How to release an album for audience, not dinero ?

[kurth]

ok...say you've got 10 or 12 songs ( or more) as ready as they're ever gonna be, and you'd like to assemble them in 'album' format, and your interest is audience quality not generating income, what are some of the possible routes known by those reading that could be more successful at achieving listeners ...assuming, of course, the music is worth listening to ? thanks for your thoughts...k

[kurth]

no one ?
well...I heard Soundcloud is better for listeners but Bandcamp for generating the green. I don't care about Green. So I don't need , nor want a paypal account. Period. What I would like is a streaming system (service) that has a seriously successful algorithm to reach listeners. I also would like it free of social media inhibitions, like censorship in general....ie utuby is a nonstarter for example. So has the branch been whittled down to soundcloud? Are there things one can do on soundcloud to achieve better listener results? Settings ? Is it down to posting on music forums for attention, or is there a more sophisticated methodology that can be implemented to reach potential listeners, short of hiring a million Indian bots? What are your thoughts...grains of wisdom?

[Rudy4]

If you want to keep control of your material being organized and distributed as an "album" then Bandcamp is probably the closest thing to what you're desiring. Someone seeking out your material can still download individual songs and you can set the price to zero.

Don't forget that we're responsible for the royalty fees for each play and clearing any copyright issues before making it available.

I'm not sure about any limitations they place on material, but I've listened to some pretty "rough" material from Bandcamp, so I wouldn't think that would be a problem. The only way to freely distribute your material with no limitations such as advertising or even mild restrictions on your chosen material is to set up and run your own server. That has a whole raft of problems such as expense, web access costs, and maintenance headaches. Then you would still need to promote your own material.

How to get folks to preview and listen to your material is the subject of entire books. That's not an easy task, given the amount of new material that gets posted to all of the streaming sites every day. Websites such as Last.fm display their download count, and the numbers are in the thousands PER SECOND. Multiply that by the number of even more popular streaming sites and you see what you're up against to get anyone to actually listen to your offerings.

There is probably some published material ranking where listeners go for searching out new material, I don't know anyone who looks for music on Soundcloud. It's a good place to upload material for posting on forums and such, but I don't think there are many random searches being done there. It does seem to be used by a few artists that develop a following and then distribute their work there.

I'd certainly be interested if you come across any innovative or effective method to draw listeners to your material. Please post here if your research yields anything.

[kurth]

Originally Posted by Rudy4

If you want to keep control of your material being organized and distributed as an "album" then Bandcamp is probably the closest thing to what you're desiring. Someone seeking out your material can still download individual songs and you can set the price to zero.

Don't forget that we're responsible for the royalty fees for each play and clearing any copyright issues before making it available.

I'm not sure about any limitations they place on material, but I've listened to some pretty "rough" material from Bandcamp, so I wouldn't think that would be a problem. The only way to freely distribute your material with no limitations such as advertising or even mild restrictions on your chosen material is to set up and run your own server. That has a whole raft of problems such as expense, web access costs, and maintenance headaches. Then you would still need to promote your own material.

How to get folks to preview and listen to your material is the subject of entire books. That's not an easy task, given the amount of new material that gets posted to all of the streaming sites every day. Websites such as Last.fm display their download count, and the numbers are in the thousands PER SECOND. Multiply that by the number of even more popular streaming sites and you see what you're up against to get anyone to actually listen to your offerings.

There is probably some published material ranking where listeners go for searching out new material, I don't know anyone who looks for music on Soundcloud. It's a good place to upload material for posting on forums and such, but I don't think there are many random searches being done there. It does seem to be used by a few artists that develop a following and then distribute their work there.

I'd certainly be interested if you come across any innovative or effective method to draw listeners to your material. Please post here if your research yields anything.

thanks Rudy....." if you come across any innovative or effective method to draw listeners to your material" . Well.... I was thinking of making a list of influential players....maybe editors in Acoustic Guitar Mag for example jaja....that might turn a key. I had a parallel experience in my midlife when I was breaking into the worldclass art gallery world...where I simply bypassed all their published requirements and sent emails to a few important folks. The truth is streaming as a financial plan is a joke. Even established musicians make peanuts. But streaming could lead to other opportunities. But imho, streaming by itself isn't worth trying to turn it into a business plan. You're far better not generating any money at all...ie not attracting the attention that generating small amounts of money produces, unless that opportunity turns into something worth the effort of dealing with the taxman, who as we know are..... fill-in-the-blank.

But here's the problem...if you put your music rated at zero value....I imagine that's one of the top three ingredients that make up a Bandcamp algorithm. So far it doesn't seem Bandcamp, which I might or might not use, or Souncloud are anymore than the brownbag they put our vinyl in. Just a protector of the medium, but not intrinsic to getting heard. I did read up on this subject a few months back and seems there's a new middleman position of launching music, which these organizations will , for a nominal fee , load you up on every possible outlet...but I never saw any way they would actually get the music listened to. All of this back in my day was done by radio. Spread faster than the speed of the internet. Don't ask me how...but it worked. It was alot simpler then. Then the dj's were popstars. I had friends...cut demos...then partied with dj's on klif to get airtime. Airtime is what we're talking about here. but even radio was simpler then! thanks Rudy

[FrankHudson]

You are correct that the "get listened to" part is a difficult problem. I know of no sure-fire answer. Whatever answers there are probably include a lot, and I mean a lot, of plugging away. I doubt any method works most of the time, so you're going to work hard at promotion and you're still trying to draw to an inside straight.

The Distrokid et al method will handle getting on Spotify, Apple Music etc handily. Listener growth is on you however. I have not used any of those services so I have no recommendation.

I have had a bit more than 120,000 listens to the Parlando Project material. I love looking at the stats and seeing listeners from all around the world. Having worked in the non-profit world, I consider what I do as "No Profit/No Income" business. I have no desire to run a small business, even though I admire those who do.

Here's what I did. I distribute the music audio files as a podcast (I use Libsyn). A minority of listeners hear it as a podcast, only what they hear is <5 minutes of music instead of an hour or more of talk and in-jokes like a conventional podcast. Most of my listeners hear the music when I include links on my blog where I talk about my encounters with the text I use for lyrics (mostly literary page poetry in the public domain). Now this is more of a "singles" experience than the album concept you want, but I'm free to do what I want, and the costs are tolerable. WordPress.com still has free plans I think, though I moved away from that after a few years due to the obnoxious ads they'll insert if you get any readership, but I'm on one of wordpresss.com's affordable paid plans now. If you want to minimize monthly costs, you could host your audio on The Internet Archive. Or you might be able to imbed links via a typical cloud base storage solution like iCloud or Onedrive you already have. I made my choices years ago, and I've stuck with them as I plugged away.

Blogging has some who'll come upon your work by accident or by links, but most of my visits come from search engines. SEO is a black art, but plugging is a big part of it I think.

"Plugging away" is my shorthand for persistence and log-rolling along with some evaluation of what works and what doesn't as you go along. I'm not very good at it, so I can't really supply the best model for it.

[egordon99]

Not sure if this will be helpful but I recently released an EP on Spotify/Apple Music using DistroKid.

https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/ev...ver-new-jersey

This was totally a vanity project and so far I've made 26 cents LOL.

Feel free to ask any questions but the "getting my tracks onto the streaming services" process was fairly straightforward. I used https://www.canva.com for the album art.

Hope that helps somewhat!

[kurth]

Originally Posted by egordon99

Not sure if this will be helpful but I recently released an EP on Spotify/Apple Music using DistroKid.

https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/ev...ver-new-jersey

This was totally a vanity project and so far I've made 26 cents LOL.

Feel free to ask any questions but the "getting my tracks onto the streaming services" process was fairly straightforward. I used https://www.canva.com for the album art.

Hope that helps somewhat!

Yes I think distrokid was one of those middle men I referred to. Any service that absolutely requires paypal is crossed off. I refuse to use paypal. Apple was crossed off no matter what it requires to use. Be careful Evan...that 26cents can come back to haunt you !

[egordon99]

Originally Posted by kurth

Yes I think distrokid was one of those middle men I referred to. Any service that absolutely requires paypal is crossed off. I refuse to use paypal. Apple was crossed off no matter what it requires to use. Be careful Evan...that 26cents can come back to haunt you !

Not sure why you think DistroKid requires PayPal. I use my Amex to pay for the service/extras (ie cover song licenses) and I setup ACH for my payout (if I ever make enough to get paid)

[kurth]

Originally Posted by egordon99

Not sure why you think DistroKid requires PayPal. I use my Amex to pay for the service/extras (ie cover song licenses) and I setup ACH for my payout (if I ever make enough to get paid)

I wasn't necessarily connecting the two. On looking at it thou, it's a subscription service...i.e. every year that fee comes around. I've found that after about 2 years, that gets old. I don't know anything about ACH, but I prefer to not do banking in the US.

[rick-slo]

Originally Posted by kurth

and your interest is audience quality not generating income, what are some of the possible routes known by those reading that could be more successful at achieving listeners ...assuming, of course, the music is worth listening to ? thanks for your thoughts...k

What do you mean exactly by "audience quality". Post some more of your music on the forum. May get some extra ideas given here from that.

What distribution avenues have you already looked into and were not impressed with? For example youtube is a big one however around 3.7m new videos are uploaded to YouTube every day.

[kurth]

Originally Posted by rick-slo

What do you mean exactly by "audience quality". Post some more of your music on the forum. May get some extra ideas given here from that.

What distribution avenues have you already looked into and were not impressed with? For example youtube is a big one however around 3.7m new videos are uploaded to YouTube every day.

Originally Posted by rick-slo

What do you mean exactly by "audience quality". Post some more of your music on the forum. May get some extra ideas given here from that.

What distribution avenues have you already looked into and were not impressed with? For example youtube is a big one however around 3.7m new videos are uploaded to YouTube every day.

Just speculating ...but I'd imagine ...if they're making music and films with AI...then those large streaming avenues would have AI judging new incoming music ...according to some algorithms dependent on things like genre, style, skill, originality, etcetc. I would think these AI's would be highly fluent and learned. Have access to all the music ever created. I would think that they would offer current playlists based on their AI's choices. Their AI's would be increasing their skill, based on market feedback. If I was a streaming company...that's what I'd be doing. If they had a fast enough system, they could be AI reviewing every uploaded file.

I would like to stream somewhere where money is not the primary factor, nor the secondary....but quality. Truthfully...when I go to soundcloud or spotify or bandcamp or wherever.....98% of the music is junk. There are whole genre's of music in america that are nothing but junk...and sadly that's what's on the lineup.

Until I found agf....I thought there were only a few survivors of good music left in america. For years I only bought music by nick cave and tom waits. And now after madonna, rap, hiphop, and taylor swift, there seems less hope everyday.

As the title plainly states....I'm not interested in the financial angle...at all. I don't want to make any money...zero. It'll be like a greeting card, or a karmic debt. Initially....
...but I would like people to listen...not just bots.

Didn't I read where that singer with the "men North of Richmond" song was raking in like $35k a day from utuby. That'll be like winning a lottery. Most of those lottery winners end up more broke than before they won. He'll have some attention he wasn't expecting, and to survive that attention, he'll have to sign up. Even Hanks Williams signed up. That's the only way to pay the piper. Sadly he's not that great so it'll be like the old plantation store, just modernized. Accrue a debt that can never be paid off. Thats the last thing I want. I don't want to sign up. Unless... it's really worth enough to pay the piper, and ...still be free. And that takes alot....more than a few weeks of 35k, and just enough to alert you know who as to why.

So for now I'll keep it simple. I'd just like ears. After the first album... results will dictate path. Optimally I would get critics and collectors. Then chaos theory steps in, and no one know wtf's will happen. And maybe...or most probably it will all get lost in the dark, and I'll go back to doing something I have more talent at than music. As a thought while writing this.....I thought , if I was a streaming company today....I would organize a songwriting contest between AI and humans. Now it appears humans must prove our artistic skill over machines ....or we're toast. I'm afraid ...where we are...that Madonna and Taylor will easily loose that contest. I'd like to throw a towel into that ring, just to see how long it takes to dry. What else is there to do? We're either men of substance, or fools running an errand.

Did I answer your question? Probably not....thanks

[rick-slo]

If you just want to be heard (and income is a minimum factor):
Try some digital distributer. I have been using CDBaby

Maybe even try radio play
https://www.sharetopros.com/blog/how...-get-plays.php

Join forums that likely have an interest in your type of music.
Post your stuff there. With that type of thing you may get
feedback from those listeners.

[kurth]

Originally Posted by rick-slo

If you just want to be heard (and income is a minimum factor):
Try some digital distributer. I have been using CDBaby

Maybe even try radio play
https://www.sharetopros.com/blog/how...-get-plays.php

Join forums that likely have an interest in your type of music.
Post your stuff there. With that type of thing you may get
feedback from those listeners.

thanks rick but still not the cheese. Seems the whole world wants to be a rockstar and paid accordingly. It's a sad cultural observation that we can't separate culture from money. It'll be our downfall yet. I read violinist tina guo say that she had (a huge number) of downloads and made like $28 dollars from streaming. When will all these mini michael jacksons understand that streaming is a siliconvalley brainstormed idea to make rich people richer. Nothing more. I wonder how many middlemen can squeeze into that crack? Our culture only has one criteria for beauty....if it makes money...and there's thousands waiting to see the spark, so they can jump into the fire. But that was a good suggestion about joining forums. I looked up songwriting forums. wonder if there's any songwriters left, or just people who want to live on yachts in greece. I'll go out into the digital wilderness and see if those bear rumors are true.

[FrankHudson]

You appear to me to have a lot of on principle stipulations as you try to form your plans. Already a lot of suggestions have been no-go from you due to things we didn't even know were musts for you.

You may have to jump in, following your principles, bending if you decide you will -- or not -- and iteratively determine the path forward for you and your music. If you believe in your music (as you seem to) consider how that balances with the I won't do stuff. I'm not telling you to compromise. I'm no model either.

One thing I meant to say at first, though it's inherent in my "keep plugging along" refrain in my earlier post. Most musicians, particularly those trying to find an audience without backing/outside promotion assistance, particularly those who have something that's not commercial, do not find their audience with one "magic bullet" piece of fine work that finds its way to an audience just because it's good. Rather they keep at it, persist, grow their audience, however limited, over a period of years. It was only about three years in that my Parlando Project started to get audience traction. The pieces I produce now aren't necessarily better than the ones I produced five years ago -- in some cases current pieces may suffer from my inability to devote enough time and focus due to changes in my family and myself. I got my small but appreciated audience by continually putting things out there and connecting with others who had parallel quests and sensibilities.

Do not underestimate persistence.

You mentioned Tom Waits. Tom Waits had a major label record contract fairly early in his career back when labels had some interest in picking up and promoting "draft picks" that might pan out. He was located in an entertainment hub city where it was easier to rub shoulders. He had famous fans a few years after that. It still took him a decade before Rain Dogs is released, and it's taken decades since for that record to be absorbed by an audience something like the size that can appreciate it.

You may not have any of those things. Like me, you may be ready to settle for a smaller audience that Waits achieved, but time and persistence is something anyone can utilize -- likely something you will need to utilize.

[kurth]

Originally Posted by FrankHudson

You appear to me to have a lot of on principle stipulations as you try to form your plans. Already a lot of suggestions have been no-go from you due to things we didn't even know were musts for you.

You may have to jump in, following your principles, bending if you decide you will -- or not -- and iteratively determine the path forward for you and your music. If you believe in your music (as you seem to) consider how that balances with the I won't do stuff. I'm not telling you to compromise. I'm no model either.

One thing I meant to say at first, though it's inherent in my "keep plugging along" refrain in my earlier post. Most musicians, particularly those trying to find an audience without backing/outside promotion assistance, particularly those who have something that's not commercial, do not find their audience with one "magic bullet" piece of fine work that finds its way to an audience just because it's good. Rather they keep at it, persist, grow their audience, however limited, over a period of years. It was only about three years in that my Parlando Project started to get audience traction. The pieces I produce now aren't necessarily better than the ones I produced five years ago -- in some cases current pieces may suffer from my inability to devote enough time and focus due to changes in my family and myself. I got my small but appreciated audience by continually putting things out there and connecting with others who had parallel quests and sensibilities.

Do not underestimate persistence.

You mentioned Tom Waits. Tom Waits had a major label record contract fairly early in his career back when labels had some interest in picking up and promoting "draft picks" that might pan out. He was located in an entertainment hub city where it was easier to rub shoulders. He had famous fans a few years after that. It still took him a decade before Rain Dogs is released, and it's taken decades since for that record to be absorbed by an audience something like the size that can appreciate it.

You may not have any of those things. Like me, you may be ready to settle for a smaller audience that Waits achieved, but time and persistence is something anyone can utilize -- likely something you will need to utilize.

Frank...I feel for anyone walking this earth that doesn't have principle stipulations. The problem is most of 'the accepted rules' I'm not interested in following. That's what 74 years and a tad of wisdom do for you. Frees one from accepted norms and rules. Here's my plan to date. Looks like soundcloud is the least capable of paying their artist, which is a good thing from my perspective ie I won't make any money. But it has a pretty good interface, and I'm already on it. As I've said earlier on other threads, I'm working on between 50 and 60 pieces. A couple of years ago I tried to register a copyright on the first group and it was rejected ...for my error of trying to copyright the album as one operatic work. Which it is, but the rulers don't see it that way so they rejected my claim and I lost like $35bucks. I continued to work...and now have about another 25 recorded. And out of that batch, I've got 10 that I'm not going to touch again. State of finished. Depending when I get off my xxx, I'll apply for the copyright of 10 or 20 new songs. If it was just me, I would forget this step. I only do it for the small chance that my beneficiaries might one day benefit. But it's a moral compromise. If they get rejected and I loose $200bucks...well who knows. First thing will be I'll loose trust in the system. O.....that already happened about 50years ago jaja. I'll hope and pray meanwhile. Then I'll let these first registered group of songs settle in. Well see if they don't raise some eyebrows. I'm thinking a year....all of which i'll keep peggin on. If no opportunities arise, i'll decide to release the second batch, which are almost ready now as well...and possibly the original piece, if I can get it remastered, or not. Or maybe rerecord it in acoustic rather electric. And by the second year, and batch release ....I'm hoping to be close to finished with this music phase, and can go back to being a poor artist. Course... the worlds a magical place and things can go unexpectedly different than what we thought. Sometimes things go like we dreamed. Maybe my songs are powerful enough. And if someone in the not too distant future wanted to hire me for a gig with limited audience.....100k expenses paid 1st class would be my motivating point. You have to make enough to pay the man, and the lawyer. Otherwise forget about making money. But forget all the foreplay. I'm not interested. I'm already a totally free man.