The Free vs. Paid Continuum

R

richardmac

New member
This is a tough topic for me to put down in words and really explain, but here goes.

At what point should a songwriter decide their music is worth other people hearing? Or buying? When you are just starting out and you don't know what you're doing, you really shouldn't be putting your music on iTunes. You CAN, but you probably shouldn't.

Beginner

Most amateurs I know hit this point where they think their music is good enough to share, but not good enough to sell. Websites like Macjams are a good example of this. These are people who do home recordings of their own music, but have not yet put out a CD and don't think their music will sell. They're right - it won't sell. So they give it away and do it for fun and they don't take themselves so deadly seriously.

Intermediate

Some of those people graduate to the point where they feel their material is good enough to sell, so they put out a CD. And 99% of these people will probably never sell 100 copies of their CD. The percentage of CD's on CDBaby that do not sell 100 copies HAS to be huge.

Advanced

Then there are the artists/bands that have established a local fan base and are actually putting in orders for 1,000 CD's at a time with discmakers. They're selling CD's, yes. They'd be morons to give their music away because there's a definite market for it. This is a small group of people compared to the huge amount of songwriters out there writing music.

The beginner and the advanced groups seem to have a good solid understanding of their place in the music continuum. But the intermediate group is confused, because there's no clear cut line in the sand... at what point is your music good enough that people will actually buy it? Keeping in mind that music sales are through the floor and the economy is terrible right now. Are the intermediate people delusional? If we fast forward ten years from now, will be see the majority of intermediate people giving their music away? My guess is yes, we will. And I'm in that group myself.

Thoughts?
 
LOL, classic bell curve.

I think it's hard to be objective with the quality of your own tunes and marketability. People in the intermediate stage know they have progressed out of the beginner stage and therefore might have something of value to sell. the amount of sales would be the gauge for how well they did in songwriting, performing and producing. Ha, I'll never sell 100 CD's. :D
 
I think when it comes to myself I am musically in the advanced stage but business-ly in the intermediate stage. I had a 1000 CD run for my album, but because I don't have a name for myself, my sales stink. I know my opinion is subjective, but my CD sounds fine (could be better but who the hell cares anyway, it came out great) but its just I don't have a name for myself so there's no reason for people to buy my CD when they can get someone they're more familiar with. That's just the way it is.

Going on a subject more related to your thread title but not necessarily the body topic, if your music is good, people will get it whether its free or commercial. If your music is bad, people will not get it even if it is free. Sure your typical nerdy iPod junkie may mass download it but never really listen to it at all. Being free or paid has little to do with anything, its all about the quality.
 
Beginner, intermediate, advanced, who gives a shit? Does it really matter? If some fool will buy it, sell it. People over-romanticize their own crappy music. Here's what's gonna happen - your cherished world-changing music is gonna end up buried on shuffle on some mp3 player, or as a CD bouncing around on the floor of someones car - case lost forever.
 
I wouldnt hit CDBaby untill you or your client have generated some press...the other kind of CDs you should sell at gigs.
 
As with beauty, quality is in the eyes of the consumer.

We chose the "pay if you want to" policy for our latest record. The record came out yesterday so I can't tell if it's a good method or not. :laughings:

The thing is, regardless of what level we're on we don't want to exclude listeners from our music. Why would we? I'd rather give away the music for free to someone who will listen to it than sell it expensively to someone who turns out hating it. It's about creating consumer relations and raising awareness.
 
Actually to say the music industry sales are through the floor would be a lie. The music industry itself as a collective increased revenues 4.7% in the fiscal year of 2009, and profits of that make the industry a 1.1 billion dollar industry on just music sales alone. $650 million of that are contributed by digital online sales (digital media) while a mere $450 from physical sales of CDs.
 
Mindset said:
Actually to say the music industry sales are through the floor would be a lie. The music industry itself as a collective increased revenues 4.7% in the fiscal year of 2009, and profits of that make the industry a 1.1 billion dollar industry on just music sales alone. $650 million of that are contributed by digital online sales (digital media) while a mere $450 from physical sales of CDs.
Click to expand...

Thanks for shining the light on that often unknown statistic. Of course it's not like i've seen a bad mindset post. :)
 
I'm going to go with an old chestnut here.

If you want to do music, do music. If you want to be in the music business, then you have to do music AND business.

And it's most unlikely pairing of talents anyone can hope to have.

Artistic sorts tend not to be bean counting go getters, but the harder you work at the business, the better you'll get at it!
 
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