Hello Everyone!
Thanks for checking
out my blog today. It’s been a busy month since spring break and I’m happy to
be back with you striving towards our careers to be successful in the entertainment
business.
In my Entertainment Media Publishing and Distribution class in the Entertainment Business Master's program at Full Sail University, we are discussing a
great topic on how to publish and distribute our own media, like music, books,
films, and even video games. I love talking about self-distribution and
publishing because I started out as an artist in this business as well. Back in
those old prehistoric days were awful for independent artist, you would have to record a demo and try to
get someone at a record company to sign you. Living in Oklahoma made that somewhat
impossible for us in the early 90's. Then some of us were able to raise enough money to promote and sell
our own music but most of us just fell to the wayside due to the lack of
knowledge on what to do next or the funds to do it.
Thank God for technology because now days with
the Internet and social media, you can promote, distribute and publish your own
music, books and films with POD (print on demand) sites. Companies like CDBaby.com,
Tunecore.com, and Reverbnation.com are publishing and distribution companies
that can help independent artist us take our careers to the next level of the
game.
Since I came from the music
side business of entertainment, I want to start out talking about the sites
that can help us promote and sell our music to our fans. First let’s look at CDBaby.com.
CDBaby.com is a great site to sell albums or singles. There are no any annual
fees and they only charge $49 per album for worldwide digital and physical
distribution. If you want global royalty collections then it’s $99 per album. You
can sell singles for
$12.95 for a sign
up fee or $39 per singles if you want global royalty collections. CDBaby.com
also offers disc manufacturing and you can also sell mp3’s, vinyl and physical
CD’s.
You can get a UPC code for only $20
an album or $5 per single and you can get web hosting for only $199 per year.
You pay only $4 per album and artists keeps the rest of their own set price.
That means we receive 91% of all digital downloads! That’s cheaper than iTunes
and Amazon. You can also license your music for films, T.V., movies and even
for YouTube. You can even set the amount you want to be paid out and once that
amount is reached, you will be paid. Payouts are every Monday.
-->
Now you have other sites like
Tunecore.com that offer similar ways to distribute your music as well.
TuneCore.com charges a set up fee of $29.99 and an annual fee of $49.99, but
you get to keep 100% of your sales and rights. There are no physical CD’s or
vinyl to distribute, but Tunecore claims and collects all of your publishing
royalties across the world. There is a $75 fee for the publishing administration.
Both of these sites are great for
independent artist to sell our music to our fans and keep a good track record
of it as well. Even though these sites make things easier for the artist to
sell their music to their fans, you still need to promote, promote, promote.
You have to build up your fan base so they will even want to pull out their
credit cards and purchase your music. Let’s talk about that in my next blog.
PS: We will also talk about publishing and distributing
films and books in my next post. Thanks for your time,
C.D. Wright.
References:
-->
http://www.tunecore.com/index/how_it_works
