CDBABY.COM - Physical and Digital Distribution
Many people know about CD Baby, and from what I’ve experienced, it’s a great and reliable company. You can sell physical CDs for a one time $35 registration fee. They fulfill the orders and ship worldwide, and will even provide you with a credit card swiper for free to sell CDs and merch at your gigs. They keep $4 of each CD sale which seems reasonable, all things considered. They will give you the contact info for the people who purchase your CD. ADD THESE PEOPLE TO YOUR DATABASE.
What’s even better than their physical distribution is their digital distribution. It’s a free opt-in service, and it puts you through so many digital websites [including iTunes and Amazon digital, the two most important ones for U.S. based artists], you haven’t even heard of them all. The down side is that you do not have any control over the speed at which your music is submitted to these digital outlets, nor of how long it takes for your music to actually show up. The up side is they only take 9% of your digital sales, and they pay every week. So you only pay out if you’re actually selling music, and you’re not paying ongoing fees if your music isn’t selling. I would highly encourage you to avoid anything that will charge you a monthly fee for selling your music, as you can lose money very easily that way.
TUNECORE.COM - Digital Distribution
Tunecore.com is another option for digital distribution, and it works a little differently than CD Baby in that they charge an annual fee [maybe $10?] and then give you 100% of your digital sales proceeds. The up side is, that you actually have a little more control over who your tracks are submitted to, and you only pay for those channels. [Like if you choose iTunes U.S. and Europe, but not iTunes Japan, you only pay accordingly.] Plus you get all of the money from your sales. The down side is you pay an annual fee whether you’re selling music downloads or not, and if you do the math, you might need to sell at least a couple hundred downloads before you’d break even with what CD Baby would take from your sales. So it’s just whatever you feel comfortable with. I’ve not personally used TuneCore.com because you can have ONLY ONE digital distributor, but I’ve never heard anything bad about them.
[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. ]
Worldwide Groove Corporation
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
How to Promote Yourself Part 21: Mi2N.com
Mi2N.COM
This site has some newsletters, two of which are: i2N, INDIE NET NEWS - The Largest, FREE Source of Musician News and B2N, BUSINESS NET NEWS - The Largest Music Business & Technology News Resource. Now if reading that just made your brain shut down, wake back up. This is one great place that YOU can submit YOUR NEWS. You must have a well written press release, but if you submit it and it’s good, they will add it to the newsletter.
I actually got the headline of the newsletter once from a press release I wrote and submitted. There are some good books and articles about how to write an interesting press release. You must do more than say so and so recorded an album and you can buy it now. You can either tie in some random weird connection between one of your songs and something in the news, or have an event that benefits charity at which you will be performing, or something else that makes it interesting. You can CREATE a fund raiser if you want. Get the permission of a charity to use their name in promoting the event, get some of your other friends to perform at it too, and then write a press release about it and submit it to this and your local community calendars and newspapers. [Like if they bring a can of food for the local food bank, they get $5 off your CD purchase, etc.]
[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. ]
This site has some newsletters, two of which are: i2N, INDIE NET NEWS - The Largest, FREE Source of Musician News and B2N, BUSINESS NET NEWS - The Largest Music Business & Technology News Resource. Now if reading that just made your brain shut down, wake back up. This is one great place that YOU can submit YOUR NEWS. You must have a well written press release, but if you submit it and it’s good, they will add it to the newsletter.
I actually got the headline of the newsletter once from a press release I wrote and submitted. There are some good books and articles about how to write an interesting press release. You must do more than say so and so recorded an album and you can buy it now. You can either tie in some random weird connection between one of your songs and something in the news, or have an event that benefits charity at which you will be performing, or something else that makes it interesting. You can CREATE a fund raiser if you want. Get the permission of a charity to use their name in promoting the event, get some of your other friends to perform at it too, and then write a press release about it and submit it to this and your local community calendars and newspapers. [Like if they bring a can of food for the local food bank, they get $5 off your CD purchase, etc.]
[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. ]
Sunday, August 23, 2009
How to Promote Yourself Part 20: LinkedIn & Plaxo
LINKEDIN.COM & PLAXO.COM
These are other networking sites, which are more about professional relationships, unlike Facebook which is much more social. It’s good to get profiles on these because you just never know who is on what site, and the more connections you have, the better. This CAN help you connect to friends of your friends who might be of assistance in your career, but another benefit is to simply get your name into people’s heads over and over. So if you’re connecting with someone on Facebook, then on Linkedin, then on Plaxo, and then on MySpace... you’re be more present in their thoughts. And if it’s someone you don’t KNOW personally, but you’d like to know OF you, then this is a good way to get your name to be more familiar to them. And people like what’s familiar. Look me up on these too, Ellen Tift.
[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. ]
These are other networking sites, which are more about professional relationships, unlike Facebook which is much more social. It’s good to get profiles on these because you just never know who is on what site, and the more connections you have, the better. This CAN help you connect to friends of your friends who might be of assistance in your career, but another benefit is to simply get your name into people’s heads over and over. So if you’re connecting with someone on Facebook, then on Linkedin, then on Plaxo, and then on MySpace... you’re be more present in their thoughts. And if it’s someone you don’t KNOW personally, but you’d like to know OF you, then this is a good way to get your name to be more familiar to them. And people like what’s familiar. Look me up on these too, Ellen Tift.
[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. ]
Friday, August 14, 2009
How to Promote Yourself Part 19: TheSixtyOne.com
THESIXTYONE.COM
This site describes itself as a “game” technically, but it’s a platform to get your music heard. Basically, you upload your songs, and the people who have listener accounts “heart” your songs if they like them. If your song gets enough hearts, then it gets posted on the home page. Listeners only get so many “hearts” per day, so they have to choose which songs to use them on, but they will later earn “reputation points” and level up as other people heart the songs they previously hearted. The earlier they are in hearting a song, the more points they might earn from it later. You can set whether or not your song can be downloadable, but if your song is available for digital sale on Amazon, the site automatically links to it so people can buy it. BEFORE YOU SET UP YOUR ARTIST ACCOUNT, I’d recommend setting up a listener account and accruing points for a few days until you get up to level 5 at least. [You do that by listening to songs on “the rack” and hearting lots of songs.] Then once you have some points as a listener, create another account [with a different email address] as an artist. The reason you want to do this is that artists cannot “heart” anything. Then once you upload a song in your artist account, IMMEDIATELY log out, and log back in under your listener account, and be the very first one to heart your song. That way you can earn the most points from it as it gets hearted. I created an account in July 2008, and uploaded our entire record plus some remixes we’ve done. By mid-September, we got an email from a record producer who wanted us to do a remix of a band he’s working with, paying work. Plus we’ve had many people contact us as listeners who said they would buy our record on iTunes from that exposure. So it’s a good site. I have not found anything else like it. [UPDATE: OK, so I totally got busted on this site and they deleted both my artist and listener accounts. Proceed at your own risk, if you want to play it safe, just be an artist and let the fates do what they will, don’t try to work the system.]
[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. ]
This site describes itself as a “game” technically, but it’s a platform to get your music heard. Basically, you upload your songs, and the people who have listener accounts “heart” your songs if they like them. If your song gets enough hearts, then it gets posted on the home page. Listeners only get so many “hearts” per day, so they have to choose which songs to use them on, but they will later earn “reputation points” and level up as other people heart the songs they previously hearted. The earlier they are in hearting a song, the more points they might earn from it later. You can set whether or not your song can be downloadable, but if your song is available for digital sale on Amazon, the site automatically links to it so people can buy it. BEFORE YOU SET UP YOUR ARTIST ACCOUNT, I’d recommend setting up a listener account and accruing points for a few days until you get up to level 5 at least. [You do that by listening to songs on “the rack” and hearting lots of songs.] Then once you have some points as a listener, create another account [with a different email address] as an artist. The reason you want to do this is that artists cannot “heart” anything. Then once you upload a song in your artist account, IMMEDIATELY log out, and log back in under your listener account, and be the very first one to heart your song. That way you can earn the most points from it as it gets hearted. I created an account in July 2008, and uploaded our entire record plus some remixes we’ve done. By mid-September, we got an email from a record producer who wanted us to do a remix of a band he’s working with, paying work. Plus we’ve had many people contact us as listeners who said they would buy our record on iTunes from that exposure. So it’s a good site. I have not found anything else like it. [UPDATE: OK, so I totally got busted on this site and they deleted both my artist and listener accounts. Proceed at your own risk, if you want to play it safe, just be an artist and let the fates do what they will, don’t try to work the system.]
[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. ]
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
How to Promote Yourself Part 18: MOG and Discogs
MOG.COM
“Mog” is referring to a “music blog”. This site exists for people to blog about and share music they like. You can create an account on this site, and blog about your music and other music similar to yours. You can upload images and even songs. Other people can subscribe to your mog and you can subscribe to theirs. I have barely done anything on this site personally, but it’s on my list, and well worth getting into. Also, I have not yet figured out where they draw their music files from, because some songs come ready for listening, and others do not have any play function. I believe they link to some other source to determine which songs have the play function. If you figure it out, let me know.
DISCOGS.COM
Discogs is a community-built database of music information. A site with discographies of all labels, all artists, all cross-referenced. You can personally submit all of the credits for your CD and also, if you like, sell your CD through their site, though I’m not sure that gets much traffic. It’s just another place to have information about your music show up in search results. You do have to meet a certain level of “street cred” in order to have your info be accepted, like it must be nationally available for purchase or something of that nature. But check it out and add yourself to the system if you can.
[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. ]
“Mog” is referring to a “music blog”. This site exists for people to blog about and share music they like. You can create an account on this site, and blog about your music and other music similar to yours. You can upload images and even songs. Other people can subscribe to your mog and you can subscribe to theirs. I have barely done anything on this site personally, but it’s on my list, and well worth getting into. Also, I have not yet figured out where they draw their music files from, because some songs come ready for listening, and others do not have any play function. I believe they link to some other source to determine which songs have the play function. If you figure it out, let me know.
DISCOGS.COM
Discogs is a community-built database of music information. A site with discographies of all labels, all artists, all cross-referenced. You can personally submit all of the credits for your CD and also, if you like, sell your CD through their site, though I’m not sure that gets much traffic. It’s just another place to have information about your music show up in search results. You do have to meet a certain level of “street cred” in order to have your info be accepted, like it must be nationally available for purchase or something of that nature. But check it out and add yourself to the system if you can.
[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. ]
Monday, August 10, 2009
How to Pormote Yourself Part 17: Facebook & NashvilleMusicPros.com
FACEBOOK.COM
I’m sure everyone knows about Facebook. It’s always good to just keep your name in people’s heads to stay on their radar, and it’s all about connections, which is what Facebook is for, right? You can add your Reverb Nation widget to your Facebook page, and also your iLike songs. But more importantly, you should most definitely create a music profile for yourself on Facebook where people can sign up as fans. If you do that, you should broadcast it to your MySpace friends. In some ways this can be risky because if you have only 3 fans, and they all have the same last name as you do, you seem kind of pitiful. But on the other hand, it’s cool when people sign on as fans and you have no idea who they are or how they found you. And even cooler when they post comments to you! Plus you can import your blog via rss from Blogger or whatever site you use. Here is where I've learned the using the MySpace blog as my rss source is NOT good, as it doesn't let outsiders click through to read the whole post. So I transfered our main blog to blogger for the better rss feed.
NASHVILLEMUSICPROS.COM - FREE
This is a relatively new site, of the same concept as MySpace, but strictly for Nashville musicians. In fact, you must first get your profile approved by the site administrator to make sure there are only professional musicians on there. So it’s a smaller web of people, and more manageable than MySpace, and so far is spam free. Look me up on here too and be my friend, Ellen Tift.
[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. ]
I’m sure everyone knows about Facebook. It’s always good to just keep your name in people’s heads to stay on their radar, and it’s all about connections, which is what Facebook is for, right? You can add your Reverb Nation widget to your Facebook page, and also your iLike songs. But more importantly, you should most definitely create a music profile for yourself on Facebook where people can sign up as fans. If you do that, you should broadcast it to your MySpace friends. In some ways this can be risky because if you have only 3 fans, and they all have the same last name as you do, you seem kind of pitiful. But on the other hand, it’s cool when people sign on as fans and you have no idea who they are or how they found you. And even cooler when they post comments to you! Plus you can import your blog via rss from Blogger or whatever site you use. Here is where I've learned the using the MySpace blog as my rss source is NOT good, as it doesn't let outsiders click through to read the whole post. So I transfered our main blog to blogger for the better rss feed.
NASHVILLEMUSICPROS.COM - FREE
This is a relatively new site, of the same concept as MySpace, but strictly for Nashville musicians. In fact, you must first get your profile approved by the site administrator to make sure there are only professional musicians on there. So it’s a smaller web of people, and more manageable than MySpace, and so far is spam free. Look me up on here too and be my friend, Ellen Tift.
[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. ]
Saturday, August 8, 2009
How to Promote Yourself Part 16: GarageBand.com and iLike.com
GARAGEBAND.COM - Not affiliated with the Garage Band software.
One appeal of GarageBand.com is that you can create your profile and then enter your songs in their “song contests” to be reviewed and ranked by other members and hopefully climb their charts. [You either need to pay for the song entry or review about 40 songs to earn an entry.] I have found this process to be painfully slow and unrewarding to be totally honest. If you do decide to create a profile on this site, your songs will automatically be added to iLike, which is good because then people on facebook can add them to their profiles. However, the down side is, if you are on garageband.com then you are not able to do any direct interaction with your music on iLike.com, like uploading songs. That is lame. I am about to delete my garageband account because it hasn't really benefited me, and that will free me up to work directly with iLike.
iLIKE.COM
As a music listener, you can create your profile on iLike.com, and add the iLike sidebar to your iTunes program. Like Last.fm, it will give you the opportunity to be “friends” with people who have similar musical taste as you. But more importantly, it’s a good idea to create your own artist page on iLike.com. This will allow you to have people add themselves as your fans, and for you to send out notes to everyone etc. Your iLike page will also link to your main website, your facebook music profile, your garage band page, and your CD Baby page. And it will allow you to post to your MySpace blog from your iLike page. Nice! Plus you can manage your songs that are available for people to add to their Facebook page, and you can get updates on how many profile adds and dedications have been made on each of your songs. I confess that I personally have barely made use of the Worldwide Groove Corporation profile on iLike, but it’s there for me when I’ve got the time to work it.
[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. ]
One appeal of GarageBand.com is that you can create your profile and then enter your songs in their “song contests” to be reviewed and ranked by other members and hopefully climb their charts. [You either need to pay for the song entry or review about 40 songs to earn an entry.] I have found this process to be painfully slow and unrewarding to be totally honest. If you do decide to create a profile on this site, your songs will automatically be added to iLike, which is good because then people on facebook can add them to their profiles. However, the down side is, if you are on garageband.com then you are not able to do any direct interaction with your music on iLike.com, like uploading songs. That is lame. I am about to delete my garageband account because it hasn't really benefited me, and that will free me up to work directly with iLike.
iLIKE.COM
As a music listener, you can create your profile on iLike.com, and add the iLike sidebar to your iTunes program. Like Last.fm, it will give you the opportunity to be “friends” with people who have similar musical taste as you. But more importantly, it’s a good idea to create your own artist page on iLike.com. This will allow you to have people add themselves as your fans, and for you to send out notes to everyone etc. Your iLike page will also link to your main website, your facebook music profile, your garage band page, and your CD Baby page. And it will allow you to post to your MySpace blog from your iLike page. Nice! Plus you can manage your songs that are available for people to add to their Facebook page, and you can get updates on how many profile adds and dedications have been made on each of your songs. I confess that I personally have barely made use of the Worldwide Groove Corporation profile on iLike, but it’s there for me when I’ve got the time to work it.
[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. ]
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
How to Promote Yourself Part 15: Indie Music Reviews
INDIE MUSIC REVIEWS
Do a google search for websites and magazines that are willing to review music by indie artists, and see what their protocol is for sending in your music. For the ones that accept submissions, make sure your music is the right genre for them, and then put together a nice cover letter which gives them a brief description of your project, and TELL THEM WHY YOUR MUSIC IS RIGHT FOR THEIR SITE OR MAGAZINE. ADD THESE PEOPLE TO YOUR DATABASE. This is how we got a review in Electronic Musician Magazine. If you can get some legit reviews either of a live show or a recorded project, that’s material for your press kit, and worthy of a blog post and bulletin. Any good review should be broadcast to your contact list, because it’s all about perception. If your contacts perceive that you’ve got stuff going on, that’ll give you more credibility. But if they never hear from you or about you, they won’t think of you at all. You want people to think about you positively.
[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. ]
Do a google search for websites and magazines that are willing to review music by indie artists, and see what their protocol is for sending in your music. For the ones that accept submissions, make sure your music is the right genre for them, and then put together a nice cover letter which gives them a brief description of your project, and TELL THEM WHY YOUR MUSIC IS RIGHT FOR THEIR SITE OR MAGAZINE. ADD THESE PEOPLE TO YOUR DATABASE. This is how we got a review in Electronic Musician Magazine. If you can get some legit reviews either of a live show or a recorded project, that’s material for your press kit, and worthy of a blog post and bulletin. Any good review should be broadcast to your contact list, because it’s all about perception. If your contacts perceive that you’ve got stuff going on, that’ll give you more credibility. But if they never hear from you or about you, they won’t think of you at all. You want people to think about you positively.
[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. ]
Monday, August 3, 2009
How to Promote Yourself Part 14: Google Alerts
GOOGLE.COM/ALERTS
Google lets you set up a google alert for any word or phrase you want. You can set one up for your name and another for the name of your record, and you will be notified when the google robot indexes any new sites with your name. It helps if you’ve got a word you’ve invented as part of your CD name, because then you know it’s definitely about you if it shows up. [I invented the word “chillodesiac” as part of our record name.] THIS IS HOW I FIND PEOPLE WHO’VE UPLOADED MY MUSIC FOR FREE ILLEGAL DOWNLOADS. You will want to be able to stop pirating of your music in its tracks, so be sure to set a google alert up, and it will come right to your email box. But also, it’s really nice when you get a google alert and find out that someone out there has blogged about your music. Then you can send them a nice note of appreciation.
[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. ]
Google lets you set up a google alert for any word or phrase you want. You can set one up for your name and another for the name of your record, and you will be notified when the google robot indexes any new sites with your name. It helps if you’ve got a word you’ve invented as part of your CD name, because then you know it’s definitely about you if it shows up. [I invented the word “chillodesiac” as part of our record name.] THIS IS HOW I FIND PEOPLE WHO’VE UPLOADED MY MUSIC FOR FREE ILLEGAL DOWNLOADS. You will want to be able to stop pirating of your music in its tracks, so be sure to set a google alert up, and it will come right to your email box. But also, it’s really nice when you get a google alert and find out that someone out there has blogged about your music. Then you can send them a nice note of appreciation.
[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. ]
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)