The Music Industry is now starting to rapidly move into the digital Space, There’s been too many reports and research on the decrease of physical CD Sales. So instead of trying to avoid and fighting the inevitable, it’s time to embrace the new Digital era.
Selling your music online comes with a lot of advantages such:
- Your Music Reaches a Larger Audience & Creates Flexibility: The internet already has billions of people on a daily basis and one way or another at least 10 % of these people are on music site looking for new music. It also creates flexibility for followers as People can have access to your music in the comfort of their homes without having to visit numerous CD stores trying to get your music
- It’s Cheaper and easier to distribute : Physical distribution used to be extremely expensive but digital has cut down a lot of the associated costs, so it’s easier than ever to sell your music now.
How to get your music to online music stores
Most of the online stores like Deezer do not have a way for artists to upload music straight to their portals; they’ve got listed 3rd party vendors (Aggregators) that can be used, although for some like iTunes you can work directly with them. However it’s advisable to use a 3rd party if your still new in the space as they are experts in this field and they will distribute your music to almost all digital music stores all at once, rather than you going to each one of them ,in addition they will handle all your licensing and administration of your music. 3rd parties are also familiar with the process and requirement formats of all these digital platforms thus it saves you time, although they will charge you a fee for their services.
Some of the recommended 3rd parties are:
CD Baby: It Distributes your music on Apple Music, iTunes, Amazon,Tidar, Spotify and more for a fee from 9.95$ (R150) per single and 49$ (R730) per album
TuneCore: Distribute your music worldwide on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Play and 150+ digital store partners and allows you to keep 100% of music sales. Their fee is 9.99$ per single and 29$ per album
Reverbnation: Distribution to iTunes, Google Play, Amazon, Deezer, Spotify , Simfy etc. at 9.95 per single $ and 19.99 $ per album for one year. And you keep 100% of your rights and royalties
There are many more others that you can use to distribute your music online; it’s all up to your individual preferences.
The Future of music is definitely moving towards digital sales and streaming, every year the percentage of digital music revenues increases while physical sales keep going down. Even tech product manufactures are slowly phasing out CD drives; Apple has already removed it from their new line of Macbooks, Pioneer has phased out CD on their new CDJs. So it’s very clear the industry is moving towards Digital sales. So it would be to your advantage to start learning more about Digital music distribution now.
