pouët.net

to be fair 2 months delay response during pandemic outbreak isn't that much. one never really knows how many people these companies have operating or their current volume of stuff to process. but you're entitled to move on and try your luck elsewhere ofcourse. hope they reply to you eventually.

Yeah the pandemic could play a part in this. I asked them about it, actually, but no answer was given. If they are indeed affected by Covid-19, then maybe they could communicate this clearly on their website for all customers to see? After all, they still accept new registrations and take people's payments and post regularly on their social media pages. No mention of Covid-19 as far as I could tell. And this, to be honest, is an unacceptable practice for a business in whatever situation if they don't deliver what they promise. They could simply have stated that submissions will take longer and that would be absolutely fine, but the website suggests that music will be in first stores within two to five days! I'd have been happy with 4 weeks and more if a simple explanation was given as to what is going on. No communication just does not work well here to gain trust in the company.

This is something I'm curious about, as someone with vague plans to release an album on Bandcamp at some point... Assuming your goal as a musician is not purely "get my music heard by as many people as possible by any means necessary", and that you want to make some money out of it, what ultimate benefit do you get from your music being on Spotify?

I understand that more visibility is generally a good thing, even if it doesn't directly make money. But it seems to me that the kind of visibility you get through streaming is particularly worthless, because there's very little incentive for the people following you on Spotify to turn that engagement into anything more than "continuing to listen to you on Spotify".

If your main revenue stream as a musician is live gigs, then I can see how treating Spotify as your advertising billboard can work - but if your main revenue stream is people buying your albums, then I can't see Spotify doing anything but eating away at that.

Maybe it's just that audiences on Spotify are way, way bigger than I imagine, and the 1% of listeners who go outside of the walled garden and spend money on your albums / t-shirts / signed underpants are still a big enough number to make it worthwhile?

From the standpoint of a consumer of relatively obscure and non-mainstream music (psychedelic/drone/doom/noise/weird metal, apocalyptic folk etc), my product of a choice is the vinyl album. I will buy that to support the artist and enjoy the pretty covers and to have the authentic object and all that, but I will listen to the actual music on Spotify. If the artist is not on Spotify, I might make it to a gig and buy the album or a t-shirt there, provided there's some way to know what the band sounds like before putting on my black clothes and hauling my ass to a club. But there's exactly zero chances that I will buy mp3 files or digital downloads. I don't listen to or want those.

slight off-topic: i love bandcamp, too. but i do not love the fact, that if you have track streaming enabled, although 128kbps or whatever, they can be downloaded on the fly, because there is no protection attempt whatsoever. so i there is some good grab-and-run practice going on, unless you give out the music for free (name a price).

pls excuse, small bandcamp ripability update. i know, any protection can be cracked, we all know where we come from, right, but... actualy dragging the bandcamp url from your browser into mediahuman youtube to mp3 converter (i am not affiliated with them, just for awareness reasons!! https://www.mediahuman.com/youtube-to-mp3-converter/ ) gives you high quality encoded 192 kbps mp3 files of *any* artist that has streaming enabled within seconds. i just checked on my own release Megademon and i remember asking bandcamp about this fact, with them replying like: well, you can be lucky that anyone listens to your music, so just shut up.

Without going over my statements from Monstercat in detail, I'm confident to say that the income from streaming services (of which Spotify is by far the biggest contributor in volume) makes up the overwhelming majority of the total income.

In the first period (2-3 months) after the relase there were some people buying downloads, but after that it's really only streaming that supply any lasting revenue.

Granted, that track was (pop) EDM, which doesn't necessarily have a long shelflife. Things might be different for other types of music, but just considering my own consumer habits I would imagine it's a general trend.
I guess you could reach out to Dubmood and ask him, considering he's been running his own label releasing chiptune music (in a very wide sense) for some years now.

gasman: there is the random listener and the supporter, these are 2 different crowds imho and you need to cater to both. ultimately your goal is to turn the random listener into a supporter. if you only cater to the supporters, you will have a much harder time reaching the random listener and thus limit your fanbase.

to get the random listeners you need to have your stuff available on their random platform of choice in easy to consume manner, right there on a playlist next to other stuff they might usually listen, for that you need to be on soundcloud, youtube, spotify, whatever streaming service that is hip, and network in it, to get your stuff listed on other peoples playlists. playing gigs outside your usual crowd also falls into this category. random listener who finds your stuff particularly interesting will then search you up and see how they can support you directly. it's a low percentage that will "convert", but if you're not exposing your work, this percentage is 0.

to get the supporters to actually support you you need to be providing an incentive for them to get your work with things that they won't get out of random streaming service. proper audio quality and artwork on a reasonable price tag is usually enough. bandcamp is currently the best platform for that imho. offering exclusive limited edition stuff can also go a long way, especially when you already have a devoted fan base community.

also deserving being mentioned is that you need a way to easily aggregate and communicate to your fanbase. mailing list / newsletter is still the option giving the best results for the majority of artists out there, facebook and twitter seem alright to show activity and hype something up, but the content there is ethereal and so people tend to miss the real important call to actions that translate into actual support.

just some lessons i picked up along the way from running a label for 20 years. take them with a grain of salt. whatever works for you is the best way.

gasman: one of my friends started making very popular niche music - boom bap. you know, this "relaxed lo-fi hiphop beats for studying" kindof instrumental stuff. he is currently building his 2nd house from spotify money. i kid you not.

you can get rich by streaming media by 3 ways:

- you get selected into some very prominent, main-page playlists (this is what happened and keeps happening to my pal)
- you achieve meme status somewhere (don't count on it)
- you are taylor swift

it also helps if you are VERY consistent with your stylistic choice, spanning over a decade.

Cheers all, it's really helpful to have those perspectives. I've probably bought into too much of the "if you're not Taylor Swift, forget about it" narrative, so it's good to know that normal people also have ways to harness the whole mass-market-consumption machine and make some money out of streaming - directly or not - provided they're suitably smart about marketing and have a better strategy than "upload music, receive $".

Not sure that's the direction I want to take as a hobbyist (hell, one of my favourite things about the demoscene is that it isn't ruled by who-is-the-best-at-marketing) but fair play to anyone who does.


wertstahl: That seems like a reasonable argument from Bandcamp I'd say. They don't have to stop determined leechers (because, frankly, no technical measures will do that) - they just have to make doing the right thing the easy and socially acceptable choice by comparison. It's like turnstiles at a metro station - any fool can come up with ways to get past them, but you still have to make a conscious choice to be The Asshole Who Jumps Over Turnstiles.

hardest thing for indies is getting visibility in an over-saturated market. if you hate doing the marketing yourself you can always try to find someone to do it for you for a percentage of your cake or a monthly flat fee, it's always a compromise that you'll have to supervise though.

alternatively you can try to join a label within your genre, that will likely already come with somewhat of a fan base that knows what kind of sounds to expect, giving you the necessary exposure and network to get some traction going. just don't sign for a label that locks you down from releasing what you want, takes all your money and does zero promotion. but there are plenty of half-way indie labels out there, just a matter of finding one that fits your goals.

would love to push out your releases through enough if you're interested. we're not genre specific, don't come with hordes of followers, but could still be worth your while. ping me for details.