityMan

We're covered digitally but a decent store front for physical distribution would be good, we used here in the past but wnder if there are better alternatives:

http://bigcartel.com/

DulcetJones

Routenote does what Tunecore does free.  I've tried Tunecore, they want your money, year after year.  I have earned more money in a few months with the free Routenote plan than I did in 2 years paying for Tunecores cheapest plan!   Both do itunes, and all of my releases from now on will only be going to itunes, no more Spoitify etc.... that pay .01cent per play compared to .65 to .80 cents per itunes sale.  I've got my music at Bandcamp but people don't buy from there, I suspect it's because they have to surrender an email address, I don't know.  I get lots of traffic and listens but itunes gets the sales.  Never tried CDBaby but I hear it's good, but I'm not getting CD's pressed anymore as I'm sticking to online mp3 sales.

thomasross20

Just getting back into this and CDBABY looks the best bet. Will read into it more and hopefully do something about it within the next couple of months. It mentions $59 for distribution of a whole album onto all its partners (i-Tunes etc) and you get something like 90% of any sale. $59 seems a bit too good to be true, no?

thomasross20

Just registered and it does look like it's $59 to distribute one album on all platforms - pretty good. 

Will see to this later 8)

thomasross20

What are rules for including well known tunes (not recent pop tuns or anything,more like "Somewhere over the Rainbow, for example) - I assume some fee would be involved...

thomasross20

I'm coming back to all this now. 

I'm going to do digital release only. 

I MIGHT go through CDBaby - thoughts? 

CDBaby have a lot of decent guides on what do do before, during and after an album release.

I would like to create my own website - what is the best/easiest way to do this? I keep hearing about Wordpress... I'm no n00b when it comes to coding but would rather use a GUI-based system. Ideas? Guess I'd best get on facebook and other social media. 

darcym

why are you trying to sell demo quality stuff ?

just put it up on soundcloud and let people listen ?

thomasross20

A lot of work has gone (and is still going) into the tunes - not going to put it up "for free" and don't see why anybody doing similar should!?

darcym

 because they are demo quality ?