How easy is it to find your work at xyz?

[whomper]

Originally Posted by EnSkorSang

So, all the bands with myspace, facebook, .com, bebo, lastfm etc etc profiles are wrong?

myspace and facebook probably not
but only if you promote *your* name not some other site

the rest of those are probably a waste

using one or two ,max, of the biggest selling sites
might be worth using
if you dont have to pay them a monthly fee

commissions are fair
but monthly fees are a rip off scam

using hundreds of sites *is* a waste of time
that should be better used to promote your own site
and do other things to get your name known

just being on joesixpaks mp3download.huh site
isnt worth the effort and will not pay you back

your goal is to get fans
and then to make sales
pretty much has to happen in that order

does being on 300 noname.huh websites
really help you make your name stand out and be known?

much better ways to market promote and do PR

[dalekay]

Originally Posted by EnSkorSang

Why is live not possible? I really dont think anything will happen without live.
Is Cd baby a distribution company or online shop? are you paying them upfront to distribute?

Internet is like the 2nd stage of promotion..like word of mouth...for it to work, some people need to already know your name and be interested. Then they search you, tell their friends etc etc. There are a very small number of chancers who find a band they like by browsing through myspace etc.

If live is out of the question (would like to know why - you are severly limiting yourself), then send copies of your best track to local radio stations, magazines, online radio, newspapers, clubs..

I said I would not do this ...
Live in my area, unless I rent out a space myself, do all the work and so on, it will not happen. There is no live venue for what I do. If I played country, yes, classic rock, still yes but harder. If I drove down to LA, I pay someplace there as well. If I had thousands to spend on something like that, I would hire someone to PR me and then pay thousands to perform live. it's a bit different, check out or peek at what I do, I think you will then agree .. it's niched ...

CD Baby, you pay up front to put your CD there, you pay for the bar code. After that, they take in a percent or fix rate. Minor cost really but per CD. They are changing now to more a user shop at ...

Radio, well yea you can do that, send out copies and they get into the circular file. I spent more time generating relationships with some net and over the air stations such that, yea we get some air time. When we do, we see some sales. I have been looking at Air Play, you do pay to get played there btw.

What is a indie to do but pay?

not just me either, I work with a lot of other bands in different styles (mostly local) and they all face the same thing ...

I am going to be taking off the day job for a week or two, head to LA to sell myself and others to the ones who might use our music. Setting up appointments right now in fact.

Sorry to counter point, I said I would not but I can see, no one is checking out what we do and just doing the general answers that do cover the bases but not all that I deal with.

Please keep them coming ...

dale

[EnSkorSang]

Ive looked at Cd baby. looks like a bad deal. I'm signed with 'believe online distribution'. It was a mistake, (which i undermine by giving my stuff away), however theres no upfront fees. They found us on myspace after hearing us on indie radio, they deliver to most online shops.
I said it was a mistake because I dont think theres any point in distributing your stuff until other things are in place.
What genre are you? If there is noone where you are that would apprecitae it...move :P
I wouldnt pay for diddly squat. Theres a lot of indie radio out there looking for small bands they can play without avoiding commision.
This week, without my prior knowledge, we were played on greek and spanish indie radio, lol.

To sell, you need to be known first and the only ways I can think of for that is airplay and gigs...

[richiebee]

My band went with CD Baby. Got the word out and get cheques from them. That's a good thing right? CD Baby got the music out to iTunes, Napster and other distributors.

Sure, people kind of need to know who we are to search, but that's what happens in a saturated market. Go to HMV (or whatever major music store you have where you live) and finding anything is a long job. Sure, you get genres. But that's it. Then its a case of look through in alphabetical order. Napster/iTunes etc, do a better job than this by providing recommendations. So its not all on CD Baby. The music distributors play a part.

[frshtrx]

I believe the original question would be valid if asked of a 'label catalog'; not of a distributor. I actually enjoy thinking that the disti's remain unbiased in promoting individual artists. They just make a buck warehousing, providing e-commerce tools and support, embedding jukeboxes, take time to negotiate digital distribution deals,etc...they are working very hard at little cost to each artist.

If you can get to your material by typing in the name= fantastic! Disti's don't make enough $$ to add promotion on top of warehousing (even digitally) and providing e-commerce functions and tracking. I would gladly pay again (and have already benefited from) the $35. set up to have a full time shipping, receiving, secure and reliable e-commerce staff at my disposal 24 x 7.

The marketing hits from CDBaby to my myspace has been great, to me any marketing benefit from a disti is all gravy.
Big label bands do stadium tours to generate interest in CDs and t-shirt sales.
It would make sense indie artists get down to the coffee shop to direct market the same way. Maybe plan on handing out cards with a pic and CDBaby link and watch what happens.

My CDBaby experience has been quite satisfactory. I did not expect them to market or promote my music.

CDBaby | Loomis

rock on

[dalekay]

Originally Posted by frshtrx

I believe the original question would be valid if asked of a 'label catalog'; not of a distributor. I actually enjoy thinking that the disti's remain unbiased in promoting individual artists. They just make a buck warehousing, providing e-commerce tools and support, embedding jukeboxes, take time to negotiate digital distribution deals,etc...they are working very hard at little cost to each artist.

If you can get to your material by typing in the name= fantastic! Disti's don't make enough $$ to add promotion on top of warehousing (even digitally) and providing e-commerce functions and tracking. I would gladly pay again (and have already benefited from) the $35. set up to have a full time shipping, receiving, secure and reliable e-commerce staff at my disposal 24 x 7.

The marketing hits from CDBaby to my myspace has been great, to me any marketing benefit from a disti is all gravy.
Big label bands do stadium tours to generate interest in CDs and t-shirt sales.
It would make sense indie artists get down to the coffee shop to direct market the same way. Maybe plan on handing out cards with a pic and CDBaby link and watch what happens.

My CDBaby experience has been quite satisfactory. I did not expect them to market or promote my music.

CDBaby | Loomis

rock on

great point !!!

Day job, I work for a Distro company, not music. They spend a ton, hire outside reps etc .. to pr and get more buying stuff to empty the warehouse. Often the companies they house the stuff, pay a bit or reduce the price to pay for ... a different role for sure but is it really that different?

Ah, back to labels .. so many hate them, often failing to realize, they are a label if they are indie and doing their own PR .. Then I run into those who do all sort of things in the name of "Getting Signed" ...

While the posts have all good points, esp. the last one, which made me think, right, I forgot ... being a indie I am so use to doing it all, I overlooked the fact, they are just that, a distro who now is trying to do something else which they might not be very good at ...

Keep them coming in ... I am sure there are a few more that will either slap me or poke some further ideas ...

dale

Inquisitor Betrayer
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[gettingthere]

I think you can kill 2 birds with one stone get a .com from go daddy and promote the **** out of it, on that website put allthe available ways to but your music on it so people have choice and the dl on your music

makes sense,neh?

[dalekay]

Originally Posted by gettingthere

I think you can kill 2 birds with one stone get a .com from go daddy and promote the **** out of it, on that website put allthe available ways to but your music on it so people have choice and the dl on your music

makes sense,neh?

done that, been there
one can spend a whole lot of time doing that
naw, you got to work with your distro ... what ever it takes, they draw them in
hire some PR types to paste your ware everywhere ...

driving the cats to your site, then dealing with "you should do this, you should make this .."
not worth the time ... then who really buys downloads from some site they know nada about?

might be for some other style of music, does not work very well for us

our site we find we can get people there to get details or if they want to know more about us ... downloads, again this month, it's iTunes as number one, all the iTune stores.

great idea, we have had the site up for many years, I see the stats ... I run the hosting company that houses our sites ... what I do on the side so I have that unlimited bandwidth and space ... ;-)

so you really did not check out the main site before posting a note here huh?
Inquisitor Betrayer

other than working as hard as you can with the distros and hiring PR types for hundreds, any other suggestions? sad as that is, that seems to be what is working for us ...
I am about to spend a few hundred on Myspace ads as well as place some ads into facebook.
I also noted, cd sales (physical media) has flatten out big time, back to down load only sales.
so why bother with the fancy art work, mastering and other costs to record when it's mp3 ...? just sad how much effort is not seen or understood ...

edit add
hit any search engine, plug in my band's name, my name ... a few tags if the style ...
it's right up there ... many years those sites have been in place and much time spent on many sites pr'ing ...

dale

[ryanoliver]

I would license this genre of music for film. Go from making $.75 a tune to 300. Create a site that caters to people looking for music beds for their films. Focus your energy on finding similar artists looking to license their music and take 30-50% for your services. Meanwhile, send out demos to every music publisher you can find an address for. They'll take 50% of your publishing but it's worth it if you end up selling something to Apple.

I have a friend who makes $500 a month bonus loot on Pond5.com selling the same stock footage. It's the same concept for music, and if you had a large enough database of artists, it wouldn't matter if you were seling your own stuff or not.

[dalekay]

Originally Posted by ryanoliver

I would license this genre of music for film. Go from making $.75 a tune to 300. Create a site that caters to people looking for music beds for their films. Focus your energy on finding similar artists looking to license their music and take 30-50% for your services. Meanwhile, send out demos to every music publisher you can find an address for. They'll take 50% of your publishing but it's worth it if you end up selling something to Apple.

I have a friend who makes $500 a month bonus loot on Pond5.com selling the same stock footage. It's the same concept for music, and if you had a large enough database of artists, it wouldn't matter if you were seling your own stuff or not.

all good ideas and in use ... here is what I found that happens which has to worked thru and just do it

1. like any sales job, you got to keep a positive attitude (not offen my forte)

2. gamemusicdepot.com is one such site, it's broken right now, hackers seemed to have wanted it destroyed so I have to find the time now to restore. The software to run it is jamroom ... good stuff but you got to devote a lot of time keeping a eye on it.

3. for some reason, knocking on doors is bad ju ju lately ... music supervisors whose job it is to pedal your wares (one of) seem to place you in the far back if you take the job away from them, do that enough, you are black listed. to that end, we are listed in several music libraries. hey I think I have $5.00 owed right now ... I made a lot more on downloads from iTunes.

4. music publishers, well we have not run into the right one yet as all I talked too are not taking in any new work, are broke or do not do what we do. I think a inside connection is needed to move in this area if you are a indie.

5. networking is what seem to work best but you got to smooze your way into those networks ... another time eater that might be best used to keep making music ....

6. taking to students in film and other indies, works .. just no money ... you find yourself, like I do, doing a lot of work for free ... little pr and not wishing to be negative but little outcome ...

7. doing our own videos has lead to sales ... iTunes or other downloads ... working on a few indie films right now, which you can see some of the trailers on our youtube is working but no money ...

8. best to forget money ... keep making music ... keep that chin up and just continue doing it ... someday ...

I do not know your friend and I do not wish to sound harsh at all but
sometimes you just luck into it ... I too sell pictures, mostly to calendars and book covers but not lately.

one of the reasons I am putting funds aside, to hire pr people that will work our music to the right places as I am just rotten at it ... ;-)

of course there is TAXI ... boy have I thought of them over the years, talked to many who have done it, been a member or dropped out .. all combinations too ... most did not want to change what they do which is, in the end, me too. I am happy making the music and the style I am doing. I am not going to play country to get a gig or get paid. A failure to some eyes but I have to be true to myself. Hence why I am not a Taxi member. It would be a waste of money and time. (sorry if I offend any country players here too, in my area, it's almost 100% country to get a gig)

Also, you are dead on, on what our main effort is, Film, TV and commericals.

dale