I'm finally going to start releasing some music. Why? Because I can, and it's about time. It's been a desire of mine for far too long, and yet getting to that end requires relatively little work. Yet I always seem to find something else I need to figure out before I do anything about it.
What kind(s) of music? All kinds. I have now quite a decent library of songs and sketches across a variety of genres and stages of completion that I simply want to get out to the world. So I scour my library and find something that is closest to the finish line that I might want to put out there. Every time I look through my creations, I feel differently about each of them. Sometimes I feel that some would be great works to be proud of, and then the next time I listen to them, I wonder what the hell I was thinking.
So enough of the over analysis, let's just get on with it, where do I start, pick one. Done. Minimal. No, that's the title I've given to it. Because it's one electronic instrument, with a very simple A-B-A song format. Although very minimal in many ways, it also demonstrates how such simple ideas can convey such expression and emotion in the musical realm.
Next step - how to get it to the world. While I have released one track on the major music platforms once before, it was not with a work that I was necessarily proud of. It was more an exercise of using something that I could publish to see how this new digital music industry works. That was a few years ago now, and the options for the DIY independent musician continue to grow, and the opportunities to make money evolve with that. The problem with that is that you quickly realize how much of a business music really is.
If you're going to release music with any intention of making money, you need to better understand the mechanics of the industry. This very quickly and easily becomes complicated and I have spent hours Googling all the things trying to find the silver bullet that helps make sense of it all. Yet there are so many dimensions.
Firstly, if you are to self-publish, what platform should you use? There are literally dozens, all that have different models of how to charge for their services, and also that have different features, benefits, and drawbacks. Some of these items come down to personal preference and circumstance. As with many things, this easily takes me down a pathway of analysis paralysis, comparing all of these minute details and trying to decide which pieces of the puzzle are least important to me. It's not the holy grail, but the best resource I kept coming back to in my quest was Ari's Take and his Google Sheet breakdown of each of the options presently out there. It does a pretty good job of providing an overview, but if any specific aspect of any one digital distributor is important to you, make sure you visit each of their websites to investigate further to get absolute certainty as to what they offer and how they do it.
Secondly, if you want to get paid, you need to understand how royalties work. Who collects what and for whom and how you tap into that. It's also different in every country, so finding content that is relevant for your jurisdiction just adds to the maze of it all. The main thing you need to know is that there are two distinct divisions of royalty types. One relates to the composition itself - the written music, so to speak, where royalties are paid to the writer/composer, as well as the publisher. The second is the actual recording itself, where royalties are paid to the performer(s) and record labels. As an independent artist, most of those entities are the same person - you. However, you need to make sure you set yourself up to be registered with various organizations who collect those royalties on your behalf and distribute them to the right people.
At the end of the day, for distribution, I went with DistroKid, which is one of the bigger heavy-hitters in the market at the moment. They offer USD$19.99 per year for unlimited uploads, and offer a number of features that I found appealing in my position and to my tastes. As you can see from the enclosed image, you should be able to find it on Apple Music, Spotify, and many others as soon as they make their way to their servers.
Now back to my files to see what track I upload next!
To pre-save ‘Minimal’ on Spotify, click here.
