Every band and solo artist wants to make the big time, but it is often difficult. You are competing against major record labels with major resources, indie record labels that also have the connections and funds for their artists, and thousands of others trying to make a name for themselves.
There are several companies that offer to “make the connection” for you if you pay them. This works sometimes, but sometimes it doesn’t, and you can end up throwing good money at bad leads.
The best way to make money (even though you probably won’t make the big time without PERFECT songs and HEAVY touring schedules – sorry to break it to you) is through licensing your music.
In order to do this, your music needs to be broadcast quality (good enough to hear in the background of radio and tv commercials, playing in the background of a tv show, etc.) Start to build a catalogue, and start to submit your music to these online companies.
All of these are non-exclusive, meaning you don’t sell the rights to your song only to them, but you are able to shop them to others, even use all of these to your benefit! I am just doing a quick write-up on each to help direct musicians, you can find out more from their web pages.
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Audio Sparx
This company has a large catalogue of independent artists’ music and sounds, and once approved, you are in complete control of pricing. It appears that most of the buyers of this music is for online productions, but it is a great way to add some passive income for your music. It is free to join (once approved) and you can upload as much music as you want. Audiosparx takes 50% of the licensing fees it gets for you.
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Pump Audio
This music site is owned by Getty Images, and it provides music for advertising, internet, tv, and film clients. You are not in control of the pricing, but it has some great tools for endusers to use. It is free to join (once approved) and you can upload as much music as you want.
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CD Baby
For $35, CDBaby will take your CD and sell it online, also making digital content available through iTunes, Rhapsody, Napster, etc. They claim to have supplied 150,000 artists with $65 million is sales since 1998, and it is a pretty useful tool to insure that people can purchase downloads of your music.
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Taxi
I think this site is better used for its resources rather than what they are selling, but they offer (by purchasing a subscription) to send you a biweekly list of music industry requests for independent musicians, songs, artists, and tracks. It costs $5 for each submission, where as Taxi listens and decides whether or not to send the song to the person providing the listing. You will get feedback for the submission from whoever listens to your song.
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Broadjam
This site does the same thing basically as Taxi, but you must sign up as a Broadjam artist. From there it costs $5 for each submission, but these go to the source, and is not “blocked” by another listener.
Check out all of these sites, and hopefully there is something here for you! Remember, the most important things – have great songs, good quality recordings, and learn from your mistakes!
June 5th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
This is great info. Another site where you can submit for film, tv, songwriting etc is MusicGorilla.com. They charge a membership fee, but all submissions are free and sent directly to the person making the music request.
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:59 am
Podla mna je to dobra chujovina a este za tie dolace,ste normalny??..Zolici americky!!!:))) lol