Peter Wells is the SVP of Operations and Customer Advocate at TuneCore. Peter began as a classical pianist, English literature teacher, senior technical writer at Cisco and director of label relations at eMusic, where he built a deep knowledge of the music business.

 Part IV: Good Marketing and Bad

Things get a little tricky from here, because marketing and promotion needs context: what’s right for one person could be very wrong for another, at any price. Everyone has a different idea of “success,” so what is “success” to you? Do you want to:

• fill the local bar every third weekend with forty or fifty happy drinkers, sprinkled with a few die-hard fans?
• fill a football stadium and tour the world on a private jet?
• remain perpetually “alternative,” always outside the mainstream, attracting fans that despise Top 40?
• record and sell your church choir’s concerts only to the congregation?
• see your music up in the biggest, most powerful music store of any kind in the world (iTunes), and don’t care if anyone listens or buys?

How about sales? Is this your hobby or career? Do you want to make back the cost of your instruments or buy a mansion in every major metropolis in the world? Are you supporting a family with your music, or a drug habit, or a charity, or are you hoping for a bit of mad spending cash reserved for fun purchases only? Are you dead-set against MP3s, or compact discs? Are you vinyl only, or compose exclusively on software for DJs to download and mix? Are you against the idea of selling music at all?

TIP #3: Define Your Own Success

Before looking into any kind of marketing and promotion, ask yourself:

• Who do you want to hear your music and why?
• How do you want them to listen?
• Do you want them to buy your music, and when, and how?
• Where do money, fame and your own musical career fit in?

Notice the first question—why should you ask why? Your music is good, right, isn’t that reason enough? And why should it matter how they listen? Isn’t it understood you want them to buy your music? What does “buy your music” really mean? These questions all highlight a trap, and if you don’t ask why, right at the beginning, you’re going to fall into it and exhaust yourself pursuing the wrong marketing and promotion.

Everyone markets and promotes for a different reason. A toothpaste manufacturer is wholly interested in making money (or perhaps branding), and selling toothpaste is how they plan to accumulate it. They promote their toothpaste to encourage people to buy it, they market their toothpaste to drive desire, to build demand. Music isn’t always so commercial: in fact, most people feel contemptuous towards music produced solely to sell or brand. Many consider it crass consumerism, or devoid of art. When you bring in beauty and art and even politics (if you don’t think music can have political aims, listen harder), the goals of creation are often very much at odds with making money.

So get a good idea of what you want your music to do. You wouldn’t be reading this article if you didn’t want it to get into at least a few hands, and presumably you’re not averse to making money when they get it. So now you have to ask “who, when and how,” and each of these has a value. Here are a few scenarios:

I want my music in EVERYONE’S HANDS, IMMEDIATELY, and in EVERY POSSIBLE FORMAT. I’m sure you do, since that means the most people will have the greatest opportunity to become familiar with your music, come to love it and buy it, in whatever format is easiest for them. Making things easy on the consumer means making it rough on the distributor. Are you really unwilling to disappoint the guy who insists on buying your album on 8-track? It’s going to cost you a fortune to make 8-track tapes, and fulfillment is going to be a nightmare (be prepared to ship them one by one). You can have all these, but you’re going to spend millions and millions of your own dollars on TV, radio, print ads, billboards, promotional giveaways, a full blitz. You’ll have to sell more than the Beatles and Elvis combined to make all that money back. No label is going to take that kind of risk on you, and unless your measure of “success” is to get your music to everyone and hope it’s liked, this isn’t a good strategy.

I want my music in AS MANY HANDS AS POSSIBLE as SOON AS POSSIBLE in THE MOST POPULAR FORMATS. Better—now you don’t have to make vinyl or reel-to-reel tapes, you are willing to let it grow a bit (what does “as soon as possible” mean?) and you’re willing to give up on some potential customers. This would still bankrupt any but the biggest labels, and unless your music is so beloved it outsells Cher and Pavarotti, this is another overoptimistic goal.

I want my music to reach AS MANY TEENAGED BOYS IN AMERICA as possible BEFORE THE SUMMER SEASON ENDS as UNENCRYPTED AUDIO FILES. Finally, you’ve reached something that’s actually reasonable, but it’s still wildly expensive. That demographic (teen boys) is heavily exploited, especially in summer. That’s also the group that tends to patronize music pirating software, so you’re running a higher risk by insisting on DRM-free audio formats. Labels target teen boys all the time, as do movies and the snack food industry and just about everyone. It’s possible for you to wade in, but again, heavy on the wallet.

I want my music to reach EVERY CIVIL WAR RE-ENACTOR in RICHMOND, VIRGINIA in time for CHRISTMAS on COMPACT DISKS and MP3s.Christmas is a long way away (I’m writing in August), and there are plenty of services who can help you in time for Christmas, as it’s a common demand. Richmond, Virginia, is a big city, but a little hard work with fliers by you and your friends could probably reach the few physical places where re-enactors gather, and they perhaps have a Website whose administrator you can reach out to. Just about everyone can play a CD these days in America, even if they don’t have a computer, so very few will be disappointed. In fact, you probably already know much of this crowd already, because why else would you be writing music that would appeal to such a narrow group?

Hidden in these scenarios are the keys to understanding not only the right kind of marketing and promotion, but also how to value it, put a hard dollar amount on it, and ultimately deciding where to put your marketing resources.

In Part V, Finding the marketing and promotional sweet spot!

There has been tremendous excitement over the past few years about the new technologies and services that help artists directly connect with their fans.  I’m personally a huge advocate of this trend and the opportunity it presents for both artists and music fans.

However, I’ve recently noticed just how many artist websites are still lacking the primary thing music fans are interested in today; downloadable music in MP3 format. Some in the music business blame the rise of the MP3 on the demise of the music industry and reject its use. It’s clear today’s music fans have wholeheartedly embraced the format. Ignoring what your consumer clearly wants in a competitive marketplace is extremely perilous. It’s the consumer’s preferences and desires that drive any market.

In a very unscientific test, I selected 10 of my favorite albums that have been released in the last year or so. I then checked the websites of those 10 bands* to see if they had a MP3 download store. Surprisingly only three (Big Head Todd, Kings of Leon and Matthew Ryan) had any MP3’s available for download at all. A quick check of the websites from several popular independent artists in my area found none of them had MP3 downloads available. Unfortunately several of the local artists didn’t even have their own website. 

Competition for the attention of music fans has never been fiercer. Artists now have to spend more time, energy and money than ever before just to get noticed. Spending countless hours emailing and texting fans, building social networks, writing witty / insightful blogs, or creating contests is largely a wasted effort if fans can’t find what they want when they finally do arrive at the artist’s website. Music fans want downloadable music, in MP3 format. If fans don’t quickly find what they are looking for they will simply abandon the artist’s website. Highly motivated fans might check iTunes or LimeWire as an alternative but there is much less value for the artist in the indirect relationship.  

Having the ability to offer MP3 downloads directly from the artist’s website is a great tool for building a direct, long-term relationship with fans. Regularly providing unreleased tracks, alternative versions of songs, live recordings or acoustic tracks will keep fans engaged and coming back for more. Once the artist / fan relationship has been established (with music) blogs, videos and emails can then help deepen the interest level of the fan.

The question of if, when or how much to charge for downloads is a complicated one and there is certainly no “one size fits all” pricing strategy. Personally, I’m always happy to pay for music from artists with which I already have a strong fan relationship and for music from a new artist that has really gotten my attention.

There are numerous, very good, inexpensive solutions that allow artists to easily add a MP3 download store to their existing website including Musicane , Hooka and Easybe. Nimbit provides the ability to sell MP3’s directly from the artist’s website plus tickets, merchandise, CD’s and DVD’s, all integrated into the same storefront. There is also an option to private label the Nimbit storefront for an additional fee.

Every artist should have their own website. For those artists who haven’t yet taken this important step towards building and protecting their brand BandZoogle offers a full feature hosted website solution that includes an MP3 download store. Their most expensive plan is only $19.95 per month.

With all the music marketing information, strategies and tools being pushed at artists today it can be easy to overlook the one thing music fans are most interested in, the music. It’s critical for music fans to easily find what they are really wanting when the visit an artist’s website, downloadable MP3’s. Hopefully as more artists embrace MP3 downloads it will help them to create strong direct to fan relationships and the opportunity to build a long-term, sustainable career.

*American Princes , Austin Collins , Bell X1 , Big Head Todd & the Monsters , Black Rebel Motorcycle Club , Drive-By Truckers , Kings of Leon , Matthew Ryan , Silversun Pickups , Tegan & Sara .

David Franz is a songwriter, producer, engineer, multi-instrumentalist, performer, and educator. David’s production company, Underground Sun, writes, produces and engineers music for a wide range of clients. He teaches production courses online at Berkleemusic, the continuing education arm of Berklee College of Music, and performs with his touring rock band, midatlantic. He is author of Producing in the Home Studio with Pro Tools (the first book about using Pro Tools, now in its third edition) and Recording and Producing in the Home Studio (Berklee Press).

In the second installment of my Pro Tools blog, I want to show you the basic steps for setting up a new Pro Tools session and recording an audio track. If you’re anything like me, when you come up with a new musical idea, you want to record it right away. My memory is good, but trying to remember that cool lick I played last night can be quite difficult. And even if I remember it, many times I can’t recreate the original feel even a day or two later. Capturing that fresh idea is the first step in the preproduction process for songwriting. Here’s how to record that idea quickly using Pro Tools.

Follow the steps in the text below and watch the video at the end of the article for all of the details:

1. After launching Pro Tools, select File > New Session, name the session, choose where to save it, and select the session parameters. For this example, choose the settings shown in figure 2.1. (More information on session parameters can be found in my book in chapter 3.)

Fig. 2.1. New Session Dialog Box. In the New Session dialog box, you can choose the session’s title and save location, as well as its audio file type, sample rate, bit depth, and I/O settings.

2. Plug your mic/instrument into an input, choose the appropriate input type (Mic, DI, Line, etc) on your Digidesign/M-Audio device, and turn up the gain knob on that input.

3. Create a new audio track by selecting File > New Track. If recording a single input (like a mic or a guitar direct), create “1” new “Mono” track. If recording two inputs (like a stereo keyboard), create “1” new “Stereo” track. For both, choose “Audio Track” and “Samples” for the track types, as in figure 2.2.

Fig. 2.2. New Tracks Dialog Box. The New Track dialog box enables you to create multiple mono and stereo audio tracks, aux inputs, master fader tracks, MIDI tracks, and Instrument tracks. Click the plus symbol (+) to add more tracks of any type.

4. If you’re not already viewing the Edit window, select Window > Edit. Then, select View > Edit Window and make sure there’s a check next to “I/O” to see the input and output selectors on the new track.

5. Select the input source that your mic or instrument is plugged into by clicking on the input selector, e.g., Mic/Line 1, as in figure 2.3. Inputs for audio and aux input tracks can assigned to audio interface channels (such as “Mic/Line 1”) or to busses (e.g., Bus 1–2).

Fig. 2.3a. Input Selector

Fig. 2.3b. Input Selector List

Fig. 2.3 (a) and (b). Selecting the Input Source. (a) The input selector is used to assign which input will be routed to a track. (b) When you click on the input selector, a list appears with all of the available input options. Any input can be routed virtually to any track.

6. Select Setup > Playback Engine, choose the smallest H/W Buffer Size (e.g., 128 Samples), and click OK. (This reduces the amount of latency, explained in more detail in chapter 3 in my book.) If using a USB powered device like the Mbox2, Fast Track USB, etc., I recommend turning the “Mix” knob all the way to the left to the “Input” side to achieve zero-latency monitoring. (Note: On some USB devices, like the MobilePre, this Mix control is software driven. Go to Setup > Hardware, and click the Launch Setup App button to adjust the mix level.)

7. Record-enable the track by clicking on the Record (R) button on the track, as in figure 2.4.

Fig. 2.4. Record-Enable. Press the Record-Enable button (R) to “arm” the track. The button will turn red when it’s armed.

8. Choose Track > Input Only Monitoring. This sets the “monitoring mode” so that you always hear the input signal on record-enabled tracks. (Monitoring modes are discussed in more detail in chapter 2 of the book.)

9. Set the input level on your Digidesign/M-Audio device by adjusting the input level controller (gain) knob while singing/playing. The recording level should go into the “yellow.” Try not to let it hit the red Peak light.

10. Record your idea by clicking the round Record and triangular Play buttons in the upper-right corner of the Edit window or in the Transport window. Click the square Stop button when you’re done.

Fig. 2.5. Transport Controls. The basic transport functions are located in the upper-right corner of the Edit window. With your track armed, hit the round Record button first, and it will blink red. Then hit the triangular Play button. Pro Tools will start recording and the Record button will stop blinking.

This may seem like a lot of steps just to start recording. However, these steps will become second nature to you very quickly. Also, note that you don’t have to be in the Edit window to record on a track. You can be viewing the Mix window instead. In fact, I often view the Mix window while recording multiple tracks at once because I like the larger faders. And speaking of that, recording more than one audio track at a time is just as easy as recording one. Create the number and type of tracks you want, record-enable them, set good recording levels, hit Play/Record, and you’re good to go.

(This text is an edited excerpt from David Franz’s Producing in the Home Studio with Pro Tools (3^rd Edition), Berklee Press/Hal Leonard, 2008) Visit www.protoolsbook.com to learn more about the book and DVD.

Fiona McLaren is a Label Liaison with Last.FM and based in London

Promoting your music online these days is meant to be easy - but due to the sheer number of sites out there it might not always seem that way. This is a brief guide to why Last.fm should be one of the main sites you use to promote yourself, and how to get the most out of it with minimal effort.

The Last.fm music database

First off, you might already have a page on Last.fm without realising. Huh?

This is how it works. Last.fm is built on the data generated by our community of music fans (21 million of them!) ‘scrobbling’ their music collections. ‘Scrobbling’ means that when a Last.fm user listens to an MP3 on their PC or iPod, the title of the track and artist name is entered into our database – and, if a page for that track and artist has yet to be created, we automatically create one. In this way we’re building a massive, ever-growing database of information about all the music ever made.

So, if you have any music out there already, chances are one of your fans is a Last.fm user who’s scrobbled your music to our database – so you might already have a page on the site. (If not, you can always create one yourself.)

But don’t panic: even if a page already exists, this doesn’t mean we have your music actually on the site. We’ll only have this if you’ve given it to us or we have a deal with your label. So the first thing you need to do is register and upload your music: http://www.last.fm/uploadmusic.

What makes Last.fm different?

The important thing to note about Last.fm (and what makes us different to other services) is that we start promoting your band for you from day one. As outlined above, as soon as one of our users listens to your music it is ‘scrobbled’ to Last.fm. From this point on, we’ll start recording the number of times Last.fm users listen to the track, and more importantly, start actively recommending it to other users with similar music tastes to the people already listening to you.

We know you’re busy, so we also get our users to help out on a lot of stuff: they can upload band photos, write biographies and describe your music using tags. All these things are essential in maintaining an active community, based around music discovery and sharing tastes. What it means for you is that once you have a page on Last.fm, it can be kept up to date thanks to our users.

The Artist Royalty Programme

What’s more, by uploading your music you’re not only helping people discover it, but you can also get paid every time anyone listens to it on Last.fm as part of our Artist Royalty Programme. Enrolling in this scheme allows you to earn money each time your track is played by someone using our On Demand service, or if it is streamed on one of our radio services.

What next?

If you want to go all out and make sure that you get the most out of Last.fm, then here are my top tips for promoting your music on Last.fm.

1. Make your music available for free download

Assuming you have already registered for our Artist Royalty Programme then your songs will automatically be available as free on demand streams for our users. However by making one or two songs available as free downloads your artist will instantly become more visible on Last.fm as we promote free content more vigorously than anything else.

2. Upload Videos

Just as we promote free content, we also push videos straight to users who might be interested in them via their recommendation dashboard. You can upload as many videos as you like and whilst promotional videos are the obvious first port of call you can also upload live performances or anything else you have kicking about, which leads me onto...

3. Create special content

If you want to raise your profile on Last.fm by leveraging your existing fanbase, a great way to do this is to upload special content to Last.fm. This could be in the form of a video tour diary, studio diary or interview, or it could be a preview of your new album interspersed with you chatting about the tracks. Not only will this be promoted automatically on Last.fm, adding interest for existing users, but you can also promote the content via your own mailing lists or MySpace page using our range of embeddable widgets.

4. Add upcoming events

Last.fm has an extensive events system that recommends events users might enjoy, as well as allowing them to invite their friends and see what other people are attending. Adding your artist’s upcoming events is a great way to keep people informed and interested. Plus, if you’ve followed the above steps, hopefully you now have a few of our users who are curious to check your band out!

5. Get involved

Last.fm is a community-based site and so conversation is important. Start using your own personal account, and join some groups. As you start to figure out the landscape you’ll be able to work out when it’s appropriate to mention you’re in a band. If people already trust you, they might be more inclined to listen when you mention an upcoming release or gig. You can also communicate with existing fans through Last.fm via things such as journals, so jump in and have a play!

6. Get an extra boost

If you’ve got an album coming out or a tour to promote, and thus some money to be spent, Last.fm also offers highly targeted advertising. We know what our users like which means that you can make your budget stretch further by only reaching those people you know will be, or should be, interested in your music.

Peter Wells is the SVP of Operations and Customer Advocate at TuneCore. Peter began as a classical pianist, English literature teacher, senior technical writer at Cisco and director of label relations at eMusic, where he built a deep knowledge of the music business.

Part III: The Myth of Marketing and Promotion

Aggregators take a percentage of your earnings, forever, with no ceiling—why? Because they can, but it’s hardly good public relations to say so. They control the only path a small label or band can take to reach the big digital retailers like iTunes, so they can set up any terms they want. In Part II, I showed why distributors might have been entitled to a limitless cut in the past, when physical product had to be placed into brick-and-mortar stores, with all the risk and overhead and managing required. But in the digital world, it’s almost indefensible. A new reason has to be claimed for taking a percentage: marketing and promotion.

Distributors aren’t traditionally marketers or promoters, that’s part of the label’s job. In addition to getting you gigs and making CDs and setting up deals with distributors and such, the label would market and promote you, because the label had signed you, and you worked for them now. It was in their interest to make you as big as possible, because they got the reward and paid you some very small percentage (whatever terms were dictated in the contract you originally signed with them). So labels would shell out lots of cash for posters, stickers, t-shirts and hats; they hired publicists for $5000 a month and crafted press releases and schedules, fought for news space in print, broadcast and radio; they purchased ads on your behalf, TV spots and billboards. Labels can sink millions of dollars into marketing and promoting a band, hoping it’ll pay off in sales, in licensing deals, even selling the contract to bigger labels for a wad of cash.

Distributors in the old days, especially the good ones, did help a bit with marketing and promotion. In a record store, if your CD was at eye level, it sold better. CDs on the end of the aisle (“end cap”) or by the register, it would sell better. Certainly if it was up on the release day, when your hype was timed to peak, it helped! If you give your distributor a percentage, you encourage them to take these steps, to leverage the stores (who, after all, rely on the distributors for content to sell) to push your music in these ways—even get the staff of the record store to wear a big shiny pin with your band’s name on it. Given that kind of effort, distributors deserved a percentage.

I showed that digital aggregators don’t have to do this or take risks to put your music into digital stores, so why are they still taking a percentage? They claim to be marketing and promoting you, but traditional brick-and-mortar tricks don’t apply: there’s no such thing as “eye level,” there’s no register, and no staff to wear a shiny pin. There are feature pages and genre pages on iTunes and AmazonMP3 and other stores, yes, but as I’ll talk about later, it’s not up to the aggregator to put your releases there. Some stores accept ads, but no aggregator is going to pay to put your ad up at their own expense.

Anyone who does claim to be marketing and promoting you requires very careful investigation. They’ll all say they are doing something, and it’s up to you to decide if it’s viable, reasonable, and worth the cost. This is sound advice for anything you buy, but there’s a special wrinkle when it comes to digital distribution.

Aggregators make their money by putting many, many artists and small labels into digital stores: it’s a volume game. The big aggregators have 50,000+ clients. How, exactly, are they going to market and promote them all? They’re taking a percentage from all, but they couldn’t possibly treat everyone the same. No matter what their plan is, this central fact remains.

TIP #2: Check the Marketing and Promotion Plan

When choosing a digital distributor who says they’re going to market and promote you, ask: 

• How, precisely? Get very specific.
• How will you know if it’s working and who decides if it is? What tracking/feedback is there?
• Can you “opt out” of their marketing efforts and reclaim your percentage?
• If they claim to market you at the expense of some other person, what guarantees do you have they won’t do that to you later?
• What are they going to do to make you stand out from their own customers, let alone all the content in the stores, and what guarantee do you have they’ll do it for a reasonable return of value commensurate with the percentage they’re taking?

 The single most important thing to keep in mind is this: are you getting what you’re paying for, and is it worth it? Let’s say an aggregator offers to put your name on a list that goes to college DJs and indie radio program directors. Fine, but if they have 10,000 names on that list, how does that help you? Who gets to be at the top of that list? Does anyone read those? Is there space on that list for you to sell yourself (describe your music, or say anything that might get you noticed)? And finally, that percentage comes down to real money: could you get better value out of that money by spending it yourself on your own marketing and promotion?

That’s key: if I were in a band and wanted to get publicized, I’d hire a publicist. They’d get a flat fee, and I’d be able to monitor exactly what they’re doing. If a publicist told me they only wanted a percentage, but took it forever, with no cap, and I had no way of telling what they were doing or if it benefited me, I’d call them crazy!

 In Part IV, telling good marketing from bad, and how to measure your money’s worth!

  Heather McDonald is a music journalist and press agent. You can read more of her work on About.com's Music Careers website.

Even for a cliché, the saying “it’s not what you know, it’s who know” is pretty overdone. In the music biz, however, it’s worth repeating. You can be sure you’re sitting on the next number one song (or you can be sure you’re managing the band with that song, putting that song out on your label or any other music industry shaped scenario), but if you can’t get your foot in the door, you’re going nowhere. And if you don’t have any contacts, that door isn’t going open wide enough to get your little toe through. So, the question becomes, where does one get these “contacts” when they’re just starting out? Enter the Musician’s Atlas.

If you’ve been involved in music for any length of time, the name Musician’s Atlas won’t be new to you. The print version of the Atlas – which is roughly the size of War and Peace, but easier to read – is chock full of contact details for everyone from record labels to promoters, magazines to trade shows. It has long been required reading even for music industry folks who are themselves listed in the directory and no doubt has been the matchmaker behind plenty of deals. But times, they have a-changed, and the Musician’s Atlas has changed with them. No need to break your back carrying around the book anymore (though many do). Now all of that info you need is a mouse click away with Atlas Online. But is it really the same? And more importantly, what can the Atlas Online do for you?

Atlas Online – You, Except Organized and With Better Contacts

There’s one thing the print version of the Atlas can’t do for you – it can’t get you organized and motivated to actually follow through with your plans. Now, given that we tend to be a little, well, organizationally challenged in the music business, that can be a problem. Atlas Online does everything but wake you up in the morning and put the coffee on. Members, who pay a monthly fee for access, can use the site to set up a list of tasks with reminders about phone calls that need to be made or promos that need to be sent, manage fan databases, create a mail merge and more. Managers can even keep track of their expenses on their private profile. You can log into your Atlas profile and send emails to contacts you find there that will appear to have come from your own Gmail or Yahoo account, so you don’t end up with any branding but your own on your message. All handy stuff that might just help you stay on track.

But what about the contacts? After all, that’s really what you’re here for, right? Your luck here is going to depend a little bit on who you are and what you’re looking for. For instance, if you’re a manger looking for a promoter in town X or a label looking for media outlets for promotion of your new release, you’re golden. You’re going to find everything you need here. Record label policy being what it is these days (don’t send me your demo – I’m afraid you’ll sue me for copyright infringement later), bands looking strictly for label addresses might end up with mixed success. However, you can find plenty of other good things on Atlas to guide you through the delicate demo stage, like studios, producers, media contacts and more.

Atlas Navigation – Guided Tours

Checking out the Atlas for the first time might make your eyes cross a bit. There are so many options, just finding your starting point is a little overwhelming. The best plan? Dive right in and start clicking. The good news about the site is that when you get the lay of the land, it’s easy to navigate. If you get stuck, however, or if there’s a feature you’re not sure about, the Atlas provides video tutorials to walk you through the steps. These guides are great – they take over your screen and show you exactly where to click when and what different tools are for. Even if you think you understand a tool, it’s worth checking out the tutorial. For a few minutes of your time, you might discover a new shortcut to help you blow through your tasks faster.

The bottom line on the Atlas Online? The book is good, but the interactive subscription service offers so much more. Put a little time into using it, and your contacts – and your opportunities – will be booming.    

Musician’s Atlas is graciously waiving the $30 activation fee for access to the interactive Musician’s AtlasOnline and offering 35% off the Musician’s Atlas print edition for KnowTheMusicBiz.com members. To learn more click here.

Peter Wells is the SVP of Operations and Customer Advocate at TuneCore . Peter began as a classical pianist, English literature teacher, senior technical writer at Cisco and director of label relations at eMusic, where he built a deep knowledge of the music business.

Part II of What Every Musician Should Know about Digital Distribution.

If you want your music up for sale in iTunes, Rhapsody, Napster, AmazonMP3, eMusic, Amie Street, Zune, BestBuy.com or any of the stores that have emerged as “big guns,” you either have to build a direct relationship with each one of them, or go with a digital distributor. Most people can’t do it on their own: as I wrote in Part I, stores simply won’t set up a deal with you, as a matter of policy, unless you’re big enough (around 200 releases or with some top-tier material already proven to generate considerable revenue, so as to attract the stores’ attentions). If you’re that big, you have your own legal staff, have been in this business a while and probably don’t need any advice from me. 

So if you are a small label or individual artist, you’re going to have to go with a digital distributor. How do you pick one? 

Aggregators

The phrase “digital distribution” can confuse: after all, aren’t CDs digital media, and haven’t they been distributed for decades? The companies that sprang up over the last few years to deliver digital music over the Internet to stores that sold downloads or streams call themselves “aggregators.” They aggregate music and materials from lots of individuals and small labels and deliver them in regular packages (weekly, daily, nightly, however they batched them together). As an individual musician or small label, you’d negotiate a deal with the aggregator to deliver the music and data and collect sales figures and earnings on your behalf. The aggregator already had the infrastructure to deliver your content to the stores, so you had to work out some way of getting your music to the aggregator (mail a disk, send the masters FedEx, etc.). Then, when the stores report sales of your music and send money, the aggregator passes it on to you. For all this service, you would pay them something. 

Aggregators are in a pretty good position: since the “big gun” stores won’t do deals with individuals or small labels but will work with giant aggregators, they’re in the driver’s seat. They were “gatekeepers,” since you can’t get your music for sale in the big stores without them. Furthermore, aggregators were born into a very well established music business that has more than a hundred years of experience with distribution. There was ample opportunity to set up deals and terms that resembled traditional physical distribution. 

So if you go with an aggregator, you’ll probably enter into a deal with them that looks a lot like the deals traditional physical distributors used: you pay an ingestion fee of some kind, are responsible for delivering your product to the aggregator somehow at your own expense, and then the aggregator takes a percentage of your sales, for however long you’re in the stores “through them.” This model is standard in the industry now, and just about everywhere you go, you’ll find some variation on it. I’ve seen percentages as high as 30% and even 50% and ingestion fees that added up to well over $100 per release. That’s a hefty cut, but hey, how else are you going to get your music into the stores to sell so you can make anything at all? 

TIP #1: Check the Percentage

When you choose a digital distributor, ask: 

• What percentage are they going to keep?
• Is there a cap, or do they take that percentage forever?
• Will that percentage ever go up?
• What are they doing to justify the percentage?
  

The last point is key: What are they doing to earn that percentage? Remember, this isn’t traditional physical distribution, this is digital. They only need to send the stores your music and data ONCE. They don’t have to have a warehouse to store it, only a hard drive (and trust me, storage is pretty cheap!). They don’t need trucks to ship it, though they do need bandwidth, ONCE, to send it along. They don’t need to package it in cling wrap or load it on pallets, but they do have to format the data to the stores’ specifications (again, ONCE). They don’t have to keep a staff of salespersons wandering from store to store to make sure your music is on the shelves as promised, it can be checked automatically, instantly. They don’t have to deal with insurance for your product (a leaky roof in their warehouse could destroy your stock of CDs, but in the digital world there’s no stock). About the only thing that isn’t changed is delivering money and sales data back to you: that’s the same for all distribution (more on this later). 

So why are they taking a percentage? Because they can: because they are gatekeepers and you’ve no choice but to use them. There is one other reason, and it’s the most important: do they MARKET or PROMOTE your music? That’s where most aggregators say they work for you, and the reason they deserve a percentage. 

In Part III: More about how digital distributors and aggregators market and promote you…or not!

Peter Wells is the SVP of Operations and Customer Advocate at <