It’s always a waiting game when you send your album off to get posted on all the digital download sites.  The sites cover themselves by saying that it could take up to eight weeks to get listed.  It took my album around three weeks to get listed on iTunes.

Also, included with my distribution package is a bunch of other distributors that probably won’t result in any sales.  I’ve read that there is a “big five” distributors, which are iTunes, Rhapsody, eMusic, Napster, and AmazonMP3, and as long as you’re on those sites, you’re okay.  The problem is that some of these sites don’t allow you to search their catalog without signing up with their service.  This makes it tough to figure out if your album is being listed on their site.

However, now that the album is available, it means I have to also ramp up the marketing.  So, I’m experimenting with google adwords and facebook ads.  Most of my research says that google is far more effective than facebook ads.  We shall see.

I’m doing a lot of ramping.

I have an old webcam that outputs 15 frames per second (video is usually approaching 30 frames per second), and I found a free online screencasting site called screencast-o-matic.com, and I started making little “behind the scenes” videos to accompany the songs on the album.

I kind of like making these little screencasts for the songs.  It’s fun to talk about the songs, arrangements, and inspirations for the track.  But another part of me thinks that making these videos is pretentious and self-serving.  I have decided that I made the album, I arranged all the tracks, I played all the instruments, and I even designed the cover art, so why shouldn’t I make a series of videos about the songs?  As long as I’m already being outrageously DIY in my musical career, why not take it over the top?

The inspiration for these videos comes from an issue of Keyboard magazine that was published a few years ago that focused on “electrolounge”.   In the issue there were three profiles of up and coming electrolounge bands.  The article took it’s coverage one step further by printing a screenshot of a track for a song from each of the bands.  This was huge for my development as a musician, because it was the first time I saw what tracks looked like in a ‘real’ produced song.

I wish Keyboard or Electronic Musician would post more screenshots of songs from current artists’ catalogs.  I find them really interesting.

So, this is where I got the idea to do an in-depth video on each of the songs on the album and to show what it looks like when I’m mixing the tracks on my computer.

Unfortunately, because the computer I’m using isn’t up-to-date, it doesn’t have enough power to play the original song files, with all of the softsynths and plugin effects, and run the screen-grab software.  Instead of the original files, I’m using the mastering stem files that I used to do the final mixes for the songs.  So, instead of having 30-50 tracks and asking the computer to synthesize the entire song on-the-fly, while at the same time running a webcam and a screen-grab program, I’m only asking my computer to stream three or four tracks.  Computers are much more comfortable streaming already printed audio, than synthesizing it on the fly.

Along with my videos on each individual song, I made an ““Christmas and Glowsticks” history and concept ” video, in which I discuss the history of the project, and the general philosophy that governed the creation of the album.

I also signed up with www.bandcamp.com and uploaded all of the “Christmas and Glowsticks” tracks for independent distribution.

I’ve done a lot of research, and believe that I have chosen wisely this year.

I chose www.catapultdistribution.com for digital delivery for three reasons:

1. They distribute to a ton of stores–all the main ones, plus all of the worldwide iTunes stores.
2. The fee is a flat rate of $25, with no yearly renewal.  They also take 9% of all sales, after the store itself takes its cut of the money.
3. I would have used www.cdbaby.com, but they’ve been getting a lot of negative buzz lately, and I decided to stay away.

Catapult Distribution’s web interface is easy to navigate, and easily figured out how to get my music in their hands.  One item I didn’t like is that I had to convert the times of the songs into seconds.  It seems like if I’m uploading my song to their site, their software should be able to figure out the length of the song on their end.

Last year I used www.e-junkie.com for my independent digital downloads.  I used them because they had a 45 day free trial with zero fees.  Also, I could do the “pay what you want” model using their system.  It worked very well.

This year, I’m using Bandcamp for my independent distribution.  The Bandcamp website is unbelievably easy to use.  Within minutes, I had a professional page, and music uploaded.  The upload speed I had with www.bandcamp.com was at least four times faster than the uploads to www.catapultdistribution.com.  So far, I have been very impressed with Bandcamp.

Bandcamp doesn’t take a cut of the profits made from selling music, but Paypal does have a fee for using their service.  Ordinarily, Paypal is set up for large-ish transactions, like over $10 dollars.  And for transactions over ten dollars, Paypal works very well.  But since Bandcamp makes it possible to sell single songs, the usual flat fee wouldn’t be very practical.  Here is what the Bandcamp website says:

PayPal’s standard transaction fee works out to about 33 cents for a $1 payment and 45 cents for a $5 payment (in U.S. dollars). Luckily, they provide an alternative designed for lower-priced items called the “micropayments rate.” Using micropayments, the fee is 10 cents for a $1 payment and 30 cents for a $5 payment.

So I signed up for micropayments on my paypal account, but now, if I sell anything big on ebay, then I’ll get hit with a higher rate.  This trade-off seems unnecessary.

—-

For context, last year, I used TuneCore to digitally distribute my first album “Babies Don’t Have Hands”.  Tunecore has a flat rate, but requires a yearly renewal.  What’s great about Tunecore is that they don’t take a percentage of your sales.  So, if you are a well-known artist, or even a medium well-known artist, and you know that you are going to sell a lot of digital downloads, then it makes sense to have a flat fee, and then no percentage taken out of sales.  But for beginners, with no fans and no marketing, this makes less sense because of the yearly fee that might be more than the amount you make from sales.  Also, Tunecore doesn’t really do physical distribution of CD’s.  They have a workaround, but it’s not integrated.

On the other hand, CD Baby does do physical distribution of CD’s.  CD Baby has a flat fee that you only have to pay once, and then they handle digital distribution and physical distribution FOREVER.  But, the trade-off is that CD Baby takes 9% of all digital sales.

So, I went with both.

I first went with Tunecore.  Tunecore seemed to be better for digital distribution.  Also, they had the cheapest UPC bar code I could find.  Later, I also signed on with CD Baby and sent them five CDs, but I didn’t sign up with their digital distribution (because I already had it with Tunecore).

Over the year, I had three or four album downloads through iTunes.  I got a few pennies from streaming.  I sold two CDs through CD Baby.  Altogether, I invested over a hundred dollars on distribution, and made a little over forty.

So, after a year, I didn’t renew with Tunecore, so presumably my album was removed from online distributors…

…I just checked in with Tunecore.  I have a balance of 27 cents from streaming off Rhapsody and Napster.

So this year I’m using Catapult Distribution for online distribution, and Bandcamp for independent sales.  I’ll let you know what I think of them after I start getting some traffic and downloads.

But I’m not just putting the original album on iTunes.  I’m remastering the album for the internet release. The original album is really good, but I’ve noticed a few things that need fixing, so I’ve gone back to the original files and have re-tooled every song.  There are details of the changes over at www.christmasandglowsticks.com.