SoundCloud, BandCamp, Reverbnation, Distrokid - experiences

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terrybritton
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Re: SoundCloud, BandCamp, Reverbnation, Distrokid - experien

Post by terrybritton »

mhschmieder wrote:Yeah, I was getting TAXI and Harry Fox confused.

The Harry Fox site sends you to SongFile if your distribution needs are fairly low:

http://www.songfile.com

They have an FAQ's page that is quite helpful:

https://secure.harryfox.com/songfile/faq.jsp#faq14

It's going to take me awhile to go through all the details, but it looks like it's going to be too expensive to do cover songs unless I sell them, as it's a penny per stream or nine cents per physical distribution.

Well, better safe than sorry. I'll continue to use DropBox for my covers, for now, as I do NOT want to spends a lot of time on the business side at this moment as I have years worth of unfinished projects at work and at home that I really want to put a wrap on, without unnecessary distractions.

It's good to have the targets in mind though. I'll read about "fair use", and also about copyrights on original arrangements of prior work to see if that gives me some sort of partial "out".
I definitely had never heard of SongFile.com - very interesting! Yes, a bit expensive, but not out-of-bounds. Thanks for that lead!

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Re: SoundCloud, BandCamp, Reverbnation, Distrokid - experien

Post by mhschmieder »

I guess people heard that Soundcloud is laying off at least half of their workforce and completely shutting down SF and London. Hmm, maybe some of those SF people would make good candidates for my employer, just opposite Soundcloud's office on the Berkeley side of the Bay Bridge. :-)

I am glad I didn't spend time getting into Soundcloud now. Not many expect it to survive, but it's an evolving story. The consensus seems to be to jump to Band Camp -- at least for those for whom Soundcloud made the most sense in the first place.

I still am only using DropBox, as I keep falling behind on the next phase of my research for how to self-publish when I get to my finished products.
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Re: SoundCloud, BandCamp, Reverbnation, Distrokid - experien

Post by mikehalloran »

terrybritton wrote:
mhschmieder wrote:... but much of this article I wrote way, way back in 1995 still applies today (of course, the dollar amounts for physical royalties no longer apply...)

Music Business Primer (1995-97)

I thought to share it because of what you said about your Dropbox version of the "Poor Man's Copyright". Basically -- they do not work.

Terry
Much of that info is still correct. A bit of it never was which is no biggie except...

There is a big, monstrous, gaping hole, however, and that is there's no mention of the differences of the rights enjoyed between published and unpublished works combined with the registration requirements and limitations concerning those that have been published.

Lack of understanding has cost a few songwriters million$ (18 of those millions in one case).

Terry, if you would like some help with that, please feel free to message or email me (not at my work email!). It's a good article, though out of date, and I'm sure I'm not alone in wanting to see it corrected and modernized.
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Re: SoundCloud, BandCamp, Reverbnation, Distrokid - experien

Post by MichaelAshSharbaugh »

BKK-OZ wrote:I have recently been working with SoundCloud, BandCamp, Reverbnation, Distrokid, Vimeo and a couple of other online artist-oriented platforms.

Before I put in the effort of doing a post sharing what I have learned/think about these platforms, I thought I would gauge interest. Shout-out if you are interested and if enough are, FWIW, I will outline my experiences.
I am totally in, but I really believe We should discuss Songtradr and RoteNote, too, as RouteNote has been 'jerking Me around' lately, and refuses to pay Me royalties, or, at least, they are making Me jump thru hoops to get paid My rightfully earned and pre-ordained/confirmed royalties.

~ Michael
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Re: SoundCloud, BandCamp, Reverbnation, Distrokid - experien

Post by MichaelAshSharbaugh »

BKK-OZ wrote:OK, here is my first go - feel free to ask questions.
I may not have the answers, but I can try.

I won't do too much in the way of descriptions, just go to the 'About' for each service for that.

Distrokid
AFAIK, the main competitor here is Tunecore.

I haven't used Tunecore, because after much Internet reading, it became pretty clear to me that Distrokid and Tunecore do pretty much the same thing, and Distrokid is cheaper*.

The registration process was very quick and easy, and the cost is pretty hard to argue with. Uploading my tracks was also easy, though the 'batching' is kind of limiting. (You can only do albums, and if you decide to add/delete a track, you have to delete the whole album and start over again.) Another major limitation with Distrokid is that you don't get to add a bio or album description. As I learned later, All Music supplies these for Spotify and iTunes, and the only way to get All Music to do that is to make a submission to them, and that can take months to process. My artwork also got crunched - not sure if there was some guidance somewhere on Distrokid that I missed, but be warned, it appears that iTunes, Amazon, etc. have a pretty specific image ratio they want, and I didn't get that right.

Within a day or so, all my tracks were up on iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, etc. I just used Distrokid's default distribution list, and I haven't checked all the outlets yet, so I am not 100% sure that my music is everywhere it is supposed to be, but I feel confident that it is, and I will be checking them all in due time. You can see my Amazon listing here: http://www.amazon.com/26-Suicides-BK/dp ... 6+suicides

If you want to see me on iTunes, do a search for '26 Suicides'. Hey, if someone wants to buy one of my tracks there, I can report on how the payment process from iTunes works! :)

All in all, it was pretty magical. Within an 1/2 hour I had done the work to get my music on all the major stores. The lack of a bio is a drag, and the current set up with All Music is pretty stupid, but I guess there isn't much one can do about that at the moment.

*I started the sign-up process for Distrokid, but stopped before payment. After a week or two they sent me a reminder email. After a couple of weeks they sent me a 40% off coupon. This may not work for you, but here FYI.

BandCamp
I set up on BandCamp first, again after researching most of the platforms. The main reason I chose BandCamp is that I don't expect to ever really sell my music (my art practice is focused on installation work) and my plan (hope!) is to monetize my work via selling of limited edition stills from my videos. BC has a fairly good merchandising platform which supports limited editions and the like, and I could get going there for free to try it out. I still haven't gone pro there, I will do that as I get closer to launching my installation so that I can post videos directly on my BC site.

Registration is easy, and it is nice that you can customize the look and feel of your BC site with your own art work (see bottom of this post for my links). The UI for uploading tracks is a bit clunky, but it gets the job done. Payments through BC seem to be processed fairly quickly, a couple of friends kindly bought some of my stuff there, even though I have everything set up for free download. The ability to set a minimum price that your customers can override (go up) is really nice.

BC don't do fulfillment (printing/packaging t-shirts, etc.), and I have done some research on that side of things, let me know if you want to learn more about what I know about fulfillment.

SoundCloud
As Vimeo is to YouTube, BandCamp is to SoundCloud. Vimeo is much more pro oriented, not full of as much rubbish as YouTube. SC is a bit of a swamp, like YouTube. In the first few days of posting there I had many 'followers', quite a number of whom wore skimpy bikinis in their profile pictures and apparently lived in Denver. hmmmmm... Then I started getting messages from people starting out with 'Hey DJ...' inviting me to check out these great services where I could 'buy' thousands of followers. Within a day or so, I had to turn off the immediate notifications, because I was getting bombarded with so much of that crap. I still post my stuff there, and I do follow some people (mostly local to Melbourne).

SC offers a basic stats reporting package for free users, and I haven't checked out what their pro option offers. BC has only the one level of stats reporting (pretty basic, but it is free.)

SC's player is very nice, and it is easy to embed elsewhere, so that is a big advantage. Not being able to offer a purchase option is a drawback (you have to link back to BC) and not being able to customize your SC page is a drag too - you just tend to get lost in the mist with everyone else. There are so many people on SC that unless you are Lady Radiohead or something, you simply will not get noticed.

If you have fans/an audience and want a simple and easy way to showcase your tunes, SC is the way to go. BC (pro) lets you embed videos, not sure if SC can do the same, but for me that means I will spend more of my energy on BC.

Reverbnation
I have only partially set myself up on RN, not for any other reason than all this just takes time and I don't have enough. RN is an up-sell platform. By that I mean that they constantly want to sell you fries with that shake. I am forever getting emails offering value-add services, etc. I haven't tried any of these things yet so I can't comment on whether they are worth it or not, but methinks that RN makes its money by preying on artist's dreams of becoming known. The interface is slick, easy to use, but it seems as though all the good stuff requires a pro subscription. BC is much more down-to-home, almost a bit like community radio, RN is more like Burger King.

Vimeo
I really dislike YouTube (autoplay, cueing of the next video, ads, etc. etc.) and I much prefer Vimeo. There is (comparatively) very little garbage on Vimeo, their player is pretty good (struggles with scrolling tho) and is easy to embed. They haven't updated features for awhile now, but they keep promising an overhaul soon, so we will see what happens.

I have been a 'Pro' user there for awhile for a bunch of reasons, but it is kinda pricey (~$200/year). For my sort of stuff (artsy) there is a pretty big community on Vimeo, and while Vimeo's Groups and Channels are pretty limited feature-wise, they do provide a relatively easy way to connect-up with like minded souls. I have over 100 followers on Vimeo, and I know that all of them are real people, genuinely interested in my work, not trolls or spam-bots trying to make a buck off me.

Overall lessons
None of these platforms are going to generate interest in your work (save, maybe to a small extent, Vimeo). You need to drive traffic to them via other means - on-line magazines, having a Twitter following (hey! follow me on Twitter!), etc. One of my videos got ~20k hits, but only because a site chose it as their recommendation for that week. Everyone else is out there saying 'look at me, look at me', so you will have to contend with that.

Even if you are Bjork, I doubt that Distrokid is going to help make you rich, because the payment terms (and prices) fixed by iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, etc. mean that unless you are selling huge, the $$$ will just be a trickle. If I was to do it all over again, I would try to get on All Music's database before doing the Distrokid thing, so that my music had a bio on iTunes, etc. but I would still use Distrokid.


http://vimeopro.com/user15810786/26-suicides
https://twitter.com/26Suicides
https://soundcloud.com/bkk-5
https://bkbk.bandcamp.com/releases

FANTASTIC post, Friend!!!

:D :brucelee: :D
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