Back to the original post, I set up a BandCamp page for my first “EP” (love BandCamp!) then I used
DistroKid to push it out to all digital places. What I just figured out however, is that you can link your DistroKid to a “Spotify For Artists”, which THEN lets you edit your Spotify profile, wherein you can add a link to your website - in my case my BandCamp page. (That wasn’t at all confusing!) …and yes, I really like BandCamp as a platform for artists. BandCamp is awesome with how they let you setup your digital releases. …But all of that is totally pointless if no one knows about you stuff in the first place.
Now that I’m done writing all that, in @Emma 's case, you have so many “followers” on SoundCloud already, if I were you, I’d just set up a BandCamp page and put a link to it in your SoundCloud profile to give your followers a place they can purchase/download your music if they want. To heck with Spotify…
I first heard Emma’s music on the old site and was very impressed right off. Why? It was good and very different. I think it was a year later I checked out her soundcloud site and was blown away by the following. I thought ahaa there are others that like this work. I then wondered, that having that many impressed with her work, has she been successful and in fact making money. I never asked her. I just know there isn’t any room to write comments on her songs, and I am lucky to get three. ha ha Glad others think the same way. You go Emma:)
@miked@feaker
Ta for the kind words… it’s a funny thing the soundcloud followers… used to be quite cool coz every time someone you followed released a new track, you got a notification. Since they stopped doing that, it makes it really hard to keep up with new sounds. The only way you really get plays there now is by others reposting your stuff and getting it on playlists. I find a lot of people simply don’t use soundcloud whereas they do use spotify.
I do mean to do something about that one day… it’s just that I’d rather make music than do promotion stuff and I seem to have never enough time. I love getting the comments on soundcloud, they warm the cockles of my heart…
SoundCloud still notifies - I just went to my home page and see that you posted “I saw you lying on the road…” 8 days ago… Have you looked into SoundCloud Pro? I wonder if that will give you more options since you’ve already got such a big footprint there?
ahh, you are one of the lucky few… I complained about it over a year ago and they said they weren’t doing it any more…! Go figure…
I think it is a mail server thing and ‘down under’ it doesn’t work… strange…
The soundcloudpro was simply too expensive for me…
That’s too bad. I hate when these companies rope you in with their services then change to rules to try to get you to pay. That, or they are just cutting back of free offerings. Well, BandCamp is free and very usable from a do-it-yourself point of view. Maybe you could group your songs into albums and “release” them there? Once you get over the learning curve it’s pretty easy to do. Then you’d at least have a place your fans could buy/download your songs. Of course, if you only want them to be able to download, you could just enable downloading on the songs you already have up on SC. Just kinda thinking out loud…
When I was 19-20 or so (few years ago) I signed a deal with Believe Digital (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Believe_Digital)
At the time they were very small…now they are pretty big!
Anyway, they are a distributor and my music ended up on itunes, spotify etc. They were able to do stuff like get us on the front page of the Itunes ‘indie’ section (or whatever it was) for a wekk. Initially, the deal was for 3 years. I got paid (such as it was) during that period but I basically didnt really do anything to keep up with it.
In retrospect what I needed was not a distribution deal but a promotion deal, gigs, and other stuff to make me actually dedicate time to turning it into a job.
Anyway, after I sent some initially material to them and it all appeared online, life took over…I went to uni etc. Carried on making music and doing some gigs but forgot all about Believe.
Out of curiosity, I just tried to log in to the client website - I still can! They have all my wrong details so if they have tried to get in touch with me or send me a few pennies over the years it will have floated into the ether.
Maybe I should get back in touch with them…especially now I am in France (Believe is a french company)
My whole experience with it is:
Its fun to see your music on itunes etc and to have this stuff done without paying for it
It is absolutely pointless unless you have an audience already and have the time (or the courage) to throw yourself at it like a ‘real’ job.
Spotify is a little more useful in terms of generating fans (it seems most of streams of my music in the intervening years have come through spotify)
Youtube vids/live streams, gigs and submitting your music to blog is the best way (only way?) of generating fans and you need them first.
BTW I think Believe bought Tunecore in 2015.
anyway, you might consider submitting something to them or however it works now. I was lucky in that they approached me (through myspace - thats how long ago it was!) when they were a fairly small company. No idea how they operate now.
I should really write to them…
aha! now I see, it was a conspiracy to begin with you used @Cristina 's song to lure me in … now I am not sure if I am the pied piper of the bunch or was I just lured here by the queen bee!
you used 
