How to get your music onto Beatport

If you make dance music then the chances are you've heard of "Beatport". In their own words:  "Beatport is the recognized leader in electronic dance music downloads for DJs and club music enthusiasts."  Whilst certainly not the largest online audio store they are certainly the most recognised.  They certainly have the power to make careers - with progressive house producer Deadmau5 and Steve Duda amongst those whose careers have been launched through the site.

Beatport are renowned as having a strict policy in regard to their record labels.  In order to launch a deal with them you have to either be a recognised label and have some marketing muscle behind you.  They rarely deal with "vanity labels" - those labels set up just to deal with one artist - unless you are the kind of artist who can guarantee large volumes of sales.  In addition they monitor all sales - if you're sales dip below $500 per quarter then the chances are they'll cull you from their roster.

By Jez with 59 comments

Is everything popular wrong?

The Independant Label Market is being held in London today and again on the 21st May.  This seems to coincide with "National Record day" which is apparently to celebrate the vinyl format.  The NME has written somewhat cynically about how they hold no love for what they perceieve as a dead format:

If physical singles are finally dying out for good, then don’t expect me to send any flowers to the funeral. I don’t care about Record Store Day. I don’t even care if I never own a physical CD or vinyl record ever again. I got rid of 90 per cent of my CD-based record collection last year, leaving behind only the records I’d paid for before becoming a music hack. I don't miss them.


And here’s why: if you’re seriously bothered about the way your tunes are delivered to you, you’re focusing on totally the wrong aspect of what makes music great.

By Jez with 2 comments

Free online mp3 hosting...

So you've written your magnum opus.  You've spent a long time recording it, mastering it, sweating over how it sounds and now you need to get it out there on the web.  You can either purchase some webspace and build your own webspace or use one of the many free mp3 hosting or distribution services.

Why host on a third party website and not your own space?    The main advantages are:

• Free - you don't have to pay hosting charges to an external company.
• Bandwidth - 1000 downloads won't impact on your own bandwidth keeping those costs low.
• Website integration - usually the hosting companies have some way for people to embed you songs on their website.
• Social networking - some of the sites such as soundcloud are integrated social networking sites in themselves allowing listeners to rate, download or connect with artists directly through the site.  You can mass mail followers and allow people to comment - enhancing your social currency.

here are some of the options currently available:

By Jez with No comments

Trent Reznor: What to do as a new / unsigned artist

In September 2009 Trent Reznor writing on the NIN forums outlined his thoughts on what unsigned bands should do if they're hankering after success in the internet age. We're using this to inform the different avenues and outlets we'll be looking into in the coming weeks. We'll also take a look at the different distribution methods and guerilla marketing techniques.

Here's what he had to say:

By Jez with 2 comments

We are living in a digital world....

Like it, or lump it, the internet has been a decisive force in music distribution for at least 10 years now.  From the very first p2p networks like Napster and Audiogalaxy to torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay or Mininova to Music Blogs to the new legal alternatives like iTunes, Beatport, Junodownload and so on.  The great revolution in the internet has been in providing greater access to distribution for artists.  

Nowadays a track can go from mixdown in the studio to being downloaded by a large audience within a matter of hours.

Opinions are split between those who download music "illegally" from torrent sites and largely the music industry and their representatives about just how ethically sound it is to download music for free.  The fact remains that whilst it has become easier to distribute your own music online the chances of a musician earning a living wage from recording has become increasingly hard.

Part of this is due to competition from the sheer number of people actively recording and releasing music.  Part of this has been due to the process of illegal downloading and the notion of free online music itself.    Recorded music is no longer a profitable commodity.

So, in this overly competitive era where access to the public has been levelled, can an artist make a living wage?

What we hope to do over the coming months is to log and record our experiments with online distribution, music licensing, gigging and so on, looking at the various different options available and ways to make income - not all of them through selling the music itself.  

We fully expect to make lots of mistakes on the way but hopefully learn from them.

By Jez with No comments