Pablo the Mad Tiger Warrior now has his music available on Bandcamp.
https://pablothemadtigerwarrior.bandcamp.com/
For those who don't know, Bandcamp is a music hosting website where independent musicians can sell their music (downloads, CDs, vinyl, etc) directly to fans.
And the beauty of it is that it is free for the musicians. We (the musicians) don't have to pay a fee for our music to be hosted on Bandcamp.
Yes, Bandcamp does take a percentage of any music sold on their site.
But we (the musicians) don't have to pay them if nobody is buying our tracks.
Contrast that to Bandzoogle, another music hosting website that allows musicians to sell their music directly to fans. Musicians can only upload a limited amount of tracks for free before they have to pay a monthly subscription fee. Which is why I'm not on Bandzoogle.
Soundcloud is the most popular music hosting website, which was also the first site where I uploaded my music to the world. Like Bandzoogle, they allow a limited number of uploaded tracks before you have to pay a monthly fee. Soundcloud allows users to stream music for free.
Soundcloud allows musicians to make their tracks available to download. The problem is that it doesn't give the musicians the option to charge money for a download. So to this day, I never allowed my music to be available for download via Soundcloud.
With Bandcamp, the musicians can choose what to charge users for each download or for each physical merchandise (ie CD, vinyl, cassette, etc).
For downloads, I charge $1 per track, and $8 for an entire album.
If you sell physical formats on Bandcamp, the users will get it in the bundle along with digital download of the album, plus unlimited streaming on the Bandcamp app. Bandcamp doesn't give the option of just selling the CD/vinyl/cassette alone, it has to come with the digital download bundle.
Since that's the case, I charge $10 per CD I sell on Bandcamp.
Since manufacturing vinyl records is much more expensive and viny records take up too much storage space (and I only have a small apartment, not a big office), I'm unable to sell vinyl at this time. Sorry vinyl lovers.
Those who want to buy my CD, but don't want the digital downloads, can buy them from eBay for cheap (circa 5 or 6 dollars). Check it out at https://www.ebay.com/usr/pw5213-xngkolqw
What I love about Bandcamp is that users can buy both a digital download and a physical CD direct from the same website
CD Baby used to offer that option, but they shut down their online store in 2020. And no, it wasn't due to the pandemic, the announcement came a month before the lockdown.
Learn more at https://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2020/03/cd-baby-closes-online-store-still-doing.html
At the time, CD Baby still offered physical distribution, where users can order the CD via Amazon, and CD Baby still distributed to physical stores for artists with a large following.
However, earlier this year, CD Baby announced they were no longer doing physical distribution. They closed their warehouse, and any CDs that were stored there were returned to the artists.
Learn more at
https://support.cdbaby.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002355206
https://diymusician.cdbaby.com/news/cd-baby-without-cds/
And here's Disc Maker's CEO Tony van Veen's 6 minute video speech about the situation with CD Baby no longer doing physical distribution.
[note: It was from that video (plus viewer comments) that alerted me to Bandcamp, and the opportunity it provided to independent musicians. ]
CD Baby is still doing digital distribution, distributing music to iTunes, Spotify, iHeart Media, Amazon Prime, Deezer, Pandora, and other platforms.
So, therefore, CD Baby is still my distributor when it comes to placing my music on those platforms.
In the past, Google Play and Groove Music were also major platforms selling digital downloads. They stopped doing so a few years ago, basically surrendering to iTunes as the most dominant seller to digital downloads.
CD Baby still allows artists that use their digital distribution services to also sell their music to platforms CD Baby doesn't distribute to (ie. Bandzoogle, Bandcamp,etc)
So to sum it up
- Soundcloud allows musicians to upload without a distributor, and is one of the most popular music hosting sites and the most popular streaming sites. But it doesn't give musicians the option to sell downloads or physical merch.
- iTunes (which requires a distributor to upload to their platform) is the biggest seller of digital downloads. They don't give a platform for musicians to sell physical merch.
- Spotify (which requires a distributor to upload to their platform) is one of the most popular streaming platforms out there but doesn't sell digital downloads or physical merch.
- CD Baby once had an online store to sell CDs and digital downloads, but no more. They still distribute to digital platforms like iTunes, Spotify, etc.
- Google Play and Groove Music used to be major players in selling digital downloads, but no more. They surrendered to iTunes.
- Artists can sell CDs (and other physical formats) on eBay, but not digital downloads. eBay also doesn't give users the option to preview the tracks before making the decision to buy.
- Bandzoogle allows musicians to sell directly to fans, but charges a monthly fee to host more than a limited number of tracks. No thanks.
- Bandcamp allows musicians to sell digital downloads and physical merch directly to fans. Bandcamp offers users a preview of the tracks, even a limited # of streams before asking users to buy the track. Bandcamp doesn't charge musicians a monthly fee to host their music. They only make $$$ off the music sold on their platform.
