@@blakeunderwood1075 Why do you doubt it? The information is easily accessible. He sold over 1,000,000 downloads of his album from his own website, no label. That's Platinum. We're talking about Prince, not lil Coco.
Less than a penny streams and slaving for plays is the short game, but there is a way out… I’m all in on direct to consumer music sales. There's REAL leverage 😁
Just something to think about. How about utilizing the streaming platforms like they’re radio stations? Instead of putting nothing on streaming platforms, why not release just the single on the streaming sites like artists have always done on radio and then let fans know they can get the full album on your website? I think that’s the best of both worlds.
Facts I switched over ( Why left this model I don't know) used to sell them CDs, and USBs, so I switched back and went D2C and sold more I would of made off streaming in one day!!! collected emails too!!! crazy!!! I thank you fam!!! I literally just told my supporters, here's what's about to happen, and you have the option....I was honestly shocked!
Man i used to buy cds and even tapes as a young, young kid. EVERYBODY did. Music always costed money. Its crazy that it just became accepted as "free" with the rise of the internet
Hey Curtiss Another Example of direct consumer is an underground artist named Mach-Hommy. He has albums that he sells for Hundreds to thousands of dollars and he has a loyal fan base. if your ever looking for something to cover look him up.
I was actually doing direct to consumer about a year or two ago , it's encouraging to see others do it themselves as well. I hope to be able to produce as often as I use to soon as well
I would love to see the correlation to the people who buy an artists album compared to who shows up for the live show. There are a lot of artists out there that have tons of streams, but nobody is showing up to their show. Meanwhile you have people with no streams, but the small venues are sold out. There is a difference between a cyber following and a real following.
um why not just do both. streaming is just another income source, yall willing to give that up? not me, I'm a make this music get all the money it can, personally.
Y would a fan buy your music for let’s say $10.00 when they could go to a streaming platform and get it for free ( y buy the cow when you could get the milk for free)🧐
I am so glad that I found your channel there are such factual subjects you cover that are very important cuz the goals that I am running around like a chicken with my head. Cut off to achieve. To have an artist like yourself and Nick D, etc. to keep it real is such a blessing for me. Much love, keep grinding🎉
Cologne companies are using this platform now to sell fragrance at a lower cost coming from them to you with no middle person, saving the consumer more money and designers cologne making better profits as well as selling directly to customers, is one of the reasons big cities from Chicago to San Francisco's shopping circles are closing their doors due to high price in lease with minimal profits as manufacturers and selling direct to customers, Thanks King Curtiss for bringing this new? Platform for selling directly to customers is long overdue!
I’m new to your site. I’m also an Artist (Poet, singer, songwriter and audio engineer). I produce my own work and it takes a LOT of time and you’ve said. What you’re been saying makes a lot of sense. We should all go direct to consumer! If enough of us do it, streaming will be a thing of the past and our hard work will be taken as valuable as they are
If youre selling dtc might as well collect emails but what might also help is collecting data from a survey at p.o.s. with questions that provide info on the customers and fans lifetstyle (if they are also musicians, etc..) and then catering to that as well eventually
No.1 Question is. For someone that puts out singles, what price range would you use for the DTC. If you are selling albums you can tag that price up to say $10-20 per sale but when it comes to singles, it's pretty hard to gauge what is the best price for you the musician and for the fans buying it. What's your say?
yeah bro custom fans like the ones you have actual personal emails with will leave you the biggest tips, don’t need many fans at all just need to reach out more and have discussions with each one that shows that you’re in it for them and that your music means something.
i needed to see this. i dont even drop cus the idea that a bunch of suits devaluing my art to nothing disgusts me, yet ive dreamed of hand making numbered cds and cassettes encrusted in dope art ive designed myself but i always assumed people wouldnt buy it when streaming exists. but if people will buy a print they glance at occasionally for 25 bucks theyl buy music. we gotta be the change.
I have one (hopefully) good question in regards to this. How do you deal with live shows, at the moment most promoters use streaming as a measure for the size of the audience you're gonna bring. Should social media cover for that? Thanks!
I think that’s a good question and the answer should be YES. Even if you have hundreds of thousands of streams/listeners, you don’t necessarily know where the listeners generating those streams are located. Don’t forget about streaming farms, too! One of the problems I’ve heard discussed a few times was how streams and follower #s weren’t actually converting to show attendance. That’s my take on it, anyway.
Organize your small shows for your supporters...they will bring their people n so on... perform for them no matter how small the crowd is.... don't forget to bring merch with you. That way everything is yours instead of filling a stadium and get a fraction of the doe
Curtiss, I appreciate your content and find it quite valuable to have a voice like yours highlighting DIY methods and mentality for artists. But, I think you were overly harsh calling out that specific commentator describing his post as a "loser's mentality." You can't just shut down debate and valid criticism and expect to convert more to the DIY ethos. As you have rightly said, the artists like Kanye and James Blake actually implementing and discussing D2C is very important. By that same token, the more people who are won over the better it will be for all independent, DIY artists. I've been in the game for a decade as well, and to deny the very real issue of perceived value of recorded music is a mistake. The comment you highlighted, while perhaps a bit defeatist, is not untrue. Many young artists will see your video and be asking themselves the same question: how do I get fans who will be willing to pay for my music? To dismiss them is to deny the fact that as James Blake pointed out in his tweets, music has been devalued over the course of 25 years. Let's not forget that streaming was the solution to piracy - or more specifically, Spotify's free tier, which now exists in a much more limited form. So if your goal is to convince a famous artist like, say, Beyonce, to bail on streaming, well, you're going to have a hell of a time. This was more feasible when Taylor Swift pulled her music of Spotify many years ago (but it still existed on other streaming services, like Apple Music). Hell, Neil Young just put his music back on Spotify this week after pulling it (albeit for other reasons) during the pandemic. In order to move forward we have to be honest about where we've been, where we're at, and where we're going - both as DIY artists but also as an entire industry. Unfortunately whether we want to admit it or not, the major labels and streaming services still wield enormous influence both in dictating the going rate within the market and also within congress. Part of the reason many of us are considering getting off Spotify is because of the 1,000 stream threshold that was implemented first on Deezer, and now on Spotify, at the behest of Lucian Grainge, the CEO of UMG. Another point worth making is that no one is denying that physical sales can generate significant amounts of income for artists. This is not limited to DIY and in all honesty, to act as if every band, rapper, or solo artist out there - signed or not - is not implementing this is disingenuous. The difference between what you are advocating vs. what the majority of artists are doing is actually getting out of streaming entirely in favor of only selling digital downloads and physical recordings D2C. This is where it goes from becoming a no-brainer to something each individual artist has to consider on their own terms. I'm not a rapper, so maybe this is newer within the hip hop genre. I know hip hop was much more quick to adopt streaming than rock or country, so maybe that's why my perspective is different. A lot of what you recommend is a no-brainer, especially on Bandcamp, where noise rock, experimental rock, metal, punk, shoe gaze, and so on and so on has been where those of us in these genres have lived and breathed since 2007. It's not uncommon for bands to just sell cassettes and vinyl in small quantities and once they're gone they're gone. Frankly, as a younger millennial, I'm somewhat perplexed by the sudden realization people seem to be having that they can...sell CD's? It's like I've hit my head and people slept through the 2000s. All of us in the rock world have been selling vinyl, CD's, cassettes, zines, and every other physical product under the sun forever. We never stopped. It's why a lot of rock bands are able to chart despite having much lower streaming numbers: they can still sell tens of thousands of CD's and vinyl. Country fans are just now joining streaming services en masse, hence the rise in country on the streaming charts, after years of just sticking to CD's and downloads. Most artists - even bigger ones - would prefer not to have their music on streaming platforms. The way royalties are distributed in a weighted, "winner take all" manner is unfair. It would be much healthier to have each person's monthly subscription dollar amount split amongst the artists they listened to the most that month. But we know that would upset the powers-that-be who are already struggling to maintain their stranglehold on the industry. But to deny that music is seen as free - or at least seen as an on-demand product - is to deny reality. Most serious artists are going to weigh whether they are cutting off their nose to spite their face. Yes, 100 sales of an album is a sizable amount of money, and certainly any artist at the level in which that is all they can sell, well, they're going to see much more money than the concomitant streams they would likely make. But at a certain point, if they're touring, making videos, and pushing social media content - they're going to want to reach as many people as possible. Remember, most artists are also performing, so they're also wanting to sell tickets, and for many who do a good live business, they make the calculation that it's worth it to keep streaming on the table. I'm not saying either approach is wrong. The whole point is that artists should have a choice. But we shouldn't be shaming folks for understanding this is a complicated problem, and making the right choice for their own career, whether that is windowing releases for a few months, only putting singles on streaming services, only releasing on services that pay a higher per stream royalty, or just trying to make high quality physical product to sell to the hardcore fans, while also having streaming for the casual audience. There is no right or wrong way here.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but is it not nearly impossible to sell DTC starting at 0 fans? Due to the short attention span of the youth mixed with the convince and habits of using DSPs? I don't know anyone who isn't a music head that will take the time to look at a new artist who isn't easily accessible... please help me understand where to start if I wanna start from 0 fans to any type of fanbase without DSPs.
Generally speaking: No. It's not difficult to start from 0. Not If you know how an ecommerce business is run. Build your business foundation first. A website that can capture emails with an opt in, a store (shopify has a $5/mo plan if you Google). Make art. Unique to you. Think of how you can provide/present that music-art in a way that's an experience above streaming. That is what you start selling. Ads and marketing helps with this. It's tedious and hard work to do all this. It's doable though. Take an ecommerce business class, since you don't understand how to get customers or know how to run an online business. Not a music business class. Repeat: a regular ecommerce business class. The difference between the two, is night and day astounding. I've studied both. Regular ecommerce classes are 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 They offer waaay more detailed info on how to run a successful entrepreneurial business. One tip: it's not what you sell, it's HOW you sell it.
No you're absolutely correct, it amazes me how many people here are blind to that fact and apparently compare themselves to well-established (understatement even) artists like Prince. It's plain rediculous
Thanks for this! im gearing up for taking music seriously and been trying to get a good 8 songs ive written recorded and mixed so this has put some extra fire under my ass 🔥
Curtiss, have you considering putting only snippets of your songs on Spotify etc then only place to get the full songs/cds would be on your website while that way people could hear you on streaming but for full songs buy from site?
I don't think that will be possible, people are lazy and they want to stick to one platform at a time. If somebody's in the mood for listening to Spotify music they're going to stay on that platform they won't take their time out to go visit a website
King Curtis King. I'm inspired by you since the past month I uploaded my first band camp song I'm doing content creation on TikTok also to be relevant. Is it why I don't have a first sale yet because I don't got a high quality album put out yet or because I havent focused on a platform yet? Anyways I can use some advice.
I think you are a great RU-vidr keep going and doing these videos as far as a rapper it’s hard to support and take you serious as an artist due to your YouTubing tho sorry but thank you!
Yeah, this is the future. There's opportunity to get really creative with how you promote music / offer contributing products to give additional value / receive additional $£€. EXCELLENT video from Toofless. I'm gonna go ahead and subscribe to him.
