How to sell your music

[Dorio Vanti]

Hello, I hope this is the place for this topic , if not please to be excused by the moderators.

It is clear that music is selled on internet and it's illegal distribution. The point is how and where we can sell it properly? What are the steps? Do we have to sell our music on our own or we have to look for Record Label for that? What do those of you who have gone down this road offer for people like us who still go on it?

[Nacho]

You can upload your music for free to Bandcamp. They will be allowed 3 full streams before they get a message to 'Buy It Now'. You can put whatever price you want for them to download your music or no price at all. If you want to get into streaming music services you need to go through an online music distributor like CDBaby or RouteNote. RouteNote lets you do it for free but they keep about 20% of the profits.

CD Baby has a lot of mastering, artwork and copyright requirements. It can be a headache and cost you a lot of money. Frankly, I haven't invested enough money, time and learning into my music to master it for commercial success. I prefer Bandcamp's 'Name Your Price' approach: Listeners can get a free full listen so they know whether they want it or not and then if they like it they can download it for free or offer you a couple of dollars, a couple of 20's or pay whatever amount you ask for. It's like the digital version of a street performer's money collection hat.

[A E J O T Z]

I don't expect to ever make money with music again. I did when I sang and played guitar but there was never a similar audience for my synth music.

It's easier every day to make and publish music but harder every day to make a living at it. "Competition" isn't a big enough word for the over-saturation of new music these days, and it just keeps growing.

I can go online and hear new music, with no repeats, 24/7 for the rest of my life. So your reputation has to spontaneously grow like wildfire, or you have to be promoted to the hilt by a sponsor who's effectively your "owner," or you have to draw attention for something other than your music (the antics of Bieber, Madonna and Kanye come to mind).

Musicians trying to make money from their music are like the Syrian refugees. There's already too many to support and nobody wants any more of them.

That's not such a bad thing. Making big bucks from music only started a little before I was born. Before that, performers and writers mostly just scraped by and many of them had to work other jobs.

Are you an artist or do you just want to be a star?

I'm not trying to bring you down. On the contrary, I encourage the kind of originality and experimentation that "popular" (paying) music discourages.