With so many avenues now to discover and share music, just how should you make your music available?

Some musicians have a fear that if they make their music freely available, they will see no financial reward. Bandcamp is one of many models which flies in the face of this - with many artists choosing to offer their music in a "pay what you like" arrangement. I detailed my own thoughts on this almost 3 years ago in my post titled "Is Bandcamp A Good Way To Sell Music?".

There are differing views and countless varying experiences of the value (or lack of value) in offering your music in a "pay what you like" arena when it comes to the financial gain (or lack thereof).

However I'd like to present a different perspective. Stop thinking of how you should make music available to sell. Instead, think about how you can make your music available to share. 

Why? I'll recount a recent experience I had. As an avid avoider of commercial radio, I was recently listening to a local radio station on the AM band while driving. I happened to tune in part way through a great track - Cold Here In The Water, from the Mark Sholtez album The Edge of the Known World. 

It was such a tasteful song, delivered with such delicacy, beautiful simplicity, and real sentiment. When I had the first opportunity, I made a note in my phone of some of the lyrics I remembered, to investigate it further when I had a chance. 

Later that night, researching the track online, I soon discovered Mark Sholtez' website and enjoyed learning more about him. Being unfamiliar with his work, one of my first ports of call was YouTube - hoping to see some recent live video or a clip for the track I'd heard. No such luck. 

I also wanted to share my discovery with others. Facebook is an avenue I commonly use to share discoveries like this with my friends - and often this is done simply by pasting in a YouTube link to a video.

In this case I couldn't. The track didn't exist on YouTube, and the catalogue of music I found was still at that stage unfamiliar to me (and therefore not on my radar to share). 

I found no alternatives to quickly share a listening experience of this track to others. So, until writing this post, my enjoyment of this new track and my discovery of this artist had stagnated. 

Now I'm not picking on Mark Sholtez here at all - his online presence is actually very good compared to many, and he is regularly active, appreciative and engaging with his supporters on social media - which is awesome to see. 

However my experience is not uncommon i.e. wanting to share a musical discovery and having little or no means of doing so in a way that enables someone to hear more than a brief sample of a track I've fallen in love with. 

Brief snippets available to listen to via iTunes are fine, but they're not really share-friendly. In this way, these samples are valuable mainly to those who have already discovered you, or are close to an album purchase already and want to hear a little more before committing. 

It's tough. Ultimately it comes back to the original dilemma - do you offer your music online to listen to for free? As a musician, you may be reluctant. But for your listeners and new fans, who would want to broadcast their discovery of your talent to their own circles, it's a must to consider. 

My own opinion - the process of getting your music "out there", even if for free to some, may pay off in the longer run. If you let someone choose what they would like to pay for it (including $0 if they don't think it's worth more), then at least you're not introducing a barrier to sharing your music to a wider audience. 

Those who wish to pirate your music will always find a way to do so. But don't let that be a reason to stop your music being shared by those who have discovered it, love it, and want to spread the word!

I read an interesting article titled "10 Ways To Make Money With Your Music That Didn't Exist 10 Years Ago" on Digital Music News. The article covered such avenues as crowdfunding, Bandcamp, and YouTube ad revenue and sponsorships, among others. 

However what I found most interesting was that the first two comments beneath the article related to music piracy. The first suggested that a good way to make money was to sue music pirates! The second comment stated that "Music has to be locked in virtual walls and monetized at the discovery moment. Beyond discovery point music is a public domain and monetization is nearly impossible".

This I thought was an interesting concept. It suggests that music loses its value - monetarily at least - after the point it is discovered as people consider it public domain. 

This is in part why I created my business, Need For Keys. I recognised that posting my songs to Bandcamp and promoting them would not draw me much income without significant support from an existing fanbase or through massive and ongoing effort in promotion to build that fanbase. To me, music quickly became a business rather than an enjoyable artform, unless I changed my approach to it.

As a result, I focused on offering something to the world which no one else could. Myself. I was no longer competing within genres on countless music streaming or download services. I was no longer competing with large corporate stock audio libraries to have my music used in film, games, television, or elsewhere. 

I was no longer competing. 

And what a freeing feeling that is. I stood up from the piano to walk over and write this blog. I didn't neglect the very instrument I'm trying to spend more time playing, in efforts of promoting that I can play it. 

So how do musicians make money in the digital age? Well, as the aforementioned article (and many others) attest, there are countless ways. So often, however, the degree of money to be made via these methods comes down to your commitment to being away from the actual craft of playing. Striking a balance is important, so you remain passionate about what you do without getting sucked into a whirlpool of endless digital promotion. 

It reminds me of some of the quotes towards the end of the documentary Before The Music Dies, most notably from Dave Matthews and also Hubert Sumlin - skip forward to 2m 50s. 

Now get up and go play something. 

This is an often-asked question, though perhaps poorly phrased. A better question would be "Is Bandcamp a good way to distribute music?" which it most certainly is. 

For those who are unaware, Bandcamp is an online home for your music, offering unlimited storage space, a customisable web address, fast streaming of your tracks and albums in full, and the following features:

• The listener's selection of format to download your tracks in: MP3 320, FLAC, MP3 VBR (V0), AAC, Ogg Vorbis or ALAC format
• "Name your price" downloads - meaning that as an artist you can either prescribe the amount of money you want to charge for a track or album, or you can make it available for free, or you can let the listener name the price they want to pay for the album (which can even be $0). 
• Real-time statistics
• Very nicely mobile-optimised so it looks great when viewed from a smartphone
• Ability to sell your tracks directly within Facebook
• Loads more Bandcamp features can be read about here

Shameless plug alert - my Bandcamp website is http://pdmusic.bandcamp.com/. So why am I on Bandcamp?

I had an interesting email exchange with my cousin just this evening. Last weekend we saw a band a mutual friend plays in launching his EP (4 track CD in this case). Interestingly, in the online promotion post-the gig, someone had commented to our friend that he wished their album was on Bandcamp as he didn't use iTunes. Fair enough, some people may wish to not be tied to a "system" like iTunes. 

While there are many discussions of the benefits or otherwise of iTunes, Bandcamp in particular appeals to me. The reason? Well... I used to charge for my music (even after I moved to Bandcamp), albeit only about $5 an album. 

However in time I started to feel that people who would actually pay for music (rather than pirate it) are happy to pay what it's worth, not a negligible amount. A mere $5 for an album made by an individual with no solid financial backing, fanbase, or back-catalogue, recorded over many many days, weeks, or months is not too much to ask. In fact, I believe it's too little. 

Never-the-less, if you let someone choose what they would like to pay for it (including $0 if they don't think it's worth anything more), then at least you're not putting up a barrier to them adding your songs to their playlist/s just because you were going to charge them for the music. The process of getting your music "out there", even if for free to some, may pay off in the longer run.

With so much mainstream pirating of music, if you're an amateur musician no one's ever heard of there are literally millions of others "just like you", not creatively, but the same in that they are unknown talents without a loyal following. If you're going to say "swipe your credit card before you can hear more", discoverers of your music are likely to click off your page never to return, moving on to download the next unknown's album or pirate a mainstream artist's work. 

Sad, but I believe true. It's a funny state for the music industry. So my answer to the question "Is Bandcamp a good way to sell music?" is... well... I'm not sure. It's hard to know whether people will pay less than what your music is worth simply because they can, and may have otherwise paid a higher asking price. 

However to the question "Is Bandcamp a good way to distribute music?" then I'd say whole-heartedly YES! By removing the payment "wall" you may increase exposure to your music (albeit via non-paying downloaders) - while at the same time offering paying customers a means to access your music and pay for it what they deem it is worth. Win-win!

-
Paul Doolan provides online keyboard session recordings for bands and solo artists. 
Want to add keyboards to your track? Learn more now. 

In the past 24 hours I've stumbled across two sites in particular which have lead to this post. While I may lose several readers with this sentence, my intention is not to prescribe rules with which to make a hit song, but to question some music industry trends. 

Yesterday I read the blog post "The Ten Second Rule: What is it and Why It’s Important!". In summary this article explains why a track needs to grab the listener in the first 10 seconds in order to be successful (generally). My first reaction was to disagree, but then I realised my disagreement was not with the rule itself but with the outcome of an adherence to it. 

Anyone who has listened to my music would appreciate that the old adage of "don't bore us, get to the chorus" doesn't generally enter into my composition process! I don't approach music from a perspective of needing to grab attention and impact from the get-go. However, I also appreciate that I am not composing with the express purpose of achieving commercial success - something The Ten Second Rule is clearly a catalyst for. 

I agree with the suggestion that there must be near-instant appeal for music which is aiming to be played on commercial radio. The reality is that deviating too far from familiar territory will lead to the listener changing the station quickly. But I question the value of this rule in creating fresh, interesting and truly original music – rather than more of what’s been heard before.

The second site I've come across today is SoundOut. As the website explains, SoundOut offers an online service to provide objective, reliable and rapid music insight. Artists are encouraged to upload a track via the site which is then reviewed by music fans (registered "scouts"). As detailed on the site:

"Every track submitted to SoundOut is fed randomly and in real-time to 80 independent reviewers on our sister site, Slicethepie (or 200 reviewers for SoundOut Pro reports). They are asked to respond objectively with their rating and honest feedback. These reviews and ratings are then automatically analysed by semantic technologies and compared against over 50,000 other tracks that have already been processed through SoundOut to produce a detailed SoundOut report."

Among other things, one outcome an artist is said to be able to gain from the SoundOut report is "How good a track is overall, with guaranteed 95% accuracy".

This service may be the absolute delight of artists looking for a way to receive constructive (?) feedback on their tracks. It's certainly an innovative tool. 

I must say though that I am wary of the outcomes of a largely automatic reporting tool determining "how good a track is overall". For an artist with the sole objective of achieving commercial success with their music, this would seem like a god-send. Once you have the big success tick against one of your tracks you just need to figure out exactly what commercial success is - how to monetise the popularity of your track in a world gone crazy for free downloads and music piracy!

As a composer putting heart and feeling into creating music, this tool leaves me cold. But again, I acknowledge I am not SoundOut's target market. 

Why formulate and automate the art of creating music?

"I am the entertainer, I come to do my show.
You've heard my latest record, it's been on the radio.
Ah, it took me years to write it, they were the best years of my life.
It was a beautiful song. But it ran too long.
If you're gonna have a hit, you gotta make it fit
So they cut it down to 3:05".
- Billy Joel, "The Entertainer"

Muscle memory is an amazing thing. The process of repeating a movement so frequently that it is committed to your memory, such that you no longer need to think about the action, it can just happen.

I've often thought how great muscle memory is as a musician. When learning a new track you will listen to it over and over - in some cases hundreds of times - before you feel fluent in the performance, not needing to think your way from one note to the next. There's a real sense of freedom when you can breeze through a once difficult part of a performance, later reflecting on how much repetition went into getting it to sound so "easy". 

Sometimes I'll sit down at the keyboard and without any effort play through a piece I haven't thought of in years. No sheet music, no accompaniment, no recent listening - just the action stored in the brain... and it can sound as good as it ever did. 

Earlier this week a friend of mine, learning piano, commented on wanting to learn the track "Army" by Ben Folds. In particular he mentioned the left hand arpeggios playing so quickly at times (check for example 1 minute 15 seconds into the video below).  

At first this would require a lot of conscious effort, but in time would be done with ease - as this performance shows! 

Just today I was playing Dark Knight (below), a composition of mine well over 10 years old. The piece starts with a fairly complex left hand part, which continues regularly to keep the tempo well after the right hand melody joins in. Having not played the track in quite some time, this once tricky left hand line came out again with relative ease.