Is there a Getting Started guide for Musicians wanting to use drupal?

Hi Zirafa,

Yep, CD baby are very popular, but, I wouldn't compare them to Artists First. They provide very different services.

• Artists First would be for Artists/labels Selling Direct to Fans from their own site.
• CD BABY are like THE ORCHARD, or AWAL (Artist without a label) or FINETUNES who aggregate content to other shops.

The smart thing to do would be do both, i.e. use a direct-sales-solution like Artists First while at the same time, stock your music in digital shops via cdbaby/theorchard or many others.

The only thing I would mention about aggregators is that it's extremely difficult to get out of some of those deals, some of which are exclusive by the way..i.e. if your music is on 100+ shops, you have no control over the price or your catalogue. Or what happens to your catalogue, if, as predicted, quite a few of the big online music stores go out of business over the next year or two?

Furthermore, very few, if any, actively promote your music for you - that's pretty much left up to the label, so it is sorta dumb (in my opinion) for a band/artist/label to invest in marketing/promotion and then send the fan to someone else's shop.

In the same breath, it's also worth mentioning, that as the music biz shifts into being a licensing-led, rather than product-led industry, control of your catalogue is paramount. I'm advising artists not to put their full catalogue up on itunes/other shops. Instead I recommend they just put up their single/EP releases or teasers for the full albums on third-party shops (like itunes) and sell those direct- and in a higher quality format. e.g. itunes typically sells 128kbps @ 0.99cents, so, bands should sell (minimum) 320kbps @ 0.99 cents from their own shop.

There's a number of reasons for that. The main one being that people, generally, don't like buying music on itunes and they don't have a problem with using google and buying direct from an artist site that's well presented and trustworthy.

Incidentally, Itunes announced today that they will start selling music in higher quality (for a higher price). That's primarily to combat the trend in the UK and europe - where direct-sales shops are selling at a higher quality- without DRM. that was really hurting itunes europe. I'm amazed it took them so long to change their policy on that.

Dub

I can see what you're saying about the openmusic network working like an open source version of itunes music store, but, don't forget that the core heart of the network is an artform and the majority of artists don't get into music to make money, they get into it to make music for the sake of making music. In other words, I think an open music platform that allowed an artist community to grow and evolve, sans ads, sans corporations, sans venture capitalists, sans corporate structure would be a huge draw to the creative forces in the music fraternity.

I think comparing this open network to iTunes was a bad way to phrase it - I didn't actually mean a centralized company that aggregated music professionally. I mean little sites, maybe indie review sites, tastemaking sites, magazines, online radio stations that could publish and link to audio directly on an artists site. The idea being that all clicks to buy or to find out more get driven back directly to the artist's site, but in a consistent way. Maybe a better comparison would be trackbacks on blogs, where you could sort of follow who is talking about what. The artist publishes their content, and maybe sends it out to get reviewed, or people decide to review it - but it's all in one spot. Maybe the audio isn't for sale, or maybe it is, but the original artist would maintain control over that part of it. I'm probably doing a terrible job of explaining what I mean. I just like the idea of being able to publish one thing yourself on your own terms and then deciding to what level you wish to promote it, be it commercial or otherwise. And for other sites to be able to aggregate these sources into their own radio stations, music blogs, or even special del.icio.us bookmarks.

I honestly think that an artist-to-artist support structure is the strongest and most honest. Making tools available to allow artists to support each other and help each other in any way possible is always a plus. Sharing resources, mixing up shows, finding opening bands, and sort of combining forces promotes creativity and collaboration and alleviates some of the stresses and hurdles involved with being in a band. The last thing I want (as a musician myself) is for online tools to create MORE work for artists, because then it means LESS music making. Currently that's how it feels. That just seems so backwards to me!

I have a (music) lawyer pal in the UK who has never been busier, mostly getting small bands out of stupid, ridiculous deals with small indie labels. It's a massive problem in the UK and Europe.

I wonder how small they all are if they're paying for a lawyer to get them out of a deal. It's really stupid to sign something you don't agree to. That said, there are a lot of unethical labels out there--although artists are just as likely to be unethical as labels. Labels can't survive without a halfway decent reputation, though. and I doubt the same can be said for successful artists who always find a major to sell their soul to. I'm really happy to work with loads of fundamentally decent people on both sides of our recording contracts.

Then there's the subscription based services. Great for major artists. Not so great for small artists, who earn next to nothing. - don't believe all that long-tail none sense - well promoted music sells well. that's a fact.

I almost agree with you on this one now, and I definitely agreed with you at the time you wrote this post. Two years along, though, subscription services are looking more attractive. Although up until recently eMusic didn't have any major labels, they did have major artists. I know a couple of small labels that were quite happy with their revenues. Since the individual risk is relatively small, customers seem to be willing to experiment a little with less-known artists. I don't particularly like the returns we get from subscription services, but I think it's worth it for back catalogue, i.e. older releases that don't sell as much. Interestingly, Sony/BMG are only offering eMusic customers their back catalogue.