Part 17 - Distribution Strategies

So you've 'finished' your song up to a standard and loudness that you're happy with, now you just lob it up on your website and let it go viral right?

Depending on your definition of 'finished' then potentially, yes. If our objective is to get something written, recorded and released then our job is done and we can give ourselves a pat on the back and move on.

Seriously, that's a piece of art that is out in the world that didn't exist until you turned your hand to it. You created something from nothing, and that's a kind of magic. 

But if we're hoping to attract a few more listeners, and we don't have the same levels of 'brand recognition' as Taylor Swift, then we're going to need to put in a bit of work.

This work is 'marketing'. It's a dirty word, and a dirtier business, but at some point you're going to have to face into it. 

Well, it's not really. Basically marketing is just letting potential customers (your audience) know that you have a product (your songs) that might interest them. If this isn't something you've really considered before, here's a really useful primer: https://somethingdifferent.co.nz/musings/a-decidely-useful-guide-to-marketing/

But if all that sounds like psychobabble, then here are some basic principles to nail down.

Know your audience. 

Firstly you have to understand who your potential audience is and what they're looking for. If your answer is 'everyone and everything' then I have good and bad news for you. The good news is that you've got lots of potential listeners. The bad news is that they're the same potential listeners who are currently being adequately catered for by the major labels and their roster of super-stars. And guess what? If you want to cut through then you're going to need a major label advertising budget. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that you don't have one of those...

So you're going to need to get more granular. If you play live, that's your starting audience. If you've already released stuff online and you have followers on social media, that's your audience too. But both of these groups are fickle, so try and find some way to capture those audience email addresses, because this is still one of the biggest tools in the box. 

This is another subject that could (and does) fill a book, so we're going to move on for now, but do think about how you're going to (legally) get those emails...

Meet your audience where they are. 

There are about eight billion people on the planet. With all manner of different tastes and preferences. The good news is that this means that even for a niche product there can still be a big audience. The bad news is that the audience might be spread all over the globe. The good news is that your digital media can be distributed all over the globe. The bad news is that so can everyone else's. But the point is that you have to get your music into the ears of potential listeners. If your main audience is a following for your live show, that's brilliant; you can sell tickets, CDs and T-shirts. If you don't have a live audience then you're going to need to be on some kind of streaming service - because that's where your audience is. Personally I would recommend being on all of them, even the ones you've never heard of. My third biggest streaming site by plays is Resso - I'd never heard of them but they serve India, Indonesia and Brazil; which turn out to be my 3rd, 6th and 8th biggest markets. Who knew?

So when you sign up to a distributor*, make sure you're signing with one who will get your content on all the platforms and in all the markets.

The other thing to consider is 'remote live' - go live on Youtube or Twitch and allow the world to come to your intimate live gig.

Have a plan. 

But for any of this to work you're going to need a plan. I was listening to a video this week where a chap was going through his 'guaranteed' 60 day release plan. And, to be fair, it was good plan that probably works well. The only downside is that you need to have three release-ready tracks and, for each one, 20-30 videos. Yep. 60-90 videos to record, edit, produce, mix and have ready to drop on a regular basis over the 180 days of the release window. 

I humbly suggest that if you have time to do that then you're not holding down a full time day job and you probably have a 'team' working with you. And you're probably not reading this blog.

But there are some things you'll need to figure out. When you're planned release date is, how long your distributor needs to get your release ready, add a week to get onto release radar for Spotify, who else are you sending it to (bloggers? promoters?) and how long do they need. Work back from there and add in things like listening parties and your social media campaign leading up to release day.

How much detail you put in is up to you, as long as it's enough to keep you hitting the deadlines.

Have some budget. 

There is a breed of musician (and this probably applies to other creatives as well) that believes that any kind of advertising or marketing is, in some unspecified but highly emotional way, selling out. They will argue that it's all about the music and that, somehow, if your music is good enough it will magically find its way into a listeners ear on an invisible wave of raw talent and ability. Or something equally ridiculous.

Approximately 120,000 new songs are added to streaming services every day. Even if 99% of them were terrible (pro tip, they're not), then that's 1,200 good songs going up every day. The only way to cut through that level of content is to pay for some promotion of some kind. It doesn't matter how many friends you have on social media, your content will only reach a fraction of them unless you pay to promote it. It doesn't matter how closely your song style matches your targeted playlister, unless you pay for the premium service it won't get listened to. Even if you're just selling merch and hard copy at gigs you still need to be able to let people know about the gig.

It doesn't have to be a lot, but work out what you can afford and how best to use it - this will be different for everyone.

Copyright. 

I could, literally, write a book about copyright; it's pros and cons, history of successes and abuses, how it's been corrupted and how it could be reformed... In fact I wrote a manifesto years ago in a series not unlike this one. But that doesn't help you with finishing your song, so we'll just cover a few quick basics.

Firstly: you cannot copyright an idea. You can only copyright something that has been 'fixed' by way being written down or recorded. It is the expression of the idea that gets the protection, not the idea.

The corollary to this is that in the UK, the USA and the EU, copyright exists the moment that a creation is fixed. So as soon as you write down that lyric, or record that melody, then it is protected by copyright - you do not need to register it.

However, in some countries (like the USA), you will be very limited in what legal action you can take if you don't register the work. You'll need to find out whatever the rules are in your country and then decide if you want to pay for registration. This should be part of your plan that we talked about above and definitely part of your budget.

Whether it's worthwhile is a decision only you can make. Personally I think obscurity is a far bigger problem that piracy or passing off for the starting musician, but if you're a bit more established, or hope to become so, then plan it in.

Some rights reserved.

Contrary to popular opinion, copyright is not an all-or-nothing choice. In 2001 Creative Commons was founded and that gives you a range of options with regard to how much control, if any, you want to apply to your work. You can find out more about the options here: https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/cclicenses/

Wrapping up

And that, you'll be pleased to know, is pretty much it.

We've written our song. Arranged and recorded it. Mixed and produced it. "Finished" and released it.

Now it is a thing out in the wild with a future of its own.

But I am not quite done. Next week we'll do a bit of trouble-shooting / problem solving and then we'll finish off with a worked example from scrapbook to Spotify. 

* Some platforms will let you upload and distribute your own content; Bandcamp and Youtube being two examples. But the big streaming platforms don't, you'll need to go through a distributor like CDBaby, TuneCore, Distokid, Ditto or many others. These are also called aggregators and they will put your music on the streaming platforms for some kind of fee. Some charge a flat rate per release (good for infrequent releases and albums generally), some charge an annual fee (good for frequent releases and lots of singles). Before you sign up, make sure you understand what happens to your music if you stop using them.