I spent most of the day trying to find a way to make some of my music available on this blog – four full length songs for free. To make a long story short (the rant about hosting services is placed at the end so you can skip over it), I finally resorted to posting a photo link to the Romanza album in the sidebar, which will take you to cdbaby.com. There you can listen to some short clips of all of the cuts from the album.
But I wanted you to have access to complete songs! I entertained the idea for awhile of putting up a form and letting people request the files, but didn’t want to chain myself to emailing out files one by one. Not a good use of time.
So, I broke down and created a myspace.com profile and uploaded the four mp3s that have been searching for a home all day today. MySpace has a nifty little embedded Flash player and I also selected the option that will let you download the mp3 files to your computer. It’s an extra step, when I really wanted to make it a simple one-click link from this page to a file on my website, but hey, it’s free, right? This way, you can listen to full-length songs from the Romanza album.
Now, there are two options for listening enjoyment:
Four full length songs for free!
OR
ENJOY!!!
All four of these songs are in the public domain, so theoretically, I’m the only one losing money. However, I am convinced that my best option right now is to have as many people as possible hear what I do in the hopes that they will like it enough to buy the CD or to hire me. Then, I can make enough money to do a solo album!
Please share the four mp3s with your friends and let them know where you found them. If the music makes you feel good, as I hope it does, go ahead and buy the CD. I’ve put a hefty discount on multiple copies at cdbaby.com to make it easy and affordable to share them with friends and family. (Please don’t copy my CD. I really do lose money then! And so do the songwriters who wrote the other pieces of music on the album…)
THE RANT
My current web hosting service won’t allow .mp3 uploads (which is only one of several reasons why they may not be “current” for much longer). The .wav files that they do allow are huge. And, while I supposedly have 100Mb of available space, the file manager kept telling me that the 40Mb file I kept trying to upload puts me over my limit…even though prior to that I had used less than one percent of my allotment. My math is not that bad. I can only figure that it actually means that the file is too big, and exceeds some sort of individual file size limit, but that is not what it is saying. Sigh. Computers. ARGH!
I went over to SNOCAP, thinking that might be an option. They look like a good service, but I am unwilling right now to shell out yet another yearly fee to another service that may or may not be something I will actually use to sell music in the future. Cdbaby.com is tops in my book. I just wanted somewhere I could upload some files and let people access them, preferably on the server where I have my website and that I already pay lots of money to…Grrr.
I have absolutely no beef with wordpress.com for their file format limitations. They offer a great service; it’s free. My problem is with a server that I pay for and who hosts a multitude of other files that could pose security problems. I can only conclude that is the old copyright issue and bandwidth concerns. But they charge for bandwidth overages, too, so what gives?
Don’t worry about Snocrap my friend… SoundLoud is better and its free… check it out at http://www.soundloud.com.
You can use SNOCAP without paying the $30 up front. That fee is waived for the first year. You can cancel any time.
By this afternoon, I think I was just getting frustrated in general with computers. Now, it looks like I’ll have to get over it and do some research tomorrow! Thanks for the comments.
Note that SoundLoud doesn’t pay for PayPal transaction fees, so you need to calculate that when determining how much you make on a $.99 download.
“7. Royalties and Payments.
a. It is currently required that you have a PayPal account in order to receive royalty payments in connection with your use of the SoundStation Music Store. If you do not have a PayPal account, you can setup an account through the SoundLoud Site or PayPal.com. We shall charge $.25 U.S. Dollars (25 cents) per digital single-track download and $3.00 U.S. Dollars per digital album download sold exclusive of PayPal or other transaction costs, and you shall receive the royalty set forth in 7(b) below. We will compute amounts payable to you in realtime and instantly make those amounts available for forwarding to your PayPal account. You shall be responsible for any sales taxes applicable to the sales of individual downloads, and any other taxes, tariff, license fees or other required payments, whether imposed by any government, municipality or other entity, in regard to royalties that you receive hereunder.
b. You understand and agree that the SoundStation Music Store is designed to facilitate sales of single song downloads and you may only sell your Digital Masters in that manner. You may determine the price for downloads of individual songs provided that the charge shall be no more than $.99 U.S. Dollars (99 cents) and no less than $.39 (39 cents). You shall receive a royalty consisting of the difference between the price that you charge consumers per download and our fee as set forth in 7(a) above minus any costs charged by PayPal including currency conversion fees. At a certain time in the future we may offer full album downloads. Your Digital Masters may only be sold as MP3 files without DRM, and you shall hold us harmless from any unauthorized or illegal duplication or other unauthorized use of your Digital Masters.”
This guy David Rowley is crazy! Isn’t he like the VP of engineering for SNOCRAP… I’m surprised that he has time to blog, he should be busy trying to build a better product.
For your information Mr.Rowley, Paypal’s fees only take effect when members withdraw earnings (2% or up to $1 maximum per payment request). To withdraw $1 in royalty earnings from soundloud will cost 2 cents… to withdraw $10,000 in royalty earnings from SoundLoud will cost $1. Might I also note that earnings can be withdrawn daily from soundloud, unlike monthly from snocap. And distribution fees for soundloud are .25 cents per song sold, unlike .39 cents per song sold with snocap. Wow… I’m surprised at you David… thats exactly why I left snocap… you guys are so shady.
Mr. Rowley should be ashamed of himself for spreading half-truth rumors in an attempt to mislead the public about the benefits of a superior service. Shame on you David, wait till your boss hears about this.
Hey, hey Paul…let’s at least be civil. Dave didn’t state a price and he didn’t respond in kind to your previous post with name-calling; he simply made a point about fees. I’m just going to leave these up as instructive for whomever might want to check further.
As for me, I’ve gone with SNOCAP (though, yes, their fees are higher) because of their mySpace integration and, in large part, because there was no name-calling from that camp.
Diplomacy. It’s the right thing to do.
Ariel
Sorry Ariel, its just that as an artist I have had some really bad experiences using Snocap. They don’t respond to emails for months and customer service is really terrible. Its just made me upset to see that someone from management had time to blog but my emails go unanswered.
Using snocap may be a good idea… at least you will see why I was so angry. You should probably use both and since which one customers prefer, thats what I did, and thats why snocap is out and soundloud is in.
Understood. I just may go ahead and do both. The more places I can get my music out, the better. There’s no restrictions and it never hurts to comparison shop!
Honestly and objectively, I encourage you to try all the services available to you. Cast a wide net and see what you catch. What I’ve obsesrved is that artists who maintain a close connection with their fans do well regardless of the commerce service they use. Also, bands that produce exclusive, frequent (often live) content do *extremely* well with this direct-to-consumer approach. We’ve seen these factors combine to form the perfect storm for a number of indie artists. We did an interesting thing with Dispatch, who did a 3 night concert at Madison Square Garden in part to raise money for Zimbabwe relief. We helped them upload their tracks into their SNOCAP MyStore as the concert was in progress. The fans who attended were told they could go home and buy the concert they just heard on the band’s MySpace page. The response was trememndous! That’s the kind of model that self-promoters should emulate, IMO.
Thanks for your comment, Dave, and for passing along the great idea that you used with Dispatch. I think that this is very good advice and intend to follow it.
I was just playing around with GarageBand on my Mac, and as primarily a soloist, I should be able to upload regular, new content on a frequent basis right from the comfort of my home studio. Now, it’s off to figure how I can set up my laptop and record live stuff from the Campus Coffee Bean this Wednesday!
I agree with Paul… How do I cancel my Snocap account????!! No one answers the emails at snocap.. it sux. If snocap wants to keep “its” fans, it needs to stay in contact with them…
Where’s the “Enabling Interface” << talk english. So that I can unregister my content from snocap.???
i have the same question as Rene. Where is the “enabling interface” so i can delete my account. Snocap is a fraud. I purchased some of my songs to test it and months later my account still shows zero sales. i can’t get a response from customer service. i just want them off myspace. i’m so frustrated at this point. Does anyone know how to get out of snocap hell? thanks:)