Ever since I started out on my music career I have wanted to sell my music to my fans. I mean isn't that what we all want?
The only thing is that my fans were my clients and the representatives I chose to work with; producers, publishers etc.
Rather than selling my music as a product I went into selling my music as a service.
And I did pretty well doing it.
I have managed to write music for all sorts of films, advertising campaigns, TV shows, and movie trailers.
The thing that I did not expect was that the desire to sell my music to people as a product did not go away.
I still want to make music that I love and sell it to people who love it too.
I still want to be an artist in my own right.
For me, that simply means writing music that excites me and that I enjoy writing for the purpose of sharing it with my fans, who will get pleasure out of listening to it.
That's what this project is all about, me selling direct-to-fan.
What is my aim with this project?
The main aim of the project is to pay my monthly bills by selling CDs of my music using direct-to-fan music marketing. This pretty much equates to me selling between $200-300 per day.
I appreciate that this is a pretty big goal but you know what they say,
"Shoot for the Moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars" - Norman Vincent Peale
That being said, if I can make any profit I will be happy. That will prove that it is a viable option and potentially scaleable if done right.
On top of that, I would like to use this project as a public case study.
I have always been a huge fan of Pat Flynn, Spencer Haws and Matt Giovanisci who openly share their current projects as they are happening.
So I am going to share this project as I am working on it. For two reasons:
- To be held accountable
- Hopefully, this will inspire some of you to pursue your own goals
I am not going to be going at this blind, I will be using a course to help me in this process.
I will be using the great course, Music Marketing Manifesto 5.0 as my template and guide throughout this process.
First Step, Choosing my Artist
I need to establish what music I am going to be selling.
I already have quite a few options as I love writing music in multiple styles and I have multiple stage names/monikers.
- Zac Rivers is my synth wave alter-ego,
- This Shimmering Sky is my ambient music, and
- Richard Pryn is ambient neo-classical piano music.
For the sake of simplicity and ease, I am going to focus on my neo-classical work as Richard Pryn.
That's me anyway 🤣
The main reason for this choice is that I have already created a huge body of work that I can draw from in the form of 15 months of (almost) daily piano improvisations totalling about 350-ish pieces of piano music.
Plus writing piano-led music with maybe live strings and synths is pretty straightforward.
Getting My Albums Together
I aim to have about three albums of music that I can sell. One album will be the "new release" and two will be optional extras that I plan to sell in the funnel.
To compile these albums I went back through all my releases on Spotify - so around 350 tracks and selected my favourites.
This has resulted in 12 tracks (per album) that I would like to rework a little bit to become the main bulk of the album.
Most of them actually sound pretty great when just remastered using LANDR's mastering engine but I think I will add some little subtle layers to them all so that I can rename them and give them their own ISRC codes.
Get clear on branding and visual language
I really like "arty" photographs that look totally serious and intriguing. I want to be portrayed as an artistic and creative composer who comfortably fits in the world of the cinematic.
For this, I have taken some photos of myself to create some "press shots".
As you can see below from my press shot mood board it is very important that I do not look at the camera. Choosing instead to gaze meaningfully into the distance. I also need to take a few photos of some trees and nature that I can include either for double exposure or for background elements.
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So here are the first few shots I took and how I developed them using Canva and Affinity Designer to make them look even more arty.
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I chose one of the shots and did some fiddling using Canva and Affinity Designer - et viola.
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This is a great start for the artist's image or at least a thumbnail or something.
It gives me a sense of myself as an artist and the music I create; ambient, moody, artsy etc.
I will choose the colours and the fonts as I go along.
The Website
I used to think it was enough to have a great-looking website and great-sounding music.
Nope.
You need a lot more than that.
The thing with this setup is that it involves a lot of moving parts, not just a website.
It involves a few things that each represent a step along the journey that a new fan would take:
- Website & shop (with custom domain etc)
- Facebook & Instagram accounts
- Landing Pages
- Email Service Providers
- Funnel Builder - with checkouts etc.
- CD Fulfill-on-demand - You then need a few things in place to be able to fulfil the orders of CDs and for that, I will be using a CD fulfil-on-demand service like Kunaki or Artglider.
I'll get to these points but for now, my first port of call is going to be my website.
So naturally I looked around for some inspiration and ideas. I basically Googled artists I know who write in a similar way and checked out their websites.
No surprise that they have gone for minimal and stylish with a touch of ambience. Nice.
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For my site, I have decided to use a platform called systeme.io because it has all the features I need to get this started, and IT IS FREE!!! (Which still blows my mind).
Previously I have paid hundreds of dollars per month to have all the features that systeme.io is offering, so I am pretty chuffed with this find.
I have created a basic website that I am happy with. The details need to be filled in but the structure is there, which is great.
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You can see the website in progress if you would like. Bearing in mind that a lot of the buttons and links might not work at this stage 🤣
That's it for now. I will update this post as and when I make some progress.
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