Comment by epoxyhockey | Hacker News Reader

Comment by epoxyhockey | Hacker News Reader

As a member of an indie rock band, I can say that it is nice to see the majority of our album sales going directly into our pockets. I can't imagine making pennies on an album sale, though, the band completely funded the recording studio time and production costs of both vinyl and CD, so we are entitled to make more profit off of album sales.

But, our problem isn't making the highest profit from selling our music. The biggest problem is how to grow our fan base and effectively reach out to new listeners who would be interested in our sound, but haven't discovered us.

I feel like the "old music industry" had a way of solving the 2nd problem as it seems to be analogous to winning a popularity contest and straight up brain-washing young children into liking something by making it look or sound cool.

Anyone can create music and get it into the iTunes store these days. The margins are great, but you still need tons of people to like and buy your music to actually make a living out of it.

Digital distribution shouldn't eliminate record labels; it should just revalue their services. Whereas before record labels were absolutely necessary for bands to make it big (hence the usurious contracts of the old days), now labels are (or are in the process of becoming) a merely helpful service.

My impression is that the iPhone App Store does a much better job of letting small developers make money than the iTunes music store does of letting small bands make money. I wonder what the core difference is?

I don't think small developers would be as successful on the app store had there been a record label equivalent in place. The app industry was virtually created with the app store. By the time iTunes came around, however, the music industry had already been operating in its current form for ~50 years.

If there was a Warner Music of app development, their products would muscle out indie developers just as record music does for indie music.

I do not think a large amount of bands were promoted in the old days, just that the ones that did were made into gods by the talent pushers. I think you have a much better position these days, especially with all the free testing (samples and such) on the web sites.

Music has always been a social thing, so take advantage of that. Your fans should have a reason to create new fans. Cool shirts can be conversation starters which lead to iPod demos. Maybe you could find similar bands and cross-pollinate the fanbases. Maybe you could run a promotion for the holidays where a fan buys a bunch of CDs to use as gifts, and the buyer gets some sort of trinket. Just some ideas.

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