The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #164170   Message #3930525
Posted By: GUEST,Richard Robinson
12-Jun-18 - 12:22 PM
Thread Name: Tech: Download from Spotify!!
Subject: RE: Tech: Download from Spotify!!
"Richard - I'm being serious now, are you trying to make money off internet music sales".

I'm not sure. Or, yes, but not very hard and not expecting to succeed very much. Or something ... I do have some recordings for sale, as of a few weeks ago. I didn't make them for the money, just for the interest and to see what I could do, and because I've been playing tunes for 40+ years and thinking maybe it'd be nice to have something to show for it, and so on. But, once you have some recordings and wouldn't mind a few people listening to them, what are you going to do with them ? So I've been looking at these newfangled internet possibilities. Kind of, not really expecting to make any money worth noticing, but interested to think about how it might happen if it wanted to.

Rough breakdown, not very informative yet - I spent some money making a small quantity of physical CDs, which I've been giving away or selling as opportunities arise, and will probably have covered the cost of making them by the end of the summer with a couple of dozen left over. Online, they're at Bandcamp, only, which has so far sold 2 physical CDs and one download for me, for something like 100 plays. They've only been there a couple of weeks, and I haven't done much about letting people know, I've been dropping mentions slowly in a few places and noticing how much interest each different one raises. There's no hurry.

Mostly, I'm a session animal, I go out and play tunes with people for the love of the tunes and the fun of playing them, and take it for granted no-one gets paid. But to make recordings is work, and if anybody's going to be making money off them it should be the people who did the work, which is why they're on Bandcamp and not the streaming sites. I like the way Bandcamp do it - people can listen to them a few times, and if they like what they hear enought to keep their own copy, it's time to pay. I think that's fair enough (and bandcamp make their money by taking a percentage, so their interest is the same as the musicians, as opposed to the fractions-of-a-peanut streaming sites whose interest lies in paying the musicians as little as they can get away with). If anybody wants a free recording to listen to as much as they want, let them come out to a session with their trusty pocket recorder.

"carp on intolerantly & ignorantly" - I am trying to lighten my ignorance. And, those recordings are my work (with more than a little help from my friends, which I'd like to be able to pay them for if any money did materialise) and to me that means I have more right to say what happens with it than anyone else does. I'm definitely intolerant of assertions to the contrary.