Making money from your music by selling CD’s and MP3 downloads has never been easier thanks to the power of the internet. Whether you have pressed a few hundred CD’s or just recorded a live version of your gig, its now possible to have these sold online in independent CD stores, or in the case of MP3’s sold on iTunes, Rhapsody, E-Music, Amazon and many other top music download sites, without any help from a major record company.
There are a number of independent companies that are termed as ‘Aggregators’ for the big online music stores, and what they effectively do is group together all the independent artists music for the major download stores, and deliver each week a total bundle of content to them. They also take care of collecting the money from the stores when your tracks are sold, and pass this money to you.
Some aggregators will take a small percentage of each sale and send you the rest; this is of course to cover their service costs such as staff costs to deliver your music, time etc. Some aggregators however prefer to take a small upfront fee and let you keep all of the money that the store pays the artist. Bear in mind that the online store also takes a cut from the sale of your music, but in reality you can end up earning up to 60 cents on each track sold on a 99 cent download. On top of this downloads do not need the large upfront cost of pressing that selling CD’s requires, so any money earned from the sale of MP3’s ensures you make a profit from your music much quicker.
If you do have CD’s that you have pressed and you want to sell them online, it can be difficult and expensive to set up your own web shop, and as there are businesses with all the technology in place already, why not take advantage of their services and let them do all the selling and money handling, whilst you just collect the cash!
One of the leading online CD retailers is CDBaby.com. They have been selling independent music CD’s online for over 10 years. What independent CD distributors like CDBaby require from you is that you sign up with their service, and send them initially a small amount of CDs (usually around 5) which they will then put on their site for sale. They will also ask you to fill in some general information about the CD and your band so they can put up a promotional page in their shop and feature the information to increase your chance of sales. Fees per CD sold depend on the distributor, but CDBaby currently charge $4 per CD, so if you sell a CD for $9.99 then you get to keep $5.99 per CD which is much more per item than if you were signed to a major record label!
Recently CD baby have introduced a scheme whereby they will press the CD for you in small quantities. All you have to do is supply the audio file, artwork, and release information and their pressing plant will do the rest, including stock your CDBaby store with the CD. One stop CD distribution for your music without leaving your home… brilliant. You can also use the distributor site to make it easy for fans at your gig to buy your CD as they sometimes offer you further promotional tools such as swipe machines etc.
For a small fee you can also purchase a barcode for your CD from the distributor (CDBaby currently charge $20 for this) which means that your sale will count towards a chart position should you make enough sales. It is always worth doing this, just in case you sell a lot of CD’s because the chart position, however low or high will give you more exposure and reasons to shout about your success…
Many of the independent online distributors will also put your music into physical distributor catalogues, so your music will be available to buy from real stores (CD Baby put their CD’s into Chicago based ‘Super D Phoenix One Stop’ which supplies many large physical retailers such as Tower Records, Target and many more). The online distributors will generally have a list of all the stores that your music will be available in worldwide on their site, so you can also contact your fans directly and let them know that they can go into their local record store, ask for your release and the shop can order it for them. If you want to also increase your potential earnings from your music then make sure you always opt in for the maximum amount of services these independent distributors provide (mostly at no cost). This can include things like ringtone sales, online radio play and promotion, synchronisation (your music in TV and Film) and many more.
New distribution models are appearing all the time. For example a new site called Popcuts.com is running a successful site selling independent music to fans by offering the purchaser a small share of future sales on each track sold. This is a great way to offer an incentive to your fans to buy your tracks, as they also get paid every time you sell a track, a real win-win situation for everyone.
Watch out also for promotions that online distributors sometimes run. Recently online distributor AmieStreet.com runs a promotion where new customers got $5 free to spend on music when they signed up to the AmieStreet website for free. If you place your music onto the Amiestreet website, then tell all your fans to go buy your music through the site, your fans get your music at no cost, and you get paid for the tracks by AmieStreet. Money for nothing and your tracks for free!
There are an abundance of distributors available to independent artists, bands and labels now, from Germany based FEIYR.com, who can get your music into hundreds of online stores across Europe (and beyond), US based Songcast Music, Tunecore and many more. Read the terms and conditions of each site carefully before signing up, and check the fee list thoroughly too. Some sites will charge you for taking the track from online stores if you decide to change distributor in the first year. Lastly make sure you understand which stores your digital distributor sends your music too. The more stores you have your music in, the greater chance of you selling your tracks…
