Do you sell your music?

[estevan carlos benson]

Do you sell your music, if so have you found any strategies or approaches that work better than others? I'm under the impression that performing live is/will always be the best way to promote your work. That aside, are there any tactics people here have found successful?

[kanuck]

I sell my music when I play live

[Rave]

Beatport is the biggest store to sell dance music.

[hacktheplanet]

I sell my music when I play live

I sell my life for music.
BAZINGA

[estevan carlos benson]

I guess my real question is, who here has found effective strategies for selling their music?

[kanuck]

I guess my real question is, who here has found effective strategies for selling their music?

play live shows and sell the music at the gigs. The obvious option for this would be to print actual cds but since this does involve a bit of startup money i'm going to experiment with dropcards.com. We'll see how it works. hopefully it'll catch on. $100 is not too bad of an investment.

[regretfullySaid]

Anyone selling direct-to-disk performances of the show they did to sell at the show?

[Forge.]

I guess my real question is, who here has found effective strategies for selling their music?

play live shows and sell the music at the gigs. The obvious option for this would be to print actual cds but since this does involve a bit of startup money i'm going to experiment with dropcards.com. We'll see how it works. hopefully it'll catch on. $100 is not too bad of an investment.

I just checked the site - it looks cool

but then I thought these days, you'd almost be able to just do a transfer from your iPhone to theirs? Just put a sign up!

It would probably earn you more in the long run to just get an email for a mailing list and give them the link for free, but be able to let them know when your gigs are on.

it can be nice to have a real object, to maybe catch those impulse buys from people after they've had a few drinks. Personally I have bought CDs at gigs once or twice, but generally I hate the clutter of CDs and DVDs - there's nowhere to put them. In those cases it;s been more that I'm impressed with the gig and I want to acknowledge it by giving them some money. I'd probably prefer not to have the CD actually. But I'd be happy to give an email so I can check them out when I get home without having to find where I put whatever the thing is with it written on it.

All my listening is in a digital form these days, and I reckon it's the same for most people, so maybe best to save them the bother of ripping it? Allow the minimum amount of effort. Cards and CDs are just as likely to get lost anyway.

With internet sales - you can have loads of releases and never see a penny.

Clearly what people want to pay for is some kind of unique experience, and that is a live gig.

[projoosa]

Interesting article in Future Music this month with Carl Cox. He's releasing an album on some kind of USB stick which sounds a bit an e-licencer. He suggests you cant write to the stick but somehow it syncs and downloads content. I think it has videos of him / tutorials and other content and the album gets updated over time.

Pretty interesting concept - be cool to see if it takes off...

[regretfullySaid]

I like the idea of the audience being able to download the show (direct-line and room mics) at a site and then they can donate, purchase merch, more muic, etc if they want. It's cool to come up with ingenious ideas but nothing wrong with keeping it simple either, especially to find the simplest route of getting your audience to give some $$$.

[JAMM]

Get your music on streaming audio sites like spotify.
I think thats the future.

The payment per play is way less then sells on itunes (also not much) but as the community grows the payment also grows.

[florian_bl]

I go the traditional way at the moment. Releasing my music on established labels and sharing the profit with them. Not much money to be made by this though. Most of the income is generated by djing and the releases are just one part of the promo for this. Sad, but this is how it works nowadays.

Most money with producing music can be made if somebody wants to license your already released music for TV sync or advertisement. A bonus income for something that you have done already that might be hundred times as much as you made with selling the record in the first place. You will need a good publishing company for this to happen, so they know how and where to present your music to the industry people. And of course they will claim about 40 percent of the money made for themselves. That's the standard, at least in most parts of Europe.

In the end, just do what you really want to do so it's not a waste of your life if it never blows up. But do it as serious as possible. And if you are at the right place at the right time things will happen anyhow and lead to the next things to happen. Developing and improving yourself as an artist is the best you can do in this game. Like this, you make "the product" a.k.a. you more worth every day.

[3dot...]

you buyin' ?

[estevan carlos benson]

This dropcards thing sounds cool.

Yeah, I was just wondering if there are successful tactics for independents selling their music. Seems like there isn't outside of live performance.

[Muzik 4 Machines]

my music is on sale, tho it doesnt mean i sell some unfortunately