Survival profit for Indie Musicians

Survival profit for Indie Musicians

In this so called web 2.0 revolution a lot of different things happened in several and differentiated quadrants of on-line activities and resources. In what touches to the Internet Music World, some good new approaches are making all the difference for the world wide music labor force...the musicians.

A lot of places were born in the last couple of years, and they really represent some change, in what touches to possibilities of revenue and better and greater exposition, for the indie artists. For years, and after the old mp3.com "died" around 1999, that no other OMD (Online Music Depot) paid the music content of their sites, instead, they created limited accounts for artists, and charged a regular fee for more bandwidth, space and exposure.

But The revolution of mentalities that is occurring, is changing the rules of the relationship of the music product by the artists with the music sites , and the consequent possibility of the artists get rewarded. Of course, we are talking about cents for the majority of the indie artists, but...one cent here...another there...make some dollar more.

Tunesquare.com - for example, had a good model working for half an year, where they had a cake of certain amount money for a period of two months, and the split of the earnings for each artist was calculated by the total number of downloads of the site and the relative percentage of each artist number of downloads, in the defined period of time. After six months, was unsustainable to still kept sponsors, as the mentor of the site said, due to the fact of the lack of projection of the site in the rankings and indexes of marketing internet. Tunesquare.com is not paying anymore.

Muzoogle.com - for example pay users to make reviews, while the artists can also be rewarded by each streamed track that is done by the user from their music page within the site, but for the possibility of earning, the indie artist will have to subscribe a specific paid membership.

Last.fm - also presented a royalty scheme to a wide range of artists and labels that use the site to spread their music. It started some months ago, the split of the advertisement revenue, paying the artist for each streamed track directly from the artist page, however, the majority of the users don´t listen music in the artists pages, they use the last.fm player.

Reverbnation.com - is also attracting the attentions of signed and unsigned artists, not only for their growing exposure, but also for their fair-share program, where they split the advertisement revenues with the artists, with some unknown formula, at least for the common mortal, that is calculated from the exposure of the artist reverbnation page, and the expression of the use of widgets in blogs, web pages, music plays, number of fans and more.

There are some more sites that also have some kind of rewarding program for artists, and maybe a couple more can just open doors...as we all wish that in a near future more sites can reward the artists for the fruit of their work.

After all, the indie artists in 90 por cent of the cases will have ALL the hard work to promote and try to get visitors to their own pages and expect that people can listen to their music...

Why can´t indie musicians make their own advertisement split revenue, fruit of their own hard work?

The home and small business marketing for long that supplies tools and mechanisms that help people to earn money, and promote their websites and products. However, the concept didn´t really touched indie artists, nevertheless, they are all already used to the concept of promoting their music using the internet.

The split policy used by most of the websites that reward artists, consist in a direct share of a percentage that is taken from the advertisement revenue. So, why can´t the artist use some similar concept, to earn and be paid for all the effort and time that is used in the hard task of promotion?

Now any artist can do it!

www.linkbucks.com - This program offers the possibility to create links for the artists promotional efforts, that after the user click, and before arriving at the desired url, will show a top banner, an introduction or a pop under option, where an advertisement is delivered within the process. After some defined number of clicks done by the users, fans or listeners, the artist will earn some cents. Linkbucks is still in Beta, and it is really expectable that in the future much more services alike will populate the possible options.

There might be some more websites with tools that can provide similar services, and for sure that artists should explore them. This kind of tool was not designed intentionally or exclusively for musicians, but mainly for another growing market that is exploding: the online marketing and home business, nevertheless, when i saw it at work, i thought, why can´t the artists use it too?

After all, it is direct cent/penny earning for the artist, without much intermediaries than the supplier of the service. And a pertinent question was brought to light: If there are sites that are paying, how can they pay the artists? because they are sharing the advertisement revenue with artists. So, why can´t any artist do it too?

Of course this will raise some ethical issues for some, but after all, the artists are only going to use it if they decide so.

But if you are an independent musician of any area, keep in mind only this thought:

If music sites use advertisement as a way to earn money, and the users and subscribers of that sites, are already used to the concept, why can´t you use it too? well, it will be a decision to each one, but now you know the options :)