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Chapter 17: Digital Jazz: Making Music in High-Tech Times
If you decide to take the plunge and set up a home recording studio, be sure
to give careful thought to its location. The more privacy a room has the more
ideal it is as a home studio.
The rise of the Internet in selling music
Today, the music industry is so competitive, and profit margins are so
narrow, that recording companies often expect new artists to come to them
with professionally recorded CDs, ready for release. In some cases, musicians
even pay the recording companies to release their CDs just to get distribution.
Other musicians, though, don’t think a musician should pay a company
to release his music. Marketing and distribution are often minimal, and most
new CDs get lost in the marketplace of music stores and online outlets.
In fact, the old model of distributing music via CDs in record stores is falling
away. Very few independent stores remain that are willing to stock and prominently
display CDs by unknown or local artists. Big chain stores are mostly
interested in music by popular artists guaranteed to sell. Even if a store stocks
your CD, a jazz fan who hasn’t heard of you stands very little chance of finding
and buying your CD among thousands of titles on shelves.
It’s very likely that someday soon, such a thing as a music store won’t exist,
and everyone may get their music online; in that case, an artist with a good
Web site and a good head for marketing has an even better position to bypass
the traditional methods. In the following sections, I discuss creating a Web site
and using other independent Web sites to market and sell your music.
Building your own Web site
Jazz musicians can reach out to music fans and keep the profits from their
work by building their own Web sites, where they market and sell CDs inexpensively.
You can save even more money by figuring out how to build your
own site instead of hiring someone else to do it.
Web sites are good places for visitors to hear your music. Most musicians
post short clips (say, 30 seconds) from the songs. If fans want to hear more,
they can order a CD.
Web sites aren’t just for selling CDs, either; you can advertise other products,
such as books, T-shirts, posters, and so on, and advertise upcoming events
just as easily.
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