Re: beat selling promotion details
blazemyl said:
Any specific ways, or could you explain more of how you did it personally
While I'm not at the point where I'm ready to do it myself, I'm very impressed by Sho-Down's approach. He has a nicely scaleable system that covers a wide-range of targets (my apologies to Sho-Down if I've misunderstand part of his process):
1: Single loop samples, useable for demo purposes, to allow people to hear your work. These are free but require you to sign up to a mailing list, which provides you with a growing userbase to market to.
2: Compilation CDs of those samples, including new material not otherwise posted but grouped into collections of similar style loops. Sell these as cheaply as you can ensuring you cover production (and maybe hosting) costs....these aren't the meat of your sales, this is just more advertising of your material.
3: Provide a leasing option which provides limited use of the loop. Where possible, try to retain the right to use the loop as part of your marketing; posting a loop with references to who has used it and where provides potential customers with a musical context to assess your work in. Plus it shows you're selling your work..."nothing succeeds like success" is cliched cos it's true
4: Provide an outright purchase option which exclusive use rights. Definately the big ticket item. If you're
ever signing away permanent rights to something you've created, at least make sure you feel you're being suitably compensated for it. (It's also worth your time to look into the process behind conferring more limited 'exclusive' rights ie retaining the ability to sell the same loop to, say, someone producing an album and someone else writing an advertising jingle. Or at least trying to ensure that your contribution is recognised and rewarded if said album producer sells the rights to the track with your loop for advertising purposes.) Being able to continue to make the loop listenable along with a reference to where it has found its home is also invaluable for your rep, just as in #3.
There's a smooth scalability to this approach that really impresses me.
should I be on MP3 AND Soundclick
Unless there's a policy on either prohibiting it, I say post them
everywhere you think they're relevent.
I hope all this ranting helps
Good luck with your efforts!
[edit to fix up minor typos]