Artists can get quite a bit of mileage out of releasing their music on free digital listening platforms in today’s music industry. However, there’s no getting around the fact that some money has to be spent in order to give your work the best chance at being heard. Music has never been cheaper to create and share, but if you’re hoping to reach the largest audience possible, be prepared to spend a little money to make it happen. Here are three essentials you’ll most likely need to spend money on to share your music with wide audiences:
3 Essentials You’ll Have To Spend Money On To Effectively Share Your Music
What Does A Manager Do?
It can be a real struggle to know what to do next.
There you are, you’ve created an incredible piece of music and you can’t wait to get it into the world. You know your music is good, but somehow, every time you release a new song, it’s kind of a flop.
What Gives A Song Its Value?
Asking what makes a song valuable in 2018 seems sort of silly. With music streaming and video platforms displaying listener stats in real time, one doesn’t have to look much further than that to see whether a piece of music is valuable or not, right? If your metric for a song’s success is purely based off of how many times it’s bought, listened to, or downloaded, then no. But what makes a song valuable, in my opinion, is much deeper and more complex than what can be quantified with numbers. To figure out what makes music valuable, listeners and musicians alike need to look past the numbers.
The Single Vs Album Dilemma
The idea of a band focusing their energy on writing and releasing singles instead of an EP or album wasn’t taken seriously a decade ago, but it’s now a strategy that countless artists are adopting. But while pumping out single after single has its advantages, something gets lost when a band throws its energy into writing a song or two at a time instead of an entire album.
So, what’s the best decision for you? Here are a couple of good questions to ask to find out if you should write a single vs an album:
About The Money: Music Distribution As An Investment
Imagine you’re a new, independent artist looking to test the waters of the business they call music. You have a soul-sucking day job, but hey, gotta pay the rent, right? Soon you’d love to quit and make music full time, but first you need to get some momentum going. You bedroom-produced a handful of songs and you’re ready to get streamed. Got $50 to drop on digital distribution for those five songs? “Ayyyyyy, I haven’t even bought a nice microphone yet!”
Do you really want to begin your career hundreds of dollars in the hole?
You can’t catch your dreams if you go broke trying. That’s why we’re dethroning The Old Way with Select Distribution, the smart, budget-friendly way to get your music on the biggest streaming platforms in the world. The Old Way requires you to spend at least $10 per song and $50 per album to get on “hundreds” of streaming sites, apps, and stores. That’s a fine offer for the more established artist with thousands of fans. That guy is confident he’ll make his money back in a few months. But the up-and-comer, well, she needs to be a bit more choosy with her money. Want to do some quick math?
Digital Distribution Checklist: Getting Your Release Ready for iTunes, Spotify, and More
Getting your music onto services like iTunes and Spotify is crucial to an Artist’s success, but the guidelines and requirements can be tricky to navigate. Spotify album art size, iTunes cover artwork, and performer’s rights have especially rigid guidelines, and failure to comply can prevent your music from making it onto these platforms.
We are proud to offer our artists a quick and affordable method of digital distribution, and we want to help make sure that your release won’t get rejected by the retailers’ strict guidelines.
With that in mind, we put together a final checklist to make sure that your release meets those requirements and doesn’t end up delayed. Watch the following video, or check out the highlights below for ownership guidelines, Spotify album art regulations, and much more.
Top 3 things musicians need in 2013
Hey musicians, what are your resolutions for 2013? Want to release a new album? Find new fans? Help others? Make it big or just pay the bills? If you’re like a lot of Reverb artists, it’s probably all of the above.
Well, listening to you (and a couple of million other musicians around the world) we’ve boiled it down to three things:
- Get more fans
- Sell more music
- Save money
Am I right? In that case, ReverbNation’s got you covered. Follow our advice below to start the new year off right:
1. GET MORE FANS
Think about it. You already spend money on instruments, on food and gas when you’re touring, on beer when you’re gigging. You should be thinking of promotion as just as important as putting gas in the van, just as rewarding as a cold one after a show.
I have a friend who spent almost $10,000 on his new album, but then he didn’t do anything to promote it. Does it sound familiar?
Maybe it’s not the investment that’s holding you back. A lot of bands just don’t know where to begin. That’s precisely why we developed Promote It. We’ve made it drop dead simple to create custom ads to promote your music on all the sites music fans flock to: Pandora, YouTube, Facebook, Billboard, MTV and hundreds of others. Trust me when I say, you WANT to be where they are. Plus, it’s completely affordable — campaigns start at just $5/day. And if you’ve never tried Promote It, we’ll even let you run your first campaign absolutely FREE.
“With Promote It, I can get the same type of promotion as a major label and still be on an indie budget. Promote It is such an easy and effective way to get new fans for my music.”
Whatever you’ve got going on — a new album release, a new song or a new video (coming soon) — we know that Promote It is the best and easiest way to get the word out there, get heard and gather in new fans. If you can think of any better way, let us know in the comments!
Try Promote It now. Free trial available for first time Promote It customers >>
2. SELL MORE MUSIC… WHILE HELPING OTHERS
Have you heard? We’ve just launched a new program called Music for Good and we couldn’t be more excited! For the first time ever, you can now choose to sell your songs directly from your Reverb profile.
Artists choosing to participate select a charity they’d like to support and for every $1.29 song they sell, half the proceeds go to their new non-profit partner.
Music For Good is the new way to sell music.
We’ve never done anything like this before, but it’s really a natural. We know that musicians like to support good causes — whether it’s an indie band playing a local fundraiser or a major celebrity effort for disaster relief. Musicians have influence, they have power. Can you imagine what 2.5 million ReverbNation musicians can do?? Together we know you can have a huge impact fighting disease, hunger, poverty and more — all while spreading beautiful music.
PLUS — and this is very important — we believe this partnership will help every artist sell more music. It gives people a reason to pull out the credit card on music again. It kicks piracy in the butt!
The way we see it (and we think you’ll see it too), the Music For Good program accomplishes two things: it supports charities AND it gets fans to spend money on music again. It’s good for charities and it’s good for your wallet. As a bonus, it’s good for your soul.
Are you an artist, but not on Reverb?
Already on Reverb?
Music fans: Want to buy some music and help a charity?
3. SAVE MONEY
This one’s a no brainer. If you already use one of ReverbNation’s premium services (press kits, digital distributions, newsletters, etc), or even paid services from another site, the smart thing is to switch to the Pro Bundle.
For less than $20 a month, you get ALL of the core marketing services you need to manage your career and more. Yes — digital press kit, email templates, a mobile app, widgets, plus digital distribution that expands every year — while the price stays the same. Holy smokes. That’s less than topping off your gas tank, buying Starbucks lattes for your friends, or getting a large 3-topping pizza in New York!
The Pro Bundle costs less per month than a large 3-topping pizza from Domino’s in NYC.
You’ll save mega bucks AND because it’s all in one spot, you’ll save time. I mean, if you prefer, you could go to Sonicbids for your press kit, Tunecore for your digital distribution, and FanBridge for your newsletter, Mobile Roadie for your mobile app, etc etc… but why go through the trouble of logging in at eight sites different sites when you can use just one? Plus you’ll get the added bonus of having just one super great support team to answer any questions. Like I said, it’s a no brainer.
Start marketing your music now >>
That’s it, folks. We truly believe the tools mentioned above will help you achieve your marketing goals in 2013. Our mission is — and always has been — ARTISTS FIRST. Now go out and make some awesome music!
And let us know what your 2013 resolutions are in the comments below.
ReverbNation + Google Music = More $$$ for You
By now you’ve heard about the launch of Google Music — a new way for fans to discover, buy, share, and listen to music. But how do you get your music in there?
ReverbNation makes it easy. Both of our Digital Distribution packages have been updated to include distribution to Google Music. Like all of our other retail distribution points, we pass 100% of the payouts from Google to you — we don’t take any percentage.
So what are you waiting for? Get your music into Google Music today!