Ways of selling music on the internet?

Subject: RE: Ways of selling music on the internet?
From: GUEST,oaktree
Date: 29 Sep 10 - 07:10 PM

I second the recommedation for bandcamp.

Subject: RE: Ways of selling music on the internet?
From: Howard Jones
Date: 29 Sep 10 - 11:01 AM

BMI is a US organisation. Since I assume from pavane's earlier question that he's in the UK, PRS/MCPS would be the equivalent. However I also think he's talking about paying royalties to other composers, rather than being paid for his own songs.

I recently put an album by my former band (the Electropathics) online with CD Baby. We'd already covered copyright with MCPS for the original vinyl release, and when I contacted them to ask whether we needed to pay another fee for online release, they told me this is covered by the fees paid by the online sellers.

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/Electropathics

Subject: RE: Ways of selling music on the internet?
From: GUEST,Spleen Cringe
Date: 29 Sep 10 - 09:40 AM

ithinkmusic and bandcamp are worth checking out.

Subject: RE: Ways of selling music on the internet?
From: olddude
Date: 29 Sep 10 - 09:33 AM

Ok, sign up for BMI ... they collect royalties for you on original songs. BMI to register is free

Subject: RE: Ways of selling music on the internet?
From: pavane
Date: 29 Sep 10 - 09:30 AM

I was thinking more of the royalties to copyright holders (Composers etc). Mrs Pavane sings mostly well-known pop songs from the 70's to 90's.

Subject: RE: Ways of selling music on the internet?
From: olddude
Date: 29 Sep 10 - 09:09 AM

You can also do it from soundclick and from reverbnation ... the latter has a link to itunes also ... so to recap ... CDBABY, REVERBNATION, ITUNES, SOUNDCLICK all you need is a paypal account. Set one up its free and so is all those listed

Subject: RE: Ways of selling music on the internet?
From: Howard Jones
Date: 29 Sep 10 - 09:05 AM

I don't know if there is a direct equivalent of CD Baby. Many of the online sellers act like retailers and don't want to deal with individual musicians. CD Baby will distribute your tracks to these sellers, as well as selling direct through its own website. So while sales from CD Baby will be in US Dollars, they will also place it on sites priced in pounds - if that matters to you.

You pay a small upfront charge and they take a percentage of any sales.

The problem with all these online sellers is that there is so much music in their catalogues that it is difficult to browse them and people are unlikely to find your music unless they're specifically looking for it. It's up to you to market your music yourself.

Subject: RE: Ways of selling music on the internet?
From: pavane
Date: 29 Sep 10 - 08:31 AM

Is there a UK-based equivalent?

Subject: RE: Ways of selling music on the internet?
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 29 Sep 10 - 07:59 AM

CD Baby would seem to do what you want. Don't know much about it myself, but I've read others here giving a good report.

Subject: Ways of selling music on the internet?
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 29 Sep 10 - 07:53 AM

I've probably overlooked some threads that would cover this but if so I've not searched for the right phrases.

I would like to put some of my musical creations on the internet where thay can be purchased at a modest price. I used to make cassettes in the "good old days" and then moved on to home produced CDs but it seems that everyone wants to get their music as downloads today according to the media.

I imagined that it would be possible to find a system that hosted the music files and allowed a download of them on receipt of payment from the downloader, passing on a percentage to me via Paypal or similar.

My ideal scenario would be to upload tracks to a hosting company and then just sit back and see if anyone downloaded them, and if so I would receive some payment automaically.

The hosting company would presumably do some minimal advertising and it would be mostly up to me to tell people that the tracks were there.

This could be extended to a web site belonging to me having links to the hosting web site.

Does this system exist?

If so how many versions of it exist and does anyone here use this sort of system?

Do you have to pay some form of set up charge or a charge for each track hosted? This might put me off the idea as I don't know if my creations will sell enough to be worth spending out in advance.

Over to you founts of knowledge.