The giants paid attention, but still balked, convinced that the shift could never overthrow the monolithic power structures they had constructed. They were wrong.
Among the many points of control under the thumbs of the corporate music gods was the method of music distribution. Traditional music distribution was handled through a complex series of pipelines that included a great number of industry friends and partners, and an even greater deal of postage. Distribution was slow, expensive, and literally heavy. Most record stores were the size of warehouses, even after the advent of compact discs.
The killing blow to the corporate stranglehold on music was the widespread use of the new Internet, and the new era of digital music distribution that came with it. For most professional musicians today, it has likely seemed like a recent addition to the scene, and many artists are still learning what digital music distribution is.
What is Digital Music Distribution?
Digital music distribution is the simple process by which one hires a team of music delivery people to circulate your music among the best stores online. Some companies for instance charge an extremely reasonable fee for this service and places your product in over 750 stores worldwide, some of them even in European languages.
There are few methods better than digital music distribution for selling your music online. The direct approach, going to companies personally to ask for inclusion on their digital shelves, is not feasible, though many struggling artists try (hence, the struggling). As is the case with many industries, the artist does far better to make contact with liaisons within the industry in question - in this case, companies dealing in digital music distribution.
To sell your music online, first choose a company who can supply you with the digital music distribution necessary to make your product available. There are several such companies in the world, each of them having their strengths and weaknesses. When searching for a company to help distribute music it is often a good idea to find one that can distribute to over 700 online retailers, which is commonly thought to be the widest distribution available. Not every company can do this so the closer to this number the better.
To sell your music online you'll need digital music distribution from a distributor with excellent customer service, too. Whichever company you decide upon, ensure that you'll be able to get in touch with customer support providers both by mail and by phone, preferably on the same day. This can sometimes be a difficult element to find. Most companies are entirely automated. Do not select a distributor whose customer support phone number goes directly to an automated system. This will not help you if you need UPC codes in a pinch - which brings up another important issue: be sure your distributor can provide you with UPC and ISRC codes. You don't want to pay for the service only to discover you need to pay again in order to get a sales code for your product.
All things considered, to sell your music online all you truly need is some decent, inexpensive digital music distribution, and that's only a website away.
