Releasing Music in the Current Climate · Nov 9, 04:16 PM

The digital revolution is making it difficult to make money as a record label and in order to survive and prosper in the current climate, you need to have a good release strategy in place. Illegal file sharing through blogs, torrents and p2p networks is costing traditional record labels sales and any label that wants to survive is going to have to address the problem and find ways to limit the amount of file sharing that goes on. This article may offer a few ideas to improve your own strategy or serve to open a discussion on the topic.

Everyone wants the new stuff

Here’s an example of what can, and is, going wrong for record labels:

Poco Records send a promo CD to a reviewer a couple of months before it’s due to be released. The journalist rips the new album onto their computer to listen to it. Their computer is connected to Soulseek (or some other p2p network) as it often is and as all the audio on their computer is in a shared ‘My Music’ folder, the new album becomes available and a couple of people grab it. The less than tech savvy journo doesn’t even realise it’s being shared. One of the people who downloads it happens to run a music blog and posts the album on his blog. This LP is hot and he will surely earn blogging gold stars for getting it so early. Loads of people grab it and within days it’s on several blogs, p2p networks and torrent sites and has saturated the file sharing community.

A fan of the artist hears about this release from his forum / music mag / newsletter / friend. Curious to find out more, he goes to Google and types in the name of the artist and the album. On the first page of results, there are three links to the full album – available for free download. He likes to do his bit to support the artists and labels and doesn’t want to download it illegally but he’s faced with this dilemma. The LP isn’t scheduled for release for another six weeks but there it is in front of him, just one click away. In the end he downloads it for free but assures himself that he’s going to buy when it comes out. By that time he’s had it on his headphones for weeks and is more interested in the new LP that his favourite blog is talking about.

This is the worst possible scenario for Poco Records. Anyone who wants it can now have it for free and it’s not even on sale yet! This is by no means uncommon though. It’s happening all the time and costing record labels lots of money.

How did this happen?

In many cases as in the example above, the music has been leaked by someone who received a promo. This is a major problem and one you need to think about when you send out your promos. Your promo list has to be tight and ideally, you need a way to identify who, if anyone, decides to share your music with the world before it’s even released. Timing is also crucial. The music press may tell you they need to have your music two months before release for them to review it, but if these people are the same people that are going to leak your music, can you really afford to give it to them that early? Do they understand and respect the value of your pre-release music? If not, should they be on your list?

Another example:

A DJ is looking for a particular track. The track was released a few years ago and he wants it for a set he’s playing. He checks the label’s website. No link to any MP3 shop. He checks out eMusic hoping to get it on the cheap. Not there. Beatport, Bleep… nope. He checks out Discogs and Ebay and finds a couple of second hand copies for sale but he’d much rather buy the MP3 as it will cost less and he can have it right there and then. He could search for an mpfree of it on Soulseek. He could probably find it there. He could search on Google and find it for sale for $0.10 on a legal-loophole mp3 mafia site…. But out of all the ways he can get this track, none of them is going to earn a penny for the label.

This problem can be remedied easily. The whole cause of it is that he couldn’t find the mp3 for sale. If you have a big back catalogue, or any back catalogue for that matter, you really should have it available to buy as MP3s online. The cost of distributing digital music to MP3 stores is low (or free) and there’s lots of shops that will be more than happy to stock your music. If it’s not available and someone wants an MP3 of it, you are leaving them little choice but to download it for free or buy a second-hand copy. You would surely be better off having those tracks available somewhere so that you can continue to make some revenue from them, even after the physical copies have sold out.

Suggested Schedule of releases

The order that you get your music out is of great importance. I don’t claim to know the best way to do it and it’s going to be different for different labels and different releases but here are some suggestions. The main thing is that you have your strategy sorted before you release so you can stay on top of what’s going on.

1. Promos

As discussed above, be careful with your promos. Consider sending out watermarked CDs (if your budget allows it) or use a digital promo service that offers watermarked MP3s like FATdrop.

2. Physical Release

If you’re putting out vinyl or CD’s, do it next. There’s no way to guarantee that once you put your release out digitally, it’s not going to be all over the net before you know what’s happened. Get your physical release out there before the pirates have a chance to damage your sales potential.

3. High end mp3 shops

By high end, I mean online stores that typically sell mp3s for between £0.79 and £1.99 and pay a good percentage of that back to the label. (Stay tuned for future post about the best deal MP3 stores for labels) Sites like Beatport, Bleep, Juno, Boomkat & Beathut all fall into this category. These stores all require that your label suits their vibe before they will stock your MP3 catalogue. Some of them won’t deal with labels directly and only accept new music via digital aggregators. Most of them are non-exclusive so you can sell through more than one but you will need to find the ones that suit your output. Other stores like Beats Digital and 7digital will stock any music without regard to genre and these stores also fall into this category. Itunes should also be mentioned here (with 5 million songs and 70% of the pay-for-download market) but they have been receiving a lot of criticism about their DRM downloads and Apple-only AAC format files but the fact is they are still the biggest player in the MP3 sales game. (Although that could all change when Myspace launch their new service).

4. Low end mp3 shops

These are the bargain basements of the MP3 buying world. Sites like eMusic, Napster & MusicMatch all offer subscription based services where users can download tracks for as little as £0.20. A much smaller cut goes to the label but these sites are becoming very popular so it’s all about low profits but high numbers of sales. In most cases, it seems to make sense to wait until the sales on the high end sites have tailed off before releasing your music through these sites. Big albums like Bjork’s Volta and Dizzee Rascal’s Maths + English were released straight onto eMusic. My guess is that they either saw how widespread the file sharing was and decided they should go straight to the low end stores with it, or they use a digital distributor that doesn’t take into account the high-end / low-end idea and simply distributes to all the MP3 stores at the same time. Using a digital aggregator can certainly make the job of getting your music into the mp3 stores much easier and is a way to get your music into stores that you couldn’t otherwise, but if you use one, find out if they service all the stores (high and low end) at the same time. It may not be the best tactic for you.

5. Free Promotion

Get your new releases listed on Discogs. Submitting new releases there can be a bit of a pain and if you don’t follow their strict rules on submissions, they will reject it, but persevere with it. It needs to be there. Also, get it on Last.fm. Most importantly, make sure people know where they can buy it and make it as easy as possible for them to do so. If you sell MP3s through more than one store, choose one and make sure a link to that page is on your website as well as your Myspace / Facebook / Virb pages if you have them. Search for your releases on Google and if you find them being discussed on blogs or forums, post the link there too.

What do you think?

Hopefully some of the ideas listed here will be useful for your own label. Whether you agree with them or not, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Do you have a different approach? If so, tell us about it. Everything on this blog is open to discussion and your comments are very welcome.

— Alex FATdrop

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