Coldwave Blog - Music Tips For Independent Artists

By Kaitlyn Raterman Originally from SymBlog Being a musician is not as simple as writing a song, recording an album, selling it, and getting money from your sales. As an independent musician trying to learn a real living off of making music, it’s vital that you understand what kinds of royalty streams are out there. The first thing to understand is that in the most general sense, there are 2 parts, or 2 “sides,” to every “piece” of music. 1) Master The master is the sound recording. It’s the thing you hear when you play an mp3, vinyl, CD, YouTube video, etc. 2) Publishing The publishing side has to do with the underlying musical composition, which is embedded within a sound recording. The “publishing side” refers to the notes, melodies, chords, rhythms, lyrics, etc. to the piece of music. The “publishing side” is the musical composition. Various usages of each “side” to a piece of music generate their own royalties. If you write your own song, r...

This post originally appeared on MusicClout By Johnny Dwinell of Daredevil Production We often hear from artists inquiring about marketing and promotion services for their music project. They want some guidance on the best way to spend their money, so I thought I would share some of the most common mistakes indie artists make for their marketing and promotion budgets. First, I want to point out that these mistakes are shared equally among indie artists with small budgets and indie artists who have investors with big budgets. It’s mind-blowing. You must be careful to separate the emotion from the event. You must separate what you think is “cool” (i.e. a promotional tactics that serve your ego from strategies that will be far more effective in exposing your artistic effort). Marketing and promotion is the act of influencing buying decisions. This is where you expose your masterpiece to consumers with the intention of creating a deep enough relationship to inspire them t...

Ok, let's get straight to the point, as most of you already know Beatport announced on May 10 that they would be terminating many of their services, including the new streaming platform, you can read the full Beatport statement by clicking HERE . The fact is that they have decided to terminate the streaming service right after we have finished updating ALL OUR STREAMING links at our pages. It sucks because now we have to update everything again. A big part of our players are back online, and as you may have noticed we'll be using both, Bandcamp and YouTube embeddable players. But for at least half of our release catalogue, we still have a lot of work to do to update those players and have them working again. We apologize about the situation but there's nothing we can do here but work hard to bring all players back online as soon as we can, please be patient and stick with us during this change. In addition we're moving our content back to our first home, the www.c...

A Guest Post by Derek Sivers Originally from MusicClout . Some people are into money. Some aren’t. Some people are inspired by helping the needy. Some aren’t. Some are into fame, power, and prestige. Others are into anonymity and freedom from responsibility. It gets more interesting when you realize people have different preferences in the different parts of their life. Famous online, but anonymous in their local community. Generous with time, stingy with money. Introvert when working, extrovert when not. You have to know your preferences well, because no matter what you do, someone will tell you you’re wrong. If you’re not into money, many people will say you’re foolish. If you’re not into charity, many people will say you’re greedy. If you’re not into crowds, many people will say you’re missing out. Some careers come with excuses: The classic novelist thrives in solitude. Alone in a cabin in the woods, writing books that reach millions. ...

By Lauren Gill This post originally appeared on Sonicbids . With the rise of social media platforms such as Instagram and Snapchat, artists must create high-quality visual content to consistently engage their fans. Great visual content helps to increase your exposure among your target audience, grow your fanbase, and even land major career opportunities. Here are five types of visual content you can use right now to promote your music 1. Music videos The traditional music video is still one of the most effective forms of visual content to promote your music. A good music video can keep the momentum going when promoting your single. With many music fans watching videos on YouTube and Vevo, a good music video can also help new fans to discover your music. Shoot a music video that captures the essence of your song. Hire a good videographer to shoot and edit your music video. Do not sacrifice the quality of your music video by hiring someone with little to no experience....

By Vanessa Ferrer Originally from SymBlog . There are two ways that musicians have always made money, by performing and by selling merchandise. With the continued decline in music sales (except vinyl), and the increasing popularity of music consumption through streaming platforms like Spotify, artists are yet again forced to lean more heavily on other income sources in order to make a living doing what they love. Touring and live shows continue to be a primary revenue stream for artists, and most artists sell 85% or more of their merch directly at live shows at the merch table. With that, merch can be a lucrative source of income to artists if they play it right.  While many artists know that selling merch is a good way to keep the hypothetical lights on in their business of being an artist, we’re still seeing some common mistakes being made out there across all levels. Let’s zone in on five of these and see if we might make more sense of this merch madness. Not ...