Why is the volume of other tracks so much higher then mine?

Honestly, I didn't think it was all that impressive...actual paid plays/sales (Zune, Spotify, iTunes, Amazon, etc.) for this last quarter were under $10. Nothing to brag about, but every time I've got $10 I can release another single and it's growing. :) Maybe if I get two or three thousand songs making me a quarter to a dollar per quarter I'll have a decent part-time income...

Yup, my whopping 213 fans (ReverbNation) and 29 followers (SoundCloud) really don't drive any money my way...Don't have any idea who of those actually listens to the songs on the pay places or how many people who listen know about my pages.
 
BroKen_H said:
How many listens a week does your site generate? I'm curious. You've got to be getting more than 500...you're music is amazing.
Click to expand...

Dude, it's a good day if I get 5 visitors to my page. Some days, it's zero. I get less than 10 downloads a week. Thank goodness I ain't in this for the money. :)

I just looked and I have a grand total of 1 download this month. I have a lot of "plays" but not downloads. One of my songs has 58 plays (not downloads), and that's only because I posted it here at the beginning of the month.
 
Possibly conventional releases through Reverbnation or CDBaby or what-not could do you some good. I release through Reverbnation @ $9.99 a song. Goes out to like 30 retailers... anyway, I think I've derailed the thread enough, but seriously, you're music is REALLY good. If I can make $10 a quarter on three songs, maybe you should give it a try. :) Initial release is only $10, give it 6 months and see where it goes. The worst that can happen is you threw away $10. :)
 
I haven't submitted anything to CDBABY in a few years. I still get about $20 a month from them for my older, crap music. Maybe I should put a CD together. I have enough material for about 2, maybe 3 CD's. I just couldn't be bothered. I really enjoy making music, but I've given up on the music industry, mainly because it has given up on itself.
 
BroKen_H said:
Honestly, I didn't think it was all that impressive...actual paid plays/sales (Zune, Spotify, iTunes, Amazon, etc.) for this last quarter were under $10. Nothing to brag about, but every time I've got $10 I can release another single and it's growing. :) Maybe if I get two or three thousand songs making me a quarter to a dollar per quarter I'll have a decent part-time income...

Yup, my whopping 213 fans (ReverbNation) and 29 followers (SoundCloud) really don't drive any money my way...Don't have any idea who of those actually listens to the songs on the pay places or how many people who listen know about my pages.
Click to expand...

Interesting, thanks again BH. I think it's incredibly impressive if you're getting those kind of clicks whether 350 or 500 a week and enough from streams to break a single dollar. I guess that's why I've kept pushing to try and understand what you're doing to generate that.

The internet's literally saturated with amateur hacks like us flooding recording and streaming sites with our crappy mixes. As you say, it's unlikely that your fans/followers on the two hosting sites are promoting your stuff, so I'm just trying to work out how people are finding you or accessing you on the money spinning ones. I just tried to find you now on spotify and couldn't, so if I'm actively looking for you and can't, I can't get my head around how others stumble upon you amongst the millions of other Christian rock songs or musicians etc without you gigging or having people promoting you.

To be honest I thought you were going to tell me you played in your church or something & that the clicks and downloads were from the congregation/community or something. Thanks for humouring me.

Man, if anyone derailed the thread, it's me btw. I should have started a new one, but I figured the original conversation was dead anyway, so I'd just post a reply.


RAMI said:
Dude, it's a good day if I get 5 visitors to my page. Some days, it's zero. I get less than 10 downloads a week. Thank goodness I ain't in this for the money. :)

I just looked and I have a grand total of 1 download this month. I have a lot of "plays" but not downloads. One of my songs has 58 plays (not downloads), and that's only because I posted it here at the beginning of the month.
Click to expand...

Yeah, these are the kind of figures I was expecting from everyone, hence my surprise - and my guess is that you're at the upper end of the scale too :D

...though I also guess you get fewer plays/downloads due to hosting on your own site rather than one of the streaming platforms.
 
robgreen said:
...though I also guess you get fewer plays/downloads due to hosting on your own site rather than one of the streaming platforms.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I'm sure I'd get more "clicks" if I had a Soundcloud account or whatever. But, just like the days of Soundclick, those clicks everyone is trying so hard to get are from other musicians. Those are really the only people on those sites. I've still yet to meet the average non-musician who has even heard of Soundclick/cloud/clack/clodhopper, let alone actually look for artists there. So, I get very few plays on my site, but at least it's not a skewed number like you'd get on Soundcloud, who also mangles the shit out of the sound of everyone's tunes. I can upload 24bit waves to my site if I wanted to.
 
RAMI said:
Yeah, I'm sure I'd get more "clicks" if I had a Soundcloud account or whatever. But, just like the days of Soundclick, those clicks everyone is trying so hard to get are from other musicians. Those are really the only people on those sites. I've still yet to meet the average non-musician who has even heard of Soundclick/cloud/clack/clodhopper, let alone actually look for artists there. So, I get very few plays on my site, but at least it's not a skewed number like you'd get on Soundcloud, who also mangles the shit out of the sound of everyone's tunes. I can upload 24bit waves to my site if I wanted to.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it was an observation rather than a recommendation - maybe didn't phrase it too well. You look on the hosting platform and see some joe schmo with one song with 10,000 plays and a load of comments posted that make no sense, and you know that about 10 of the clicks are from genuine listeners and the rest are either paid for clicks/comments or from the schmo playing the follow/unfollow and favourite hundreds of songs you don't listen to on random pages in the hope of getting some favourites in return game.

That's the point I was trying to make above to BH. Nobody's trawling those sites to find new artists - they either want covers, which do get clicks or they want to find the official pages of Kanye or Drake or whoever posting up his latest demo or remix. If BH has people actually looking for his stuff, he's found the HR elixir!
 
How do you actually get money off a Soundcloud account? Do you have to have paid account? I've had about 7,500 plays in total on my Soundcloud and a couple of my tracks have had a couple of hundred downloads, but no dosh, as yet! :D
 
Bubba po said:
How do you actually get money off a Soundcloud account? Do you have to have paid account? I've had about 7,500 plays in total on my Soundcloud and a couple of my tracks have had a couple of hundred downloads, but no dosh, as yet! :D
Click to expand...

They say it's coming, but for now, all the paid stuff I get is from releases from Reverbnation. It's about three streams to a penny, if I remember right from the first few quarters (when I got like 23 cents for 74 plays or something like that). Don't know how sales from Amazon/iTunes, etc. add to the pile, but I've had a few of those, too. The first one from each release, of course, was me. I try to download them and play them so I can see how crappy their compression schemes kill the sound. A few FB fans have also told me they downloaded stuff, too. So far, releasing my first release to Noise Trade yielded exactly what I expected...0. But, like I said, that's what I expected because that's how much I've tipped there...
 
Haha, nice derail guys. Good subject though, I should try those sites like reverbnation and cdbaby more. Although it is not big bugs it would be nice to earn a bit of money with my music, good job there Broken!

Someone on topic also caught my eye:
Farview said:
I do believe that all the popular streaming sites have some sort of auto-levelling. I know for a fact that youtube does.

It's only when someone downloads the song and puts it on their ipod that the volume will become an issue.

There are some that think that since the streaming outlets are making everything the same volume, that means that people will stop trying g to make their stuff louder than everyone else's. That might be optimistic, given the fact that not many people know about the auto-levelling.
Click to expand...

I didn't know this Farview, I'll probably limit the coming tracks I will put on youtube less then I have limited the last one. (I'll post the track in the Bash my mix subforum :D)
 
Arrrrrgggggghhhhhh!!!! As a Mastering Engineer, I hate it when recording engineers use limiting. You should be more concerned with getting a clear, detailed mix, and not worry about volume!!!!. At the mixing stage, it is far more important to be concerned with proper gain staging, phasing, and sound field placement. It is perfectly acceptable to have a mix peaking anywhere from -24 - -12db, as digital processing does not increase the noise floor like analog processing does.

My mixes all peak around -12db when I start the mastering stage. VERY RARELY do I even have a limiter in the signal path until I get to the final stages of mastering.

Volume should not be your goal at this stage!

Cheers

Leqs
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top