After a conversation where we decided we would like to carry on working together after this deadline, I had some more thoughts on how to distribute the music. Historically, music artists needed a record label to help distribute music, but the change to online distribution has allowed artists to take on a do-it-yourself approach (Bockstedt, Kauffman and Riggins, 2006, pp. 8-18) which makes the process of releasing music a lot easier for beginner artists like myself, and I am very grateful for.
At the moment, I would prefer to use independent streaming sites (such as Bandcamp) where the artist has full control over the music rather than to pay for a distributor to upload it to outlets which don’t allow artists to directly submit content (such as Spotify). The main reason for this is I would rather wait until I have a substantial portfolio of music before trying to build a presence online, and paying to do so (even though there are a lot of very affordable distributors out there). Another thing to consider is that features such as the playlists on Spotify are leading listeners back to consuming singles instead of albums (Pack, 2017) and in order to get onto these playlists your track has to fit comfortably into a specific genre which people are looking for. As our collaboration wasn’t aiming for one particular genre and was more an exploration of how our separate musical styles would meld together in a hybrid genre, and for our own enjoyment, I feel it would not fit in well with the ideals of these streaming services.
Regardless, we would very much like to take our collaboration further and once we have completed a substantial project, perhaps even a full album, I will look into trying to establish a presence online by distributing to various different streaming sites. The two singles for this project will instead be uploaded to independent sites (Bandcamp and Soundcloud).
References:
Bockstedt, J., Kauffman, R., & Riggins, F. (2006). The Move to Artist-Led On-Line Music Distribution: A Theory-Based Assessment and Prospects for Structural Changes in the Digital Music Market. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, Volume 10(3), pp. 7-38.
Pack, B. (2017). The Complete Guide to Music Distribution. Theproaudiofiles.com. Available at: https://theproaudiofiles.com/digital-music-distribution/ [Accessed 3rd May 2020].
Damon Siseman MUS634 