Recently I was asked about artists setting up their websites to offer songs as a digital download to their fans. Specifically if it was worth the time and effort and cost of setting it up.

Here is my response:

It all depends on who is buying.. If it’s an older group of buyers then the cd option is the best. If they have a following of teens/40’s or if they have fans already asking for downloads then they may need to look at the download option.

Any artist with a paypal account and a website can create a sales page and sell their music online. The problem is by the time you pay the processing fees you are in the hole unless you are selling full albums. 99 cents doesn’t go far when you start deducting all the associated fees.

The biggest problem with downloads is you can’t sell them at a venue and since most music sales still occur at a live event you almost need to offer the cd option or you are losing any chance for additional income.

From a publishers point of view I would always push for the physical products because it is getting very difficult to issue a mechanical license for digital products. With a cd there are ways to verify production (invoices from duplicators) but verifying the number of cd downloads if the artist is using a service and being distributed through a dozen different services is next to impossible unless the label runs everything through one master account.

Looking down the road into the future the music income for artists will be shifting to [Read more…]