How to sell your own music on the internet?

As an amateur musician myself I am always looking into different ways to sell my music on the net but because there is an overabundance of information it’s hard to see the forest for the trees. If anyone has any advice or wants to be interviewed on the site please contact me.

Below is an interview I did with someone who has already successfully done it and their story.

How to sell your music on the internet! Interview with Ben Byrne

Ben has been playing music since he was seven years old and he has recently started selling his music on the internet. This interview describes the process that Ben went through to get his music on the web and it provides a very useful guide for anyone who is trying to sell their own music on the internet.
Interview with Ben Byrne (BB) by Richard Johns (RJ), Top40Musicsites.com

RJ: When did you start playing music?
BB: I started playing guitar way, way back when I was about seven years old — me and a mate would play in the school assembly and bunk off lessons to go and ‘practice the songs’ - which basically meant just messing around playing anything we could for hours on end.

RJ: Do you record as a band or individually? BB: While I’ve been in and out of bands, I’m essentially a solo artist now. My day job involves quite a lot of travelling so it’s really hard to get something solid together or commit to other people’s projects. Hopefully if I go pro I’ll get something together behind me then.
RJ: Are you pro or semi-pro? If pro, are you currently making a living out of music?
BB: Very much semi-pro. Making money out of this isn’t going to happen in a hurry, I don’t think. So you just carry on doing it, doing what you’re supposed to do as a musician - which is write songs, get them into a format where they can be heard and just try to get as many people to hear them as possible, whether that’s live, on the radio or sold as physical or virtual songs and albums.

RJ: What made you decide to record?
BB: I finally decided last year that I wanted to record an album to just get down songs that had been floating about for years, get it about and see what happened, so recorded it and put it ‘out’ under the name Silversphere. I’d really recommend the whole process to really focus your attention as a musician. Even if the album is shit, you’ll learn a lot.

RJ: Who was involved in recording the album?
BB: For recording the album, it was all me except the drums, which were done by a young guy who worked as an assistant in the studio and which he did really well. He was cheap too!

RJ: What recording equipment do you use? Studio or your own set up at home?
BB: I demo most stuff at home, and also write / play around with a Mac G4 laptop, an audio converter that you can plug guitar / mikes / midi keyboard into and a program called Tracktion (see www.mackie.com) which I really recommend for low budget recording. It can do pretty much anything you need, and most importantly for me has a totally fluid, intuitive interface which after the total bitchery of working with Cubase is heavenly. It’s also about $100 as opposed to over half a grand for ProTools. For the album, I found a local engineer who had a rough and ready set up in the top of a warehouse in San Francisco. All the gear was really top, but it wasn’t Electric Ladyland. But for an independent, low budget release, that’s exactly what you want and it’s probably good discipline for you as a musician / producer.

RJ: Did you record with a label or are you independent?
BB: I essentially set up what I’d call an independent micro-label — silversound Records — to release the album. I don’t even think it’s strictly necessary to do so, but it helps when you’re sorting out things like rights management and ‘official release dates’and stuff. It makes your publicity look more professional, and basically it’s just cool, isn’t it? }

RJ: What’s involved in making a record label?
BB: This was all a bit of a mystery to me until I had the blinding revelation that that it’s basically about as simple as saying — ‘I am now a record label’. Unless you’re going to be employing other staff or deal with payrolls and such, you don’t need to register the company name officially (though you’ll obviously want tot get the appropriate websites registered and make sure the name’s not already taken). You might need a permit to operate, especially if you’re going to be shipping stuff physically from your address (which is probably your bedroom). Any income you make you can probably add to your own personal income until it goes over a certain limit. If it’s going to go full time, then it’s worth registering for tax reasons in some places, but until thenc

RJ: Do you publish just on itunes or on other sites?
BB: I think I’m listed on about 30-40 sites, some bigger like Napster, MSN Music and Rhapsody, some smaller and weirder like tiny operations run out of Croatia.

RJ: How long did it take from the time you decided you were going to publish your songs on the net to actually getting it done?
BB: The process took a few months, from having the time to sort it out to the lag of about two months that it takes the various companies to process stuff.

RJ: How do itunes pay you and what % do you get from your songs?
BB: The way I think the way it works is that every month, iTunes reports to my online distributor - CD Baby (more below) - how many songs have been sold as a download and totals up the cash they owe. I think every song is priced at 99 cents (US dollars). iTunes takes a cut of something like 25 cents, then the distributor takes a couple more. So at the end you get the satisfying figure of 69 cents out of 99 — essentially, just over two thirds of the retail price. This is actually pretty good considering that most regular bricks and mortar distributors will take a cut of about 45% of the price of an album. It’s cool too that you can see roughly where in the world it’s been bought — you might get sales in all sorts of countries you’d never expect!

RJ: How many sites have you signed up for and for how long? Which ones have made you the most money? Which were the easiest to publish with and why?
BB: Like I say, I’m on about 40 sites, and they were all sorted out by CD Baby who cover the majors and some interesting little ones. iTunes seems to be the one that works best — and its obvious integration with iPod seems to be the smoothest way — it just does the best job I think of removing the little obstacles that might makes the difference between someone buying a song and not bothering. The second part though, is their digital distribution section. For an extra 20 bucks or so, they’ll take care of submitting it to the various digital download companies, including the Holy Grail — iTunes — in exchange for, as I said, about 7% of sales. iTunes eventually got back to me recommending the use of a site like this instead of dealing with them direct, and it’s a winner all round basically. They’re good people too. I think it’s currently just operating in the US, but Apple sent me a list of other ones round the world as well, including Japan, which I’ve included below.

RJ: When did you first publish on itunes? Have you made any real money yet?
BB: The album’s been up now for a couple of months, and in terms of real money, nope. There’s been about 100 downloads. But I haven’t yet got the promotion up at full speed. What you realize quickly is having your product on the market is very different from anyone buying it. Once it’s available, you’ve got to get down to the traditional means of marketing it — getting it to the ears of people, getting them interested enough in your music to decide it’s worth their hardearned money and click ‘Buy’. Letting people know it’s out there. So it’s very much the base line that you start from rather than the end of the rainbow.

RJ: Is it necessary to copyright your originals before putting them on the net? Is this difficult? Did you copyright your own material before doing so?
BB: I’m in the position of having a physical album with a barcode, release date and stuff anyway, as well as the online, virtual ‘mirror’ version, so don’t have to worry as much-I hope. I’m not sure how it would work if it was all virtual — you’d probably want to get a physical copy of all the songs and copyright in a basic way, like the classic of sending it to yourself by registered post and leaving it sealed, so you’ve got clear, date stamped proof that you wrote it all. I don’t worry too much about copyrighting stuff, to be honest, perhaps foolishly. I figure that if you’re writing songs that are awesome enough for people to take the risk of trying to rip off, you’re probably soon going to be in a position where you’re well rich and can hire a top laywer to sue them.

RJ: Did you find it challenging financially?
BB: One thing you realize quickly is that as you’re paying for every minute — with your own money — you need to have everything totally planned out from your harmonies to your drum lines before you go in. Maybe there’ll be something new that happens in the studio that sounds magical, but having the time to play around with those kind of things is a luxury that you’ll pay for.

RJ: What will you do differently if you release another album?
BB: For the next album, I’m thinking about trying to record the majority myself at home, with maybe a few tracks like live drums done in the studio to take advantage of engineers who know how to mike stuff properly, which I don’t. The vocals also need to have a soundproof place and good gear. The advantage of recording at home of course is just the luxury of time, experimentation, and, above all, absolute control of how things sound which I missed a little on the first album.

RJ: What motivated you to sell your music on the net?
BB: Essentially, the effort, slog, bamboozlement, confusion and difficulty about getting a physical distribution deal. As an unknown artist, it just isn’t going to happen, and it’ll be a full time job. The advantage of the net is that is gives you a world-wide market that can grow with you from when you’re a total unknown, and just want people to be able to buy your tunes if they hear them somehow, all the way up. The latest song by U2 is in exactly the same distribution realm online as that by your mate’s band. So in terms of distribution, it levels the playing field. You get a bigger cut too! With your own label and online distribution, you get about 70% of gross. Compared to about a 10th of that signed to a major. What you’ve got to remember though, is that the work of a record label is basically recording, but then promoting an artist. Without promotion, the best distribution in the world (which you could say the net represents) won’t sell a single song, except by accident.

RJ: What are the pitfalls to avoid when trying to put your music on the net? What would you avoid if you had your time back?
BB: One of the problems is coordination — you obviously want your CD available to buy when you officially ‘release it’ and time stuff like gigs, promotion posters and stuff appropriately — it’s a bit random when things appear though. I was lucky in that I found out about CD Baby quick so didn’t have to deal with too many online charlatans. Other than that, it’s basically just the information gap - not having much of a clue about how these things work. There’s obviously a lot of people trying to sell a lot of stuff online mixed in as well, so it’s sometimes impossible to get a sense of who’s ‘official’ and who’s a joker. There’s no one to tell you how these things work — so hopefully articles like this can make it a bit more straighforward for people.

RJ: Well, thanks for your time and I wish you the best of luck with your album, Silversphere. Letfs catch up in a few months to see how things progress.
BB: Thanks. Hope this helps with some questions. Best advice I’d say is just to keep writing, record things as best you can, try to follow up with the long slog of actually marketing the album once it’s out (the hard bit), and if it’s rubbish, just do it again. Cheers! Ben Byrne EXTRA INFO: Silversphere — www.silver-sound.com, www.myspace.com/silversphere Digital distribution companies that iTunes accepts content from: For your information, below is a list of several companies that can encode and deliver your music content to iTunes. Should you be interested, please determine which digital service provider is appropriate for your particular content. For Audiobook content, see below. Please note that the companies listed below, regardless of their location, may be able to deliver content for global Artists and Labels. North America: Avatar - http://www.avatar.com CD Baby - http://www.cdbaby.com Digital Musicworks - http://www.digitalmusicgroupinc.com Digital Rights Agency - http://www.digitalrightsagency.com IDEA - http://www.ideadistributors.com Independent Bands - http://www.independentbands.com Ingrooves - http://www.ingrooves.com IODA - http://www.iodalliance.com IRIS Distribution - http://www.irisdistribution.com Redeye Distribution - http://www.redeyeusa.com/ The Orchard - http://www.theorchard.com Tunecore - http://www.tunecore.com Virtual Label - http://www.virtuallabel.biz Europe (and where located): AWAL (UK) - http://www.awal.co.uk Artspages (NO) - http://www.artspages.org Believe Digital - http://www.believedigital.fr Consolidated Independent (UK/Europe) - http://www.ci-info.com/contact/rfp.html DiGiDi (DK) - http://www.digidi.dk Edel (DE, IT, PT) - http://www.edel.com Finetunes (DE) - http://www.finetunes-solutions.de/new/de/index.html Flowphonics (UK/Europe) - http://www.flowphonics.com/ Kontor New Media (DE) - http://www.kontornewmedia.com Kudos (UK) - http://www.kudosrecords.co.uk Phonofile Danmark (DK) - http://www.phonofile.dk PIAS (Benelux) - http://www.pias.be Pinnacle (UK) - http://www.pinnacle-entertainment.co.uk SoulSeduction (AT) - distribution@soulseduction.com State 51 (UK) - http://www.state51.co.uk The Music Business Organisation AS (DK) - http://www.mbo.dk Uploader (UK) - http://uploader-music.com Vital (UK) - http://www.vitaluk.com Zebralution (DE) - http://www.zebralution.com Australia: AmpHead Entertainment - http://www.ampheadmusic.com Japan: Rightsscale - http://www.rightsscale.co.jp Pryaid - http://www.pryaid.co.jp