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selling my music

I think my music is good enough that I could sell a few tracks. I'm considering sites such as CDBaby or Tunecore. Are there better alternatives?

Comments

  • Bandcamp - essential.

  • Bandcamp seconded

  • edited July 2018

    Bandcamp. I put my album out for friends (although I did put a competitive price on it), and lo and behold someone a few countries over who loves digging for music found something they liked in me based off the tags, and I sold 40-50 copies off of that one person's word of mouth.

    Nice at the very least to have your whiskey paid for for a few months.

    Edit: ok, who am I kidding, one month.

  • @oat_phipps said:
    Bandcamp. I put my album out for friends (although I did put a competitive price on it), and lo and behold someone a few countries over who loves digging for music found something they liked in me based off the tags, and I sold 40-50 copies off of that one person's word of mouth.

    Nice at the very least to have your whiskey paid for for a few months.

    Edit: ok, who am I kidding, one month.

    Very cool!

  • I did the CDBaby thing once for a group project. Good company. We sold a few. iTunes is a rip job. There are others if you want to do the leg work (send out complimentary copies, solicit reviews, etc.). It's alot of fun and drive is required and at least you can say you gave it a try. All the best!

  • I have been hearing about this
    Distrokid
    https://distrokid.com/

  • Bandcamp is great.

    https://aristake.com/post/cd-baby-tunecore-ditto-mondotunes-zimbalam-or

    decent article that does some comparisons between a few of them.... "There is no "winner" necessarily because each company has unique features that may be super important to some artists and not at all to others." (quote from the article)

    there's also this newer one that might be worth checking into: http://www.musicdiffusion.com/

    I'm curious to hear others thoughts - I've been thinking of setting up distribution with one of these types of companies but so far haven't made the jump.

  • I was about to post that link! He used to update it frequently but it looks like it hasn't been updated since last August (almost a year) but these services used to come and go and maybe things have settled down a bit.

  • I went through CD Baby. I’ve sold about 100 albums in two years, but I’ve been getting a pretty steady $10 or so a month from Spotify, Apple Music, You Tube, etc. CD Baby charges something like $90 per album, which I liked because I couldn’t see myself making more than one album per year. I’ve had listeners in something like 30 countries, and sales in about 10 or so. CD Baby does a great job of allowing you to track your streams and sales on the big three platforms (Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes) and sends itemized reports quarterly to track all the others. They set you up with ASCAP or BMI to collect royalties from places and services I’ve never heard of. I’ve found CD Baby to be transparent and fair. I have enough older listeners who still buy albums from iTunes, but younger people stream. It could take quite a while to break even as streaming pays very little compared to sales through iTunes. In the US, iTunes pays you about 60% of what you sell, which I think is pretty good. Streams are like $0.01 per stream.

    I’ve also sold a few albums through Bandcamp, but it hasn’t worked as well for me as CD Baby. I think Bandcamp was free, though.

    Good luck. Let us know what you decide. I’ve really enjoyed the whole process with CD Baby.

  • Good luck with this.

    I use both Bandcamp (kind of free to use - but they take a certain percentage of sales), and I've tried CDBaby to get onto the streaming services. Unlike some of the others I've made a total of $0.16 from CDBaby and about £30 in total from Bandcamp (over about 5-ish years). The difference is really this: you have to promote your music (and yourself) tirelessly. I have musician facebook friends how constantly are talking up their music, their live performance, their new releases - constantly! When you release a track to Soundcloud - you shout about it - its the best track you have done. When you do a live performance you are "excited" to perform. And so on.

    And look for opportunities to play live (if you can), or get air play on local/internet stations. Build your fan base.

    I don't do any of the above - I no longer even mention my music on my personal FB account, and rarely these days on forums. I enjoy the process of making my music - but havent the confidence (or inclination) to promote it.

  • edited July 2018

    @Halftone said:
    there's also this newer one that might be worth checking into: http://www.musicdiffusion.com/

    These guys might be great but it is hard to take a company seriously when the first thing you see is that they represent "INDEPENDANT ARTISTS."

    (I notified them and hope they fix that quickly!) (They fixed it...good job!)

  • I appreciate all of the feedback. My goal is simply to sell a few tracks. I have no desire to become "famous" or to make a lot of money. Given this modest goal I should be successful. It's very helpful to hear what others have done.

  • @kitejan said:
    Good luck with this.

    I use both Bandcamp (kind of free to use - but they take a certain percentage of sales), and I've tried CDBaby to get onto the streaming services. Unlike some of the others I've made a total of $0.16 from CDBaby and about £30 in total from Bandcamp (over about 5-ish years). The difference is really this: you have to promote your music (and yourself) tirelessly. I have musician facebook friends how constantly are talking up their music, their live performance, their new releases - constantly! When you release a track to Soundcloud - you shout about it - its the best track you have done. When you do a live performance you are "excited" to perform. And so on.

    And look for opportunities to play live (if you can), or get air play on local/internet stations. Build your fan base.

    I don't do any of the above - I no longer even mention my music on my personal FB account, and rarely these days on forums. I enjoy the process of making my music - but havent the confidence (or inclination) to promote it.

    Gawd, this so resonates with me...

  • @jigglypuff said:
    I appreciate all of the feedback. My goal is simply to sell a few tracks. I have no desire to become "famous" or to make a lot of money. Given this modest goal I should be successful. It's very helpful to hear what others have done.

    Bandcamp is the easy way to go - doesn't cost you anything to set up. Most other services you will need to pay something to use.

    You might also want to give some thought about the use of samples (especially samples from other musical sources, speeches, TV, films., etc). To do this properly samples need to be cleared for use - and anything with existing copyright could be problematic. But if you aren't making any/much money then its _likely _that no one will notice or care - but *if* money is made later - then it is likely you will get some grief if you have used some samples you got off YouTube of a famous speech (for example). I'm not saying "do" or "dont" for this - just at least think about it before you release something.....

    I would also advice NOT to release your music as "free download" (like I did) - or at least not all. It seemed like a good idea at the time (giving something back etc.) but in hindsight this can be interpreted as "my music is worthless". Even if its a nominal amount (eg. £3 for the album) it sends a different message. And lets face it - if someone really wants to get your music for nothing, they will find a way!

  • @kitejan said:
    Good luck with this.

    I use both Bandcamp (kind of free to use - but they take a certain percentage of sales), and I've tried CDBaby to get onto the streaming services. Unlike some of the others I've made a total of $0.16 from CDBaby and about £30 in total from Bandcamp (over about 5-ish years). The difference is really this: you have to promote your music (and yourself) tirelessly. I have musician facebook friends how constantly are talking up their music, their live performance, their new releases - constantly! When you release a track to Soundcloud - you shout about it - its the best track you have done. When you do a live performance you are "excited" to perform. And so on.

    And look for opportunities to play live (if you can), or get air play on local/internet stations. Build your fan base.

    I don't do any of the above - I no longer even mention my music on my personal FB account, and rarely these days on forums. I enjoy the process of making my music - but havent the confidence (or inclination) to promote it.

    This is me, too. Only thing I do participate in is the song of the month club here on the forum :smile:

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