Music online is different. It’s not just ‘new format’ different — it’s ‘new ballgame’ different. But some rules still apply.
It’s a whole new world. You know that and I know that. Digital music is not like the change from records to CDs. It’s the change from printed sheet music to recorded music.
But it’s not all robots and lasers. People have a tendency to do many of the same things in many of the same ways, and no amount of technological innovation will change people from doing some of the things they’re hard-wired to keep on doing.
I’ve been thinking about some of the things that aren’t different about music business online, and I thought I’d make a little series of them. Here’s the first of them.
1) More distribution is better than less distribution
Doesn’t matter whether you’re selling shellac 78rpm records or house tracks as 320kbps mp3s. The more places your music is available, the more chances people are going to have to stumble over it. That’s not job done, of course — making something available is not the same as marketing it — but it’s the other half of the equation.
There are choices in the world of digital ‘aggregation’. You might want to check and compare their services. Independents tend to have nice things to say about CD Baby and TuneCore in my experience, but there are thousands of other services. These people will save you the trouble of dealing with individual retailers, just as distributors do in the offline world.
It’s absolutely right and proper that your music should be available on your website. It should be available on everybody’s.