Not all music purchases are motivated by low price. Blue Coast Records’ development of Extended Sound Environment recording has created a new niche for the audiophile market through high-res audio streams and CDs. Read More.
Soundcloud is special because its features allow it to create a very intimate sense of partnership with your listener. Everyone knows you need to create a personal bond with your fans, and Soundcloud isn’t really a streaming service at all – it’s more of a music-centric social network. Read more.
A big part of the revenue blurriness in music streaming is because many record deals were made before the advent of music streaming, using a model of selling a physical product. It’s time to tackle the job of drafting contracts to account for the fact that there are no manufacturing costs with streaming or download sales. Read more.
2015 was marked by a number of high-profile artists continuing to speak out against the music streaming business model while excluding their music from providers like Pandora, Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, and many more. Mainstream artists have challenged whether streaming can ever be profitable for artists. Read more.
Whatever you think of Adele’s decision to follow the likes of Taylor Swift and Thom Yorke and sidestep streaming services like Apple Music and Spotify, she’s proven again that she has the star power and “four quadrant” appeal to change the trajectory of album sales for the industry this year. Read more.
Jay Frank, a former VP at Country Music Television and Yahoo Music, recently launched his own record company, called DigSin. Based in Nashville, DigSin, which stands for digital single, has a very unique business model: It promotes free downloads for life and a “360 of the song” deal. Read more.
Apple Music is live and streaming, and for independent musicians who want in on the service, CD Baby is the go-to source to make music available on the platform. In addition to being an Apple approved aggregator, the editors at CD Baby’s The DIY Musician blog have embarked on a series of posts covering Apple Music. Read more.
You’ve heard the term “ISRC” thrown around, but what is it, and why do you need it? An ISRC (International Standard Recording Code) is a 12-digit alphanumeric code that serves as a unique and permanent identifier for any sound recording or music video. So where a UPC is tied to the “carrier” of the track – e.g. the CD or LP – an ISRC identifies individual tracks. Read More.
As an indie, your plan should be to seek out social and digital distribution platforms that will cater best to you and your audience, but there is one platform that still dominates as the go-to for mass music purchasing. This platform is iTunes. As of 2013, iTunes accounted for 66% of all digital music sales. Read more.
Revised January 2019. Whether you’re contacting magazines, music blogs, radio shows, record labels, music distributors, or promotional services, you have to check their specific submission guidelines before getting in touch. This is the most fundamental rule of music promotion. Read the post.
Ben Sword interviewed Disc Makers and CD Baby CEO and President Tony van Veen (in which he reveals that Tony is his hero), and the two explore topics ranging from time travel (kind of) to digital music, music distribution, music marketing, and getting a music manager. Read more.
Can we call it a trend? In March we posted that overall album sales were up in 2011, and now we’ve received news from our comrades at CD Baby that physical CD sales for their independent artists are up from this time last year. Read more.
The united state of independent music is thriving big time, and we have the numbers to back it up. CD Baby put together this infographic to highlight some of the key figures from 2011. Highlights include nearly $42 million paid out to musicians, close to 4 million songs distributed, and over 61,000 new albums and almost 30,000 new singles added in 2011. Check out the infographic for more details.
As the discovery of new music increasingly moves to downloading and streaming, taking the time to ensure your online music sounds as good as it can takes on ever greater importance. For many independent artists, a new listener’s first impression will be formed by hearing some type of compressed audio file. Read more…
How indie artist Making April went from 0 to 1,000 sales a week on iTunes in one year.
I recently was having lunch with my dear friend, music attorney extraordinaire Dan Friedman, who was in town to showcase a band he represents who he mentioned was selling 1,000 singles a week on iTunes. Read more…