SoundCloud, BandCamp, Reverbnation, Distrokid - experiences

BKK-OZ · Post by **BKK-OZ** » Tue May 19, 2015 6:03 pm

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.

billf · Post by **billf** » Tue May 19, 2015 7:33 pm

I am interested to hear your experiences.

RROY · Post by **RROY** » Wed May 20, 2015 4:25 am

Definitely interested.

HCMarkus · Post by **HCMarkus** » Wed May 20, 2015 6:34 am

Bandzoogle too?

Tritonemusic · Post by **Tritonemusic** » Wed May 20, 2015 11:00 am

I'm in.

FMiguelez · Post by **FMiguelez** » Wed May 20, 2015 12:32 pm

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.

BKK, I was just going to ask something similar. I will be following this thread with great interest.

I would be VERY VERY interested in listening about your experiences with these services, particularly about the registration process, your experience about getting paid, rates, general user experience, tips, do's and dont's, etc.

I've never used any online platforms to promote my music, but that is going to change THIS month

BKK-OZ · Post by **BKK-OZ** » Wed May 20, 2015 3:43 pm

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

BKK-OZ · Post by **BKK-OZ** » Wed May 20, 2015 3:44 pm

HCMarkus wrote:Bandzoogle too?

I haven't tried it yet, but I will. I think one of the things to do on the 'net is to just give into the notion that you need to get your stuff out anywhere it might get some attention. Hence, I am also on Tumblr and Twitter.

crduval · Post by **crduval** » Wed May 20, 2015 5:58 pm

I use soundcloud and am pretty sure you can sell tracks through them. I haven't tried it since I just want a place for people to easily hear my stuff. I like that you can provide a bio and descriptions of each track and collection of tracks. They have a few subscription levels that mostly allow you to add more tracks and learn more about who/where is playing your stuff and other stats.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

BKK-OZ · Post by **BKK-OZ** » Wed May 20, 2015 6:07 pm

crduval wrote:I use soundcloud and am pretty sure you can sell tracks through them. I haven't tried it since I just want a place for people to easily hear my stuff. I like that you can provide a bio and descriptions of each track and collection of tracks. They have a few subscription levels that mostly allow you to add more tracks and learn more about who/where is playing your stuff and other stats.

AFAIK, SoundCloud has no direct support for selling. You can do third-party add-ons like Nimbit, but I am not aware of selling functionality within SC.

Have you got a link or reference to share?

BKK-OZ · Post by **BKK-OZ** » Sat May 23, 2015 5:12 pm

Well, I hope my post was of some interest to you guys... let me know if you have any questions.

Another option worth looking into, depending on your business model, is CD Baby. CD Baby do the distribution thing like Distrokid, but they can also manufacture and distribute physical (CD's, vinyl) media as well. They don't offer their 'Pro' plan outside Canada/USA (imperialists!!!), but otherwise they appear to have an interesting offer. They charge per track/album. Anyway, worth a look, depending on what you are doing.

HCMarkus · Post by **HCMarkus** » Sat May 23, 2015 6:12 pm

Thanks BKK. Appreciate your perspective.

BKK-OZ · Post by **BKK-OZ** » Tue May 26, 2015 10:12 pm

HCMarkus wrote:Thanks BKK. Appreciate your perspective.

I'm glad someone found it of some use, thanks for letting me know.

daniel.sneed · Post by **daniel.sneed** » Wed May 27, 2015 12:50 am

Thanx for sharing this extended experience.

nk_e · Post by **nk_e** » Wed May 27, 2015 3:28 am

I found it very informative. Thank you for taking the time!

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