Hi Guys...
As a matter of interest...Do you think it is ok to sell our original work via Songcrafters..Albums etc
The subject may be a trifle controversial....?
I was wondering what you guys think? as it dosn't hurt to open a discussion regarding this..
Cheers
Nick
I've been selling my album 'Wrong Songs' after placing an 'advert' on these very pages. Collabers were sent free copies and others have sent me postal orders, cheques, paid in via PayPal and one amazing person visited me in the shadow of St Michaels Mount to pick a copy in person. I've sold copies in local music shops and sold copies via www.henwrench.weebly.com. The cost of the CD is purley to cover the outlay of the discs, jewel cases, printed covers and postage.
I will shortly be sending a copy overseas, which will help me to establish 'AirMail' postage costs.
henwrench
Great info Henrench, thanks..
I am a bit unknowing when it comes to band or artist promotion. I guess one has to be imaginative these days and slog away at it!!!...
This is something that the admin team needs to discuss. Please don't advertise anything at Songcrafters until we've discussed it and reached a decision. We'll let you know.
Not that I even qualify for having input, but my opinion on the matter is to suggest you use an online service such as iTunes or soundclick, and then Put a link in your sig saying "Click here to buy my music."
One thought struck me.
Only a few of the songcrafters members have come to the point yet where they have an album ready. And those who have, have posted most of the songs that are on those CD's here for us so we don't really "need" to buy the albums to get their music. I think if that is the case, say that if at least half (or maybe even all) of the songs have been posted here it would be OK to have a little advert here to let us know where we can buy it if we want to.
This policy would prevent us from beeing flooded by people just wanting to promote their music.
On the 50/90 and FAWM sites they have a forum for 'self promotion' in which you can talk about yourself all you want. Or sell your stuff, or mention your upcoming gig... whatever.
They also have a prominent 'recent threads' button that will take all the posts, regardless of forum, in a nice easy listing based on last post. I've noticed lately that we have an unread message button, or a message since last visit button, which I've not used yet. They might be similar.
My point being, it's accepted, but it is also easy to ignore if a user wanted to do so. I for one would like to know when users here have music for sale. And I doubt we would be inundated with 'outsiders' just coming here to post albums for sale. There really isn't that many advertised on FAWM and we have a lot of members. 10,000 songs were written and posted in 28 days last February.
But I also understand the importance of keeping a clean site and the extra work that advertisement could impose on the staff. I'll respect their decision as always.
t.c.
This is quite a tricky subject, IMO. It's one thing to have established, participating members of this site letting everyone know they have CD's for sale, but quite another to have random, unknown chancers trying to flog us stuff. Unfortunately, if we start allowing 'advertisements' for music, we might be opening up the floodgates for people who are not part of the community. I totally agree with Dmann that having a 'click here to buy' link is a much cleaner way of doing it. And maybe we could have a little avatar / graphic for our posts that says 'new album out now' or something. Although in my case, that'll be one a month, lol.
Another association board I participate on,
allows members to post self promo/sales type stuff to a seperate forum.
But they only gain access to post to to that forum after getting the privilage turned on by the moderator.
That stops flyby spammers, and allows other members to view or not view the material as they wish.
Quote from: peterp on September 09, 2010, 09:06:38 AMAnother association board I am participate on,
allows members to post self promo/sales type stuff to a seperate forum.
But they only gain access to post to to that forum after getting the privilage turned on by the moderator.
That stops flyby spammers, and allows other members to view or not view the material as they wish.
That sounds cool.
In my own case, here on SongCrafters, it was less of an 'advert' and more of a 'heads up', and only after I'd sought permission from 64Guitars. I've managed to piss enough people off here in the past, so now try to moderate my views and always run any post that may be deemed 'controversial' by our very own 64.
henwrench
The admin team has discussed this issue and decided that we don't want any hint of commercialism on Songcrafters, so album sales/promotion will not be allowed from now on. What I'd suggest instead is to create an artist/band website somewhere else where you can freely sell and promote your album. Then, in your Songcrafters profile under "Forum Profile Information", you can set the "Website title" and "Website URL" fields to your website so that interested members and guests can get to your site by clicking the website link ((https://songcrafters.org/forum/Themes/songcrafters/images/www_sm.gif)) under your avatar. You could also put a link in your signature, as long as it's not blatantly promotional.
There are two conditions regarding links to external sites:
1) The site cannot be 100% commercial. So a site about yourself, your family, your band, your equipment, influences, interests, other hobbies, holiday photos, etc. is okay. If one of the pages on that site is devoted to your album that's fine too. But if the entire site is designed solely for the promotion and selling of your music, then that would not be allowed as it's entirely commercial.
2) The text of any links to your site should not be blatantly promotional. So a link in your signature, for example, with just the name of your band, or "Visit my weebly.com site", "My Reverbnation site", etc. is okay. But a link that says "Click here to buy my new CD" would not be allowed because it's promotional.
I think a one-time post mentioning the completion of an album would be allowed as long as it's meant to be informative rather than promotional. You could perhaps talk about how long it took to complete the album, what new equipment, software, or techniques you used during the recording of the album and what you learned from them, problems encountered along the way, etc. Anything like that which would be of interest to Songcrafters members. Then you could say something like "See my website for more information about the new album".
I'd also like to point out that Songcrafters is all about freely sharing our music. If a few members decide to try selling their music, that's fine as long as they don't promote it at Songcrafters. And we wish you much success. But I'd encourage all of our members to consider sharing their music freely instead. If you're thinking of selling an album solely as a means of distributing it rather than for profit, I think there are better ways to accomplish that and I'd be happy to help you with it. For example, you can create a website where people can listen to the album and download it for free. I recently created such a site for oldrottenhead here:
https://songcrafters.org/oldrottenhead/index.html (https://songcrafters.org/oldrottenhead/index.html)
You could also create a CD image which people could download and burn directly to a CD. That way, you can control the song order, inter-song spacing, etc. I can help with that if you don't know how to do it.
Giving away your album freely might be a better means of distribution than selling it because more people will be willing to give it a listen. And you never know, someone might hear your free album and offer you some gigs or a recording contract. Or maybe they'd offer to buy the rights to use your original song in a movie, TV show, or commercial, for example. So, in the end, you could make more money by sharing your music freely than if you'd tried to sell it (fewer people might hear your music if you sell it).
I think that the future of music lies mainly with talented amateurs freely sharing their work via the internet. And Songcrafters is a pioneering site in that future. We don't want to tarnish the free spirit of Songcrafters by allowing any commercialism. There are plenty of other sites where music sales are allowed and encouraged. We suggest you use those sites if you want to sell your music, and use Songcrafters for the music you want to share freely.