Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Wired Magazine Talks Indie Music Promotion

Wired magazine's Eliot Van Buskirk recently wrote an informative piece about Spotify who has partnered with TuneCore, a digital music distributor that "allows anyone to sell music through iTunes and other stores for a low flat fee." This is something every independent musician should know about.

"Spotify already includes over seven million tracks, including the Pixies, who were signed to TuneCore founder Jeff Price's SpinArt label. This new deal help its catalog continue to expand, while giving unaffiliated artists a new way to reach fans," wrote Van Buskirk.

"The popular Spotify music service solved a major problem Wednesday by providing a mechanism for bands unaffiliated with larger aggregators to submit music. In a partnership with TuneCore, Spotify will now allow any recording artist to add their tunes to the service for a low, flat fee."

Read the rest of the article here and take notes indie bands!

6 comments:

  1. Great info. Independent artists do need any distribution outlet they can get a hold of.

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  2. Indeed, all the points made in the article you refer to are valid.

    But in this age of total availability of ALL kinds of TOOLS from recording to pressing to distribution, etc - the one thing that still eludes the indie artist is promotion.

    A good distributor is not a promotor. For this you still need to go down the same route artists always went: get a manager, get a publicist - gig regularly and become popular in your area, then expand -AND- get airplay if you can.

    On the last point, there is a number of local-level radio stations which will play your music if they like it (though few will give you ROTATIONAL spins), but there is nothing like this on mainstream radio - bar one exception which is of course "Fame Games Radio."

    Mainstream Radio outright REJECTS even the best indie artists, in favor of repeater-radio format with famous (major-label-backed) acts that nobody really listens to (do they?)

    Now, I hear that Fame Games - the world's only mainstream syndicated radio show which tries to do the battle for the indies - is experiencing constant problems with affiliates who don't DARE try playing unknown music.

    How many other initiatives like this are there out there that are squashed by NARROW and very tiny minds?

    To succeed in music, you need promotion and exposure. You've GOT everything else. But they ain't givin' you that last thing. Not over their dead bodies.

    RIP, says I...! ;)

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