Literally everything is online nowadays, and if you don’t start to accept that now and take advantage of modern technology you and your music could get left in the dark. Imagine living your whole life in a house but never once stepping out to explore the world outside and all the possibilities it brings. The house represents the older traditional methods of selling music and the world outside the front door represents all that the digital age has to offer. It’s time to sell your music online.
The Digital Revolution: Sell Your Music Online
New sales models such as BandCamp’s ‘name your price’ model can actually earn you more than traditional pricing strategies. Handing the responsibility of naming the price of an album over to the consumer often leads to consumers paying above and beyond the RRP of the album. This unique strategy can only be found online; can you really imagine a record shop allowing you to name your price for their goods?
Once you’ve put all the necessary work into promoting yourself – using every social network available to you to gain awareness and get your music out there – then you really are missing a trick if your music isn’t available to buy online. The truth is we as consumers are lazy. If we listen to a song we like on Soundcloud and decide that we want it, we want it there and then. Music consumers are so bombarded with choice today that if you manage to gain their attention, you need people to act on it as soon as possible. Consumers will not want to wait until the next time they’re near a record shop to buy your music, they will want to go straight from Soundcloud, or wherever they found you, straight to their favourite download or streaming service.
It’s all happening online!
The internet allows word of mouth to spread like wildfire in ways that would not have been possible before. All these people connected by the internet, sharing, liking and talking about music – you’re missing out hugely if you do not give them easy access to your music too.
Making you and your music more accessible to fans by having it available online creates a more personal experience between you and the fans. Simply having an online presence that fans can interact with allows fans to engage with you on a more personal level. They can favourite your tweet in the same way they can favourite their friends’ and feel like they are personally involved with you. This personal experience can often mean that fans are more loyal and willing to part with money for your music. So make it easy for them to do so. Get your music available to buy online and promote it on all of your accounts.
Probably the most obvious reason to sell your music online is the fact that compared to physical sales it is a lot cheaper and gives you the chance to sell to a global market. If you wanted your album pressed and delivered to physical stores all over the world you would need a large sum of money. Selling your music online allows you to tap the global market for very minimal costs. Ultimately, if you do not sell your music online in such a vast industry, you are making yourself less competitive in the global market.
All this possibility at your fingertips (quite literally a click away) – utilise it!
