A while back, I gave some thought to the question “How can I sell my music online?” and concluded that a good mix seemed to be getting it as many places as you possibly can using a digital aggregator like CD Baby or maybe a no-frills option like TuneCore – while simultaneously making it available to purchase from your website.
Well, it’s all very well to say “I’m going to sell my music from my website” – but the actual process of setting up an online payment and fulfillment system is something else again. The process of integrating e-commerce into your website can be confusing and frustrating – particularly if what you have to sell are digital files rather than physical products.
Because when people make their purchase, they want their mp3s right then and there. And that means setting up automated, coded systems – which can be a little more challenging than sticking CDs in envelopes…
Someone else’s problem
The easiest way to sell mp3s online is to get someone else to do it for you. Whether that means have your web developer find/make a solution or whether it means integrating an external shopping cart system – it’s easiest to have the job done fully on your behalf.
There are numerous services online more than happy to take a little bit of your money and integrate some sort of online shop for you (and more than a few who want to take a lot of your money…). And most web developers are able to design or integrate for you a built-in e-commerce platform.
Offsite commerce
There’s a range of web-based services that I call ‘divert’ solutions. These are services that stand apart from your website, but which you link to. The integration is usually pretty seamless: the customer comes to your website, clicks a buy link, does the commerce somewhere else and is returned to your site on a ‘Thankyou’ page.
One example of this sort of service is E-junkie. I use this for selling an e-book on another of my sites. It’s pretty good.
There’s also Payloadz, but from my experience it’s called that because that’s what you end up doing. Your experience may differ, but I’m not a fan.
Clickbank is also worth a look (and E-Junkie integrates with it nicely). Although it’s kind of ugly and occasionally baffling, not only can you use it to sell files, you can offer affiliate programmes, so that people can earn money selling your files for you.
Bolt-ons
There are services available that will just provide an e-commerce system that is attached to your website, and will sell your mp3s for you.
For the most part, these will use a payment system like PayPal or Google Checkout.
An example is Easybe, which – for a one-off $68 payment for bands, or $168 for labels, you get your own online record store, and a bunch of simple, step-by step instructions that will help you upload products and install the site on your own web server.
That said, there’s a worrying lack of content or updates on the Easybe site – and while it looked like ‘the answer’ about a year or three ago – now it’s not quite so encouraging. The look’s also pretty dated. For $68, it’s probably worth investigating though.
Plugins
If you’re using WordPress, then look no further. There’s a brilliant (albeit complex) little plugin made by my fellow countrymen Dan Milward, Thomas Howard, Chris Beavan and Allen Han. It’s called WP E-Commerce and it’s the business.
This will not only allow you to accept payment for digital files, it will also provide a range of tools that allow you to import your products into the Facebook Marketplace and Google Base. If you’re not already using WordPress, then this may be the killer app that makes you change your mind.
Oh, and like WordPress – it’s free.
No, I don’t work for them – but I am a bit of a fan.
E-commerce solutions
There are quite a few very good e-commerce solutions that will handle everything for you.
Foxycart looks really good. I haven’t used it myself, but it appears to be really simple, straightforward, aesthetically appealing and idiotproof. It’s $15 a month, and they host everything. Definitely worth checking out.
Likewise, Shopify does more or less the same thing, and looks great too. It is a bit more industrial, though there are light versions of the product, and you pay a monthly fee for them to do all the hard work.
To me, this monthly fee system is a lot more sensible than a one-time upfront development cost, followed by a ‘percentage of sales’ arrangement that some providers offer. That doesn’t make any sense to me. That’s like paying royalties to the guy who sold you the cash register. So I’m not linking to any of those.
Free solutions
There are quite a few open-source e-commerce platforms that will do the job, but the vast majority of them are based on the idea that you’re opening a shop and have a range of products in a range of categories.
For most independent artists, there’s one category: ‘My Music’ – and so these more heavy duty retail solutions seem a bit unwieldly. For the most part, they’re often quite cumbersome and tricky – simply because it’s designed for the retail industry, not for the solo musician who has a CD for sale.
Web Distortion recently reviewed 9 of the most popular open source e-commerce solutions. It’s aimed at website developers, but it’d be worth your while having a look through and seeing if there’s anything there that suits your needs.
[They seem to think that Shopify is based on a 'percentage of sales' system, but as far as I can tell, it's not...]
That said, the best of the bunch, as far as I can tell, is Magento. It’s gorgeous.
Magento is a free, well-supported and documented industrial strength e-commerce system that is so lovely from the end user’s perspective, that people will buy from you just to experience the interface. I’m a big fan – and it’s remarkable how much you get for no money at all.
Summary
This is hardly a comprehensive collection of all e-commerce platforms, and there are no doubt others that will fit the bill just as well. However, all of these will require a little bit of effort on your part.
There’s more to selling mp3s online than simply pressing upload and waiting for the cash to roll in. Metadata’s important. You want to ask yourself if your music needs to be chart registered (though my sense is that this is usually pointless) and most importantly, you need to ask yourself how user-friendly this is.
Adding images, making sure your bank account connects to your Paypal account – all of these things take time.
There are payment systems and e-commerce platforms that are a dream to use, and there are online stores that are such a nightmare to deal with that you’ve given up by the third page of form-filling. Make sure you make it as easy as you can for people to give you money.
But obviously, there are people reading this site who already sell their mp3s online. I’m curious: what do YOU use?
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68 Comments
Magento is for sure a complete ecommerce solution butyou’re quickly overwhelmed by the amount of options it provides.
It’s too bad they don’t have a UI engineer with them. Most of the companies don’t unfortunately. It seems like developers only think about features/tools and forget about the end-user.
Anyway, Magento is good but it’s hard to implement and their template system is not the easiest one either.
In other words, it’s overkill for a musician, at least for me :-)
That WordPress plugin looks fantastic – however I think one of the issues surrounding selling products directly from your own site is trust – how does the user know they are getting the tune when they pay the money? How do they know you haven’t messed up on the coding and it’s all going to go tits up? It’s kind of a risk for the user – and dealing with an unfamiliar interface when purchasing can be off putting for some people.
This is why I think using someone established such as itunes or whoever helps increase confidence in the buyer – especially if they’ve bought from there before – if it doesn’t work, it’s apples problem, and not yours. They can also be pretty sure their card details are secure.
I personally don’t believe in selling Digital copies of music anyway, but if I were buying your music, I’d rather get it on itunes than from your site..
Interesting. I’m currently using E-Junkie, which I’m largely happy with, as it integrates well with my site, offers enough options without blinding me with science, and supports a variety of checkout options with good sales stats options. I tried Payloadz too, and found it to be an utter abomination or poor interfacing and back-end organisation.
I’ve been running my own store cobbled together from off-the-net components (as I’m very much a non-developer) since the start of February, and have had to make a few fine-tuning tweaks now and then, but I’m pretty satisfied with its operation (though actually making enough money to cover the E-Junkie fees is another matter!). I’ve also tried to incorporate a store with a flash player to preview all the tracks in their entirety (in 22.1kHz 128kbps mp3 format) before buying.
Now, my main peeve with E-Junkie is the way its hosting plans work *against* musicians, i.e. any content sellers which have large and numerous products to sell; the hosting they offer is simply miserly (understandable — they’re not a web hosting provider, and have limited server space). Fine, I thought — rather than have to spend an inordinate amount of money opting for a suitable hosting plan capable of storing all my 320kbps mp3s and FLACs, I’ll simply host them myself, thereby not needing E-Junkie to host a single byte. Again, limitations in E-Junkie’s plan tiers rear their head. To host your own files, you need to choose at least the $18 plan, and must have each file cost 0.99 of whatever currency you choose. This limits the sale of individual tracks (as 99c or 99p per track is too expensive), forcing you, as I had done, to consider whole albums instead.
I feel E-Junkie should remove the crippling stipulation of a minimum price for self-hosted files (it’s not as if they make any more or less money, charging, as they do, a flat monthly rate), and for $18 a month, let you charge whatever you please for your own files on your own site (I decided for just a couple of quid per album).
But regarding formats, I chose 320kbps mp3 for its ubiquity and quality, in addition to FLACs for the purists/enthusiasts — who get a kick out of knowing they’re getting the bit-for-bit masters, identical to CD options.
Being a WordPress user myself, I’ll be looking at the plugin in the future with a view to saving myself a few quid, but for now EJ seems elegant enough.
Anyway, if anyone’s curious as to the workings of my simply store, feel free to have a look and let me know what you think — I’m always looking to improve it.
I used Easybe for a brief period and cannot recommend it AT ALL. It is plagued with many, many bugs. The interface is very counter intuitive, and adding an album takes a huge amount of time and hassle. And as you mentioned, no updates and/or support. It simply isn’t worth it.
I’ve given up selling individual MP3s on my site. I use Tunecore and love it. I do run a Zen Cart system to sell CDs, and created an attribute that allows a high quality mp3/flac download of the album immediately upon payment. I figure they get two for one and immediate satisfaction, which seems more than fair.
Although it’s not for selling digital downloads – Bigcartel seems to be the norm for most artists selling anything physical – It’s really simple to use, effective and free – I’d recommend it.
I’ve received a ‘whoops – you forgot about us’ email from Chris at Bandzoogle. Sorry about that Chris.
1) Anyone have any experience with Bandzoogle or feedback about it?
2) Anyone here want to submit a review of the site for New Music Ideas?
3) Anyone here want to review sites for New Music Ideas generally? I have a bunch of sites lined up waiting for review, and I’m keen to bring more writers on board. Send me an email if you’re keen and we’ll talk.
Very interesting, this one. There’s also http://www.thirdchord.com/ – which is a “free mp3 store for musicians”, but it seems it hasn’t been updated since 2006. I haven’t tried it even though it looked quite promising. I’m very curious about bandzoogle though, it could be a good thing. The only thing i once tried was zencart, which is more like a regular e-commerce platform, but it was way to difficult.
And there’s I Think Music and a bunch of others too. I’m bound to have forgotten dozens of them, all of which blur the line between aggregator, store provider, e-commerce solution and retail outlet.
I suppose, despite the alternatives, what most musicians need/want is: full control about what is sold on their own site. (albums/songs/prices/discounts/freebies/…), a solution that requires at most very limited technical knowledge, a solution that is completely free (free from fees, setup costs and ads). And of course; the security & reliabilty of an mp3store like iTunes.
Maybe it’s unlikely that all these elements will be found in one package aimed at the DIY musician. Especially in the case of the magic word “free”. But it’s good there’s a search for a solution that comes close to what is needed. Based on a few looks, i think bigcartel is really good, if only such a thing would exist in combination with digital goods, then you would have a dream of a store for all independent artists and labels.
I have looked at all the options you listed and many more – none of them do what I need. That was until Topspin came along and changed the game completely (I am in no way affiliated). I have put everything on hold until they open up to all-comers. Looking at some of the artists they are currently working with, Topspin offer complete freedom to bundle any combination of physical and digital, subscription options (pay to own – not rent), fan list management/monetization, widgetized sales and promotions and much more…
That photo at the top looks like the article is about identity theft. Those are some of the credit cards the bad guy with a ski mask stole today.
I just discovered Lulu.com and one of the artists I’ve been working with is about to try it for her digital downloads. From what others have said it looks like it will be very useful because she has creative other creative outlets besides music that she can explore.
My band has used Itunes and it has been great for us. People trust the name and most people already use it.
i would suggest to use drupal with ubercart. specially if you plan to ad social features to your site, which is great for music related websites.
I think you should always provide the iTunes/Amazon option for those people who’ll never trust anyone else with their CC number.
I prefer solutions that allow me to offer things like special packages, discounts, pricing control, etc. which iTunes is never going to give me. For my own site I use the Brad Sucks Digital Download Store, which is pretty easy to set up but requires some web tech skill if you want to customize it heavily.
All that said, I’m looking forward to seeing if Topspin will open its doors to everyone…
Ah yes — the Brad Sucks store was another one I considered, but it did look a bit difficult to tailor to my site.
I’m beginning to think it’d be worth simply paying a web developer to knock-up a bespoke download store, with cart, encryptable download links and paypal integration (assuming you make enough money to justify the initial cost). What with PayPal etc., taking a slice of your earnings, why add a monthly bill to the costs?
Last April I set up an eCommerce store on my website. I went with Zen Cart because my webhost offered it as a one-click install. It was a huge task for me, as I am genuinely a web hack. Right around the time I nearly had the project completed, I discovered Magento. I have demoed Magento, and it appears to be a much better alternative to Zen Cart. My web host now also offers it as a one-click install, and once I feel like I have a better handle on how all this eCommerce stuff works, I may consider switching from Zen Cart to Magento.
This article came up at the perfect time, as eCommerce has been on the front of my mind this week. I am excited about sifting through all the different solutions everyone linked to, and possibly finding something that fits what I want to do way better than Zen Cart. I’m also excited about looking into this WordPress plugin.
@Daniel on my Zen Cart store I have set up that exact same attribute to let customers buy the physical CD, and then download the format of their choice. I chose to go with mp3 at 320kbps, FLAC or Apple Lossless so that our files could be compatible with pretty much any music playback device. I think that attribute works very nicely, and am glad it’s an option.
@WIM I agree with you, those features are exactly what I’m after. I was just emailing with someone today about the features I’d really like in an eCommerce platform. My list was: very simple and easy to use admin interface, be able to have multiple “store fronts” all controlled by one main admin interface, so that it would appear that you are buying directly from our artists, when you are really buying from us (the company that backs them), be able to offer items without requiring the user to enter in any info whatsoever (such as name and address), and finally, easy customization so that I could make the store front look exactly like our main site. All that is a lot to ask from an eCommerce platform, and I suppose something that sophisticated would be pretty high dollar.
@Chris I think it’s totally worth paying a web developer to “knock-up” a store. This truly would be the best solution of all, as it would be totally customized to your business. I hope in the not-too-distant future I can be in a position to hire someone who could run our online store full time. Don’t realistically know how soon that will be, though…
Looking at that list, it’s clear we have no excuses!
Like Bob and Scott, I’ve got to give Topspin some credit for coming up with something really comprehensive, pretty, and apparently quite simple.
(And no, I’m not affiliated… promise!)
Every day it seems I discover another web store service, which doesn’t quite do everything I want.
I just started using Nimbit (dot com), which provide a shopfront in a handy player/widget. They take 20% commission with no other fees upfront at all if you are just selling direct. they have other paid options.
It seems to be pretty good, but they only pay out earnings by US $ cheque, which is a pain for anyone in the UK. The player only plays clips of your tracks and to download the whole album, you have individual links for every track, which is not ideal.
I use WordPress, so the plugin you recommend is the next thing I will investigate.
Now if Nimbit were to pay out via Paypal or electronic transfer, provide on-demand CD pressing like Lulu do and sorted out their widget to play full tracks and the option to download an album as a ZIP file then I think they would have the winning formula.
However with all the options out their I still feel like I should start using CD Baby because of Derek Sivers’ contribution to the independent artist, even if he has handed over the company to someone else now.
Whatever store you use though, Reverb Nation is still the best looking all-in-one promotional widget because you can put links to all your points of sale inside that widget.
We are spoilt for choice these days.
I’ve been trying Soundloud.com and Blastmymusic.com which are widget systems – they are a bit clunky as you might expect from one-size-fits-all solutions and they take 25-30%. But for on-off albums they are an idea.
Well, after all my talk, I’ve decided to ditch the store altogether after having to pluck a few tracks from the albums for a future physical release. After making about £300 in six months (minus the PayPal and E-Junkie fees) it wasn’t really going to set my bank account alight anyway; I think I’d rather value the extra listens.
But if I were to sell downloads in the future, I’d be inclined to either contract a developer for it (now knowing what I want from the store) or at least go for something without subscription costs.
I’ve been playing with the Wp-Shopping Cart plugin for a while now, and while it does have it’s bugs (it’s a plugin and is going to interfere with CSS and other plugin issues), it does the trick and it’s the way to go.
I’d love to do a review of anything you need reviewing that I might be currently using. I also know that another very popular musician service is going to roll out their own method – stay tuned!
As a label chieftan who put a year’s worth of research into it, there’s really only 2 worthwhile solutions.
Magento is insanely powerful if you want to run it yourself, but as some commenters already pointed out, it’s built for IT/web professionals, and most DIY musicians lack the expertise to use it right.
We were going to code our own store (since my partners had the expertise to do so) but once we weighted everything, Tunecore came out on top. It really is the simplest, most powerful and most beneficial for artists. We’ve been very satisfied with their transparent accounting, detailed metrics, and in terms of the service they deliver it’s a great damn deal.
I am not paid to endorse them, in fact WE pay THEM for their service — and it’s badass, and that’s why I recommend them to anyone who asks.
Andrew you can use ithinkmusic.com to set up a web site and sell your music! surprised we didn’t get a mention. Our platform give a whopping return compared to all the other solutions…
Hey Michael,
I didn’t mention ithinkmusic.com simply because it’s not an answer to the question I asked. This was about ways to sell your own music from your own existing site, rather than services that would allow you to sell your music on their site. In other words, adding a cash register and a download service to your band’s website.
For the record, I’m a fan of ithinkmusic.com and use it to power my Liquid Crunch website. Still waiting for those requested features to show up – but the returns to artists are certainly pretty good as far as these things go.
Have a look at The Bizmo… http://www.thebizmo.com
As people have highlighted, there’s a few options out there, but this is our platform of choice.
For transparency… yes, I have a vested interest in The Bizmo.
In brief..
it’s simple, quick and easy to set up.
It’s in a widget form that enables you to plug it into various web pages, blogs and social networks, etc.
You can sell more than just music downloads with it – Ringtones, Videos, Books, T-shirts, Tickets, artwork/images, etc, etc.
Accounting is simple, transparent and quick.
For merchandise such as t-shirts, it has a built in designer. Simply upload your image/logo, add any text you want, follow the step by step instructions and you can have a store with as many printed garment designs as you want. No advance ordering of stock, garments are printed and dispatched up upon ordering. Final retail price could come down a bit, but… that will happen with time.
Visually, the only downside for the moment, is that it only comes in one visual skin. Custom designs have been put together for a few clients that are getting some special treatment, but again… plans are afoot to make the visual look adaptable by users.
For me and my partners tho, the stand out feature that convinced us to get on board with The Bizmo instead of any of the other options out there, was the built in cross selling mechanism.
That is, you can search the platform for other users content and (if they’ve enabled the feature) add their products to your store.
Now, that could be a designer or photographer who’s artwork you love, or who’s printed clothing sits perfectly with your music style, it could be an author who’s made his books available on The Bizmo, or tickets for an event… even one you’re not playing at, or even attending yourself.
Hell… you don’t actually need to have any of your own product… you can just surf The Bizmo for great content/products and add them to your Bizmo as an extra little content provision and revenue stream for your website.
This presents and interesting proposition for fans, too. They could simply copy the code for your Bizmo and stick it on their social networking page of choice, or get their own Bizmo, add your stuff to it and get a small commission on any sales from their Bizmo. They could then stock it up with tracks and merchandise from any other cool bands they find on The Bizmo.
Very versatile.
We’ve only just scratched the surface with the creative ways you could put this application to use. It’s been adopted by Music Week for their A&R showcase Being involved on the fringes with what The Bizmo will be doing over the next 6 months or so… we can see it expanding considerably.
Music Week have adopted it here – http://www.musicweek.com/hybrid.asp?typeCode=34&pubCode=1
And you can check ours out on our MySpace page at http://www.myspace.com/rockandindie
My 2cents, anyway.
Del.
PS. It’s FREE to set up and there’s no ongoing usage fees… The Bizmo simply take their cut and can administer MCPS payments and the like, too.
Selling your digital product from your own website is the best thing you can do. When you acquire off-site services, you end up paying monthly charges or percentage. Well, I use both methods for different sites. But I definitely recommend selling directly from the website, i.e., if you know how to secure your product.
Shaukat.
http://www.SellDownloadsGuide.com
I use Paymate. They are Australian based. I have always found them very efficient. They take 3% of sale. Easy to set up…. recommended.
http://www.paymate.com/
Thanks mate, I use paymate also. Its kind of annoying the ammount they take but everyone needs something from somewhere.
I have an e-commerce account (with google checkout) but I have no idea how to put the files up for download and have the url time locked etc.
Any suggestions?
Very helpful. There aren’t many articles on the net with this info. Thanks.
thanks for the info mp3..
by dani
Ive had a few requests for this site I moderate on for CUSTOM MADE sound files, its for a developers forum proberbly for game sites mostly so I can pick up a few free leeds for the best established freelance resourse thats submitted.
You can contact me at the site just put Zenon in the Subject field.
I use yozik.
yozik.com is a service online wich help artists to promote and to sell their music on their websites, providing code html or javascript to be inserted to add a cart, a shop, a player , and much more …
Wondering if I missed it or if you didn’t mention Snocap. I don’t love it, but it seems you can sell CD’s from your site using their service. Did I miss that?
I meant to say, you can sell mp3′s using their service… oops.
how about the new paypal micropayments and send the file manually to start with (sadly most of us won’t sell many mp3s) or put the file in an autoresponder email on thank you page
for any sale you want the customer to be added to an email list
Hey everyone thanks for sharing everything I’m currently trying to make a choice… one question if you guys know:
is there among all of these services or new ones created since then that allow you to:
- Add one audio player displaying full songs (in decent quality) on your wordpress blog or site and just linked to a buy button for each track. All that combined with the ability of selling tangible goods (vinyl, cd, merchandising) ???
I guess Bizmo is what would be the closest solution to my problem, any of you beside Del Nergaard using it?
thks
Hi Elrin,
Regarding TheBizmo. I’ve more than just a vested interest in it now. I actively participated in giving them lots of feedback and suggestions on how it should be developed.
It turned out that my input impressed them so much… they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.
So, I’m now head of operations in the UK for them, and participate/consult on all their international operations, too.
BUT… I don’t want to hijack Andrew’s blog to blatantly advertise TheBizmo.
Suffice to say, we can do what you need, and a bit more since a major upgrade we made this past week, with more cool features to come in phase two of our upgrade program in Sept.
I’d be more than happy to give you the full details if you drop me a line on del@thebizmo.com
Same goes for anyone else that’s interested. My inbox is always, erm… open.
Del.
Head of Business Development, UK
TheBizmo.
RUN AWAY from Magento! It’s a horrendous piece of software.
As a career web programmer who wasted valuable months of my life working with it, I can tell you with authority:
1. It’s SLOW.
Magento will not survive on shared hosting with more than 10 concurrent visitors. It’s likely you won’t even get good performance with that many on a dedicated machine.
2. It’s awful to modify.
It supports a lot out of the box… but not much of it very well, and the code is so fragmented and poor that even professional web programmers will find themselves frustrated and stumped while attempting to augment existing features or (heaven forbid) add new ones.
3. The support is nonexistent.
The only support you’ll get for Magento is from other unhappy users on their forum. In almost all cases, Varien employees themselves don’t support Magento unless you pay for a support contract: It’s called milking the ‘open source’ concept, and it’s the reason Magento is the undocumented behemoth it is.
4. The documentation is nonexistent.
There is one outdated ebook out there somewhere… it’ll cost you $15 or so and it won’t teach you much of anything that’s actually useful, on any version of Magento (but particularly the new ones).
ZenCart seems to be the best cart solution written in PHP… OSCommerce is awful, but still better than Magento.
If you really want a great shop: Find yourself a Django programmer (Python) who knows Satchmo and has integrated with authorize.net. Cut out the middle man!
I just read your article, and its all very interesting. A few months ago I decided to have a website created to sell music, it’s all flash and very quick, this would be a great site for a good size label, I have tested the store with over 25,000 tracks in it and it works beautiful, have a look and send your thoughts, here’s the link to the page:
http://flashmusicstore.com/
Hessler
Just wanted to drop a dime on Easybe, coz I promised I would. Due to lack of functionality, developer support, and overall clunkiness. It was the best way to burn up $68.00 without using flames!
@Hessler: That’s actually very aesthetically pleasing! Where can I get one?
@Joseph: simply send an email to sales@flashmusicstore.com
We’re working on yet another system to make it easier to sell track downloads, with no transaction fees (except for paypal, which we can’t avoid at this stage). But we need help! Let us know how to make this super-easy, I’ll make sure you get a free account, hosting space, etc..
http://www.soundfolder.com/help-us-out
thanks :)
thebizmo.com The only bad thing about it is that you can’t set your price. Good that reverbnation.com now has a store where you can
@Terique:
Not totally accurate, Terique.
There are various price bands to select from, including all the ‘typical’ price points for music downloads. For instance, the generally accepted standard price of a single track download in the UK, is 79p… 99c in the US, etc.
Beyond that, we’re always happy to listen to our users and if they request additional price points, they will be added.
There’s no desire on our part to prevent users from selling the products at the price they want to.
Besides, while this issue has always been a bone of contention between the larger labels and iTunes, etc… we think it’s a minor issue for the independent artist… less than 10 of over 10,000 users have asked us for a price point that differs from the options available in our system..
Like I said tho… we’re always open to suggestions.
Del.
y, sell your music or beats on websites like soundclick, itunes, myspace, well you cant sell or add a pay pal on myspace so that really sucks, just let um use you to market. but anyway y put your own music rights on a site where you haft to compete with hundreds of people trying to do the same thing u do? your only promoting an marketing them. Its not a gurantee that if u market yourself threw facebook or other markting sites that the person will actually choose you out of the hundreds that are doing the same thing u do. EXAMPLE: “a TWEET”, “Hey anyone who loves good music or likes instrumentals check me out” http://www.whatever.com. Ok right at that moment they click an go to the publics site where hundreds of people doing the same thing you do. THE EFFECT. Well they found your profile an like your songs. But their was someone else advirtising their music on that same site also. So, more than likely they left you alone an looked an bought someone elses song SOORRY.
On the contrary, Josh… you can sell on MySpace. Our store is an officially approved MySpace app.
In fact, one of the driving factors in what we put together was the very fact that MySpace were happy to have millions of people provide the content for their site so they could get advertising dollars, but… people couldn’t sell anything of their own from their MySpace profile.
Things have changed though. MySpace doesn’t make it easy, but it can be done. We are evidence of that.
Now, our motivation is… shouldn’t you make more from your MySpace profile than Rupert Murdoch does?
Beyond MySpace, on your own website for instance, there is nothing to stop any artist from setting up a PayPal account and adding a payment button to their site to sell their stuff. Bit harder to sell downloads, that automatically kill off the link once the track has been downloaded, or after a reasonable period of time.
So, an artist has a few choices… dependent on their web design abilities, they can have either a very simple but functional page with PayPal buttons for selling stuff, or if they’re skilled at web stuff… a fairly sophisticated store they design themselves.
OR… they can simply buy a pre-designed store (which could cost thousands, depending how slick you want it to be).
OR… use a third party service such as ours. We’re not unique in what we offer, but I think we’re up there with the best of them (I’ll check my ego and stop short of saying we’re the best!). Free set up, with you only giving away a competitive 15% of net profits, and enabling you to sell music downloads, ringtones, videos, images (wallpapers for mobile or computers), tickets and t-shirts (print-on-demand… no stock to buy).
Fair point about potentially being lost in the crowd when you’re on one of the multitude of music retailers out there (although… you’re not giving away any rights with any of them), but… even if you only ever sell from your own site, you still have to compete with everyone else on the net, just to get people to your site in the first place.
At the end of the day, if you want to make money from your music, you have to compete for peoples ears, one way or another, and it’s a never ending effort to get their attention.
So, the internet has expanded your potential audience by Billions. But, it’s also expanded your competition for their attention by Millions.
Del.
i love music $ you blog unik
I really enjoyed reading your article and found it most helpful.
Thank you very much.
claudio zaniolo
switzerland
Great article googled and up ya popped basically all the info you need to research with more detail well done that dude
Your information still does not state how to sell music on a site.
You just point out the basics of what to do, BUT your neglet is telling your viewers what to do to legally sell mp3′s on their sites.
If you do not sell them through the right channels, you can get into a fist full of trouble.
Please update your site with information about who to go through to setup a legal pay-to-download music site.
This would be beneficial for all your visitors plus give yourself a better informational site than what you have right now.
Good Luck
Wayne Barron
http://www.picdrive.net (Image Hosting Like No Other)
I have been looking at ways to sell music online but not mine thought. What are your views on amazon mp3 collection.
Why so complicated? Just use PayPal to process payments. (You’re gonna have to pay somebody to do that, and PP is competitive). Make PayPal buttons for your MP3s to put on your web pages. After people pay on PP you just direct them back to a simple PHP script on your site which can serve up the file from a password-protected folder. The password and the URLs of your downloadable files are hidden in the script and not easily accessible. OK, serious hackers can get it if they want to bother. If you’re a famous artist they might, but chances are you’ll never have this problem. You can find free or cheap PHP scripts that will do masked downloads. If you can’t handle it, any web developer who knows PHP should be able to do it without much effort or cost. If you need something more sophisticated, then by all means, an e-commerce solution like ZenCart.
Well, I’m most enthousiastic about Topspin and Bandcamp + custom domain (then it’s own your own site too.
Bandcamp.com is the best music store you’ll probably ever see.
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Some important tips on selling a website.
* Determine the price of the website you are going to sell. The price shouldn’t be very high and must be stable.
* Continue to run your website efficiently.
* Share a lot of private and confidential information. If you give less information, buyers might be a bit reluctant. On the other hand if you give more information, the offers will be more.
* You must keep your tax filings, financial reports, budgets and business plans up to date.
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I found this really useful. As part of my college course we set up a record label and have an album we want to sell. The artists don’t profit from it and neither do we-thats illegal, but we have a dozen artists that have donated a track to the cause. My first searches were useless but a few of your suggestions have potential for us, cheers!
Hey guys, I am looking into this as well. You’ve listed several options and methods, I also found one that isn’t listed yet, I’m wondering if you have any experience with it: http://www.mybandtheme.com/features/sell-your-music-online/
Its a WP theme for bands, and the sales part looks pretty impressive. Does anyone use this?
Selling your products online might not be as easy as you think. There has to be an effective way to posting it to your site aside from using commerce applications on wordpress and other plug-ins.
I listed some few tips to effectively sell your product online:
1. Post the photo of your products. Enhance photos will only do good at first but when the customer finds out it is not what they actually received, they will not go back to your site and buy. So only posts photos of ORIGINAL physical appearance.
2. Leave a link to social networking sites. The more people can see your products the more likely it will be sold fast.
3. participate in forum sites that is relevant to your products.
Hope it help.
Thanks! This information was VERY helpful!
How can i sell digital files such as music tracks on my website in the form of mobile downloads through sms links?
Darren vickers hi web carts mm ere mm song cast take the piss r.i.p off yep rip offs is it tercore, yer gun and booms.
As mentioned by Claudia, having images, descriptions and good information about the song/file and maybe even a preview is always a great idea. Posting links in forums and communities would also be a great way to get exposure.
@Wayne Barron: Opps Wayne, think you may have got hold of the wrong end of the stick. This is advising people on selling their own “original” music not someone else makings. This means they own the rights (hopefully) to all songs they are selling.
Hi, this is incredibly insightful, and it is of tremendous importance that this information get around. iTunes and amazon are alright, however iTunes want something near 60% of every item you sell, and Amazon, something near 40%. So in an industry where exposure goes up in increments of 1% or less, you now have effectively been robbed blind. Every person selling anything online needs to read this or pay a professional to make a trustworthy shopping cart, when you don’t have to give up half your cut to first idiot with his hand out. Apparently these people have no key understanding of their suppliers, because you must choose one 50% cut to give either; your shopping cart host, your advertiser, your material suppliers, and do the others yourself. You are a bright star in a vast expanse of darkness in the universe of the aspiring musician.
has anyone any information/ reviews on sellmp3downloads.com? I want to buy their package but I’d like to buy a couple of songs from artists that utilize it first to see how it works. What website do I goto to buy from the artists? I’ve sent a couple of inquiries to sellmp3downloads.com but they haven’t responded yet.