Online music publishing/sales advice

[Tubetec]

Seems to be a few services around offering to tie up worldwide royalties ,cdbaby is one , I was wondering if anyone had tried it or other services to protect their interests musically . Is it better to to create your own direct sales websites for music downloads anyway?
In my limited research people said they would be prepared to visit a musicians own website to pay for and download  music directly . I know another local singer songwriter who has done very well with 'crowd funding' to raise money for new recordings .
All thoughts and ideas welcome.

 

[scott2000]

This guy appears to be doing well...Few Billboard places...cd sales....youtube views..... I guess he's independent but some of his videos look pretty professional. May have some ties somewhere....IDK...
Looks exhausting.. Probably some fun though...

https://www.hangovergang.com/

 

[ruffrecords]

There are plenty of aggregators who will get you material into iTunes and all the major and minor streaming services. There are generally two ways of paying for this. One you pay so much up front and you receive 100% of the streaming revenue or they do it for free and you get around 80% of the streaming revenue. In either case you tend not to get a cent until there is $50 of revenue. You need a lot of plays to reach $50.

The alternative is to sell downloads and again there are plenty of place like CDBaby that will do this for you. CD Baby even used to sell hard CDs on your behalf. You get a lot more money per download so you need to sell fewr albums or tracks to reach the usual $50 minimum.
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Whatever  route you take, the key to success is promotion. Aggregators and CDBaby et al will not do this for you. You have to do it yourself. The more time and effort and money you put into promotion the more sales you will get.

As an example, my mate Bob has recorded 15 albums in the last 15 years. They are all available on all the major streaming sites. In that time he has made maybe $100 from streaming. One album is songs about famous people and places here in Norfolk. Bob spends a fair bit of time hawking these around all the gift shops in North Norfolk and as a result sells between 500 and 1000 albums a year at about £10 each.

Cheers

Ian

 

[matriachamplification]

Hello TubeTec

I have a lot of experience in this area.

My suggestion is simple.

Use as many free services to make your content available to as many end users as possible while promoting, hard, direct sales from your killer website.

Give some incentive from buying direct like bonus tracks or custom artwork.

In regards to crowd-funding, it is an option but will lead you to my previous suggestion so it is really about how you want to structure your time. I prefer not to crowd fund as it can backfire having negative impact on your vision.

I have created countless websites, logos etc... and can help you get rolling with some custom templates if you like.

 

[Tubetec]

Thank you all for the suggestions and advice .
I must check back with the artist and see how we move forward on this .
Some people still prefer CD still ,I guess because of the artwork , I was thinking more about a memory stick with the music on it maybe packaged in a tin box with printed artwork included , seems do-able for a few extra bucks .
I have to say as a sound engineer I really dont like the idea of selling MP3 downloads , 24 bit 96khz as the original sessions/masters were recorded at can be problematic to play back on a mobile phone though , why that is in this day and age is beyond my understanding . 48khz 24 bit I could live with ,but why shouldnt the better quality be also available for the people who do care to listen over decent gear .

 

[Whoops]

Is it better to to create your own direct sales websites for music downloads anyway?
In my limited research people said they would be prepared to visit a musicians own website to pay for and download  music directly . I know another local singer songwriter who has done very well with 'crowd funding' to raise money for new recordings .
All thoughts and ideas welcome.

I really think the success cases of people that only sell direct from their website are the exceptions and the very few exceptions.

People want easy of use, people want a lot of artists available immediately, people also dont want to have to download anything they want streaming.
So if you want to reach a biggest number of people you will need to be in Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora, Google Play and Youtube.
Most of the people prefer to go to youtube and listen to music, where they have a lot of options than going into an independent artist website where they only have contents of that artist.

I work with a lot of Indie artists and well as Major artists, and for Indies getting a digital aggregator and having their music in all the streaming platforms is still the best way to go.

 

[matriachamplification]

I have to say as a sound engineer I really dont like the idea of selling MP3 downloads , 24 bit 96khz as the original sessions/masters were recorded at can be problematic to play back on a mobile phone though , why that is in this day and age is beyond my understanding . 48khz 24 bit I could live with ,but why shouldnt the better quality be also available for the people who do care to listen over decent gear .

With the understanding that I am retired/disabled, and my memory of working as a sound engineer are scattered at best. Is it not the sound designers (and mastering engineers) goal to have audio sounding at a premium on all platforms for end user playback?

 

[matriachamplification]

This is very interesting to me. I had never considered any of this before.

When radio was a staple playback for new artist, did engineers at the time ever question the quality of radio?

 

[TwentyTrees]

This is a great discussion! Thanks for kicking it off, Tubetec.

My band is going through all of this at the moment as well as we're releasing our debut full-length in a couple of months, and for us it comes down to reach. With direct sales from the website, you keep 100% of what you take; with any other route, you pay a percentage to a distributor. However, as Whoops says, potential customers will be (much) more likely to search out the music on their channel of choice, probably via apps they already have, and your opportunities to direct them to an artist website will generally be very limited. So, for us, it came down to 100% of almost nothing vs some percentage of something!

There's also the "casual customer" effect, where some distribution channels will suggest similar artists or have options for you to browse genres. By way of illustration, we've had our debut EP available for direct purchase on CD on our website for some years - we recently added it to Bandcamp as well, and have sold more copies there in a fortnight than we did on our site in the last three years!  ;D

On  crowdfunding - I'm not convinced that's super viable these days for funding a music release. I know personally quite a few independent artists who've run crowdfunding campaigns over the last few years, putting in a lot of work and doing everything "right". None of their campaigns were successful. Maybe if you've got a decent and dedicated fanbase already it would be a different story?

I do agree on the CD quality point - CD is generally my preferred format, and if I rip to my phone I use wav. The vast majority of customers will go with MP3 or streamed equivalent though, so for us as a band it makes sense to offer that as an option so as not to exclude potential customers - while making sure we can cater to those who want a more HD listen.

We've found Bandcamp is a good middle-way, as they also offer high resolution audio downloads (cheaper and less risky than a posted USB key) - plus their artist payments are way higher than most distributors. We're ppanning to direct people to Bandcamp in the first instance for CD and digital sales, but will also have the album available on the usual suspects (Spotify, iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, etc). We've used CD Baby in the past for that digital distribution, I think Bandcamp can possibly do that as well though these days so it may make sense to have a one-stop-shop.

Lots to think about these days. Good luck with the launch!

 

[Whoops]

When radio was a staple playback for new artist, did engineers at the time ever question the quality of radio?

Engineers yes, but not artists or labels.

The same with Vinyl, a format that was never chosen 60 years ago because it was good, it was chosen because it was cheap, fast and easy to produce.
But engineers know all the tech specs of Vinyl are crap, limited frequency response, problems with low end, problems with low end PAN, problems with high end, high levels of distortion, high levels of noise.

It was much worse than tape, it much worse than CD quality, it's even worse than mp3.
But Artists and labels didn't care then and they don't even care today because they can make a few bucks extra by convincing ignorant consumers that Vinyl has a great sound, and making them buy it now that no one buys CDs.

In the end majority of consumers don't care much if it's WAV, MP3 whatever, nowadays the majority of people listen through streaming platforms and thats what is relevant when you want to release your product for a market.