So.. Have you seen Vibedeck?

Off-Topic
1

This is new, and very interesting, and I stumbled upon it last night http://vibedeck.com/

Its different from bandcamp because they do not charge a commission on your sales. It connects very easily with your soundcloud and facebook and youtube. It doesn’t have as many features as bandcamp but its got a business plan that is far more fair to artist IMHO… and really that is just my opinion.

A very intesting thing about VibeDeck is your website! If you built your site using wordpress, then vibedeck has a wordpress plugin.

You know… Its like the best and worst times to be a music producer! You have all these tools, but all this noise to cut through. Lately, what ive been doing, is streamlining all my music efforts… I’ve chosen to give up on Reverbnation, Fandalism, Virb, and Myspace… I only want to focus on Soundcloud, and Facebook, and obivously Youtube is good for music videos… I don’t have my own website again… The next time I try with that I want to make sure I am 100% settled on a domain name, and 100% settled with how I am going to build the site!

But I really like this vibedeck thing, because it is very simplified, and streamlined… i almost find bandcamp too much, and reverb nation too much! and a lot of these things are so expensive…

Ok, check it out… If you sign up for band camp today, and want to use your own .com, you must sign up for their premium service of $10 monthly… that is $120 a year… On vibedeck, your own .com, $36 a year… When you combine your own store, with your own website, and a small social media strategy, and also an aggregator like songcast, or tunecore… You have streamlined your efforts… Now you can make music, send it all throughout the web, and really begin to focus on building a community around your art… Which you should do, from your own .com imo…

Anyways, I do see a lot of Renoise’rs using bandcamp… and I am just wondering, is that really what you want? So many here know wordpress, know it very well… have their own web-building abilities, know exactly how to use social media… So maybe if you want your own music store, vibedeck is a better answer… “keep 100% of your sales.”

Bandcamp… what do they charge? 10% of sales, 15% of sales? That is a huge commision… When you go to buy an iphone, is apple paying the employees 15% of sale?

Its your music!

2

hm, i checked out their site, i checked out the blog and there is one big question for me: how are they making money?

the only thing they offer for money are these “extras” which are optional and which don’t scale depending on how much bandwidth you use which i think is a bad sign. is the hosting and streaming for free? the site is not very clear about its business model which is already suspicious to me. you have to read the blog to figure out some of the stuff or sign up, which i won’t.
i’m bringing this up because it’s not unusual that services like these start out with very promising features and stuff like “keep 100% of your sales” to lure a lot of people in after which they switch to another business model. if you got used to their services by that time, you’ll be more inclined to pay for something that was initially advertised as free. Bandcamp had a similar issue. they started out with a 10% cut as far as i remember and now they are at 15% and additional payments for free downloads.
sites like VibeDeck always seem a little shady to me, i don’t know why.

but then again i don’t think that this thread is directed at me. noone buys my music so i don’t really care how much money Bandcamp gets from my sales. i use it as a streaming service that allows people to “donate” a few bucks by buying my music. sure there are better ways and i’ve also thought about some alternatives but people trust Bandcamp. they know what it’s all about and that counts for a lot.

but i guess it wouldn’t hurt to give VibeDeck a try.

3

I totally appreciate your thoughts, and contrasting opinion; you bring up some very good points… I will, “proceed with caution.”

Cheers

4

I don’t know where you got this. bandcamp lets you use your own domain for free. All you have to do is set it up under the “profile” page of the settings. You have to own a domain of course, which is usually around $10-15/year, but that’s nothing and you don’t do it through them. Go to wahrk.com. It goes to my bandcamp, retains the url, and I didn’t pay bandcamp anything.

5

Bandcamp “used to allow.”

http://bandcamp.com/faq_custom_domains

Now you must be a premium member. Is it worth it? $120 a year, for the premium features of bandcamp + they take a commission… ?

Cheers

6

I don’t know what you’re looking at, man. Nothing on that page says anything about paying anything to bandcamp to use your own domain.

I do alright, but I don’t sell anything on there right now really. I just allow donations. Most of my releases are available from my label’s website, and I get a lot more downloads from there.

7

“Please note that for accounts created after April 11, 2012, custom domains require you to be a Bandcamp Pro subscriber”

It says it right there on the top buddy… :slight_smile:

After April 11 2012, you must be a premium member, if you want to use a custom domain… Its the first or second sentence on this page: Bandcamp

Never mind me… :slight_smile: Wasn’t really my business… I’ve just had a long day; but I totally understand…

Cheers

8

I’m not strictly interested into the topic at all, since I don’t sell my music, but your example is simply wrong.

here it is a more related one:

when you submit your app to the Apple AppStore, they review it and unilaterally decide if it follows their guidelines. this said, the same app can still be either accepted or rejected depending on the reviewer’s mood or interpretation of guidelines.

if you manage to get your app published, Apple will take 30% of the sales for itself. Basing on the number of apps available, this seems to be fair according to the developers.

9

I’m wrong a lot. So i can probably be wrong here too. Wouldn’t surprise me :slight_smile:

There are a lot of, “apps.” available… but there is only 1 channel of distribution. There is 1 way, “to get the app in the store.” There are hundreds, upon hundreds, of endless music services, digital distributors, aggregations, and legal as well as illegal download stores.

My reasoning behind, “bandcamp is charging a lot of money,” is that there is, “a lot of competition in this part of the market.” If band camp was only charging commision, or only charging for premium service, than that would be 1 thing… but they are charging a premium, and taking a commission… They are, “milking the same cow twice.”

I would expect Apple to take 30% percent cut on the apps… If you make an iphone app, you have to play “apples game.” There is not a lot of places to, “have your app available to download.”

My reasoning behind, “bandcamp = pricey,” was all, “competition in the market place.”

But I don’t have much of anything either way… I was looking at bandcamp yesterday, and I was, “about to sign up,” till I noticed the “Premium To have my own .com pointed to bandcamp.” I did a google search, stumbled upon Vibedeck…

I’m just exploring… didn’t mean to say anything bad, or offend anybody

Cheers

10

Ah. I don’t see that because I’ve had my account for years. Bummer.

11

archive.org is still free but doesn’t have a mechanism for taking money or info from downloaders.

Not really related but I figured while people are talking about services, I notice I get peeked at through SoundCloud all the time and get plenty of action in archive.org, but through bandcamp I get almost nothing. I’m concerned that I can’t give extra sites the right amount of attention so maybe I should stock with what works for a while.

12

See… “Archive.org,” that’s just as weird as I believe… Ok, “so it looks like I am trying to sell music.” Not exactly imo :slight_smile: I am trying to, “distrubute.” I am not caring about $0.79 a psychedelic trance tack LOL! I am more caring about, “trying to get my music distributed and played at parties, etc, etc…”

So that is where I now think Bandcamp has failed new users!! By making it so expensive for an artist to have a proper outlet with them, the artist can go anywhere… To like, “150 other distribute my music websites.”

So… If I was using vibedeck… lol, maybe I would not be looking for $, but for facebook likes? :P and this is different from Archive, cause they do not have a mechanism for that too. But, I have no problem with all ways of music distribution… I believe, “music in itunes, music on spotify, music free to download on archive, and music from your own webstore.”

What bandcamp is? Your own music webstore…

I think I am getting misunderstood… The thread is not about, “what is the best and most efficient way for me to capitialize on my music.” The thread is just about, “hey, have you seen vibedeck, whatcha think… its not charging a load of money like bandcamp, and provides you with an commerce solution.”

Actually, the same thing can be said of this, if you have your own wordpress website, you can sell digital files… http://www.orderstorm.com/

But none of these are a good replacement for Archive.org, which I do think is very important. But I also think, that plenty of dj’s, party promotors, even fans of music, expect to see your music for sale… lol, and also for free…

:lol: :lol:

Its just a very strange world right now… Anyways, the thread was only meant to share ideas… It was not meant to find a solution that best benefits the sale of music, “efficiently, and least expensively to maximize profit.” Was not my thought

Cheers

Edit = btw I think soundclound is really well done. its a great site, and it does seem to get your music around.

13

Bandcamp is certainly asking for more cut than it used to. A lot of us signed up when the bulk of the service features were completely free. Ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.

But find a record deal that is better. There would be few with such optionality. The ultimate would be to run it all 100% independently, but who of us have the investment capital to run such an operation seriously?

Because the music industry is a heartless commercial exploitation fest, you have to spend money to be part of the game. I just got some professionals to build me a website so I could get out of this WP/tumblr limitation and have something that looks special, so that people think my music is special. The cost has been fairly serious. And I’m still doing distro through Bandcamp because it would cost several thousand more to pay a web dev to basically re-create BC entirely within my own website just for my music. No. Tasteful embedding will do for now.

I don’t think my music is that commercially viable, but some people feel that their music is. For that material, you can make investments from $6000 upwards in just one song to have promotors and a campaign just to get the song some radio airplay and industry presence. You’d be either very very good or very very full of yourself to pursue this direction. And it would be a while before you’d see a sales return of that size, let alone clear profit.

The more I do music the more I think it’s just a hobby for me. A very serious, artful and crafty hobby, with dedication and purposefulness. If I can be genuine in my work and learn from the experience, then anything else is a bonus.

On the other hand, I’ve never seen artist driven cooperatives as an economic model for the commercialisation for music - maybe there’s something possible in that direction? But then again organising artists is like herding cats.

14

So true, and so sad… But a lot of, “what’s to blame,” is the vast amount of people who buy into the, “faux artists,” that the Big Three** continue to market to them, like bad sugar candies.

Can you believe, we are now down to the, “big three.” Just 3 record companies have better than 85% control of music actually paid attention too, and paid for.

Strange world…

I might edit the topic of the thread to something like, “latest solutions to distribute your music, and create a fan base.” I did some more searching and stumbled on this new project today… Its open source, the installer is on github… they say by fall, “a hosted solution,” will arrive… could be interesting… integrates with your tumblr… I really like tumblr! Very cool stuff

http://cashmusic.org/