Music Promotion | How to Get Your Music on to Major Platforms

on By

You’ve invested months or maybe even years into writing your songs, perfecting the composition and arrangement, getting the track produced and carving out the sounds. You’ve finally got the final master(s), no pun intended, and at long last you have a song or collection of songs that are ready to share with the world. Great!

The problem is, not all of your audience likes to listen to music in the same place, and if you want to grow your audience, you want to make sure your music is available on the platform they would normally use to listen to music.

Apple Music, Google Play, Spotify, Amazon Music and TIDAL are just a few of the ever increasing number of streaming platforms you can reach with a distribution partner.

Even if all platforms did accept uploads directly from artists (which most do not), there are so many that it would be incredibly time consuming to have to send all your music to each one individually. This presents a frustrating obstacle for artists, but their reasoning is fair and there is a range of companies that provide a solution to artists and labels.

Operating services like Spotify or iTunes and making sure the money goes to the right places heavily relies on metadata. They also want to present a professional and uniform visual for their users – that generally means no strange formatting in song titles, good resolution artwork, all contributors credited appropriately and all the data they need in the right place.

Stores may achieve this by screening who is able to directly submit works for sale/streaming in their stores through an application process, which means it is possible to submit directly to some outlets, however it is suggested that you start out by using a distribution partner.

Some great reasons to go down the distribution partner route include:

  • They have already jumped through all of the hoops required to distribute music directly to outlets.
  • They will be able to advise you on anything you are uncertain on relating to the distribution of your music and how to correct any issues with the release of your music.
  • They have already invested in the infrastructure required to effectively do this activity at scale and distribute to many stores.

There are a fair amount of companies that offer music distribution services but the top three that come to mind for me are Distrokid, CD Baby and Amuse.

1) Distrokid

Distrokid is the company I personally use to release music to stores.

For an annual fee, Distrokid allows completely unlimited digital distribution with a quick delivery to stores. You can choose to set a release date further in the future (this is generally advisable to allow for playlist consideration and pre-release promotion opportunities), but if you want it to go live as soon as stores process it, then you can release to stores “immediately”.

There are lots of optional add-on services priced on a per-release basis which can increase the renewal cost of the subscription.

I’ve had no issues, everything works as intended and although support through their ticketing system can be a little slow at times depending on their volume of queries, they can be reached for general advice queries on social media channels. If they can’t fix it there for you, chances are you’ll need to still raise a support ticket but they will tell you which one to raise, so it’s going to the right place.

If you want to sign up with Distrokid, my referral link will get you 7% off your chosen plan and get me $5.

2) CD Baby

CD Baby offer a pretty comprehensive range of services allowing artists to distribute both physical copies of their albums as well as digital distribution. They know their way around the publishing world and are happy to get involved on behalf of their artists.

Operating a pay-per-release pricing model along with taking 9% of all revenue collected, they also succeed when their artists do. This means it directly benefits CD Baby to promote the artists using their service, which may be an influencing factor when deciding which company to work with.

3) Amuse

Amuse is a great development in the music industry over recent years. They offer completely free music distribution to major outlets because they get to use the insight from the sales data delivered to them as the artists distributor to cherry-pick and invest in artists they see potential in, which puts them in a uniquely powerful position as a record label.

Summary

You should now know how to get your music on Spotify, iTunes/Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Facebook and Instagram, TikTok and potentially hundreds of other outlets – pick a distribution partner, upload your tracks and artwork, make sure your data is correct, pick a release date and you’re done.

If you already released a song to stores, don’t then try and get another distributor to re-release the same version. This can and will cause you frustration that is easily avoidable.

When your music is available everywhere, you should probably start keeping track of all of these links somehow… That’s a problem for another post, but spreadsheets and databases are your friend here.

Music Promotion | RepostExchange

on By

If you’re just setting out into promoting your music, it can be difficult to work out where to start. Finding networks and groups of people with similar interests is a natural way to discuss your work with others and promote what you’re doing. Not only that, it opens up the opportunity to get feedback from peers in your field.

In this article I want to introduce you to a service called RepostExchange. This is a great place to start building your audience. It requires you to have a Soundcloud page and to connect your Soundcloud account to their service.

I want to make clear that this article is formed of entirely my own opinions and is not paid or sponsored content. I’ve been using the service, I personally like how it works and wanted to share this with others.

I have provided referral links throughout this article, so if you are a content creator on Soundcloud and you sign up using one of my links – I get credits (a virtual currency used on the site) to promote my music using their service. 

It doesn’t cost you anything to use the link, it just lets them know that it was me that showed you their service so they know to credit me if you are an eligible referral. If you want to sign up but don’t want to use my referral link, you can copy the link and remove everything after “.com” before navigating to the site.

What is RepostExchange?

RepostExchange is a site that consists of a network of Soundcloud users. As you might imagine, it primarily promotes your Soundcloud page, however there is an option to fill out your profile with other social links. This allows other members of the site to find you on their preferred platform, so don’t miss out on this opportunity to promote your other pages!

Credits

Credits are your currency on RepostExchange. You can earn them by reposting tracks and you can spend them on getting your tracks reposted by other members of the site. 

The credit cost for each repost is directly correlated with the reposting users legitimate follower count. RepostExchange ensures fairness by having functionality that allows them to check if your followers are legitimate.

The way to calculate the cost of a repost is:

cost = legitimate follower count / 100
round down cost to 0dp
if cost = 0 then cost = 1

A working example of this model:

  • You request a repost from another user who has 570 followers, it costs you 5 credits.
  • You have 40 followers and repost another users track, you receive 1 credit for your repost.
  • You request a repost from another user who has 65,500 followers, but only 24,400 are legitimate followers, it costs you 244 credits.
  • You have gained 260 legitimate followers since using the service, giving you a total of 300 and you repost another users track, you now earn 3 credits for your repost.

You can also get credits through other means; you can purchase them or keep an eye out for the Mystery Box codes in your email inbox and the codes in the podcast giving you either free credits or a discount on purchasing credits. 

If you’re spending the money on credits anyway, the smart thing to do is wait for one of these codes to come along – you can save yourself a fair bit of money, especially on the larger credit packs! You can viably use RepostExchange for free, purchases are fully optional.

Campaigns

Campaigns are simple. You select the track you want to promote, a credit budget for the campaign, any additional features or restrictions you may choose to apply and start your campaign.

From there it is put on the Campaigns page and any other members of the site can listen to your track and choose to repost it, deducting their repost cost from the campaign budget. 

Direct Requests

Direct requests are members sending their track directly to other members to request a repost. You can spend your credits to make requests to other members, or you can earn credits by accepting direct requests from other members.

Since the feature to add a short note to your direct requests was added, a small number of people have utilised it. This is where you can add a personal touch, and start building relationships with other members. 

If you can do it all for free, why pay?

There are monthly plans that give free campaign boosts and add extra functionality. By default, you will be on the Free Forever plan upon signing up.

While you can achieve positive results with zero expenditure, if you want to make the most out of the features, maximise your reach and run effective campaigns, you might want to consider a Pro plan that suits your usage of the service. 

If you find yourself running campaigns with large budgets frequently, consider purchasing a credit pack that comes with a free month of a Pro plan.

Free Forever plan members are also charged an inactivity fee of 10% credit balance for each week without reposting a single track. Paid subscriptions do not incur this fee.

Two new tiers of Pro plans and a bigger credit pack have been recently added. These plans are targeted to promoters and labels – music industry professionals that would use a service like this at scale.

Insights on correlation between RepostExchange activity and Soundcloud KPIs

Data has not been meticulously tracked before 2020, however from being active on the service most days, I saw an initial follower increase by over 700% within 3 months, daily plays became a reality and I’ve had some great music sent directly to me!

Since the new year, I’ve been tracking more closely so that I can explain the impact my RepostExchange activity has had on key Soundcloud metrics. I’ve also attempted to take deliberate actions and measure their impact.

A couple of things I noticed that you’ll want to take into account while using the service:

  • When you stop being active on RepostExchange, your follower count may slowly drop. This is because you are not gaining new followers through direct requests being sent to you. You could also see a drop in daily plays as you aren’t sending your tracks directly to people on this platform for them to listen to.
  • You will show higher in the recommended channels to submit a direct request to immediately after accepting a request or reposting a campaign track, this seems to be an activity-driven algorithm which limits the number of requests you receive based on how many reposts you have done that day. 10 seems to be the maximum reposts the platform allows before cutting off the influx of requests.

Summary

I like RepostExchange and the service it provides. It’s a great tool if you’re just starting out and their compensation model is scalable.

I believe it can continue to be a beneficial service for the music community wherever they are in their journey, for as long as Soundcloud remains a significant presence in the industry.

The other potential limitation is it’s user base. If people stop being active, the service will lose effectiveness.

On the other hand, if the active user base keeps growing, that means you can reach more people! So if you are going to join, I would encourage you to be an active part of the community. It benefits us all!

If you want to join RepostExchange, click this link.

How To | Add Custom FL Studio Patcher Presets

on By

I give away a different FL Studio Patcher preset that I have created every week. To see what free downloads are currently available, you can find this on the Giveaways page.

This post is a step-by-step guide on how to add new FL Studio Patcher presets.

1 | Find the folder where your existing FL Studio Patcher presets are contained

Depending on the whether the preset is a generator or an effect preset, you will need to put the .fst preset file in one of two places.

You can load Patcher in both the channel rack (light blue dot) and the mixer FX chain (red dot). When loaded in the channel rack, you have access to the Generator presets. When loaded in the mixer, you have access to the Effects presets.

For effects, the default location on Windows is:

C:\Users\<username>\Documents\Image-Line\Data\FL Studio\Presets\Plugin presets\Effects\Patcher

For generators, the default location on Windows is:

C:\Users\<username>\Documents\Image-Line\Data\FL Studio\Presets\Plugin presets\Generators\Patcher

If your Patcher presets are stored elsewhere, you can find the directory path by loading Patcher and clicking the arrow icon in the top left to open a menu, then click “Save preset as…” to bring up a save dialog box. The directory path for User presets will be in the navigation bar, you can copy this and paste it into File Explorer.

By going to save the blank preset, you should open a dialog with the location where you need to save your presets.

Once you have reached your Patcher presets folder, you can create new folders and sub-folders to organise your presets.

2 | Move the preset into the correct folder

It may help you to keep track of your downloaded presets by creating a folder inside the Serum presets directory called “Downloaded Presets” and then having sub-folders for each site you download from.

Once you have created the folders you want, move each preset (.fst file) you have downloaded into the appropriate folder(s).

Each folder will appear as a header in the preset selection.

How To | Add Custom Serum Presets

on By

I give away a different Serum preset that I have created every week. To see what free downloads are currently available, you can find this on the Giveaways page.

This post is a step-by-step guide on how to add new Serum presets.

1 | Find the folder where your existing Serum presets are contained

By default, on Windows – this location is:

C:\Users\<username>\Documents\Xfer\Serum Presets\Presets

If your Serum presets are stored elsewhere, you can find the directory path by loading Serum and clicking the floppy disk icon to bring up a save dialog box. The directory path for User presets will be in the navigation bar, you can copy this and paste it into File Explorer.

Floppy disk icon underlined in red. Use this to find the directory path for presets.

Once you have reached your Serum presets folder, you can create new folders and sub-folders to organise your presets.

2 | Move the preset into the correct folder

It may help you to keep track of your downloaded presets by creating a folder inside the Serum presets directory called “Downloaded Presets” and then having sub-folders for each site you download from.

In the example shown, I have created a folder called “Another Enigma Presets” in the Serum presets folder. Doing this allows you to have quick access to the presets from the preset navigation menu within Serum.

Once you have created the folders you want, move each preset (.fxp file) you have downloaded into the appropriate folder.

3 | Refresh all plugin instances

In order for the changes you have made to be reflected in the UI, you need to close and re-open all plugin instances. Make sure you have saved your work before you do this!

Custom menu is now accessible through the Serum preset selector.

Once this has been done, you should be able to access your presets within the Serum UI.