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?
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?