How To Earn The Most Money As An Independent Musician

As an independent musician, a lot of the time you’re making music for the passion; you love what you do and it loves you. But there comes the time when you need to ask yourself “how am I going to make a living out of this?”

Which is what we thought here at Ditto Music – so we opened the vaults of our data and studied well over 100k releases and found out how an independent musician can make the most money from their release.

There were quite a few interesting data points we found:

• iTunes is the runaway leader in royalty generation for artists - it outperforms all its competitors in every genre and remains the main store when it comes to music sales.

• Soundtrack is the highest grossing genre of music by a long way, bringing in 58% more than average for a release.

• With the debate over Spotify’s royalty distribution in the news, it’s interesting to see that the store pays out far below the average when compared to its rivals.

• Hip-Hop’s popularity over the last few years has seen its stock rise significantly, with a Hip-Hop artist looking to net themselves 11% more than average per release.

We’ve picked through all the data and presented it in a much easier to digest manner, analysing which store is best for your genre, along with how much each genre makes on average.

Infograph

Click here for more information

Joel Brandenstein and DieLochis: recordJet Passengers are Permanent Fixtures in the Charts

What do Joel Brandenstein and DieLochis have in common? Quite a bit, actually. Both acts are recordJet passengers, both have gained popularity through YouTube, and both are successful in the charts!

Click to read more ...

Capital City Derby: Brokenmusic And RecordJet Announce Collaboration

The digital music distributor recordJet and the young Berlin-based technology start-up brokenmusic have announced a joint collaboration. brokenmusic focuses on music and audio production services, while digital distributor recordJet offers bands and musicians the opportunity to sell their music digitally and physically worldwide. “As a Berlin-based start-up, we are particularly proud that a successful, young company like recordJet has placed their trust in us for a joint cooperation. Our work together will mainly focus on the combination of our services”, said Valéry Döhler, founder and managing director of brokenmusic.

“We were very confident in the idea of brokenmusic, because it stops right where recordJet starts. From production to sales, it covers the precise competencies that are needed before distribution. By combining our strengths, we’ll be able to offer our passengers production services together with a professional partner”, commented Jorin Zschiesche, Captain of recordJet, on the young collaboration.

Click to read more ...

A 5-Year Upward Climb – Digital Music Distributor recordJet Celebrates Its Anniversary

The young, Berlin-based digital distributor is not so young anymore. The 1st of November 2013 marks the start-up’s 5-year anniversary. While nowadays firmly rooted in the capital, recordJet was founded in 2008 in Dresden with the goal of offering musicians and bands a fair opportunity to sell their music digitally worldwide. “Back then, recordJet was formed due to lack of alternatives”, said Jorin Zschiesche, Captain of recordJet. “We wanted to sell our own musical project online and weren’t satisfied with other distributors’ offers – too high shares, loss of rights, restricted freedom, long-term contracts, lack of transparency. So what could be better than doing it yourself?”

Click to read more ...

Has Digital Distribution And Production Had A Positive Impact On The Industry?

With the advent of both digital production and distribution methods becoming more popular over the past decade the landscape of music has changed with it.

The question is, has this been a positive one?

The answer to that probably differs according to who you speak to.  For some people it will be seen as a boon allowing more freedom and productivity than what was possible before. Yet others will argue it’s opened the floodgates to a swarm of low quality work diluting music in general in the process.

Click to read more ...

Relationships Are The New Distribution

Social Media superhero Chris Brogan recently wrote a post on the basics – the 4 P’s of marketing(product, price, place, and promotion) and talked about how many people don’t spend enough time on their Product, and try to make up for it in Promotion. If that doesn’t work they try competing on Price. But rarely is much time spent thinking about Place.

This got me thinking about how music is marketed, and how absolutely right he is. A lot of indie musicians tend to spend the majority of their time on Product and Promotion, with Price usually being the standard $0.99 per track. The common mistake is in thinking that Place, which is your distribution, is taken care of once you’ve gotten your music up on iTunes or Bandcamp.

I think we need to start thinking of distribution as more than just where people download or buy your music from, and maybe shuffle a few P’s around in the process.

Click to read more ...

What digital distribution means for (especially) female artists

As a fan, I’ve been excited for the rise of digital distribution and for the direct interaction of artists and listeners because it means I’m more likely to hear great music that I like. It means that I get to decide what I want to listen to, rather than having a slew of A&R folks and radio programmers make the decisions for me.

But lately, I’ve been thinking about how record labels are not only gatekeepers for the music itself, but also for the visual image of artists.

I get it. Artists are performers, and looks matter.

But it’s pretty clear when you look at Top 40 artists that the standards for successful female artists and successful male artists are not the same. Music industry executives are predominantly male, and their professional tastes are, frankly, boring. So female artists have to be conventionally attractive, but male artists can look like Nickelback—middling-attractive guys (whose videos are then stuffed full of women in bikinis).

Click to read more ...