Selling my music online, any tips ?

Anything about MUSIC but doesn't fit into the forums above.
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Hi all,

Seems that this year I'll be able to work more on music and at that stage I have to think about how I want it to be distributed. Seeing the general troubles about selling stuff physical and not being that hot about going through the long way of finding a decent publisher, I would like to try something different : no publisher, no distributor apart myself, 100% online. Actually it's pretty much the same idea than selling plugs online : direct connection to the public, not a lot of customer but big margin, humanly sized business.

One solution is to build all by myself - website, communication (oh yes, and music ;-) but I guess there must allready be some specialised labels/website/shop that will allow me to do this directly and if so I would like to check them before attempting to recreate the pyramids all alone :P

So all the website you know that sells indie music efficiently... bring it on :P

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Ok, looks interesting.
Thus I have got a few questions :

- royalty, good. What rate on a one dollar download / on a CD ? [for some reason the link is not the good one on their info pages]

- they say they do some promotion. I guess this is limited to their website or do they work with some press (possibly online), create and send presskits, etc. in some case ?

- I guess you're happy with it ?

- do they only sell CDs ? I don't want to sell CDs, just MP3/Ogg. Whatever, I still can't find any info on what they take on a MP3.

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for cds they have a base rate for a package say 9.99
you then add whatever you think say 5.00.they would then take $1 of tis 5 on top of the cost,if you charge an extra 10 they still only take 1
whatever on top of the price for package you charge they take 1$only

btw 9.99 was just an example there are a few diff prices available for diff packages :wink:

payperdownload i have to be honest i personally have never looked into so wouldnt like to give any info there sorry :oops:

as for whether im happy im about to sign up for my second year,the cd they did for me i was happy with the quality 8)


and yes they send out press stuff/cds to a n r that kind of thing 8)

if you email support tho the ywill answer any questions,even before you sign up.
i had a few queries when i first started thinking about it and they were only too happy to help.

far more artist friendly than most sites i visited when looking for this service,but a few new ones around these days so keep looking also i know endmusik is using one i think its called magnatune?

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Why would you want to sell compressed music when you can sell it in wav-quality?

I doubt people are really waiting for music that has undergone a deadly compression in the form of Mp3 or even Ogg :?

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Mystahr wrote:Why would you want to sell compressed music when you can sell it in wav-quality?

I doubt people are really waiting for music that has undergone a deadly compression in the form of Mp3 or even Ogg :?
IME it becomes a matter of time used to find/dl interesting stuff + saving disk space.

The above is also a problem for the portal offering the downloads - there´s a huge difference whether people are fetching 50 Mb's of data instead of 5-8 Mb´s.

192 kbps (and even 128 kbps in some rare cases) quality mp3s -when well mixed and mastered- are so close to original wav's by the sound quality (when listened to in the usual listening environment ie. home, office... ...) that I'd rather offer good quality mp3 than wav's.

Regarding format conversions I´d recommend SoundForge as software - In my experience way the best program for this purpose.

Mika

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:oops: You are right; he's talking about downloadable tracks. I was thinking in CD's - burn on demand. :oops:

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ampcast accept wavs for cds 8)

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Ampcast looks nice, but always seeemed to me a bit "crowded", and I don't think there's a solution at this point. I have a small publisher together with an american friend (we started it from nothing) and we use cafepress.com; is it better than Ampcast? Not sure. People can sell merchandising too, which is a plus in her opinion and a minus in mine (I never agreed with merchandising carrying my name). But the quality of CD's is good too. You can follow the links in my page.
Eventually something intelligent will appear written here. Watch this space.

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Ooops! it seems they have the server down right now :(
Eventually something intelligent will appear written here. Watch this space.

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Here’s my plan for making money through music on the net. Right now I'm in the process of putting together my first studio album (and I'm serious this time :D ). I'm thinking of going down the creative commons music/sampling license outlet (to allow my music to be spread through word of mouth easier) and just do a promotional blitz of sites like garageband, our own KVR, em411, sonicstate, sectionz, broadjam, etc. and try to get some word out about my website where I will be selling the album for $5-$10 a pop (depending on whether you want to d/l it or have it shipped on CD). I've had it with the idea of middle men cutting in on my royalties, as well as having to compete with lots of other dudes for the buyers on the same site (like on ampcast). This way, I give people a taste of my album on the site (hi quality streaming and all), and then sell it to them for a good price, letting myself walk away with a nice chunk of change in my pocket.

http://www.dollarcd.com/ looks like a pretty rocking site. $2 for a B&W printed CD-R in a jewel case with 2 page B&W booklet printing is a pretty good deal. Has anyone else dealt with this company? I'm looking for a way to get my first album out there with minimal risk while I establish by distribution networks. Although it would be cheaper at a higher quality to just do a full run CD, without a fan base it's doubtful I could ship enough of the 1,000 or more units as for it to be profitable. So this dollar CD thing, with its on-demand printing nature seems to be a less risky proposition for an aspiring producer.

ATA

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MP3/vs CD

Well, mainly because more and more people just don't want to bother with CDs anymore. The first thing they'd do is bitching about the fact they have to turn it into CD to have in their iPod and or play list. Added to that they pay way more. Plain stupid IMO, especially if you consider that an high quality ogg file is hardly different from an uncompressed version.

Of course there are the ones that prefer CDs (I am amongst them) but in that case they still have it cheaper to dl an burn by themselves. I am not against CD if it means - real - packaging, something that I don't expect to be possible for real. Anyway, as those all will try the songs on computer first, they must all have MP3's as well. So in anycase I am still in a familiar, accepted path with them.

My own plan is not completely different from atomic_afro one :P

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Thanks Red_Force, great minds think alike :D

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Funnily enough, my friend is doing this exact thing, selling the music all himself...

www.loungesoundsix.com

Okay, maybe that's a bit of a plug but seriously I am pointing out that there really is nothing to stop you setting it all up yourself and seeing what happens!

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Hey Red,

Claire Fitch was around a little while back and said her stuff was listed in a big long list of commercial music download sites by using CdBaby.

Mentioned it in this thread here.

For just CD sales, I've always been interested in Unsigned-bands.com, but I don't know anyone who has any experience with them.

Cheers,
Steve

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