This project was focused primarily around the practical work that goes into writing and recording music. My overall goal for this project was to produce a three track EP that shows a variety of technical skills, and to push myself into experimenting with more unorthodox time signatures and scales to show my growth as a musician since I began studying at college.
As a result of this, I have not planned to have a big launch day, and I will not be paying to upload my EP to premium streaming services such as Spotify or Amazon Music.
My EP will be available to listen to via Soundcloud and Bandcamp, and will be free for people to listen to.
As my EP is of a niche genre (instrumental metal), it likely will not get as many listens as something more mainstream. Additionally I am still an unknown artist with no following, further reducing the amount of streams I will get on my music. Due to this I have deemed it unnecessary to pay to distribute my music to the bigger platforms as I will never make any money back from that investment.
Furthermore, the pay-per-play rates for sites such as Spotify and Amazon are so ludicrously low that even if I did have a following, I still wouldn’t earn my money back. For example, here are the rates that various platforms pay artists per stream, in USD:
In these charts we can see that it would take 279 streams to make one US dollar from Spotify, meaning they pay around $0.00359 for one listen.
The online distribution platform Distrokid charge £20 to distribute your music to platforms like Spotify. For me to make that money back I would have to earn $28.39 (equivalent to 20 GBP), which means I would need more than 7920 streams just to break even.
There is no realistic way I can achieve this many streams at my current level, therefore I have decided to make my music available on the two free platforms, Soundcloud and Bandcamp.
I have decided to launch my EP on Saturday the 15th of May, at around 8pm. I will put a post on my Instagram page to let my friends and followers know, as this is where I post all of my music related events and work.
Here is a link to my Instagram as well:
https://www.instagram.com/dan.greenhalgh.guitar/
Sadly I was let down in regards to the album artwork, and therefore had to launch without any. In future I will have to make sure to get some sorted out early, and possible have a backup ready in case this happens again.
Overall, this has been a successful release, even though it wasn’t a major event. I have so far had some positive feedback from friends and followers, and hopefully will get some more as the week goes on. Here are the links to my uploaded EP:
Soundcloud:
Bandcamp:
https://dangreenhalgh.bandcamp.com/album/2021-ep
References:
Reskinoff, P., 2016. How Many Streams Does It Take to Earn $1? Take a Look…. [online] Digital Music News. Available at: <https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2016/09/15/streaming-music-earn-1-dollar/>
Pastukhov, D., 2019. Soundcharts | Market Intelligence for the Music Industry. [online] Soundcharts.com. Available at: <https://soundcharts.com/blog/music-streaming-rates-payouts>
Sanchez, D., 2018. What Streaming Music Services Pay (Updated for 2020). [online] Digital Music News. Available at: <https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/12/25/streaming-music-services-pay-2019/>