How to Promote Yourself Part 7: Amazon, Barcodes, Soundscan

AMAZON.COM/ADVANTAGE

You can sell your CD through Amazon.com through their Amazon Advantage program. You simply create and account, YOU MUST HAVE A UPC CODE ON YOUR CD AND THE CD MUST BE SHRINK WRAPPED for this, and then they will order one or two copies of your CD for their warehouse. They pay you after your CD sells.

You will want to be on Amazon.com for more reasons than just selling your CD. [See what I will write for Pandora and Live365.] The down side is they keep over half of the money, and deduct the $35 annual fee from your sales, but the up side is, you’re on Amazon.com which puts you through to all of the other websites that are “powered by Amazon.com”. PLUS you can then create your own Amazon Marketplace account and sell your CD directly through their site. But you can’t do the Marketplace thing if there is no preexisting listing, which is why you need the Amazon Advantage account first. So, Amazon Advantage means THEY fulfill the order, and keep more money. Amazon Marketplace means YOU fulfill the order and get more money.

BARCODING.COM/UPC/

If you get a UPC code number for your project, you can generate the barcode graphic on this site for free.

SOUNDSCAN.COM

If you’ve got a barcode on your CD, you should consider registering it with Soundscan.com so it can be tracked. Who knows? Your project might be a hot seller and it would be a shame if no one was counting. Just because a site like Amazon.com may report your sales to Soundscan doesn’t mean Soundscan is keeping track. If they don’t know what project belongs to that number, they’ll discard the stats. So YOU need to give them the UPC code number and the title of the project. You can either print out your registration and fax it in, or register it via email. A&R people at record labels sometimes look at the Soundscan reports, and if they see a new artist getting lots of sales, it gets their attention. You just never know.

ANOTHER THOUGHT: The previous paragraph is based on what I’d been told over the years by my friends in the music business, however recent personal experience has made me think there may be another side to this. We have a guy who wants to sign us as an artist to a pseudo record deal, basically taking our project we released in 2007 [independently] and repackaging it with a few new songs. He expressed concern over our soundscan numbers because if they were too high, the label might not perceive this project as a “clean” release. So... do what you want.

[Hi all,
Ellen here. I've decided to take a very long handout that I
created for my college students and break it down into a series of
blogs. This is a summary of what I know about promoting yourself and
your music online. If you or someone you know is a self released
artist who doesn't necessarily have a plan of action after the CDs are
manufactured, subscribe to this blog and read the series. I'm breaking
it down into bite sized portions. ]