Lessons

Lesson Info

Convincing Fans to Buy Music with Q & A

So let's go move on to how do we make sure music sales air charted by music authorities and sound scan? What does this directly have to do with income? Well, first of all, obviously if you're charting, you've got a heck of a thing to to use to market it and for pr as well. So it's directly related for that sound scan also tracks sales and so this kind of thing can be very useful inside the industry to prove that you have a very viable product out there. So how you ensure its charitable? Most people don't know this, but even though you don't have a cd anymore, a lot of times a lot of bands don't do it. You need a barcode that's how they do it so you can get a barcode very easily actually buy going to usually your cd duplicate er's can actually sell them to you, you can buy them online we have actually a bunch of resource is in the indie band survival guide about it like whereto where to get it. The key thing with it is that you need it in advance during the design phase of your album ma...

king process because it is part of the album art, it just doesn't make sense I mean, you don't often think of that, but you know it's actually kind of thing that slowed us up because we were already done with the back cover we'd already sense it in and now we have this e p s file that has the bar code and we have to stick it back on the thing this matters we have ah album out there our first one that was in dispute with another album and ours was first but then they knocked us out of amazon that's just because selling our code itself got confused yeah, it well, that could always happen. It was the authority. So this kind of thing is words were telling you like a business point here just get this is another thing for your checklist you releasing a new album get a barcode especially if you're interested in charting right now another aspect how do you make sure that your artist's name and track listing appears automat you ever pop your cd in and just see all the tracks come in that comes from something called grace note also something called free d b you can enter your information there there's a lot of ways to do it again. Your cd duplication houses will often do that for you so there is actually something to be said to do like a run of cds because you get a lot of other services you can get a bar code, you can get ice rc codes you can get this taken care of the right way the key thing with this is having all of that stuff spelled right now why is this important in the age of basically ripping cds well those mp three's with the I d three tags and home those I d three tags get filled out based on this so you need to get it done ahead of time this is another thing you do before you release your music and grace note dot com well actually has a little fact page on their page which tells you exactly how to do this using things like itunes you'll be typing in all the track names yes, you want to make sure that you spell everything right double check it because once you hit submit it's going to go this big database in the sky that everybody else has got your cd we'll get the names and everything else on it this is a question that we get quite often as you can imagine it's something that comes up quite a bit how do you convince fans to buy your music that you're releasing for free after all and to tell you the truth it is something that's a bit of a conundrum because the thing that you're selling is the thing that you have to give out to convince people to buy the thing that you're selling and then by the time you've given it's about when and why that hector they're going to pay for it right I mean it doesn't make any sense well we're going to give you a few methods we actually wrote an electronic musician article about this that just came out not too long ago but we've also given it quite a bit of thought there's a lot of things that you can do around this problem although I want to refer you back to our first session today for those of you who weren't here from from there we have something as a concept called sell adam's not bits you don't just want to sell your music and we'll be talking about merchandise will be talking about a lot of ways to make money off of all kinds of aspects of your music business royalties is partially what recovering here that doesn't get affected if people take your music and in fact may make it more popular and more likely that it gets played so you get more royalties right that said let's talk about how not to effect your digital music sales these five are probably your best bets and that's not to say that these air it but let's dig into each one separately streaming services uses streaming service allow them here the song but not down with song now there's plenty out there there's things like reverb nation soundcloud will let you do it and it just has an option let people download the song yes or no you could just say no can they still steal it? Yeah, you bet I mean, if the music can be played it can be basically pulled off of there and take it it's very easy but if you raise the bar just enough so it's more of a pain in the rear end to do it that it is just pay the damn ninety nine cents then they'll pay the damn nineteen I says this especially if you could make it super easy with a big buy button right next to it that it's simple most people already have their credit card with apple, which is should scare every buddy a lot, right? I mean and they're like the largest place in the world where people basically buying music if you can send people there they've already got their credit card, they have to re enter it it's just a buy and then they go that little page by now you have this song nice and simple, right? So that's the way to think about it way we talked about this youtube youtube is actually somewhat of a streaming service for the most part because there's no riel there's ways to download the video but then you don't have the audio. Then again, those of you who are more savvy will recognize immediately that there are web sites that will accept any youtube bureau and pop out an mp three now is the sound quality any good no it's pretty terrible it's really awful unfortunately do you think people care no you might care your musicians rights but we just I'm sorry of your fans don't no and they're happy they've got the song and some of them might care but it's not going to be a huge percentage so how can you ensure that actually once you have it on youtube that they just won't pop it out we're gonna have to say wait because we have an entire session on just video and we cover this as a question but I'm just going to tell you to wait on that one youtube is an excellent place for you to get your music out though providing song samples should be obvious you just have a snippet that down the upside is that doesn't directly cannibalize sales downside no one's going to really going to go viral probably people don't virally here's a great sound sniff it I heard I mean it just is just don't right can you imagine doesn't happen not his viral sorry doesn't work audio bumpers you add an audio tag at the beginning of the song or the end of the song and uh conclude maybe with a statement on where they could buy it just to let the mill who look this thing that I gave away and downloaded is still available for sale and you know jesus like, you know, for me some money, the main thing is don't make the audio of the free track the same is the audio of the track there going by, and we did this for their song of the day project that's sure, we had a audio bumper in the beginning for the signing today, so every song had this bumper said, like a jingle that lasted three seconds, yeah, and then the song would come on. Yeah, and then, of course, what we made for sale is just the pure song without the bumper. So basically, the song became advertising people ended up liking the bumper, and it made sense to, in context, the song of the day because it was a podcast, it was podcast it automatically, and people love that because they every morning there was a new song just waiting for him from us. It was just a really good way to do it. It made sense doesn't make sense for all types of things that you would do. The final one is alternate versions. You can release free alternate verses a song, but again, you're not selling the same thing that you're intending tio cell, you're not selling the same thing you're intending to give away is what I meant, so here's a list. I'm just going to blast on a whole list at you was a whole bunch of ideas now this finally gets to the question that we were asked I don't know hour ago or so I want a half ago it's like, well, what should I do with my demo versions? This is where you can use it in order to generate interest in something that's coming out will it cannibalize sales? I don't know, I mean, it depends on how rough it isthe and whether you feel comfortable releasing it acoustic unplugged versions live at compel a cappella certainly instrumentals out takes making of weren't you talking about that the other day? The making others like you've seen this maybe in spotify and itunes where they you know, the artist talked over the song and explains like what they were thinking and all that kind of stuff that's just that version and then stems now those of you who might not do remixing might not know what stems means stems are just the little bits attracts that people can use to remix on their own you could also do source tracks all of these things could be useful we talked about this last session people like brad sucks released all of this source tracks that actually got people even more involved love in the music and tied in, so we've covered an awful lot of stuff here there's even more about music there's certainly a lot more about copyright and everything else. But the key thing is these air to ones that you might find very interesting ways to collaborate with people um there's also a lot on copyright there's certainly a lot on there's. There could be a lot more that you might want to dive into on howto like register your music in different places, but the's air the key ones that are tied directly to making money with music, and I wanted to make sure to leave this one. Oh, and finally we have an electronic musician article about convincing fans to buy music that you give away and also mixing your music for licensing six versions you should be making of each song we talked about that earlier on. These are all articles that are part of the materials that you get if you enroll, so they're available to you if you guys enroll in the course and I wanted to make sure to leave enough room like I said for questions considering this is a very detailed set of title ix, I assume there's a lot cute up based on this way question. Yeah, and some of these again, you may be getting too later some of these touched on some of the software you've mentioned, for instance, keith wants to know a little bit more about cd baby he says can't you license songs through cd baby? I thought you paid the copyright when you submitted the album to them is that true hate the copyright when he cemented to them? I yeah, I think there might be some topics that air mixed into that so they do have some licensing options. A lot of people, a lot of companies dio they'll help you license it and their whole goal is to try and connect you with potential licensees. Now we didn't talk about that a lot of detail here, but we can talk about it just a little bit. This is a a basic well, we're going to talk about next session, aren't we basically how to do something chinese helped ease up quite trying to understand the question because again it was about copyright right about the idea of pain cd baby to get the copyright so number one is it's copyrighted before, like once you created uh but so there wouldn't be any kappa right there but just register it with the copyright office but that's u s government you know what now? Maybe cd baby has a service that says we'll also do that as an added value or some sort of thing, and then I'll be part of it and then three other one I think that randy is getting at is that they also have some sort of uh sink licensing and some other things that do involve copyright that you could pay them and they'll help you out with it so it could be any one of those three thousand thanks wait a couple of the questions coming in terms of the capital you need to do all these registrations and what you should prepare yourself for in order to do that and keck said asked how much money all of these registrations costs and keith and followed with you know what what do you need in terms of capital for all these copyright purposes if you're unsigned yeah look I think randy hit it hit on it right off the bat let the world tell you which ones to register we have not registered all of your duty capital so you need I think that much of a lot of those u s cattle osan exchanges free ask registered fifty dollars she register as a member and then you're registered for life that's just fifty dollars and then it's about thirty five to forty depending on what the copyright registration is it's it's well under fifty dollars for registering your entire album so we're talking about all told not even just over one hundred bucks for all of this and you're set for an album yeah so again you don't have to do well with the copyright stuff you don't have to register all of them and that's a big one okay good and I know that you mentioned youtube and we had a little discussion in the chat room youtube versus video a lot of people saying the audio quality on video you better it makes you look more credible certainly to any thoughts on premium that's a very good point will we'll talk about it? We're pro audio quality is definitely so that's a very good point on that uh but might see last night's discussion yes, I think that, uh grammy association what they're trying to do with sound quality it's interesting? Yeah try I think all of the video services are actually trying to improve audio quality um but, uh another point there's there's there's which one should you go to the o kind of chat room there a lot of people who prefer video over youtube but I know that you mentioned youtube being kind of the great tools because it's more widely. So yeah so look, you can do both and we have this concept co you know, go where the parties that so you want to go where everybody is and aa lot of a lot of that is that youtube at the moment and video I do understand with the equality and what they're catering to and all that kind of some other features I believe it's very possible and we'll talk about those with distancing programs they have other premium for programs that youtube doesn't have. We'll talk about it a little bit.