There's a lot to consider when it comes to deciding exactly how you want to release your music. For musicians and producers looking to release music commercially, it's important to do extensive research and get as much advice as possible from peers and experts alike. I've done my own research throughout the years, as well as talking to many musicians and producers who are trying to make a living from their music.
I'm not giving any form of advice in this post. Rather, I'm sharing my opinion about why I think independent musicians and producers self-hosting their music is the best way going forward. Additionally, I want to talk about why I exclusively release my music for free, as this is integral to my creative identity and independence.
Commercializing Music
As much as the musical landscape is constantly changing, I've learned that there are several steps fundamental to releasing music commercially:
- Register as a business
- Register with your intellectual property office
- Register with your performing rights organization
- Choose a music publisher
- Choose a music distributor
- Understand your rights and responsibilities, particularly masters ownership, for any sort of sync, publishing, or label deal
All this is crucial to ensure your copyrights are protected and your royalties (mechanical and performance) are actually paid out. When you've done these things, you are officially making music as a business.
With this, there comes a perception that you are taking yourself as a creator and your music "seriously." The common understanding is that you can consider yourself "professional" once you've started earning money from music.
To be sure, this is something to celebrate! It's an amazing accomplishment to make music professionally. If this is your goal, you deserve congratulations for achieving it!
Having said this, I want to point out that being paid is not the only measure of success and professionalism. I believe skills, discipline, cooperation, and consistency are more significant determinants of professionalism. This is important to highlight because I've noticed there tends to be dismissal, and sometimes outright mockery, of musicians who don't attach monetary value to their creations.
In certain communities, especially those driven by gear and status, musicians who offer songs or services for free (or affordably) are not considered "professional," which is almost always coded as not "good" enough, "valuable" enough, or "serious" enough. While this is obviously not true, the predominant attitude is one that strongly encourages–and dare I say–pressures musicians to commercialize.
If the intention is to commercialize, then it's even more important to talk about the significant issues that come with that.
The Barriers and Problems with Commercializing Music
For independent musicians and producers, there are several deeply concerning and widespread problems associated with commercializing music:
- AI content flood
- AI plagiarism
- Botted streams
- Platforms removing you and your music
- Miserably low streaming payouts
- Distributors withholding your funds
- Data scraping
- Your music being used to train AI models without your consent and without remuneration
- Delayed releases
- Delayed payouts
- Rising service costs
- Platforms shutting down or being replaced
These barriers and issues are interconnected. For example, it's been well documented that Spotify penalizes artists who use fake, botted streams to artificially inflate their streaming numbers. The issue is that even artists who don't do this, but whose music has been added to botted playlists without their knowledge, are punished and removed. In turn, these artists are denied payouts from music publishers. Royalties stop. Their credibility takes a massive hit and may never recover. Momentum and success that's been built up over time suddenly comes to a screeching halt.
In one of the more recent and upsetting examples of platforms changing beyond recognition, Epic Games acquired Bandcamp in 2022, then just six months later in 2023 sold it to Songtradr after Bandcamp employees tried to unionize. Before this, Bandcamp was deeply respected and known for being the platform that put indie musicians first with fair payouts, discovery, their direct-to-fan sales model with the option for "pay what you can," and support that included promotion, merch, vinyl releases, and coordination with indie labels. Since the acquisition, Bandcamp has effectively become corporatized. Users report numerous issues such as lack of artist and listener support, ineffective search and discovery functions, lackluster customer and artist support, no application and website cross-functionality, and an influx of AI artists and AI generated marketing (although it's now banned AI generated music).
These are just a few instances of how detrimental the barriers and problems are for musicians and producers who are commercializing their music. It can feel so hopeless and defeating, especially when it seems there aren't that many alternatives available.
Think about it: you put all this tremendous passion and effort into making music, and then you release it in ways and means you have no control or ownership of.
So why would you choose to be disempowered and risk your music being wiped from existence?
The Power of Self Hosting - Selling Directly To Fans
Building a respectful and trusting relationship with your fans is at the core of everything, aside of any platform, gimmick, or marketing strategy. Self hosting is powerful because it lets you share your music on your own terms and empower your audience along the way by cutting out the middle man. Self hosting gives you back independence and control for your own music.
Thankfully, it's never been easier to set up your own website. Whether you use a website builder or code from scratch, the only thing you really need to sell directly to fans is an embeddable storefront. Again, there's a plethora of e-commerce options available. And of course, there's PayPal, Patreon, and Ko-Fi.
Additionally, an impressive example of an all-in-one direct to fan platform is EVEN Backstage. Their draw is building a community of fans through phone and mailing lists where you own the data, supporting you with branding and promotion, including exclusive content, paying you daily for every sale, and reporting directly to the Billboard charts.
Now that you know about these options for selling directly to fans, and why self hosting is so empowering, I want to explore how releasing music for free is also just as viable in my experience.
Why I Only Release My Music For Free
I exclusively release my music for free because I love to make music. I don't want to turn my passion and hobby into a "hustle" or "career." I want to preserve my creative expression, the integrity of my music, to always have a good time making music, and to remain independent so I can keep doing what I love on my own terms.
I'm thankful to have a fulfilling, well-paid profession that has nothing at all to do with music. Not depending on music as a source of income allows me to release at my own pace, and to take creative risks however I want without worrying about appeasing the music industry.
Further, I refuse to monetize my audience, especially in such difficult economic times. The special relationship between a listener and music is something so sacred, pure, and emotional. It has fundamentally existed in cultures everywhere long before the commercialization of music. This matters deeply to me and I care about my listeners' music experience. Therefore, it doesn't align with my values to turn listeners into customers. I would rather have them as equals coming along for my music journey.
And to be blunt, I'm exhausted by a saddening majority of musicians and producers who are obsessed with making music their career, to the detriment of creativity and collaboration. They are so desperate to extract money from their audience, and so entrenched in their careerist attitudes, that there is no room for community over competition. I refuse to have any part in perpetuating this.
In order to stay true to myself and my creative vision for Masquerade, I self host on Google Drive, YouTube, and Samply.
Google Drive is a great option for its available storage space and how it seamlessly integrates with the rest of Google Workspace. I created my website using the excellent Google Sites and my blog is hosted by Blogger, so it only makes sense that Google Drive is where all my releases are easily accessible for listening and direct download. Also, I always include extra goodies for listeners such as phone wallpapers and a custom lyric booklet, which means Google Drive stores them right alongside my music.
YouTube is excellent for ease of sharing and music discovery. I upload full albums or EPs and songs instantly, with accompanying DIY lyric videos and visualizers. It's also easy to engage with listeners through channel posts and comments. Seeing comments always makes me smile!
Samply is a brilliant platform to share music at lossless audio quality, as well as allowing listeners to download files directly for free. It's created and run by a cozy team of people who are passionate about music, audio, and supporting artists to share music on their own terms.
Discord is another good option to directly share music with people, individually or server wide. The community building aspect of it is wonderful! I will also gladly zip all my music and related files to directly email them to friends, peers, any anyone else who's interested in listening. I may even burn my music onto CDs and send them...
I feel incredibly fulfilled and happy releasing my music exactly the way I want to!
Self Hosting is The Best Way to Release Music for Indie Musicians and Producers
Whether you're commercializing your music or releasing it for free, I think self hosting is the best way for indie musicians and producers to release going forward.
It's important to have control, stability, and predictability in the tools and platforms we use to put our music out there. Self hosting empowers us to take back our independence and decision making power when it comes to all aspects of the creative (and monetary) process.
As upheavals continue in the music industry, and technological disruptions affect the tools and platforms available to us, self hosting will become an increasingly important, reliable way for us to share our music on our own terms.
Comments
Post a Comment