One of the most important questions for musicians is how should they release their music? This is especially true in the digital age of the internet. While there are online music stores where you can actually sell your music either in physical or digital format to your fans, music streaming sites are now gaining considerable popularity, as well.
Artists can get their music submitted to online music streaming services like Spotify so that when people search for them they can find it for instant streaming. The artist actually gets paid for every stream which they receive through services like Last.FM or Spotify. The actual amount is so miniscule that it’s negligible, however, and the real value in getting your music on streaming sites is for increased exposure.
In this article, we’ll look at an up and coming streaming service which has long been available and popular in Europe but which has only become available in America in recent months, Spotify.
The benefits of Spotify for an artist are aplenty. It’s a HUGE up and coming streaming site which more and more people are likely to begin using as time goes by and it gains more exposure and notoriety considering how much music can be found and streamed for free through it. This is one source of exposure which you cannot afford to pass up given how many people are already using it and who will use it.
The actual cut which you get per stream as I mentioned earlier is very negligible. You earn less than a tenth of a cent per play, and you’d need millions and millions of streams of your songs before you started to see income in the hundreds or thousands of dollars unfortunately.
Unless you’re signed to a major label where you’ve got people working to get your music on streaming sites like Spotify for you, you’ll have to do it yourself. Fortunately it’s relatively inexpensive to do so as you can use a service like Tunecore which I recommend to get your album uploaded to Spotify and every other noteworthy streaming site for a price of just $49.99. This gets your album on online streaming sites like Spotify but at the same time it gets it in actual digital music stores for purchase like iTunes.
Again, it’s all about exposure as well as making your music as readily available to your fans as possible wherever they are and through whatever music services they feel comfortable using and frequent, and Tunecore does this for you with a few clicks of your mouse.
Remember that the absolute best place right now which an independent artist can sell their music is through a free service called BandCamp in which you can earn 85-90% (minus the Paypal transaction fees) of every penny which you earn from sales of your music with BandCamp themselves only taking an industry leading 10-15% for themselves for the transaction in full.
i would like to sign up for spotify