when release day comes.
Its might be a little early to be talking about album release, but fuck it. I don't expect that it will take me 3-4 years between releases like last time. The problem is, in the atmosphere of today's music industry, how does an independent artist with little fan base sell their music?
There's plenty of services out there: Snocap, Musicane, Tunecore(gets your music up on iTunes). The problem with all of these services is cost. You may as well sign to a label and get robbed, it's all pretty much the same, especially for the first two mentioned above.
I personally like the idea of a physical release rather than a download. It actually feels like you've paid for something, and as a designer, it lets me go nuts with the artwork. It can unfortunately be an expensive up front investment. One of the sites I was looking at offers 300 4-panel digipaks for about $1000, complete with CD duplication. Not too bad, but if it doesn't sell you're ripped off.
Burning them yourself used to be the way to go in high school, and it worked for a time, with lousy 20# paper liner notes. I wish I could find my old band's CD, that was just laughable. If I find it and my old release under a godawful name that I can't remember, I'll post them for free download. Good for a laugh. A year or so later I did the whole Staples CD Label thing. No case, no liner notes. Gave away a few copies and maybe sold 2.
For my last album I gave the internet a try. Used my own bandwidth and sold via Paypal. Again only sold a few copies. I posted it myself on a popular BitTorrent site(that unfortunately is no longer with us), and it was downloaded many times, but I haven't heard any comments, good or bad. Maybe they're afraid to admit to the artist that they've "stolen" their work? Even though I put it out there myself, and even posted a link to the torrent page.
Do people get turned off by completely instrumental music? I guess we'll find out once I get some vocals down and release some snippets to the public.
Maybe a combination will be a way to go:
Sell the CD on the specified release date, allowing people to pre-order to receive even earlier.
After a couple weeks or so, sell the mp3 version (192kbps quality). The reason for selling only a 192k version (and later) is because I will want the physical CD to sell rather than the download.
I have to work very hard to make this release something special. If it does not generate interest, then what's the point of even doing this anymore?
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6 comments:
Selling music as an independent artist can be a bitch. I'm already getting robbed by a record label which I resigned from.
that is a real shame how they dicked you over with the whole Canada shipping thing. Leave it to a record label, even a small one, to fuck over their artists.
Thanks for the mention. Actually, if you want, you can have your music put into iTunes as an "iTunes PLUS" release, which is 256 kbps .AAC files (those are slightly better sounding than 256 kpbs .MP3 files).
I know what you mean about getting ripped off--that's why we founded TuneCore, so there was a defined, flat up-front cost and no percentage taken. You'll never be out more than a flat fee.
Let me know if you've got any questions about digital distribution or "signing yourself." I love to hear about folks who really care about their music and are willing to do what it takes to get it heard, even without the traditional label system.
Thanks again for the kind words!
--Peter
peter@tunecore.com
Tunecore people searching the net for any mention of it's name? :p
You guys are surely the better choice as far as digital distribution goes. The thing I don't like about iTunes is the fact that they have all of these separate stores, so if I say, forget about Australia because I haven't had any fans from the country, and then one pops up that wants to buy my album but can't. I'm not sure I understand the point of it. But that's not your problem I know, it's Apple's.
The answer to this may be Amazon's mp3 store. I really think they've got the right idea. Better quality, no DRM. No album artwork unfortunately. But still, that appears to encompass all of Amazon's customers, not just country specific.
Yep, I always try to find out what the world thinks of TuneCore. We get a lot of ideas about how to run the business by listening to what people are saying. I hope you don't mind that I commented, this isn't a spam--not trying to get you to buy anything!
The different iTunes stores are just a question of setting permissions. If you're in iTunes at all, you can be in any or all of the stores, and can hang out on their "shelves" forever, able to be purchased by anyone. And it's practically free to be in an iTunes store, doesn't cost any more in subsequent years, and is only $0.99 the first time around, once.
AmazonMP3 is a really interesting store! We're watching them carefully, since we started delivering to them a little while ago. I expect it'll mature nicely as time goes by.
--Peter
peter@tunecore.com
No problem, I'll be keeping you guys in mind when the time comes.
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