This is step five in my online music marketing series. In the last post (step four) we went over email marketing including some how-to discussion along with a short list of resources available for musicians . In step five we’re going to go over an area of marketing your music on the Internet that is either your first stop or the last place you turn to to market yourself and your music. This next step takes a little bit of know-how to get it exactly right. You may be of the generation that grew up with it, and you may be someone who doesn’t gravitate to this type of human interaction. What are we talking about…?

Social Media

Social media is currently one of the most, if not the most, important marketing vehicles available in today’s music industry as well as today’s business landscape overall. While it is difficult to project the role that social media will play 3, 5 or 7  years from now. It seems likely that it will play some type of role. One of the intricacies of social media is that, while it does seem likes it is here for a while it changes all the time. That makes it difficult to keep up with. If you are still feeling not so sure about social media, don’t want to spend your life with your nose in the computer or think that social media equates to the breakdown and corrosion to our society, then I would encourage you to really attempt a new perspective. I will tell you right now that I struggle with social media. I just can’t seem to keep up with it. I don’t particularly enjoy surfing facebook for hours. I haven’t trained myself to look in the right places quickly and I get wrapped up in other things sometimes and just simply forget about it. However, I am fully aware that social media is a piece of this marketing puzzle that we all will need to remain in today’s marketing game, let alone be competitive.

This is not going to be an in-depth how-to article on social media. While I know my way around social media, I learned what I know from elsewhere and it makes sense to let them deliver the in depth how to’s as they already have. I have discovered a number of resources that could possibly support you as an independent artist. In my research, I have uncovered some of the basics of social media for the major platforms out there. I will point these out as we go along here, The purpose of this post is to discuss the importance of social media as a piece of your online music marketing plan and to point you toward the best information that I have found to help you effectively use the tools available.

I am also not going to tell you which social media platforms do what. I kind of assume that you have heard of FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter, Flickr and so on… If you have not heard of these sites and even if you have I am once again going to direct you to the experts in social media to discover the right social media platform for what you are trying to accomplish. As far as I am concerned, this is the place to go for musicians to learn about social media.

First Of All… Its Really Cool

The first thing I want to talk about is how incredibly cool Social Media is for independent musicians. I mean, the younger generation takes it for granted and the older generations are starting to. Why is social media so cool? It used to be that an artist didn’t have a prayer of making a living without a record label backing, distribution and promotion. Now we can manufacture our own media materials, handle our own distribution and we can reach a reasonable sized audience from home. You can get on Twitter and be heard by thousands of people. Your friends on Facebook can recommend or otherwise turn their friends on to your music in seconds. That is a lot of potential. You don’t need hundreds of thousands of fans. You just need a targeted group that will spread the message and buy your stuff. Now, is the first time that a musician can run their music career like a profession rather than struggle for years or decades to move from garage band to rock star. This does mean that you have to work at it and learn a skill beyond your music, but if you are choosing music as a career, you have to focus on some of the stuff supporting that choice.

So, about social meda… I would offer an observation about the title “Social Media”… The word ‘Social’ is not arbitrary. This implies that social networking is akin to socializing in the physical sense of the word. Picture you are at a cocktail party with friends and family and their friends and family, what are you doing? I would imagine that you are walking around talking to people, finding out what they have been up to, sharing stories and so on. This is what ‘Social Media’ is mimicking. So try to think of anything you do within any social media platform as a part of a conversation.

Start By Listening

If you are going to equate social media practices to conversation, it is important to take a moment to learn something about how people communicate. It isn’t rocket science actually. It is very simple. People talk about things that interest them and they want very much to be heard. So, in order to get noticed within a social media platform, you need to make it known that you are listening. I am not the first person to say this. Most social media advise you can find out there says exactly that. I know this is true for me. Whenever I post a witty status on facebook, I am secretly excited to see people ‘like’ it and post comments. People just like themselves. It’s natural. For example, one study has shown that people like even the sound of their own name so much that somebody with the name Dennis or Denise is somewhat more likely to become a dentist. Is it vanity, or is it totally natural? Whatever, that’s the way it is.

So, I know that I said I wasn’t going to get into a lot of how-to stuff, but I am going to throw the single piece of advice that turned up in my research over and over again as a key element. In order to be successful in social media and to really benefit from your efforts, you have to listen to your fans and respond to what they are saying. You will likely get nowhere at all if all that you send out there is stuff like “check out our new CD ‘Blammer Head Sharks’ available for sale at BLAH, BLAH…” or “Don’t miss our show at the Locker Room on Thursday night. Should be a blast”. While people might care about that stuff, they will care a lot more if you make them feel like you care about them.

At this point you might be thinking… “what is this guy even trying to say?” Its like this… look at your friends posts, like them and post comments. Add to their conversation and they will like you.

So, how do you listen? There are a number of techniques that equate to listening in social media. Instead of trying to round up what I think are the best techniques I am simply going to send you to Ariel Hyatt, the musician’s social media expert.

Ariel’s book will help you to link as many of your social media platforms together as possible. Fickr, twitter and facebook can all be intertwined. Ariel Hyatt explains all of this in her book and in her course. I definitely recommend her programs for anyone who would like to learn how to do this stuff. This will save you time and will minimize the strain on your patience if that is an issue for you.

Make It Easier

There are tools available to you also, that will help you along the way. You don’t have to have your face in the computer at all hours to accomplish something with Social Media….

My point is… there are all sorts of services popping up all over the internet that are designed to help musicians with their social media. You have to read their TOS, look for reviews and measure what they are offering against your goals to make sure that you are in line. Here are a couple of tools out there for you to check out:

I recently watched a webinar with Elizabeth Edwards featuring Matt Conn who represents RootMusic.com. The company that makes the Facebook app bandpage. This app makes a Facebook fan page make sense for musicians. After watching the webinar, I definitely recommend checking this app out.

Hootsuite and Tweetdeck enable you to schdule your posts on Facebook and Twitter. Setting up an account is easy and the platform is reasonably straight forward. Nimbit and Topspin offer an interesting platform for social media. I have written some about these platforms in Step Three. Each of these services give you a social media manager that allows you to schedule posts on facebook or tweets on twiiter. This is kinda cool as it gets all of your social media efforts linked to one central command. They also give you the ability to sell your music straight from your facebook fan page. I know other facebook apps allow you to send your facebook fans to itunes or CD baby or where ever you are selling your music. But to be able to sell your stuff straight from facebook is a definite plus. Make sure to read the TOS thoroughly before signing on to anything.

Hire Someone Else To Do It

There are also services out there that will take care of your social media for you. I cannot speak to their efficacy, however, if this interests you, I encourage you to check them out. The range of services vary widely along with price. Here are two such services that I know of:

• Ariel Hyatt’s company CyberPR will run a campaign handling your social media as well as press releases, blogger exposure and more. You can get the Headliner Package – a 3-month campaign for $1,995, the Rock Star Package – a 4-month campaign for $2,795 or the All Access with Virtual Assistant Package – a 4-month campaign for $4,995. Go check out Ariel’s site to see the specifics on what these packages offer.

• Hypegenius is a service that promises to add targeted friends on Facebook, increase followers on Twitter and get more views and subscribers on youtube. The most affordable package ranges from $275 – $600 and guarantees 500 targeted twitter followers, 500 targeted fans on Facebook, 500 targeted friends on youtube and 3,000 additional views on your youtube channel. I don’t entirely understand their pricing, it seems like an awfully wide range. If you are interested, just contact them to figure it out.

That’s what I have to say about Social Media for musicians. I want to stress the main point of this post to you… Social Media is not going away. If you don’t like it, that does not mean that your fans or potential fans don’t like it, in fact, they probably do. So, dive in, either become an expert or at least learn enough to do the minimum.

Keep a look out for Step Six of Marketing Your Music Online  in a future post.

Tom Siegel

P.S. – For more information about how to put together an online music marketing strategy sign up for my newsletter at www.indieleap.com.

This is step four in my online music marketing series. In the last post (step three) I discussed the sticky and ever-changing subject of digital distribution. In step four I will cover a big money maker that is grossly under utilized and misused by musicians and businesses alike. Without this piece of the marketing puzzle it is hard to really even call it marketing. This is the step where you take off your musician hat and pay tribute to the direct marketers of old. You will have to learn at least some minimal copy writing skills to do this well. I will cover the basics, enough for you to put together a minimal plan. What am I talking about? Keep reading…

Email

Email. Many musicians and artists alike that I talk to, don’t like this part of the independent musician career. I think it is generally because they don’t like the idea of the pushy salesman and don’t want to be seen as such. I guess if that is how you feel than don’t participate in email marketing. The alternative is to just trust that your fans will know about the products you are offering, your upcoming shows, your newest CD and what your music is like and what inspired you to make it entirely on their own. To this idea I ask this question… Do you think that your fans will come to your website and become so enthralled with everything about you that they will buy everything that you have for sale and then check your site regularly to find out where you are playing next and if you might have something else for sale that wasn’t there last time they visited?  Yeah, when you put it that way, it does sound a little far fetched. Yet this is what many musicians (and small businesses and major corporations for that matter) do. Think of your email subscriber list as a list of people who want to know what you are up to, but don’t want to put the effort in to find out. That is a good start in how to deal with this issue.

Take A Good Look At What You Have

Your email list should be made up of several types of fans. There are the fans that have attended a show and liked what they heard and signed up at the show. There are the fans who have come to your website maybe after a show or after being turned on to your music from a friend or radio or whatever. There are the fans who have bought a CD. There are the fans who have bought some other merchandise. There are the fans who have bought everything that you have to offer and have attended as many shows as they could. Each of these different types of fans, or whatever different types of fans that you can think of, should be segmented within your list. This way you can send a message to everybody on all of your lists or just the portion of your list it makes the most sense to convey that particular message to. I’ll explain further… keep reading.

In the previous paragraph I described briefly a couple of ways people (or fans) can be added to your email list. Now I want to talk about making it possible for them to do so. I can’t tell you how many times I have visited a band’s or a musician’s website and not been able to find a place for me to join their list. You need to put a “name capture” form on EVERY page of your website. It doesn’t necessarily have to be prominent on every page but it shouldn’t be burried either. There are two places that I recommend making the name capture feature a focal point of the page. The first one is kinda obvious. You should have a whole page dedicated to signing up for your email newsletter (or whatever you are inclined to call it). Yes on this page it should be very obvious how to sign up. The second place where I feel your name capture feature should play a big role is on your home page. I know, I know… There are all these great graphics or photos on your home page and you don’t want to ruin their effect or busy the page. Well, what can I say? There have been plenty of times I visit a website (of a musician or otherwise) and I find a name capture feature on the home page and the first thing I do is to sign up. Especially if the company or band is offering me something I want in return for signing up, we’ll talk more about that, keep reading… But first, I want to talk briefly about how to deal with the name capture on the home page. The simplest general suggestion I can make is to put the name capture form in the sidebar and put it at the top. That way you don’t have to make it bigger than anything else and you don’t have to try too hard to make it stand out.

As for the rest of the pages on your website, place the name capture form in the sidebar either at the top or somewhere toward the middle (hopefully above the fold). If you really don’t want it to be a significant part of the page, put it at the bottom of the page or at the bottom of the sidebar. As long as you have it there somewhere I won’t give you too much grief.

Where To Get The Tools

I have left a couple of important questions unanswered until now… Where do you get these “name capture” forms? and how do you manage your email list? This is actually easier than it seems. There are a number of companies out there that will handle all of this for you, for a small fee, of course. The good news is, that most of the companies that offer this service are really pretty reasonable price-wise. I will give you my recommendations in a minute. First, I want to tell you what you should be looking for. Make sure to look out for the following features:

• The ability to customize and design your own name capture forms
• List segmentation options. Usually this is in the form of a “if someone signs up for list C then automatically unsubscribe that person from list A” type of function. Example: if I sign up for your list and a month later I buy your CD, you want me to be moved from your potential fan list to your proven customer list.
• How many subscribers can you have? Are there different prices for more subscribers?
• How many emails can you send per month? What does it cost if that number is exceeded?
• What is the maximum number of  messages you can load into your auto-responder?
• Tracking tools: what type of tracking is important to you and is there a tool that will meet your needs?
• Do they have a shopping cart? If not how difficult is it to integrate one?

As you begin to explore the various companies out there you will develop more questions of your own. One word of caution… because of anti-spam laws and the tendency for people to abuse these services for spaming purposes, it is not always that easy to move your email list from one company to another. Most of the time, a reputable auto-responder (or email marketing) service will want to make sure that all of your subscribers have given you permission to email them. Therefore they tend to want your subscribers to be acquired in one of two ways. The best way is for someone to sign up themselves and then to confirm their intentions to be added to your list via email. If you have a list of people that have already done that then these companies generally want you to enter their names and emails by exporting your list from the previous company to a spreadsheet of some kind and copying from that spreadsheet and pasting to the new company. This is generally for the protection of your subscribers to minimize any unwanted emails – spam. There is sometimes a limit on how many subscribers can be added manually. For example, Aweber limits this method to 2,000 subscribers per day. So if you have 20,000 subscribers this would get to be a pain, but if you have 600 this really won’t be too much of an issue. And besides, you don’t want to spend your life making these kinds of decisions all the time. Do some real research on the front end and make the right choice for you.

My Research

Listed below are some of the companies which I am aware of. I have heard something in the positive about each of these companies, but the only one that I have personal experience with is Aweber.

• Aweber – Easily well known to be among the most reliable and professional auto-responder services available. Aweber provides name capture form templates and allows you to input the HTML code manually or install it easily with  javascript. The interface is easy to use and the tracking options are intuitive and helpful. Aweber allows you to segment your lists into several different categories and provides very useful reports and graphs for you to track your progress. Aweber allows you to have unlimited number of follow-up messages as well as send out broadcast messages. Aweber used to have the best deliverability in the industry. Although I think others have caught up. You are able to integrate Aweber with almost any shopping cart, as far as I know. You would certainly want to look into how Aweber or any name capture/autoresponder integrates with whatever shopping cart or purchase/checkout method you are using to sell your wares. A relatively recent feature that Aweber has added is an API feature allowing you to create your own app to access your Aweber account. I don’t know a lot about it but you can find out all about it on their website. By the way you can try Aweber out for one month for a $1. The regular monthly fees are $19 for the basic plan which includes 500 subscribers. From 501 to 2,500 subscribers it is another $10 and from 2,501 to 5,000 it is another $30 and so on… Honestly, I am slightly annoyed that they changed this. I think it used to be the $19/month up to 10,000 subscribers. That was nice. But, what are you going to do…? I guess you have to look into other autoresponders to make sure that Aweber is the one for you.

• 1shoppingcart – In a lot of people’s minds this company ranks number one in the autoresponder race. These guys have a lot to offer. I personally have never needed the things they offer and therefore have not taken the time to personally check them out. However, I know some people who have and I see reputable vendors using them all the time and they seem to be liking their experiences. This service is really set up to be an all-in-one e-commerce solution. There is, however, an autoresponder feature that is quite extensive. You can segment your list, have unlimited number of follow-up messages, there are name capture templates and if and when you become ready, you are able to rather seemlessly integrate their proprietary shopping cart feature. This is definitely handy. There are also different levels of service that allow you to create an affiliate program for your products. That’s kinda cool. The basic autoresponder plan is $29/month and then it goes up based on what type of shopping cart functions you are interested in. In order to have a fully functioning shopping cart and affiliate program, the price is $99/month. I didn’t see where the website mentions pricing increases for more or less subscribers. I also didn’t dig for it. It may be one price for unlimited number of subscribers, but I would make sure of that before you choose 1shoppingcart for this feature alone.

• icontact – I have seen a lot of internet/direct marketers using icontact lately which is why I have included it here. I am not all that familiar with the service, but I have spoken to a representative of the company who was extremely helpful. They certainly seem to offer something rather interesting. These guys offer most everything that the  two services listed above offer and I saw something else that intrigued me… There is a “forward to a friend” feature that enables your subscribers to forward your emails to their friends. This sounds cool, it is a link that you can add to your emails so that your recipient can forward that email to a friend. If they use that link, you are able to track the fact that your email has been forwarded and by who. This tells you who your mega-fans are. Cool. Another cool thing with icontact is that they offer you a facebook widget that enables people to sign up for your newsletter or whatever on your facebook fan page. This is really cool.  icontact’s pricing starts at $9.95/month for up to 250 subscribers then it goes to $14/month for up to 500, $19/month for up to 1,000 and so on. You can check out icontact on their website, or go ahead and call the guy I talked to – Josh Arcand at (800) 232-9690 Ext. 4142. Tell him Tom Siegel from Indie Leap sent you. Once you sign up for icontact you get assigned an actual person as an agent that will help you with all of your questions and get you set up the way you want to be set up. If you call the number that I gave you, then Josh will be your agent. He was very helpful. I certainly recommend checking out icontact, but I suggest really checking it out. Remember to really read the TOS for whatever service you are checking out. Just as a side note I am considering switching to icontact myself.

• ReverbNation – Reverb Nation seems to be offering more and more all the time. I really tend to like what these guys do for the independent musician community. Reverb Nation has an auto-responder available that is specifically tailored for musicians. There are all kinds of features that you will not find with any of the options above. Of course there is a free version and a paid version. The free version is limited to a fan collector (name capture) and I think a maximum of one automated email. This is cool if you don’t have any money. You should be doing this at a minimum. Fan Reach Pro is a little bit more beafy. They offer many of the features offered by the above described services as well as specialized things like providing direct access to your music and your merch through your email and some type of social networking integration where it automatically finds out your fans info for you to see how much exposure they can offer you. I have not read the TOS in depth regarding Fan Reach Pro. I will say that I have found Reverb Nation to have some limiting features. I am not trying to bash them, but I would just be sure to read the TOS carefully before you take action. The pricing for Fan Reach Pro is based on the number of subscribers and it appears to be quite reasonable. From 0 – 999 subscribers is $9.95; 1,000 – 2,500 is $14.95; 2,501 – 5,000 is $19.95, and so on. This is relatively inexpensive next to the services listed above. I strongly urge every musician to check out what Reverb Nation has to offer in general. There is a lot on this site that could be quite useful.

• Constant Contact – All the time I hear about musicians using Constant Contact. However, I almost never hear of any direct marketers using this service. Constant Contact enjoys a lot of main-stream exposure relative to the other services mentioned here. There are a number of services offered by Constant Contact. For the purposes of this post I am speaking to their email marketing service only.  Their pricing is based on number of subscribers and is not unreasonable. 0 – 500 subscribers is $15/month; 501 – 2,500 is $30/month, and so on. On their website they talk about an auto-responder feature, but they do not mention how many messages you are able to load into your auto-responder. I do not want a limit. I want unlimited emails in my auto-responder. I want to be able to load an entire years worth of emails or more into my auto-responder so that I can have the opportunity to get the business side of my projects on auto-pilot.   I have not read in depth their TOS, but I highly recommend that you do. I can’t tell you why but I am skeptical of their service.

• Mail Chimp – Mail chimp is growing in popularity as an autoresponder service. It does seem to give off a hipness that the other services don’t. Seems to be built for the young and young at heart. Mail Chimp is structured a little differently pricing-wise as well. You can sign up for a free account without an expiring trial and without a credit card. With your free account you can begin to collect names and email addresses, however, the features are limited somewhat. Your design capabilities and autoresponder features fall short of what is necessary in a musician’s world. Don’t fret. From 0-500 subscribers is only $10 and 501 – 1,000 is $15 and 1,001 – 2,500 is $30, 2,501 – 5,000 is $50 and so on. These are good prices. I have not personally used Mail Chimp, but I know there are a lot of people out there using this service that are happy with it.

Read The TOS (Terms of Service)

So, in short, look carefully at all of your options, read the TOS carefully and choose a service that suits your needs specifically. Remember to keep your end goals in mind when making choices. Alright… That is enough of that. I want to tell you very briefly about the basics of composing an email. I am not going to talk in length about this because there are so many other highly qualified places for you to find this information. First off if you want to really learn to write effective emails then simply sign up for someone’s newsletter who is producing results consistently. Here are the basics, in short:

Wait!

I got a little ahead right there. First I want to tell you that you don’t need to be selling anything at all in your email. In fact it is better if you don’t sell anything about two thirds of the time. The primary aim of your emails should be to stay in contact with your fans and potential fans (mostly the potential fans). People have a tendency to forget just about everything. So if you are sending them an email once every two weeks or once a month (minimum), it will make it a little harder to forget your name. So if you aren’t selling something, what do you write about? Just keep your subscribers updated. Let them know about a song that you have been writing, the time you have spent in the studio, the trials of getting ready for your next tour or a trip to the beach that the band went on that moved you in some way. Whatever really. You are connecting. Just connect

So What About When You Are Selling Something?

The skeleton of a “sales message” should include the following categories in some form or another. Attention, interest, desire and action. The first part of  a sales message is generally the headline. For the purposes of email, your subject line is your headline. This is the most important part of the entire email and here’s why: If your headline doesn’t interest people they will not open your email. If people don’t open your email, then everything else you write and the information that you are trying to convey doesn’t mean a thing. So I would try to include the first three aspects of the “sales message” formula in the headline – Attention, interest and desire. Save the action piece for the body of your message.

The actual email message should generally contain more detail that draws more attention, interest and desire. You should describe what you are offering and explain how what you are offering will benefit your fans. Try your best to use sensory descriptions of the benefits to really put your readers in the experience you are offering. For example, a lot of artist will send out a notice about their next show that will go something like this: “Hey, come check us out  at the Blue Barn on Washington Street this Thursday night at 9:00. Its gonna be a great time.” Some will write more and some (believe it or not) will write less. I’m suggesting something more along these lines: “When you push open the heavy door of the Blue Barn this Thursday night, you will feel the electricity from the stage and the body heat from the dance floor. Make sure to step up to their signature blue bar, grab a drink and let the the funky beat drive you over to the dance floor. The Blue Barn is located at 1234 Washington Street and the show starts at 9:00… We’re really excited to see you there.” Maybe you think that is corny. Maybe it is. My point is, just be exciting and try to avoid the “just letting you know” tone.

Then you have to direct your readers to some type of action. If you are telling them about your new CD, then give them a link to your website and tell them to “click the link below to hear some samples from the new CD”. If you don’t give them any direction they will do nothing. So just tell them to do something. If you are writing to tell them about a show, tell them to RSVP on facebook or tell them to call their friends and put it in their calander… Whatever it is, just make sure you give some kind of direction.

Ok… That is what I have to say on email. It turned out to be an awful lot in the end. Sorry for writing so much. I will try to keep the next post down in size.

Keep a look out for Step Five of Marketing your Music Online in a future post.

Tom Siegel

P.S. – For more information about how to put together an online music marketing strategy sign up for my newsletter at www.indieleap.com.

This is step three in my online music marketing series. In the last two posts (step two and two-A) I discussed the importance of having your own website and some tips on creating your site. Please check out Marketing Your Music Online – Step Two and Two-A for your reference. In step three I am going to discuss an incredibly crucial piece of the puzzle. Something that is so important to online music marketing that if you were to make poor choices in this department it would ruin your efforts in other areas. Keep reading…

Digital Distribution

In previous steps I have talked about setting up your online presence in the sense that you need an online presence and even before that you need to do a little bit of leg work in order to figure out who you are marketing your music to within this online presence. This step is going to be all about making your music available to purchase online. That’s right, that incredibly confusing subject of Digital distribution. This subject confuses so many artists today and rightfully so. It seems that a lot of artists I meet simply go with the most well known distributor or the one their friend is using. Why is this subject so confusing? Well here is my opinion (I want to stress the fact that it is my opinion)… Online retailers of digital products have opened up their formats so that any individual could potentially distribute their products within their stores. I am not saying that this process is easy, in fact, its not at all. However, it is possible. This made it a lot easier for someone to develop a business designed to distribute digital products to all of the various online retailers. A middle-man. Not a bad deal for musicians, deal with one company and your music is then available in every major and many minor online retail locations, available for the masses to discover, purchase and fall in love with. This sounds great. The fact of the matter is that it is great. This is the very reason that making it as an independent musician is possible in today’s market. Having the opportunity to distribute your product to so many venues and make it available to so many potential consumers is really phenomenal. Here’s the downside… There are a lot of hacks out there. There are some tried and trusted entities out there as well. Then there are the lesser known companies that may be fine and may not. Who to choose is an ongoing discussion. This is precisely the discussion that I am trying to engage in right now.

Easy Now…

I am purposefully going to tread somewhat lightly on the subject for two reasons. One – I do not consider myself to be an expert on this subject specifically (meaning, I am not specifically in the digital distribution business), although I do know some things and I intend to share what I do know. Additionally this part of the industry is always changing. The technology that enables companies to distribute to all of the online retailers is always changing and so is the technology that enables all of the online retailers to distribute to the end users, the consumer. What I will not do in this post is, to make a recommendation on a specific distribution service. I simply intend to point out a couple of gotcha tactics that can make their way into the terms of service and the fine print. I will also mention a few distribution services that I am familiar with as examples of the common differences between platforms. My overall goal, to be clear, is to provide an overview of a solid format for an online music marketing campaign to be successful in generating CD and merchandise sales at the same time as creating meaningful exposure. I think an entire book could be written on digital distribution and maybe one should be. The distributor that you ultimately pick will need to fit your specific needs and goals. I will make the simple point that you need to do the research on whatever company you choose in order to really know what their deal is.

Ok… So, rule number one when picking your digital distribution company… What is your goal? You will have to go back to Marketing Your Music Online – Step One in order to figure this out. As I said above, the distributor you choose will need to fit your specific needs and goals.

There are several different platforms and business models to consider. each one varies sometimes very little and other times it couldn’t be more different.  Along with business models there are just as many fee schedules and gotcha clauses that may or may not really get in your way. So, rule number two is to read the Terms Of Service (TOS), Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) and as much of the website as possible.

Don’t Do What Everyone Else Does

I want to point out that it doesn’t matter if there is a musician you’ve heard of who is a customer of the distribution service that you are looking into. It matters only if the service will meet your needs. I would like to point out a couple of different models that are available and the companies that offer them. This is not, by any means, a complete list of digital distributors. Nor is it a complete list of business models. (For a complete list of distributors along with a complete list of a ton of other useful services I would recommend you check out the Indie Bible). I’ve mentioned these companies and business models to provide examples of the differences in services available. I will also point out that the different models out there essentially consist of distribution plus… That is, distribution to several online retailers as well as some other service. The different models that I have examined for this post are as follows:

• Main stream digital distribution plus social networking
• Main stream digital distribution plus physical distribution
• Direct to fan distribution
• Main stream distribution plus direct to fan distribution plus marketing

Each company offers more smaller, and sometimes quite substantial, pluses that I have not mentioned above.

Some of the Players

Perhaps the most well known distributors for independent musicians are TuneCore and CD Baby.

CD Baby has been on the scene for quite some time now. Infact, Derek Sivers, the founder of CD Baby, basically invented distribution for independent musicians. CD Baby entered the scene as a physical distribution hub and a kind of music discovery warehouse. Since, CD Baby has merged with the main stream of digital distribution offering distribtion to Itunes, Rapshody, Emusic, Amazon, Napster and so on… CD Baby will also provide artists with a credit card swiper for CD and Merch sales at shows. The current fee schedule is $35 one time fee plus $4 per album sale and 25% ($0.29 min.) for every mp3 download. CD Baby additionally allows you to set your own prices. I don’t know… if you plan on selling a lot of CDs this model could get really expensive. But… a lot of artists like CD Baby. I personally have followed Derek Sivers for some time now and I have to say, I really like the guy. That being said, he no longer owns the company.  The company overall does appear to be very proactive in finding ways to assist Independent Musicians. That’s worth a lot. CD Baby is also partnered with Sonicbids, an online DIY booking hub.   I am not entirely clear on how this partnership works. There is also Host Baby. CD Baby’s sister web hosting site. I suggest you read the TOS. In my quck review of the TOS I couldn’t find any information about take-down fees. I would think they are there, but I didn’t see anything when I looked. Again, read the TOS.

TuneCore was one of the first digital distributors to make a splash in the DIY Indie Musician world. The general structure of TuneCore (as of this writing) is digital distribution to all of the major etailers such as Itunes, amazon, Emusic, Napster, etc. and physical distribution through Amazon. The fee schedule currently looks like this: $49.99 for the first year per album and $19.98 per year for each subsequent year. Singles and ringtones are $9.99 per year. This is a flat fee. TuneCore delivers 100% of all net proceeds from the retailers to the artist. WATCH OUT! There’s a gotcha here… When signing up for the distribution package you need to pick your stores. If there is a store you missed then you will have to pay $1.98 for each additional store after you have already given the green light. So, make sure to pick all of the stores you will want before you say go. A couple of pluses that TuneCore offers include: music video and film distribution to Itunes, a partnership with Guitar Center to allow for TuneCore artists to be played on Guitar Center Radio during business hours and a partnership with Universal Music Group to offer a la carte record label services. The partnership with UMG was controversial when it was established. Some applauded the record label’s intention to cater to the DIY Indie Musician and others seemed to feel that it was a sneaky attempt by the label to rob musicians from the inside of the DIY network. Who knows what they are thinking. If you think this works for you, then maybe TuneCore is your thing. Oh… There is a take-down fee (termination of service) of $20 for each album that has been active for less than six months.

I would also mention SongCast. SongCast is pretty much straight digital distribution. The pricing is $5.99 per month plus a $19.99 one time fee per album. In some circumstances this may work out to be less expensive than some of the alternatives. For example; if you have several albums to make available. Notice there are no annual fees for each album. Just a reasonable monthly fee for all of your music and a one time fee per album. Songcast additionally has a radio station that plays songcast artists 24/7. I don’t know what their listenership is. I suggest researching that before you let your decision hinge on that fact. There is a take-down fee for any album terminated that has been active for less than 8 months.

The next company I want to talk about did not start out as a distribution service. Reverb Nation was originally geared toward providing social networking between musicians and their fans. However, Reverb Nation has joined the game and is now competing with the larger distributors. Reverb Nation has two distribution plans. The Standard plan provides distribution to 28 stores and costs $39 per CD per year. The Pro plan provides distribution to 38 stores for $59 per CD per year. Reverb Nation does not take any additional monies on the sale of your music. There are other limitations, but nothing out of the ordinary. Reverb Nation offers a whole slew of other services including email marketing, street team management and all kinds of stuff. There are other companies that probably do a better job these other services, but Reverb Nation has them all under one roof. Reverb Nation overall offers some really great stuff for musicians and it is worth knowing about and their digital distribution service could well be for you. The take-down fee is $30 for the standard plan and $50 for the Pro plan. These are steep in comparison to alternative services.

**My Favorite**

The next type of service on my list is a topic that really excites me. The direct-to-fan movement is why I started this blog and Indie Leap in the first place.

BandBox is a service that gives you a widget (a music player where one can listen and purchase your music). You are able to put this widget on your own website, Facebook, Myspace or anywhere. You can upload what ever audio you want and provide it for your fans wherever you want. You can even upload the audio from a live show and have it be available the same night as the show! (if you want to stay up all night). I think this is great. This gives you the flexibility that you should have in today’s music industry. There are two levels of service. There is BandBox basic, the digital only service for $9.95/month and BandBox Pro which is digital and physical CD sales. BandBox does not take any additional money from the sale of your music beyond the monthly fee. What is really cool about this… is that you pay the monthly fee and you get unlimited album uploads. That is great. If you have a lot of albums, this could be one of the most inexpensive models available to you.  However, there is no main stream distribution.

Another direct-to-fan system of note is Nimbit. Nimbit is really a platform designed to serve several needs of independent musicians in one place. There is a direct-to-fan distribution component to the platform. You can create your own store through Nimbit. Nimbit calls this a skin. The neat thing here is that you can put your store (skin) wherever you want to. Put it on your website, on FaceBook, and so on. Your fans can also put a store on their own site. How cool is that!!? It is common knowledge amongst marketing gurus that word-of-mouth or referrals are the most powerful and effective form of marketing in existence. Anything that facilitates that is a cool thing. There are 3 levels of service and with them come 3 different fee schedules. There is Nimbit Basic and that is FREE!! Nimbit basic gives you the ability to sell your digital music on FaceBook, MySpace and your own website, track your fans, some analytics tools and the ability to accept credit cards. Nimbit Indie costs $12.95 per month and gives you everything that Nimbit Basic offers as well as the ability to sell physical CDs, merch, etickets as well as MP3s on Faebook, Myspace and your website andwarehousing and fullfilment for Cds and merch. Once you start paying for your service you also get digital distribution to the major online retailers such as Amazon, Emusic, Rapshody, Itunes and so on. These are only some of the additional features of the Nimbit Indie. Nimbit Pro costs$24.95 per month and is their top level of service. Everything from the last two levels and this is where you can customize your storefront and really integrate their dashboard with your own website. Nimbit does take a 20% commission for all transactions coming from one of their storefronts. They don’t take any money from transactions from another online retailer. This can get steep if you are selling a lot of music. However, in my opinion, they are really offering a lot of flexibility to an artist. This is just another thing that you will have to weigh against your goals.

There are many, many other digital distribution services available. I have only highlighted a portion of them. The point here is that each service is totally unique. The platform of any given service could work great for you and it could be a total headache. I am suggesting as strongly as possible that you look into exactly what it is that the company is offering, read the FAQ and the terms of service, but beyond that, you absolutely need to know what your goals and targets are. If you have done a good job with Step One, you will have a solid grasp on what you need for distribution. For example; if you know that your target audience spends a lot of time on Itunes, then that will be your major concern. You will know if your audience generally buys one track at a time or whole albums. The pricing plans tend to work well for one or the other but not necessarily both. On the other hand, if your audience are big FaceBook users, then you are going to really want to consider Bandbox or Nimbit or something similar.

Take Away This…

I am trying to impress on you two major points… Know who you are selling your music to and READ! the FAQ and terms of service to really understand what you are getting. There are usually very annoying consequences to making the wrong decision. I know this was a long post, but this is a hairy subject to navigate. I was hoping to clear a path to some answers.

Keep a look out for Step Four of Marketing your Music Online in a future post.

Tom Siegel

P.S. – For more information about how to put together an online music marketing strategy sign up for my newsletter at www.indieleap.com.