I’ve been working on a project for a couple of years now but finally have a solid bunch of material to hone and record, and I’m looking ahead to when I’m ready to put stuff up for sale.
iTunes requires a 20 album catalog, and rather than go the “Van Morrison Payin’ Dues” route, I started looking at alternative distribution outlets. I’ve bought a handful of CDs and a couple of mp3-only albums thru Bandcamp, and found their service and product to be very good for a consumer, but I’d like to know if anyone has experience with them as an artist/seller, and if that experience has thus far been a good one.
Yes, very familiar with Bandcamp. It’s a great platform, but really needs to be combined with some other marketing and social media tools to see good numbers. Very easy to use and setup.
You’d also want to combine that album with streaming and online distro aggregators using a service like Tunecore or CDBaby - which will also get you on iTunes, Play, etc.
Before you release you also need to make sure you’re registered with a PRO (typically ASCAP or BMI) for publishing revenue (including YouTube micropayments) and Soundexchange for collection of Master Rights streaming revenues (i.e. Spotify streaming and the like)
If you have cover songs, make sure you register for a mechanical license with HFA (Harry Fox Agency)
Getting BC set up is pretty simple, as is integrating into an existing site and your artist FB page. If you have specific technical questions let me know.
The real trick is planning the launch and tying it into your existing social media campaigns and event promotion.
Pricing is very flexible and quite the hot button topic in the business these, especially among indie artists. Some want to give it all away, or flex price/pay what you want, or free download but sale of physical merch. Pricing strategy should be tailored to your position and needs.
I haven’t used Bandcamp, but I wanted to say that I have used the services provided by CDBaby. Their mechanical rights service is cheaper and easier than Harry Fox, and their digital distribution service is pretty comprehensive.
Post a link to your music when you get it up and running!
I’m in rehearsals all day today so I plan on looking into CDBaby to see what they do and how they do it, etc.
I have a YouTube channel up already, but, I realized I was getting ahead of myself. I will, of course, proudly post links to stuff when I get all set up properly.
