Self-distributing Your Music

Now speaking about the real self-publishing matter and how to get your work out there. More and more the people have turned to self publishing their stuff because distributors and publishers take too much percentage gain out of the artists work to most of the time not even dedicate the enough effort to put the material out there that it deserves. Or if not, they will just shut you down specially if you are an uprising artist because you “don’t have any background” that supports you so they just don’t consider you good enough to give their 100% to promote your material. And as doing it by your own can be very expensive relaying in those companies what you will better want to do to get your work out there is going to have to do it yourself! But don’t feel bad, this is not just happening to the music community, it happens in all the industries of the artistic community. And the good news is that there are online tools to help you do it and that will do the work for you in exchange of a small amount of money. 

For example, for those musicians that are trying to get their music out there SongCastMusic is a great tool. They are a digital music distribution to online music stores. By digital it means that you can upload your music on their website and they will distribute it to online stores, accordingly to the package that you choose, like itunes or amazonmp3, among others, and also they feature your music in their online radio network. You can categorize and catalogue your music and your band, collect your royalties and see how your sales are doing at the end of each month. You can do all these and some more for a budget of 14$ - $80. 

Think about it, it’s a great start, first of all because nowadays everything works online, specially the buy and sell practice. And is a guaranteed way to build your fan base and that ‘background’ that distributors and publishers ask for. You can start with a service like songcastmusic and after a few months jump to a publisher, if that’s what you want. Check it out: www.songcastmusic.com

Making others believe in you is part of distribution. Considering Simon Sinek's "Start With Why"

Fascinating as it is to me the subject of publishing and distribution especially when it carries the prefix “self”. If you have been following this blog or have read some of my previous posts you will find that consistently I link almost every professional matter (marketing, publishing, selling) to one’s personal skill in doing the same thing. I relate to ‘self-publish’ but not precisely meaning how to sell or position your product, but instead yourself. Marketing yourself, promoting yourself, publishing yourself. Why? Because when you are doing all these things in a professional environment, who you are truly representing is yourself and what you are truly selling is what you believe.

 When you go to a meeting to sell a project people buy whatever you are offering based on what you present – your belief, therefore, how you end up presenting the project because you are part of the package and part of what you represent. How you speak and how you deliver your speech, if you are able to trigger inside the other person the feeling that they ‘get’ what you are saying is because you managed to connect with the other person beyond the basics of the product.  When you are marketing a brand, for example, people almost end up buying its products if they like what the “seller” says, which in this case is you. Marketing, promoting, distributing are things very well known by experts and the people that study the strategies to be successful in these fields. But the masses, the consumers, the audience, the target, to this huge group it’s all the same. They don’t know the difference when somebody approaches them to show them a project, a product or an idea for a film, book or record album. To them is who you are and why you are doing it and how you present it that will make them take a decision. If they believe in you, then they will relate to your product, brand, project or idea. If they didn’t believe you, or in other words, did not ‘buy’ what you had to offer, then revise yourself, your speech and your presentation, because it means that somewhere in your package something did not ‘click’ in the other’s feelings or thoughts.

Few people realize this really. Now that I think about it, marketing, promoting, sales, among other subjects are classes that should be taught starting from this premise. Does it make sense to you as much as it does to me?

I strongly believe that if you speak from the heart it will be equally and proportionally conceived by the other party.  Because you need to connect with the audience beyond the superficial aspects of your product, that they might even already know, to trigger within their minds a feeling of belonging so they can relate to you. And the way to do it is aiming at including the ‘why’ not the ‘what’ in your speech.

I used to find a lot of logic in this topic before but somehow could not manage to explain it. It was until a few months ago in a previous course when Simon Sinek’s speech "Start With Why" was shared with us that I finally understood and became more inspired.  

Get inspired! Check out this link and I’m sure you’ll find some answers too. Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action | Video on TED.