Without the backing of a major record company most musicians struggle to sell their music. Thankfully, the internet has provided independent musicians with a variety of ways to better market and sell their music, and most of this can be done with a modest financial investment – sometimes you can do it for free!
Here are some of the different ways to sell your music online:
Start a Website to Sell Music Directly
Every musician should have a dedicated website for promotional reasons, but it can also provide a great place to actively sell your work. Selling music through a website is easy enough to do and provides musicians with invaluable data about their sales and customers, which is important for future marketing strategies.
There are no commissions or fees to pay (beyond the costs of owning and running the site), while you can use the website to upsell merchandise and concert tickets, along with promoting your music and engaging with fans.
Digital Music Stores
With the popularity digital music stores such as iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, and Google Music, musicians should always be looking towards these platforms to sell their music.
After all, these are the most popular platforms for selling digital music, so if you want to make it big and get your music to the widest possible audience, you’ll want to try selling your content on these platforms.
However, it’s important to note that getting your music on these platforms is often very challenging, but this can be made much easier through the help of a digital music distributor like One Way Distribution. These services do much of the hard work getting your music on the biggest digital music platforms, charging a small amount for the service.
It reflects well on an artist when their music is available on highly trusted platforms such as iTunes and Spotify, with consumers more likely to buy music here than from lesser known sites. Plus, most are already connected with their credit cards or PayPal accounts, making it easier to buy music.
Soundcloud and YouTube
While you don’t technically sell music on Soundcloud, the platform does provide massive exposure with huge global userbase, and you can easily connect the account to a relative digital music store. Think of it has a powerful marketing tool that can directly lead to sales, making it quite useful for emerging talents looking to sell some music.
YouTube is much the same as SoundCloud, but with an even bigger userbase. Granted, getting exposure may be difficult, but those that do find success with their music videos can create links to buy the music directly, whether through a website or digital music store.
