Since things are a little slow this week, I think it’s time to get something off my chest.
It’s been real fun, netlabels. I have gigs of free music and it’s mega awesome. But we have some problems. It’s getting harder and harder to pick the good from the bad in a me-too sea of wanna-bees and also-rans and never-wheres and I have a few suggestions to help make it easier for you to turn music fans into becoming YOUR music fans.
Host your own material
Seriously guys, I’m not going to wait 85 seconds to download something I haven’t heard and am not sure I like. It’s only a few bucks a month and it’s worth the nominal investment if you really want people to download your artists’ material.
Provide Download Options
Yes, zips are nice, but don’t go too far one way and disallow single track downloads as well. Zips can be messy if you don’t know what you want.
Provide a Streaming sample (or even the whole thing!)
It is trivial for a listener to let a record stream in the background to see if they like the whole thing. Using a service like BandCamp also gives you an embeddable streaming flash widget that gives you stats and lets you embed the player in all kinds of spammy places. It’s really cool.
These meager suggestions may seem nit-picky, but your selection of artists material and the ability for people to hear your artists’ work should be the most important thing on your mind as a netlabel owner. As an open question to the readers, is there anything that burns your biscuits about how you absorb netlabel data?
I have had good results with midi sync, or using panning or click like lead ins, but this is a pretty good tutorial too. Should be applicable for people making mulitrack renders on other platforms as well.
