My CDs have arrived and the EP is out!

I am very excited that today my CDs for 'Beyond The Glass Sky' have arrived! They look great. 

I created the artwork myself, using one of my pictures and combining it with layers of royalty free stock images found on the internet.

This is what they look like:

I have written a newsletter using mailchimp.com and sent it to my subscribers. This time I remembered to add all the subscribers I have on my ReverbNation list, which counted over 400 email addresses, so now my list of subscribers has grown significantly. It's interesting to see in the future if this makes a difference, because my original subscribers all came from people signing up at gigs or from Bandcamp sales, while ReverbNation is more of a social website for musicians, driven by a 'follow for follow', 'like for like' policy.

The EP is now available on Bandcamp and I can now also fulfil my pre-orders.

Since I'm on the subject of publishing, I would like to describe how I do it and talk a bit about the main platforms I use.

Bandcamp is the main platform I use to sell my music, and the only place people can buy my CDs in hard copy. In addition, I put my music in digital form on iTunes, Spotify and Amazon, but these don't accept submissions from individuals, so the submission would need to go through a service such as TuneCore or CdBaby. Even ReverbNation offers now this feature. Last year, when I released my first EP, 'Monsters', I did some research into companies offering publishing services and decided to go through DistroKid. This online distributor sends music to the main online retailers, for a yearly fee.

This answer on the DistroKid FAQ page for the question: 'How is DistroKid better than TuneCore?' seems relevant in helping you understand my choice:

'Both services upload your music to stores and give you 100% of your royalties.

DistroKid is a lot less expensive, and has a better user interface. 

TuneCore charges $49.99 per year per album. $29.99 for the first year.

DistroKid charges $19.99 per year and lets you upload unlimited songs and albums.' (Distrokid.com)


DistroKid's yearly fee was particularly useful for me, as I wanted to be able to release as many singles as I wanted without worrying about money.

Bandcamp is similar, in the sense that one can publish an unlimited number of albums or singles, but the company keeps 15% of the sales. The great feature of Bandcamp though is that it supports pay-what-you-wish, meaning that an artist can set a minimum price for their album, but the buyers can pay more if they want to.

Here is an excerpt from an article comparing Spotify to Bandcamp, which refers to the pay-what-you-wish function on Bandcamp:

'Jason Shanley, an independent artist who records as Cinchel, says he went through TuneCore, a third-party distributor, to get his music on Spotify. TuneCore, however, requires a yearly subscription, the cheapest of which starts at $9.99 per year, not including other fees for setup. Other than the lag time, he says the payout was too low. "I’m losing too much money with an account there. I think I made $2 from it this year or something.” 

Instead, Shanley opts to put most of his discography on Bandcamp. Even though he prices most of his albums at $1 or free, Shanley points to Bandcamp’s name-your-price model as an opportunity for profit from enthusiastic fans. "Maybe about 25% of buyers paid more than the minimum,” he estimates.

"I think there’s a psychology where if you don’t charge anything for it, people don’t think it’s worth anything," he says "But there’s a point where if you charge too much for it, then they don’t feel like it’s justifying that much of a cost.”

Josh Brechner, also an independent artist, notes that Bandcamp helps artists in giving their albums an optimal price. He says Bandcamp recommends charging around $4 for a five-track album. "But they’ll pay more if they like it,” says Brechner, who records under the moniker Visager. "In a way, that’s sort of like, ‘We believe in you.’

My personal experience confirmed the above, as I repeatedly had buyers pay a much higher price than the minimum. In fact, for 'Beyond The Glass Sky', from selling 2 CDs on Bandcamp (one for £100, one for £30 - with a set minimum price of £7.99) I managed to cover the production costs of the 50 CDs I printed. 

This seems to confirm some of the opinions I read in books and articles (such as Amanda Palmer's 'The Art of Asking', Kusek's 'The Future of Music', Kevin Kelly's '1000 True Fans' (http://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans) and gives me hope that it is possible in the digital age, with a lot of work, not necessarily music-related, to make a living relying on a small number of dedicated fans.