How to sell and market your own music online

How to Sell and Market Your Own Music Online

By Jarvis Simms

The music industry has significantly changed over the years by digital file formats and the internet. Long gone are the day of mailing and selling cassette tapes to record companies and independent record shops in order to sign to a label. These days the biggest acts make most of their money from touring and music store are now non-existing. Independent musicians often seek alternative ways to get their music to the forefront.

It has never been easier to share your music and make a small amount of money from various sources. There are no guarantees that you can make a profitable living from your musical compositions. However, if people like your creative opus, you can ensure that you reap the benefits. This feature article will show you how to market and sell your music online, and how to make money from your music.

Selling Your Own Music Online There are various ways to market and sell your music online. For a lot of musicians, ITunes would be the place. For others eMusic, Google Play Music or AmazonMP3 will be the choice.

Technically, it is possible for anyone to sell music from ITunes. However, it is not easy and ITunes requires you to be both an encoder and a producer of at least 20 albums. Most independent musicians do not have an impressive repertoire of a musical catalog. One of the most popular venues to market and sell your music online is signing up for Apple approved aggregator. ITunes aggregators will format and distribute your music across multiple channels.

Apple pays the aggregator for sales and the aggregator pays the content owner. Signing up for ITunes aggregator makes selling your music via ITunes a simple process, but there is an incurred cost.

There are benefits for using an aggregator. They will post your music to multiple online music stores and not just ITunes. The digital distribution company AWAL will sell your music to more than 200 services, including ITunes, eMusic, Google Play Music, and AmazonMP3, as well as other online digital music distribution companies. In return for their services, there is a 15% cut of all sales, after the stores have taken their cut. There is a downside of using an aggregator.

They are not obligated to accept your music. Many aggregators select what musicians they would like to represent and many unheard of musicians do not make the cut.

The distribution company Ditto Music specializes in selling your music online. They charge you a fee upfront and you get to keep 100% of rights and royalties. Ditto Music will sell your music worldwide in leading digital stores, such as ITunes, eMusic, Google Play Music, AmazonMP3, Spotify and Rhapsody. Ditto Music will also provide you with support to help get your music heard and promoted. You can also establish your own record label.

The final option to distribute your music is CD Baby. CD Baby specializes in selling CDs and music downloads. The company is also serves as a digital aggregator, distributing contents to several popular download and streaming music retailers from independent musicians to consumers. CD Baby charges $49 to sign up for their services and $4 for every CD sold, regardless of the price you set to sell your music. This might not be the cheapest method but it will get your music heard and sent directly to fans.

Marketing Your Own Music Online Marketing your music online is the best way to get your unheard musical compositions heard and the most effective way to promote yourself. Marketing online, give you a better chance of becoming a successful independent musician. At the very least, you should establish a website, as well as Facebook, Google+ and Twitter feeds. Once your website has been established, you should provide snippets or entire songs to entice your audience. You should also provide a link to where your music can be purchased.

The online distribution service SoundCloud, is the first music-based social networking site to consider marketing your music. It enables it users to upload, record, promote and share their originally created music with other music enthusiast. There a 3 different options to choose from to market your music with SoundCloud. The first is Partner, it allows up to 3 hours of content to be placed on SoundCloud for free. The next is Pro, which allows up to 6 hours of content and there is a monthly fee to pay. The final selection is Invite, which allows unlimited content and you can establish a visual profile to accompany your music.

YouTube is the second most popular music-based social networking site which allows you to post your unheard music for free. YouTube is a video-sharing website and it is essential to create some type of video in order to better market yourself and your music online.

Independent musicians can register, upload an unlimited amount of videos of their music, up to 15 minutes each in duration. Users that comply with the Community Guidelines, maybe offered the ability to upload up to 12 hours in length of videos to the site. YouTube presents a great opportunity to post live performances, interviews and gain a significant amount of exposure.

Using any of the methods mentioned in this article, can effectively assist any independent musician in selling and marketing their own music online and gaining the attention they so deserve.