Jon Thompson explains how online distribution can work for new music — but only if you get in at the ground floor...
There is no way I could ever get a record deal in today's industry. At least, that's what I used to think. Last year, however, I read a piece in Sound On Sound about how you could upload your work for free to mp3.com, to your very own web page, and the world would be able to listen. It looked as though the old punk dream was coming true at last: subvert the establishment and speak directly to potential fans. If an audience really was out there, it would find me.
I listened to the main mp3.com top 40 and did not think much of it. Where was the cutting edge? Where were the new and dangerous ideas? All I heard was light rock and all‑too‑predictable synth‑pop. My work was far better and I would prove it (there's nothing like a bit of healthy belief in your own abilities!). I took a couple of weeks off work and set about writing a new track. I worked well into each evening, neglecting everything else, but finally I had something of which I was truly proud. Choosing a name for my 'band' proved difficult. I decided on 'Count To Four' as being cynical and yet somehow hip. It took a couple of hours to compose a snappy description and biog and then upload the track.
A few days went by — and there was my track in an obscure sub‑chart... at number 157. My heart sank faster than the track's subsequent decline into complete obscurity. I had many other half‑finished tunes I wanted to try. Again, still no real interest. One track was made a 'featured' song and gained me 71 page visits in a week. Big deal! It was hardly anything on which to retire. Listeners who e‑mailed me were complimentary about my work, so it couldn't have been the quality preventing it getting higher in the charts.
It slowly dawned on me that being able to circumvent the industry is meaningless when everyone else is doing it too. Your work simply gets lost in the stampede. It's over. The dream has already died. As a web site, mp3.com is truly massive, with over a third of a million songs listed. What chance would I have of being heard if everyone who searches for the keyword 'trance', for instance, only plays those tunes at the top of the list?
Even worse was the realisation that when web surfers go to their favourite chart, only the name of the track and artist are presented. Without any other information, the tendency is to start by playing those songs at the top of the chart, the thinking being that if they are at the top they must be some good. It seems probable that — being 250 places or so lower — no one would ever hear my work.
Mp3.com themselves have several tips on how to increase the number of downloads of your music. One tip is 'networking', where you listen to another artist's work, review it, and ask them to do the same for you. I approached someone to review my work. He simply added me to a mailing list hosted by an external provider. I asked him to remove me several times, whereupon he became quite abusive.
It does not take long to realise that large music sites are victims of their own success. The majority of artists making headway are those who opened their accounts when the site was in its infancy. They are in the enviable position of riding high in the charts (and thus are better able to be seen by newcomers) than the rest of us. It is a self‑perpetuating situation.
There is a way to get your music heard, though. New sites spring up daily. As sites open, upload your music to them while they are still small enough to be easily searchable. No matter how flaky the connection, no matter how many spelling mistakes the site in question has, upload your work to all of them and get it seen. Even if no one downloads you at first, when people see your name on five or 10 sites it's like having billboards all over town.
When BT's 'Get Out There' site still had less than a couple of hundred songs I uploaded a big‑beat track called 'Big Clumsy Children'. It was downloaded sufficiently often to go to number one in its chart, and I won a Roland MC505 on the strength of it. So, you see, it can be done. You can get round the industry and find your audience. It might be in Outer Mongolia but provided it has access to a modem, this should not matter. You just have to be prepared to spend the time to look for new sites as they start up.
About The Author
Jon Thompson is 33 and lives in Macclesfield, Cheshire. He does something boring with networks for a living and spends most of his spare time either in the pub or with the big pile of wires he refers to as 'the studio'.
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