You’ve got your songs, arrangements, musicians, and studio all set and ready to go; plans for CDs and publicity aren’t far behind. The question? How to pay for it all. Here are case studies, tips, and strategies from musicians on gathering the funds to make their own dreams of an indie album release a reality. Read more.
There are numerous ways to approach crowdfunding – including home-grown methods that don’t rely exclusively on the websites that facilitate the process. Singer/songwriter Linda Chorney has been creatively financing and her own album projects for decades. I interviewed her to get some of her personal crowdfunding tips on the matter. Read more.
Crowdfunding doesn’t just raise money, it engages your fans beyond simply asking for donations or getting them to buy your merchandise; a successful campaign makes them feel like active participants, captures their enthusiasm, and helps you spread the word. The key is organizing your efforts to maximize fundraising. Read more.
You’re a musician – of course you want to record your music, make CDs, have an album release party, create new merchandise, and go on tour. Trouble is, you don’t have the cash on hand to make any of these things a reality. How can you raise the money to help fund your next music project? Read more.
Music metadata is the information embedded in a digital audio file that is used to identify the content of the song, including the song title, band or artist’s name, the name of the album on which the song appears and which number track it is, the genre of music, and year the song was released. Read more.
Many retailers have expressed concerns over the choice of Friday as the global record release date. The inability to re-stock a popular title over the weekend, as well as limiting the reporting of first-week sales to a mere three days (reports track through Sunday in a given week) are cited among the chief objections. Read more.
When it comes to sales, sometimes the very best technique is the most direct. Ask plainly for the sale. If your fan or customer really wants to buy from you, you’re doing him or her a favor by making the process streamlined and easy. If your fan or customer is unsure, you’re not helping the cause by being ambiguous. Read more.
Record Store Day is almost upon us! The full list of releases has been published, and there are three categories: Record Store Day Exclusive Release, Record Store Day Limited Run, and “Record Store Day First” Release. We’ve created a Spotify playlist to get you in the mood for some crate digging. Read more.
Record Store Day 2017 is on April 22nd, and we’re joining in to help celebrate the enduring importance and coolness of the independent record store. Five Disc Makers employees share favorite albums and why vinyl records have a particular place in their hearts when it comes to their love of and relationship to music.
It’s not always easy to know what you should be releasing as a musician. Should you go all out and create a 14 track album right away? Should you release a single as soon as you’ve recorded your first track? Here is a plan I’ve seen work well for many independent artists. Read more.
Vinyl record sales are 26% from last year, and this vinyl record revival can be a sales driver for independent artists. According to Dan Faughnder of Sledding With Tigers, “Once we announced that our first vinyl record was in the pipeline, we received enough pre-orders to break even on the pressing cost before we got them from the plant.” Read more.
The process of transforming your musical ideas into a finished product you can share and sell begins with your audio recording sessions and continues through to the delivery of your packaged CDs or vinyl records. The choices you make at each step affect the quality of your final product, so familiarizing yourself with this process at the earliest stages will help you produce the best possible results. Read more.
Even though CDs and vinyl records both make use of similarly-proportioned circles and rectangles in their design templates, each format presents unique opportunities to create graphics that your fans will love. Here are some tips from experienced designers and album manufacturing product managers to help you craft an album design worthy of the music enclosed therein. Read more.
Testing and feedback should be part of the process of getting your music products into releasable form. Testing material on your most likely fans, and making necessary improvements and decisions before committing your time and money to the recording, manufacturing, distributing, and promoting it. Without market research, you could easily spend hundreds (or thousands) of your hard-earned dollars recording music that’s unmarketable to music supervisors, labels, radio stations, and even your own target fans! Read more.
Most bands do a traditional media campaign (newspapers, magazines, radio), as well as a new media campaign (podcasts, music blogs, MP3s). Music publicity is not just compiling lists and following steps mechanically, it should be fun and is a chance to channel the same creativity you put into your music to build a buzz. Read more.