Archive for: music promotion
Insound is a minor player with a lot of heart involved in its operation. They essentially act as a blog and record label, picking up and supporting new acts that are to their taste, promoting them and selling their music through the site. They’re a smaller retailer that survives by taking an active interest in the bands they sell, keeping their margins high (read higher prices to the consumer – MP3 downloads $9.99-$10.49) and selling other trendy stuff, badges, bags, books etc. If you can convince them that you’re worth selling they’ll really make an effort to put you out in front of their indie audience, with promotional tools like free MP3 downloads and custom merch to drag people in to buy your music. RouteNote doesn’t currently do digital distribution to Insound – your best bet would be to approach them directly.
***EDIT***
Just to respond to that comment: a totally unfair comparison of someone who happened to be on Insound’s MP3 download front page when I looked, The Castanets, shows their album ‘Texas Rose…’ as being $1.50 cheaper on Amazon ($8.99) than on Insound ($10.49). Please feel free to refute me with your own research. I think Insound might deserve the extra money for taking an active interest in the bands they promote, and I hope they pass on more $ to their artists, but as a straight comparison, Amazon is cheaper (admittedly this is only one example).
iMesh is a peer-to-peer platform that has survived the legal harrow of the recording industry. The RIAA brought a copyright infringement case against them, which they settled out of court, and after which they changed their business model to be based on subscriptions within North America. Those of us lucky enough to live in Europe can still use the file sharing service without paying a $29.99 annual fee, and even the hapless Americans can use the iMesh ‘to go’ service, paying for tracks individually.
The music they offer up through their search is based on results from youtube, which streams quite smoothly in a little window on their GUI (the program window), and on the hard drives of the various iMesh users logged on at a given time (you all know how peer to peer works, right?). They have agreements with the RIAA (and thus the labels and artists listed with them) to pay royalties on streams and downloads, but they also have a vast amount of content that has not had copyright claimed. This doesn’t mean that copyright doesn’t exist in those tracks, just that the people the tracks belong to haven’t objected to their being used on iMesh’s service, which doesn’t seem particularly equitable if they don’t know its happening. RouteNote doesn’t currently do digital distribution to iMesh, but if you’re a user, you can put your own tracks in your iMesh folder to be shared. You won’t recieve any revenue thereby unless you’re registered with one of their partner mechanical copyright agencies like the RIAA or MCPS though.
This is inexcusable, I know. But here is a poorly conceived, badly executed playlist for all of my Spotify loving comrades. However, in preparation for your weekend I have prepared you slightly more than an hour’s worth of music on the theme described in the title. It starts off slow, plumbs the depths of cheese, and pretty much stays there. May your Saturday nights be forever fevered.
HMV’s online store is an extension of their high street business, and as such caters mainly to the mainstream. The prices are high but the catalogue is pretty varied; they’ve got deals with all the majors, and they do carry a lot of offers that cheapen their products, two-for-one deals etc. Another plus is that they provide a one stop shop for digital, physical and merchandise products in a more coherent, music oriented way than Amazon do (unless you visit their subsidiary, Play.com). There’s no subscription option or anything, it’s just a nice simple version of their bricks and mortar operation without you having to traipse those weary miles to the town centre, or possibly wheel down there on your special fat guy scooter. RouteNote doesn’t currently distribute to HMV, but we can get you onto Amazon, who’ll make physical CD’s for you (soon).
eMusic.com launched back in the misty past of September of 1995, initially as a CD retailer in September 1995. They didn’t move over to their current subscription based model until 2000, but they’ve since sold more than 300 million music downloads from catalogue of 6 million tracks, from 60,000 record labels. They deal with Sony, but not any other of the other majors. They make up for this by a strong focus on new and independent music – a policy of obvious benefit to RouteNote users – actively promoting artists from labels like Warp, Domino, Beggars group etc. They also have a very active and trend-conscious blog, written by people who are keeping an eye on music that comes in to eMusic’s electronic fold, going some way to proving that they genuinely care about the music they sell.
RouteNote can distribute your music to eMusic; artist revenues are based on dividing a proportion of their total subscription fees between the artists that were downloaded, 1 download equaling 1 share of the divided dinero. Subscription costs are variable, but in the UK you’re looking at somewhere under £10 for a month, which buys you 40 tracks (25p each for those who hate maths as much as me). eMusic will then take their share, and pass on a cut to the artist. Good for the consumer who’s prepared to commit to a monthly outlay, not necessarily as good for an independent artist, who is looking at significantly less per track income than on iTunes, but then there is more chance of an indie-loving audience hearing and buying your music, and more chance of getting exposure on an indie based blog than on one where you have to compete with artists from all the majors with a huge budget behind them.
Dominorecordco.com is the online outlet of the Domino record label – a pretty big indie label as things go, but still tiny in comparison to the big retailers. Their catalogue is also available through iTunes at a significantly reduced price, which seems a slightly strange move. For example, their flagship band the Arctic Monkeys album ‘Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not’ costs £7.99 for an MP3 download on Domino’s store, and only £4.74 on iTunes. Since all the music they sell is available cheaper elsewhere I wonder how they keep running the shop… RouteNote doesn’t distribute to Domino’s store (they only sell their own stuff) but we do send music to iTunes!
A niche indie supplier trading mostly in electronic music – the stars of their catalogue are Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, Thom Yorke (of Radiohead)… Principally formed from the catalogue of Warp records, but also featuring the catalogues of over 300 other record labels this site sells both MP3 downloads and physical discs (CD’s and vinyl). Their prices are based on the GBP, £6.99 for MP3′s, £8.99 for WAV’s (nice that they give you the choice) around £9-£13 for a CD, and a few quid more for the black stuff. If you’re in the states you’ll save by not paying the UK tax, but for everyone else they’re pretty expensive. Not really a competitor to the big guys like iTunes and Amazon, more for the enthusiast who can’t wait to get their mitts on a holdable, strokeable copy of their favourite band’s new LP or 12 inch single. They also do merch for some of the bands on their roster, so more and at the same time less than the big guys. RouteNote does not currently distribute to Bleep.
Audio Lunchbox is a DRM free download services based around a 2-million strong track list of independent musicians. They offer both a pay per track and a subscription service, which allows users to buy ‘credits’ to spend on music which would otherwise cost a far greater cash equivalent. They don’t have deals with Universal or the other bigger players, so should you subscribe, you’ll find yourself looking around for new and interesting music to spend your money on, rather than being able to get hold of stuff that you’ve heard on Radio 1.
The subscription plan does work out far cheaper per track than the cash option; depending on which package you purchase you’ll be getting tracks for less than 25 cents, as compared to 99 cents. The month by month plan costs $9.99, for which you get 40 credits a month (enough for 4 albums) plus 50 bonus credits to start you off. This might seem like a pretty cheap way of buying music, especially compare with iTunes basic and inflexible pricing scheme, but if you’re prepared to commit to a monthly outgoing to buy music, you might be well advised to check out Spotify’s subscription service; similarly priced at GBP£9.99 (the dollar is at 1.59 to the pound as I write) you get access to all the streamed music you could possibly want, advert free, with a catalogue that includes artists on both indie and major labels, and a widget for your android or iPhone that will allow you to listen to playlists you’ve created offline.
Starting up a band is relatively easy. Four mates that all wanna be rock stars, can all play reasonably, right some songs that you all think are the nuts (or learn covers that make money) and find a place to practice. Most starting up bands though all have jobs that help them fund their obsession with the latest release from Gibson or whoever you adore. That’s just the problem though, working men in Indy (or whatever your music scene thing is) bands don’t have the time to promote themselves. Its just not realistic to be a super mum and plug your band at the same time. So what precious time they do have needs to count. Here are three easy steps from RouteNote.com that should make it easier. And I hope that RouteNote.com subscribers are all reading this! (if not, shame on you!)
- Gigs. The bottom line for a band is playing in front of people. There is no point in rocking out and singing about saving the universe if you’ve got on-one to listen. Open mic nights are good place to start if you can make it. Offer to play every week with the establishment, so there is always someone there at least, they’ll appreciate that and you’ll find yourself in a semi-house band situation. You’ll end up playing with other people too and eventually creating a name for yourself in the local community.
- Social Networking. Social network yourself like crazy. Make friends with every band that slaps themselves on Myspace or Facebook and they’ll make friends with you right back. Even if they make a thousand empty promises to go to your gigs, they’ll still know your name an recognise it if they see it on a poster or their friends tell them about you. Try to go to as many of their gigs as possible. You’ll not only be able to create some more contacts and friends along the way, but it will encourage them to go to yours. More people at your gigs means things are improving already. You can then start to plug your social network site and contacts to your fans.
- Contacts and Circles. Semi-contradictory to the second one, don’t follow everyone else at once, sometimes its nice to be missed. Spend most of your social Network time (when you go out i mean not in front of the PC) at a lot of the same places. Follow local promoters that you think have a genuine interest in your band and follow bands that you want to work with. You’ll start to become a regular and will become synonymous with the music scene. It should result in you becoming “that guy” people think of if they need an amp or whatever. They’ll start to ring you and offer you gigs, soon after that the band should start to look after itself.
Garageband is a really interesting peer-review and music discovery site. Artists submit music to be hosted onsite, which is then sent to 20 other artists, who review it. If they like the song then it tends to rise up the GarageBand chart and get more plays, reviews and ratings. Reviewing songs earns you entry into competitions that the site runs for various prizes, giving a continual incentive to help out other producers and artists with advice and peer review, and provides the opportunity to get free stuff and good press for your music.
