ever tried selling your music, art, or photos?

[chaosmachine]

Ever tried selling your work online? Any kind of work, really. Music, photography, painting, drawing, film, etc...

 

Do you use any 3rd party shops? Are they any good? Make any money? Get ripped off? Gave up? Great success?

 

What's good, what's bad, and what would you change if you could, about selling online or off?

 

Tell me about your experiences!

[modey]

yes, i've sold a few items on bandcamp. probably about 5 copies of the 'lets take this dinosaur' cdr through bandcamp, and about 50% of the other copies through word of mouth/forum posts. the rest were given away.

 

as for in person, whenever i play a gig i try to put some cds at the merch table, last gig i played i managed to sell a few, which was nice. i usually like to give cds away though, i'm not *really* in it for the money if it's on a small scale like cdr releases. if and when i decide to go down the path of mass produced vinyl/cassettes i'll probably take sales a bit more seriously.

 

i kinda like how bandcamp works too. being able to set your own price with no minimum is a really good idea. especially for someone like me who doesn't rely on their art as a main source of income. it allows people to download my music for free but also donate if they feel like doing so. and i'm much appreciative of those on watmm who have bought my releases! and even those who haven't, but still enjoy it.

 

what would i change? well, i'd like a service that promotes too (for a cut of the profits, i guess), but that might be wishful thinking. guess i should just get on a label or something

Edited December 5, 2010 by modey

[YEK]

i sold a couple old albums back in highschool to friends. 5 dollars. in retrospect i shouldn't have charged that much , i probably sold 3 or 4? woohoo!

[Guest analogue wings]

biggest problem for me is selling my indie band online. gig sales are no problem because people hear us and they get it. online, i struggle to find communities of people who listen to similar shit to what my band makes. i myself do not listen to similar shit to what my band makes, which doesn't help. i dont know many other artists that sound like us and i dont know what cool genre names i should be tagging shit with

[Mellow U]

I have managed to make music for a living since about 2006, mostly releasing it myself and selling it via an online mailing list, but also releasing with other labels if/when it's profitable enough for me (in either cash or exposure terms). I also deal directly with several shops/distributors, which makes it easier to find my stuff abroad. I'm pretty much a minority though...I kinda make enough music for 3-5 people all on my own...although that doesn't mean I have absolutely no quality control either! Despite how much I have released, there's almost just as much material that remains unreleased, which sometimes mutates into finished work later for other projects, but also can get scrapped entirely.

 

On the whole, my experience has been a positive one - esp. considering I rarely perform live and I don't spam the fuck out of my work on the internet (all of my nodes of publicity entail: a blog, Facebook group, mailing list, sometimes Soundcloud and Myspace, and of course I'll occasionally post here in the New & Upcoming Releases subforum if I think the music would be appreciated here) - but I would be absolutely nowhere without a very core group of steady supporters...I.E. the same few dozen people and record shops that continually pick up what I put out.

 

I've found when it comes to classy publicizing, nothing works better than free shit, whether it is a totally free downloadable release, uploading the tracks to YouTube, or something close to that. I like to operate purely on the notion of...give 'em a free taste, and if they like it, they'll come back for another fix at some point. Of course, smaller solo/indie operations such as myself are the ones who are truly hit hard by internet leaks and filesharing (I once had an unmastered unreleased album leak via a friend on Slsk, and some kid found it, slapped it on Oink and it was on the front page's top downloads in under a day!)...but despite this, I've found that it works much more in my favor to go with the tide rather than against it. I am vocal about supporting filesharing as long as it's not some disrespectful prick who maintains the opinion that all music "should be free" and chastises me for even asking for a return from my work, and usually people agree with the idea that if someone downloads your work, likes it, spreads it around to others seeking it...that's a load of publicity work that I don't have to do, and in the end it is totally genuine because you never end up with people who aren't really into your work listening to it due to some sort of annoying spam...

 

Phew! Went off on a bit of a tangent there but whatever...I rarely post at length here and for once I felt like I had something to add to the conversation.

[Velazquez]

Yes, i've sold some paintings, through galleries and through personal sales. I make some money doing video work as well, some "artistic" stuff and other time just point and shoot type of stuff.

[Silent Member]

I made an album for an upstart label, they got contacted by an interested and well known distributor (over here at least) for the album, but the label couldn't be arsed to do anything about it before they had more releases ready to go. Time passed and nothing happened, the label guy got more interested in online gaming. The album is currently sitting in boxes in a basement somewhere. Got so demotivated by the whole thing that I gave up on my music.

[chaosmachine]

thanks for the responses so far.

[Braintree]

I've sold my music online and at shows. I've also licensed music for advertising, as well as done some professional composition work. I'm made some okay money from composing, but never consistently enough to live on. I mostly work as a live sound engineer, as well as teach music/audio.

 

I still haven't heard back about the iTunes sales from my last album, which came out in May of this year. I got a bit of exposure through the label for that release, but not as much as I would have liked. They were really easy to deal with, and it was great that they had distribution through a lot of different channels, but I would have liked some more exposure. That's the main reason I release through other people instead of just through my bandcamp site.

 

I often think of starting my own physical label since I know a lot of really talented people that don't get enough praise for their music. There's just the money obstacle, and the fact that I have to get someone to design a website.

[Guest hahathhat]

i just upload it all to the internet for whoever gives a shit

[vamos scorcho]

I made an album for an upstart label, they got contacted by an interested and well known distributor (over here at least) for the album, but the label couldn't be arsed to do anything about it before they had more releases ready to go. Time passed and nothing happened, the label guy got more interested in online gaming. The album is currently sitting in boxes in a basement somewhere. Got so demotivated by the whole thing that I gave up on my music.

 

slightly similar thing happened to me. i was going to have an album of music put up for free online on a small label. i figured it would help start the word going a bit. the thing ended up dissipating over time.

 

it ends up that i developed some new beliefs in the process about how i'm going to distribute my work in the future. i've sort of got my mind set on the idea of running a website from which everything is released - i plan to never, ever charge for files - to provide all of them free. instead i think that i'll charge high prices for the extravagant designs on physical copies, should people wish to make that purchase. i'm sure there are collectors out there would would pay good money for a good artistic product.

 

that's truly a while down the line though, it doesn't really detract from the creative process at all. it's just something i've been slowly thinking about as the moment in time approaches when i will have to carry out these plans.

[Cryptowen]

Back when I was 16 I made a few physical copies of my first album and gave them to local cd shops & CDBaby. It sold about a half dozen copies, which I thought was a pretty good amount considering it was experimental noise collage music & I didn't do any shows to promote it.

 

Bootleg copies of my second album are apparently for sale somewhere in Russia.

 

My third album isn't for sale anywhere, & I'm not sure if it's been bootlegged because it's gotten about 1/10th the exposure of my second release.

[data]

semi related

 

i just found a bunch of links to my ep from last year and my new album (both on itunes) on a russian forum, i registred and told them that if they can't access itunes or afford it or whatever, they could get in touch with me through myspace, facebook, youtube or soundcloud and i'll send it to them, instead of having links to .rar files posted all over a public forum. i kinda feel like a proper cunt now.

[Guest tht tne]

Atop tried to sell me a sneaksta303 mix but instead i fucked their mums

[Guest Benedict Cumberbatch]

it seems to me like everyone doing there own thing separately is a waste of energy. look at the resources and people who frequent watmm. team up, form collectives, labels, etc.

 

exposure comes from either pushing your music hard in peoples faces (spam) or by someone coming to it by association with something else or by hearing it in mixes etc. not many people will listen because you post a link.

 

look at the gravity halo blog - its just a blog posting releases, shows, news etc. they did a great compilation earlier in the year. didnt get incredible exposure but its young still.

 

how is your online presence? got a website? got a soundcloud? forget myspace and facebookmusic pages.

 

community is a big part of it to i feel.

Edited December 14, 2010 by Benedict Cumberbatch

[purlieu]

Yes, community helps. Back in the day, I was a member of ElectronicScene.com when it was a pretty big site - Ochre, Captain Ahab and a few others were regular posters before they got signed and such - and was heavily involved in the forum there. After the label it was due to come out on folded, I decided to self-release my first album, and between that place, other online sites, friends and a bit of promotion through reviews (managed to snag a review in The Wire somehow), sales went into three figures, which was amazing for what is a fairly weird album promoted by an 18 year old on a few websites and mailing off a few copies in jiffy bags.

I attempted the same thing for my second album but times had changed and sadly it had become much harder to sell a self-released CD in the three years that had past, especially as ElectronicScene had pretty much died, and my curious school friends had been replaced by university friends, very few of whom were into electronic stuff, and even fewer of whom were impressed by 'wow, my friend makes music!'

More recently I've been uploading tracks to YouTube, last.fm and various other sites, and sales very slow but steady - a few a year, but they never completely dry up.

I've put out a couple of bits and bobs recently, just on CDrs with weird/novelty packaging, very limited edition harsh noise/breakcore stuff that I target at a few noise forums, they seem to do alright but I make no profit on them. It's a bit of fun though. In the future the only stuff I plan on self-releasing is free music, I keep a little netlabel going that's home to my own project for EPs and stuff. I've got small labels interested in selling my next two albums so I don't have to worry there, and I'm trying to alternate between putting a free download and a retail release out. There's no reason to be interested in profit as I don't stand a chance of making any, so small DIY labels do the job for me. I make the odd £20 here and there and that's fine!

Edited December 17, 2010 by purlieu

[ryancolecreate]

I've sold my music online and at shows. I've also licensed music for advertising, as well as done some professional composition work. I'm made some okay money from composing, but never consistently enough to live on. I mostly work as a live sound engineer, as well as teach music/audio.

 

I still haven't heard back about the iTunes sales from my last album, which came out in May of this year. I got a bit of exposure through the label for that release, but not as much as I would have liked. They were really easy to deal with, and it was great that they had distribution through a lot of different channels, but I would have liked some more exposure. That's the main reason I release through other people instead of just through my bandcamp site.

 

I often think of starting my own physical label since I know a lot of really talented people that don't get enough praise for their music. There's just the money obstacle, and the fact that I have to get someone to design a website.

 

 

Hit me up about that website. i'd be interested in contributing if you want to start a label... I don't know many people but I can swing the wordpress stick pretty well. :)

[autopilot]

been selling music on bandcamp for 2 years

 

made some nice cash