Money and Music and Distribution...to charge or not?

[louderthangod]

Like a lot of musicians making original music, releasing it ourselves is easier than trying to find a label interested in putting it out. What are your thoughts on services like TuneCore or CDBaby? I'd personally like to get my stuff on BandCamp and iTunes, I've seen that you can submit stuff to Pandora directly now and some of those services will get you on Spotify but I'm not sure about Apple Music. I have a nice day job and I can't in this current music market see making a living off of music but then again it would be nice if it could cover even a fraction of my gear costs but even that might be unreasonable. I'd really just be happy to get my music out there and hope it connects with the handful of people that might be into it. What has worked, what hasn't worked for you? My last band put out a cd years ago and we put it on iTunes for $9.99 and it barely sold anything. I did a few one-off projects that we put some stuff on BandCamp as a pay what you want and got a few bucks and a handful of plays. I'd like to get out there and start playing live again, even with my one-man-band thing I'm doing...I've seen a few of those live and it seems like it can work. Maybe we can use this thread as a resource in this ever changing market that is struggling trying to find a balance between artists and the listeners.

[BoatRich]

Bandcamp is super easy, all you have to do is make an account and they walk you through the rest. I believe they take like 10% of each sale and you get 200 free downloads a month. I have no clue how to get on Spotify but I'm trying to, so if anyone could help with that?

I don't really see the point of iTunes/CD Baby at this point though unless you have a reasonable following. They want way too much money for the low return.

[tuj]

Give it all away. At least someone will remember you when you're gone.

I tried for years to make money off music. I learned it is so much more about WHO you KNOW and WHERE you LIVE than what you actually sound like. Sucks...

[coldbrightsunlight]

As a listener I love bandcamp and I buy a tonne of stuff off there. The pay what you want model and the generally low prices of the minimum priced stuff makes me buy LOADS more stuff than I otherwise would because it's cheap to try it out and support a band.

[D.o.S.]

Yeah bandcamp is pretty hard to beat. Not only can you charge what you want but it's very nice, aesthetically.

[jrmy]

Big time Bandcamp fanboi. I think they had to up their percentage, but it's still less than any other service out there...

[louderthangod]

The benefit to iTunes for me is getting albums directly on my phone. I wish I could directly download albums from BandCamp onto my phone or if they had a better mobile player. I think you still get 70% on iTunes but I'm not sure if you can add it for free. With Connect you can add directly without cdbaby or tunecore but there are tons of restrictions like barcodes and bunch of other stuff.

[daseb]

another +1 for pay what you want or pay a minimal amount on bandcamp.

I tend to approach this stuff with the opinion that no one owes me shit for the noises I make and so it's always pretty nice when someone considers the things you're making worthy of their $5.

[weed_killer]

there's no reason not to host on bandcamp - it's the best music platform around, imo - total control over the look/content of your page, ability to upload/download in multiple formats (lossy/lossless), extremely easy to connect with people and free to use. I can't imagine not having a bandcamp page.

[Dandolin]

Here to learn.

[kaeth]

The way I look at it is that I'd rather people:

1) Listen to my album and pay me
2) Listen to my album and don't pay me
3) Don't listen to my album and pay me
4) Don't listen to my album and don't pay me.

In that order. So I really dig the pay what you want model.

Truth be told, I have a very low income, so I take a lot of albums from Bandcamp, but I pay for some when I can. It usually depends more on circumstance than how much I like the music. I'd never chastise someone for taking my music. I don't think that's taking any money out of my pocket - it's just telling poor people that they're not allowed to enjoy it. I know Bandcamp offers free streaming, but I generally download and move to MP3 player because that's where I do the majority of my listening. I assume there are others that do the same.