SELL YOUR MUSIC ONLINE
Get your music on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, Amazon, TikTok, Instagram and more, reaching new audiences & fans across the biggest global platforms. Check out our store guide below to discover where listeners can stream and download your music when you release with Ditto.
SELL YOUR MUSIC ONLINE
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One of the best stores to use to sell your music online is Bandcamp. Bandcamp is an independent platform that allows you to sell your music to fans in various formats, including MP3 and WAV. You can also collect the data and email addresses of fans who buy your music, which can be useful when it comes to marketing new songs or providing updates about upcoming tours, shows, and releases.
Platforms such as iTunes also offer handy marketing features, such as the ability to offer pre-sales and instant gratification tracks. Music download sites allow users to instantly access your music, rather than having to rely on selling traditional physical copies, which are more expensive and labor intensive.
Spreading your music far and wide is the key to getting heard and building a loyal fanbase these days. So why upload direct to Spotify when you can use a free music distribution service (like Amuse) to release your music on all the major streaming platforms and stores in one go?
Getting your tracks promoted on blogs is one of the best ways to get playlisted and sell more music. Most of the major playlist curators look at music blogs to help them discover new music, so when your track gets featured on one, you level up your chances of getting playlisted.
There are many ways you can engage with your fanbase; common methods include promotional video teasers on Facebook and Instagram, and keeping your followers up to date with photos and posts documenting the creative process. If you have your own website you can utilise this to advertise and promote your music, but social media is great to utilise with or without a website.
Once your release is finally online, a promo link player or your Artist Hub will help you gather links to all shops on a single page. That way, you make sure your fans can always find your music, whatever platform they use. You can also embed the promo link player on your official website and newsletter, as well as share it on all your social media profiles.
An often overlooked resource, email lists are a crucial ingredient in the success of selling your music online. This is because, with an email list, you own a database of fans that you can always access and download. Unlike social media, the majority of people at least check their emails every day. If fans have been subscribed to your email list to receive a newsletter or by having purchased from your website, they are likely keen to hear from you and about any new releases. In addition to your other promotional activities, you should always use the opportunity to send out an email to your fan list with a link to buy your new single or album.
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If you're a new musician and are releasing your first album, EP, or single, your music distribution strategy may be more DIY than an artist whose farther along in their career and maybe signed to a record label. Either way, we've put together this guide to teach you everything you need to know about getting your music into the right stores and services.
Because of this, it's important that you make your music available on as many digital services as possible - the mainstream ones so fans can easily access your music, and the newer ones so you have a better chance at being found by new listeners due to less competition.
Digital music distribution companies exist for independent artists to send their music to many (but not all) of the popular streaming and download services, along with the appropriate rights that allow the service or store to stream or sell the music to their users. These companies usually charge a small annual fee to manage the digital distribution efforts for an artist.
If you're looking for a way to sell your music directly to your fans, Bandcamp is the solution. You can upload your albums for digital and physical purchase, along with merchandise like T-shirts and stickers.
In addition to selling your music directly to your fans via your own website and services like Bandcamp or Big Cartel, there are many online outlets you can sell your physical CDs through such as Amazon and CDBaby.
If you're getting played on the radio, have a large, densely populated audience interested in buying music in local retail stores, and you have the means to support a physical distribution supply chain (either on your own or with a partner), selling your music in physical retail stores may make sense.
These companies have existing relationships with physical retail outlets, and often times handle a large portion of the marketing strategies for the music as well. If you're in a later stage of your career where you've acquired a nice sized fanbase, you may be able to work directly with these companies - even without a label.
If one of your songs was recently added to a radio stations playlist, try contacting local consignment retailers in that area who may be interested in selling your music, and see if they'd be willing to test your album with a small amount of inventory.
Working your physical distribution supply chain independently as a musician can be extremely time consuming, and take away from time spent writing new music and touring. However, if you can pull it off, along with great marketing and touring efforts, it can be a great source of revenue.
Since most music is consumed digitally, and it's easy to sell your music physically online, your time may be better spent working to grow your fanbase to the point where you can outsource physical distribution, or land a deal with a record label or a distributor with an existing network of retailers rather than trying to manage things yourself.
While the musical aspect depends entirely on the quality of your songs, both in its composition and recording, promotion and distribution are a big part of the business and they have to be taken very seriously.
One way is, for example, to create your own website and sell music through there, but there are other options like selling your songs through Soundcloud (with the extension DIY Music) or specialist sites like Bandcamp and Vibedeck.
For this post, we're assuming you've got the compositions, and you've got professional recordings of them. If you try selling your music without having high-quality recordings, you're going to burn bridges before you had a chance to build them.
Many of the market and music-only platforms require that you make your music available to them through a music distributor. The music distributor handles all the legalities and payment processing and often assists in the marketing of your music. Each music distribution company offers its own variety of payment options, which usually include a portion of your royalties going to the distribution company or you pay them a flat fee. They also offer a variety of additional services.
For example, RouteNote offers distribution services and assistance in setting up your own e-commerce site to sell your music. It also provides a service that scans YouTube for unauthorized uses of your music so you can get paid for their use. Distribution company ReverbNation includes a member-only marketplace where you can find a gig, signing, and collaboration opportunities, among a full-range of marketing and promotion tools.
In this scenario, you're not necessarily the musician. You want your compositions used commercially by others. In fact, you won't be the musician in most cases. You'll still need a quality recording of each piece, regardless of who's performing. The recording may not need to be the complete song, but enough to let a professional musician, publisher, or producer know if they want more.
This is a good time to clarify that when you sell directly to an audience or to a music industry professional for commercial use of your music, you're really licensing the work's use. Music licensing and royalties are intricate legal and business thickets. If you aren't hiring an attorney who will make sure you aren't inadvertently selling away your rights to your music, working through an online distribution platform is an excellent choice. Just make sure to read the details of their arrangement so you know what you're selling on their platform.
There are online platforms that specifically connect composers with publishers, like Kobalt Music and Soundgine. You can also contact music publishers directly. Here's a list of music publishers. There's an art to pitching your work to publishers, so don't spam them individually or send out a pitch blast to a bunch of them at once. You will want to have your own attorney review any contract you sign with a publisher.
The critical issue here is that you'll be composing "works for hire." In the complicated world of music copyrights, "work for hire" is one area of relative clarity. When you compose a "work for hire," you don't own any of the copyrights to it. Your salary or freelance rate is your payment in full for the composition.
Offering your services as a composer for hire may be a great way for you to earn money for composing music while helping you refine your composition skills for your own compositions. Carefully review any "work for hire" contracts before signing them. Employment contracts especially may have an expansive take on what falls under the agreement, and you want to ensure work you do on your own time and with your own resources won't fall under the contract. 041b061a72