Let us quickly look at what a “Digital Music Store” and “Music Promoter” Means. You may find all kinds of definitions but I will explain them base on our topic.
WHAT IS A DIGITAL MUSIC STORE?
– Wikipedia defined “Digital Music Store” as a business that sells digital audio files of music recordings over the Internet
WHO IS A MUSIC PROMOTER?
– A MUSIC PROMOTER is a person either a blogger or an OAP who publicize and promote an Artiste or Music whether offline or online. For bloggers we make use of our blogs, social media pages etc for this purpose.
Some Bloggers only collects 30 – 50% of what you pay for distribution in digital stores but they can hype your song and even assist on getting it up on other affiliated blogs. You pay us the bloggers 7k – 10k to get your song on digital store without a promotion of any kind. Do you stand to gain or loose?
Now without much hesitation let us go straight to the points.
1. WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW ABOUT APPROVAL FOR DISTRIBUTION:
Your music may get declined on different occasions if you failed to meet a single criteria for digital stores and no refund will be made after paying huge amount but failed to get it live in stores.
However even when you are able to get it in stores, for your music to remain live in digital stores beyond the first year of distribution, you must be paying an annual renewal fee otherwise your music or your release would be removed or taking down from all stores. And when your music is taken down and you want to get it live again you will have to start a fresh procees on getting it on stores again. Be careful because if you rely only on stores you will wake up one day and may not find any of your songs online.
2. HOW MUCH YOU MAKE/EARN AFTER PAYING FOR SUBSCRIPTION FEE:
How many people are willing to buy or stream your songs in stores?
With no delay on this, musicians could earn up to $3 – $4 (dollars) for 1,000 streams with Spotify whilst Apple Music paid $7.83 for 1,000 streams and Amazon paid $7.40. Can you get 1,000 streams on this sites before your subscription runs out?.
For Audiomack, only the verified artistes get paid for streams but you, what do you stand to gain? You keep sharing links while the Audiomack keep benefiting from you. The good news is that BestXplorer Blog offers similar services with our local store where you get to keep 100% of your music sales and without any annual renewal fee. (CHECK OUR STORE HERE)
3. RISK ON AWARDS OR RECOGNITION:
Most award bodies ask for a downloadable link and not streaming links, when you submit your music link using link from stores you will lower your chances of getting nominated and besides your song might have been taken down already because you failed to pay for the annual distribution fee.
Some awards bodies even go further to search your song on blogs to make sure it is visible on Google or search engines and on different blogs.
4. YOU LOWER YOUR CHANCES OF BEING DISCOVERED BY LABELS:
Labels can hardly discover your music when it’s only up on stores. They easily discover songs that are on blogs for downloads because people share blogs links more than link from digital stores. They need to download your music to review it over and over again to know how good you are and then contact you. Bloggers can easily be contacted to get to you or if your social media handles or contacts are in the blog post you can be easily contacted unlike the stores. Again, How will label listen to your songs on stores when you failed to renew your annual distribution fee and your song is taken down?
5. MOBILE DATA USAGE AND MUSIC SHARING:
How many people are willing to spend on data whenever they want to listen to your song?
You may loose relevancy why because fans may not have the song on their phone whenever they want to groove to it or share it with friends, instead they listen to other artistes songs on regular basis who have made their songs available for downloads. For instance how will a DJ play your music, will you expect him or her to go online to stream your song and play in a club or party? But, when your song is up for download it gives all these opportunities for sharing, constant or repeated listening and for easy access by Djs.
How many people have the Audiomack App and among those that have, how many are making use of it regularly? how many will download your music among the few?
6. HOW FANS REACTS:
Don’t expect everybody or all of your fans to buy or stream your music when you post stores link, Audiomack link and also YouTube when it comes to video, start collaborating with bloggers, hype mens or any other promoters from different angles for your branding and promotion. Only few will stream your music and out of 10 people that stream your music you may hardly get 1 or 2 people that will come back and stream again.
You writes good songs, paid for good production but end up killing the song for not promoting it or due to a very bad promotion. Imagine 2k people downloaded your songs from different blogs and 1k shared your songs with friends. Think of how far your song could go.
7. YOUR SONG VISIBILITY ON GOOGLE:
People or fans can easily access your music on Google or any search engine from different blogs and download it with ease unlike the digital stores. And when you failed to renew your distribution annual fee for stores your songs or release will be taken down and you will loose your place on Google or any search engines. The more you become visible on Google with the help of Blogs the more chances you get for Google Artiste Acknowledgement panel.
FINALLY, THE A LIST ARTISTES WHOSE SONGS ARE IN STORES AND AUDIOMACK, IS THEIR MUSIC NOT ON BLOGS FOR DOWNLOADS? OF COURSE THEY ARE AND THEN WHAT ABOUT YOU? ARE THEY NOT RENEWING THEIR ANNUAL DISTRIBUTION FEE TO KEEP THEIR MUSIC LIVE IN STORES? YES THEY DO AND WHAT ABOUT YOU?
DON’T KILL YOUR CAREER OR LOOSE RELEVANCY AND THE FANS YOU HAVE SIMPLY BECAUSE YOU WANT TO FOLLOW THE A-LIST FOOTSTEPS. YOU DON’T WANT TO MAKE SACRIFICES BUT WANT TO ACHIEVE BIG.
Written by Fidwon Fidelis
CEO BestXplorer Blog
www.bestxplorer.com.ng
