MUSICDISTRIBUTORS WEBLOG

1,000 New Tracks

1,000 new tracks added since January 1st!

New labels coming on soon!

Mark Kerr - Blues Hall of Famer

Louisiana's blues guitar legend Mark Kerr, recently inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame and named the Ambassador Of The Blues for the State of Louisiana made this important announcement recently.  Has your local blues radio station been playing this?  Let us know.  People around the world appreciate Mark's giving spirit and, of course, his phenomenal guitar playing.  We've got Mark's latest as digital downloads, just put his name in the search box on the Musicdistributors.com main site.  You can find the Nothing But Nets page here.

Affiliate Program Now Live

The musicdistributors.com affiliate program has now gone live!  You can earn 10% on every purchase of credits that come through your website, blog, myspace page or other site that you have.  Just go to the "Affiliate"  link at the top of the page on musicdistributors.com.  Its the fastest, sweetest sign up for an affiliate that I have seen.  Try it out!

There's also a fabulous promo coming up with MPIO for digital players and accessories.  The more you buy, the more you'll save!  We'll let you know as soon at it rolls out.  Look for it on the musicdistributors.com homepage.

MPIO ONE

I got the MPIO ONE unpackaged





Got it charged.





It is tiny!


You need to put that neck strap so you don't lose it.

The biggest surprise?  The clarity of the voice recording!  This is one of the uses that I'm surprised we haven't heard more about.  There is no way that anyone would know that you were recording them - this thing is tiny and there are no moving parts.

The other thing that I like is that it is so light.  When it plays and the screen goes to sleep you can forget where the music is coming from.

Is the music good?  Yes!  Even with the earphone (buds) that come with it there are sounds, especially in the midrange and upper that I don't notice on speakers.  Tiny sounds in the music - the kind of thing that has you looking around only to realize that its coming from the player.

It takes a little time to get through the menus and I haven't looked at the games and other stuff.  Right now, I'm just going to take some time to put more stuff in it, and, I'm going to see what happens when I use it as a recorder in different places.

MPIO Players are Here

Two new MPIO Players came in today.

The MPIO FY800 

and the MPIO ONE

I've been looking for really great sounding players to use with the music that I download.  I wanted something that I could play WMA, MP3 and ASF files on right out of the box.  First I'm going to go through a step by step of getting them out of the box and trying them out.  One thing I can tell already - They are SMALL!  And I can hardly wait to listen.
Keep you Posted!

Rhett Tyler

For the past couple of years we've been shipping Rhett Tyler CD's all over the world - England, New Zealand, Australia, just to name a few places.  He's got a following everywhere.  But shipping those physical CD's was always, to put it nicely, a real pain.  Anytime a physical CD goes International it either gets very expensive to ship, or it becomes an adventure in postal mystery land.

Now, Rhett's music is being digitized on the site.  Already all of Disc 1 of "Don't Put Me in no Box" is available in the Blues Genre as digital downloads at 88 cents (8 credits) apiece.  Now all of Rhett's fans in New Zealand, Australia, England and everywhere else can download the music and have it in a few seconds rather than in a few weeks.

Watch for Disc 2 of "Don't Put Me in no Box" to be available digitally soon and also "Live At Manny's Car Wash" is in line to be digitized and made available as digital downloads.

Rhett also has some out of print material and some new material that we will soon have on the site for your downloading pleasure.

Digital Downloads LIVE!

Great news!  Right now, you can upload your music to sell as digital downloads and anyone, anywhere in the world with an internet connection can buy your music and download it using Musicdistributors.com

When you upload your music with musicdistributors you work directly with musicdistributors - this is not one of those sites where you place the music but it is then sent somewhere else to be sold.  If you have questions you talk directly with the people responsible for keeping track of your music sales and keeping the system working.

Think of the beauty of this system -

You create a song that you want to sell.  The day the song is ready, you upload it to musicdistributors.com and it is then ready to be bought by everyone who likes your song.  You create another song, that day, you upload it and its ready to be bought.  You never have to worry about duplicating CD's, labeling, packaging or shipping.  All those headaches and costs are safely back in the past, never to bother you again.

Musicdistributors Wants the independent artist and label anywhere in the world to do well and be able to sell their music to a digital buying public.

All files are Windows Media Audio (.wma) files, compatible with the widest range of computers and players in the world.

When you register and upload your own files, there is no charge to get started.

It doesn't get any better than that!

After Tower Records - What?

Sounds like everybody's crying the blues.  Many, many Independent Labels and Artists are facing serious difficulty now that Tower Records is being liquidated.

The worst thing is that there was plenty of warning.  Tower went into bankruptcy without much real hope of ever coming out as the kind of retailer that they were when they went in.  Cash flow was already reported to be a problem and what Indie would think they would be at the front of the line to be paid?

Unfortunately, the same thing that helped to kill off Tower will also kill off many Independents.  Internet sales.  Some of the Indies will get it and prosper - the Indies who don't will disappear.

For those Labels and Artists who do grasp Internet sales - especially Digital Downloads - this is a magical moment.  They will be able to say that they were There when the playing field was leveled in a way that had never existed before.  How is that?

One - No more huge costs of physical reproduction of the music.  Make a master - upload it and the distribution to the retailer is completed, whether you sell one download or  zillions.

Two - add to that the hidden costs that quickly become very visible which includes things like shipping, or driving physical inventory to various sellers.  This is really serious when you are in another country or on another continent than the one you want to sell on.  Look at the tremendous music being produced in Africa.  Now that artist can take a few minutes to upload a master and that's that.

Three - No more bad contracts because there is a monopoly distribution chain that can't be penetrated unless you are with certain players in the market.  If you can produce a song you can upload it.  If people anywhere, anytime, like the song, they will buy it.

Four - No more accounting nightmares.  We use third parties (DRMNetworks and CCBill) to protect the music and to handle all of the financial transfers associated with the sale of a download.  You don't need to take our word for what happened.  In fact, we don't even touch the money unless it is too small an amount for the third party to issue, which is a few dollars.  Anyone selling enough music can go online and look at what is happening everyday.  The third party splits off your royalty and sends it directly to you. What major label has ever allowed that?

Five - Microsoft.  Yep. Since Apple is doing a classic Apple and working from a closed system, the market is ripe for another open architecture take over - count the PC/Microsoft users out there and compare.  There is no comparison - and the gap in music players can be closed much quicker than  most people realize.  I want a player that will allow me to have flexibility - not lock me in.  As soon as Microsoft releases theirs expect a flood of new music buyers - ready to buy your music, if your download service will allow it to be played on many players.

So why are so many Indie labels and Artists crying the blues?  Maybe most of you are not.  It might just be more fun to write a story about sadness and pain than about everyone finding a better way.

Testing has begun on our new Digital Download system.  We will go live very soon and we have Artists and Labels queuing up to be put into the system as quickly as possible.

I personally knew someone in the top circle at Tower so I don't feel good about that, but Tower had plenty of time, finances and connections to have jumped on Internet Sales and Digital Downloads - much more than most of us who are in the game - so it's hard to feel very sorry for them.  They acted as if nothing ever changes - when we all know that everything changes, constantly - either going down or ascending.  Which do you want to do?

Internet Sales

Digital Downloads

The rest of you can continue to pin your hopes on physical CD's if you want to.

Take the Performance Lead

... take the performance lead...  without any warning -  (the link is for you Gamers in our audience) but the thought is what counts, especially in the music world.

In just 15 years the Internet has changed more about the way things are done than anything else I can think of.  Including the way people buy and share music.  But what's this? ??  Mostly the major labels and their biggest hits are reaping the benefits.  What happened to the Indie?

When it comes to buying digitally downloaded music, life can get tricky.  Who actually owns the music?  what happens when your subscription lapses.  What happens when you want to transfer the music to another player?

Selling is even worse.  Tried to contact Itunes lately, as an Independent Artist or Label?  Or, how do you keep track of what is happening when you go with a service that sends your music out to several digital download platforms, keeps a slice of what's left after the platform takes their share and finally gets a few cents to you?  How do you know what is really happening?  And how do you keep your music from getting lost in that shuffle?

You know your music is good - why else would you keep producing it.  The real performance challenge is getting it out there where everyone can hear and buy it - without having to go through that massive machine made up of the labels, radio stations and music stores.  The stores are already dying (that heavy sound that you keep hearing is not thunder, it's the sound of huge retail music chains collapsing and crashing to the ground like the dinosaurs they are), the labels are consolidating (meaning laying off everyone they can and cutting all other costs in an attempt to stay alive and make a nice profit for the owners and managers) and radio is not far behind.

Trouble is, they just don't want your music.  You don't fit their mold.  And as they get more desperate their only alternative is to push their tried and true acts even harder.  If they do look at you it's because you already are a zillion dollar seller.

The excitement that we feel here is for the coming opening of our direct digital download platform for the Independent Artist and Label.  No huge label system to go through.  No "send us your music and we try to put it on other platforms." 

Of course, we'll keep you posted about our process.  In the meantime, you can see how it works here.

DVD's in the Closet

How many artists have DVD's but no where to play them?  DVD's in the closet.

Like Digital - the artists who begin to understand that they have to take their own careers under their own control are the artists who are going to stand out.

Gone are the days when players had the illusion that big daddy label would pay for everything and then it would be all right.

Take control of your own destiny.  Get those DVD's out of the closet where no one can see them.  What good does that do?

As we get our new digital platform set up - the artists who get seen and heard are the ones who have a chance to really sell their work.

We are getting new registrations for the digital platform.  Don't forget to send those DVD's in too.  If they don't see or hear you - how can they know they like you?

Don't get left behind.