Being a composer, I made a music CD a while ago (with my photo and name on the CD jacket), for use in networking in music circles. It was useful as a fancy business card, basically, if in talks with someone who had connections in music industry or musical activities.
People told me, though, that CDs are such a 1990s thing and outdated. I’m trying to think of a suitable alternative. What is the modern-day equivalent to music CDs? Sure, I could make my music downloadable on various websites, but the whole point of having a music CD is that it is a tangible object that can be held and seen. It was much more useful, in this networking field, to have that on hand than to tell someone, “well, if you go to YouTube or this or that channel, you can hear my music.”
How about you keep handing out the CDs, but along with your name and photo on the CD jacket include a URL for where they can go to listen to or download your music (in case that’s more convenient for them).
Or just a business card with the URL. I, personally, like the idea of handing out CDs, but I’m old-school, and a layman.
Put your music up on Soundcloud and put a QR code on your business card that takes you to your Soundcloud page. That way you can keep your music updated without re-burning CDs or flash drives, and you can promote yourself within the Soundcloud community. Or Bandcamp.
I’m a bit old school too and like CDs, but recognize I’m an outlier.
That said, aren’t flash drives / microSD cards a little old school these days too? I haven’t used one in more than a year I reckon. Also, depending on how much of a stranger you are to the people you’re networking with they may be uncomfortable plugging your flash drive into their computer. Also, you lose the immediacy benefit: a link to a streaming or download location means I might grab a listen from my phone on the bus home (or from my car or whatever). I can’t do that with a CD or data card unless I have my laptop with me.
A link (QR code? Are those still a thing? It’s hard to keep up.) on a business card might be good. And if you are linking to something you’d certainly want to make sure it was Android / iPhone friendly for listening. That’d actually exclude some website download implementations that are just annoying from devices.
Personally, I don’t really like being given “stuff”. It’s happened a lot as we’ve been house hunting recently. Agents give me a card and I don’t really have a good place to keep it (until I discretely find a recycle bin that is). I wonder if this is a generational or specific industry thing … I wonder if you could compromise and have the cards / CDs for those who still like those sort of things and something that can be scanned right there and then (maybe on the business card itself) for those who don’t.
You can have business cardflash drives, but they aren’t especially cheap. Not shatteringly expensive, but you will you think twice about whether someone is [del]sponge[/del] um card-worthy.
Aside: My mom stumbled upon this from exactly the opposite direction. She has a crafting hobby-business (mostly sewing). For a while, she had an Etsy store, and when she got business cards printed, she had the store link on them. But she discovered that she was doing hardly any of her business online, and it wasn’t worth the hassle, so she shut down the Etsy store. She then removed the link from all of her business cards through the simple expedient of cutting off that corner. Which does indeed make them distinctive and stand out.