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Tag: music promotion

  • Spotify Is Cracking Down On Fake Music Streams

    Spotify Is Cracking Down On Fake Music Streams

    Popular music streaming application Spotify, is cracking down on fake music streams and warns all about the acts of fake music streams. Content that is gaining fake streams will be removed and mechanical royalties will be withheld. Spotify has made policing fake streams a warning in the past, however the real hunt for cracking done on fake music streams has begun now.

    The abuse of fake music streams also known as bot streams on the Spotify platform has been a trend of late. These practices are performed by Artists, who either don’t know they are being scammed by untrustworthy music promoters or they are blatantly committing streaming fraud. Those artists who don’t know they are being scammed are in an awful situation, but for those artist who know what they are doing need to stop!

    Spotify is cracking down on fake music streams to save more of the marketing bag for their self. The business structure for any mega giant like Spotify is simple, control market share. Spotify’s biggest money maker is advertising and their business goals as a music social media platform is to make money through different advertising streams. Fake streams takes away from Spotify potentially controlling the music advertising market share. Spotify wants more independent artist to spend money on their ad studio for artists.

    The issue is the Spotify ad studio is not as effective in my humble as opinion. Facebook, Instagram and google ads. These social media platforms are better options that will give you a better ROI on your music promotions.

    Artist look for short cuts and go for fake music streams, because honestly the streaming game is garbage. Spotify gives artists and content creators fractions of pennies for royalties. The Spotify algorithm seems to favor artists signed to record labels and this makes things unbalanced in the industry. Those who want organic streams  don’t have the financial backing to run major marketing campaigns, so they look for cheap options not knowing cheaper is not actually good! Generally if you see some marketing agency offering and guaranteeing 1 million streams for $50 dollars or $100 dollars that’s a untrustworthy music promoter serving you bot streams.

    In the long run acquiring fake streams will only hurt your music. Spotify is on the hunt looking for musical content that has gained fake music streams to take down. You can bet that your music will be at risk if you are engaging in streaming fraud. January of 2021 Spotify had a massive removal of content, which sparked some controversy because many of the take downs were in fact inaccurate. This goes to show, how far Spotify is willing to go to eliminate bots streams.

     

    Fake Music Streams

     

  • Starting A Record Label

    Starting A Record Label

    1. Choose The Music

    The 1st fundamental step to building your record label is choosing the genre of music you will create, market, distribute and sell. You want to decide if you will sell physical copies or digital downloads or both. What will be your labels main genre of music that will be released to the public. You want to make sure you are specific.

    1. Choose The Name

    The next step is to create an identity for your record label. Research into your competitors and how they are branded. Creating the right kind of identity for your label is incredibly important, given that in the international digital age this will be your shop window. Make sure to register your labels name but first you want to make sure it is available for business use. You can do this via the National Business Register or if you’re setting up a Limited Company, you can do it online via Companies House.

    1. Establish A Brand Look

    Similar to the importance of your record label name, you will also need to produce logo’s and a brand identity. Make sure your brand identity is simple and straight to the point. Make your brand easy to remember and builds a emotional appeal. By doing this you will grasp the attention of your prospective fans. Your brand is very important so take your time with it and make sure it’s a catch.

    1. Build A Website/Register The Name

    The best thing you can do for your label is have a website, with the rise of social media a lot of labels and artiste a like are making a mistake substituting facebook, Instagram etc as a website. You want to build a website for your main hub, where fans can interact with your business. You can also advertise other things on your site such as t-shirts, hats, concert dates, album’s etc.

    1. There are a number of design agencies that will sit down with you and turn your thought process into a well designed, well delivered entity and, if this costs a bit of money but leads to a worthwhile, pleasing user experience, it could be the best money you spend at this point, in the start up of your label.
    2. Use a free service like WordPress that runs more like a blog. WordPress enables you to sign in, update and is a very easy functioning site. It also looks really professional all you need is a hosting service with at least one PHP database included.

    If you are on a budget, I would recommend WordPress and for the ease of updating.

    1. Get Your Tracks Sounding Good/Mastered

    This is the product you’re going to be selling so it is important to get your tracks sounding professional. There are two things that can let down a track, one being the arrangement and the other being the mix. Tweaking either one of these things could make a difference between a hit and a flop.

    Mastering – nowadays a lot of musicians & artiste are not getting their tracks mastered properly, do you want your record label to be seen this way? Mastering can cost money but will always be worth it, you want to look professional, you need to sound professional. Invest your money and get your tracks mastered.

    1. Promotion

    Promotion is the key to branding yourself amongst your prospective fans. Use social media to get started. Build with your audience, show them footage of concerts or updates on new releases. Don’t be too cooperate but try to be consistent and interesting to you audience have a good balance of both. Start building a database of email addresses building your fan base.

    1. Know The Contract

    By now you’ve done lots of hard work, so why not start making some money off your artists. If your label is releasing music made by other artists then make sure your agreement with them is fair and binding. And this doesn’t mean bringing in high powered lawyers. So long as the terms you have agreed are clearly set out in a document, printed and signed by you and the artist in question, then you’re up and running. It’s up to you to negotiate the terms and agreements and remember everything is better in writing, so if something were to happen you have a legally binding letter to fall back on.

    1. Get Your Artists Playing Live

    Although record sales are starting to increase, touring has sky rocketed. Get your artiste in front of the local public on a weekly or by weekly schedule. Live performances leads to upfront record sales. Make sure you set up a station during performances to sell your products. T-shirts, Hats, Albums and so on are satisfactory.

    1. Collect Royalties

    Collecting royalties takes time, and there is often a time lag of at least 6 months, so you need to consider this when planning releases. Sign up with the PRS and MCPS and research into what they offer in form of registering your tracks and collecting publishing money.

    1. Accounts/Income Tax

    When the money starts rolling in, and your tracks are going platinum you’ll need to pay a percentage to the IRS. That’s the law, so be sure you have every cent accounted for. Set up a data base with income and expenditure’s, as expenses which relate to the running of your business can be claimed back against tax, for example you don’t pay tax on business phone calls, driving artist to gigs, running the website etc.

     

  • Making Money Off Music

    Making Money Of Music

     Making Money off Music

    5 ways to making money off music

    Many recording artist have a common question, is making money off music possible? Now this is a fair question to ask, especially in this new era of music. With the incline of social media and the internet a lot of artist, songwriters, producers and recording studios may have some doubts about the state of the music business.

    Honestly I would have to say yes! The possibility of making money off music is definitely there. We are in a digital age, and there is no better time than now to make music and earn off of your music. The digital age has given recording artist the flexibility that wasn’t possible 15 years ago.

    It is safe to say that the digital age has forced most artist and musician groups to become more independent and independence is not a bad thing! Yes being an indie artist trying to make money off music will have its challenges, but the success is a lot fruitful in regards to the monetary gain.

    The average statutory rate for earnings for a newly signed artist on a major label is 10 cents off the dollar. Meaning a record label will collect 90 cents and the artiste keeps 10 cents. Some independent labels will give an artist 25 cents and collect 75 cents which is better. Also you have your indie artist that does everything for his or her self and will collect all of their earnings after paying for promotion, distribution, studio time and beat instrumentals or live musicians.

    Making money off music will take time and will also depend on how hard your working. Think of a strategic approach to introduce the public to your sound. Your growth as an artist will not come over night but it will come if you have the proper work ethic.

    Also you must have a love for what you are doing. Whether it may be a singer, rapper, dj, songwriter, producer or studio engineer, you must have a love for it. If you don’t have a love for it making money off music will just be something you’re doing just to make money. Most people who do something just to make money drop the ball and fail as soon as they see the slightest form of disappointment.

    Below are 5 things an artist can do to begin making money off music, in the digital age.

    1. Crowd funding – this avenue in making money off music is done through donations from friend, family members, customers/fans or individual investors. The approach is basically a collected effort amongst people who have admiration towards the artist music.
    2. You Tube – As an artist you tube as set up monetization so selected channels can generate revenue through advertising. The very first step for you tube would be to drive traffic to your you tube channel and build an audience to optimize your channel for opportunities.
    3. Sponsorship – Sponsorship’s only work best when an artist has developed a nice fan base. company sponsorship’s can range from money, products or services.
    4. Streaming – One of my personal favorites is streaming, streaming does take some work to circulate your song for online streams. However streams are like radio spins. You can get 3, 5 or 10 cents per steam depending on where the music is being streamed from.
    5. CD Sales – One of the top ways to sell cds are at live performances, an artist can have his or her team set up a vendor with cds to sell. Live performances are the best way in my opinion because potential fans are getting a feel for who the artist is and will feel more open to patronizing an artist music campaign.

  • Music Distribution

    The power of music distribution

    Why Music Distribution Matters

    Adding music distribution to your campaign

    Frequently talented unsigned artist record great material. They get it mixed, mastered ready for the world to hear and even ad a music video to the song, so they figure… I’m going to drop it Friday on Facebook maybe even twitter Right! Well that’s a good attempt but unsigned artist need to take things a little further. It is annoying to see good artist spend year after year making music that can potentially spawn their dream career and the music ends up going no where!Music Distribution fyah beats

    Unsigned artist should look towards music distribution, the process of distributing a artist music is vital to the growth of the artist career. Now this depends on what type of music distribution, there are many forms of distribution and is a part of the puzzle that is pretty much left out sadly by unsigned artist.

    Now a unsigned artist should take all avenues in music distribution, why? You may ask! Its simply because he or she is a fresh face. I’ll be straight up if a artist does not place some effort to distribute their material they limit the chance of success by about 50%. People need to continuously see, hear and become familiar with the artist, this is also in relation to forms of branding.

    The biggest mistake unsigned artist have is thinking releasing a song starts and ends with social media. If a artist begins to get stuck in this train of thought they will definitely become stuck. All that will happen next is year after year the artist will loose focus, hope and confidence only to fail at achieving their dream. Now not everyone can be have what it takes to a super star artist, but the game has honestly way more depth to it than twitter and Facebook… and this is the reason why you have so many artist online now wishing to be scene.

    My friend if you are reading this now go ahead and click here tap into a piece of the puzzle that many indie artist leave out the puzzle! There are millions of unsigned artist online desiring to be heard and seen but I beg and plead please don’t be stuck year after year recording great music thinking a major label A&R executive will come in boxing you on Instagram and twitter. Simply does not work that way… Don’t get me wrong at all… It has happened but its like winning the powerball lotto! Don’t wait for luck make your luck man.

    let me give you some valuable information about some of the steps you can use to bring your music as a artist above the rapid saturation that has plagued twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Go here

    Win a 1 Year Free Digital Distribution Offer

    Artists win a free 1 year Digital Distribution offer. Sign up now! to learn more about the contest! Accepting music submissions now!

    We value your privacy and would never spam you

  • Digital Distribution

    Indie artist and Digital Distribution

    Independent Digital Distribution without a record contract

    Why indie artist should get Digital Distribution

    Social media has made changes to the process of promotion, marketing and distribution of music. Many indie artist have stood the test of time through these changes, but many have given up along the way due to the evolution of the record industry. The beginning of this change started during the release of myspace and since then continues to grow.

    With facebook, twitter, indigital distribution stagram, youtube and other social platforms along with apps, the record industry has took a turn to independence. Gone are the days where record labels would pump massive amounts of money into a single act hoping for their investment to payoff. Labels are more interested in pre developed artist, who are self reliant and able to do for themselves. You now might be saying ok! what does self reliance have to do with digital distribution.

    Lets look at a few things here, record labels spend lots of money on digital distribution these days. If your a chart topping super star artist most likely the label will make a return on the investment. In essence they would be recouping the advance they gave the artist, but we will go into advances and recouping at another time. Now unfortunately for new artist fresh out of the stable investments can end up being a loss for record labels.

    With that said labels would much rather market, promote and invest in digital distribution for artist who are already established and carry a following. Imagine if you were a record label and you invested lots of money only to see it become unsuccessful. Im sure the next time around you would be a little reluctant to opt into investing again.

    It is important for unsigned artist searching for a break to not only release music online but also grow a loyal fan base. Once this is done, the next step can be to introduce digital distribution into the mix of a music campaign. Allowing the fans to get access to music that will inspire them to purchase. allot of indie artist neglect digital distribution and just place their music for free on soundcloud or hulk share. Now the truth is, artist are gambling with a 50% chance of devaluing their brand before building it.

    Now in the beginning stages of a music campaign artist should give away some free music maybe even a whole album. Giving free samples of a artist music is highly encouraged, when starting a campaign. However their must be a goal at the end of the day and that is to generally be able to make sales independent of a label. Doing this would allow a artist to have references of their success when a label comes calling.

    The goal of any independent artist is to make themselves a success instead of running to a record label. Remember the saying beggars cant be choosers, well it applies here! Record labels will not offer a talented indie artist a good contract. In fact they probably wouldn’t entertain the idea of contract negotiation. Their have even been situations in the past where labels have used artist as tax right offs sad to say.

    The best thing for a upcoming artist in this new age is to become independent and serious about the music they make. Yes it will take money to go indie. Recording music, paying for a band, buying instrumentals, paying for marketing and digital distribution can cost a little. However for a artist now is the best time to make a name independently! With private marketing teams, social media and other tools at ones finger tips their is no need for not even attempting to try.

    Win a 1 Year Free Digital Distribution Offer

    Artists win a free 1 year Digital Distribution offer. Sign up now! to learn more about the contest!

    We value your privacy and would never spam you