As I'm tooling around with playing guitar again and have a distant eye on recording I've been looking in to methods of distributing somewhat half heartedly. I'm a huge fan of offering artistic works for free. If the material is good enough people will want to pay for it. It shouldn't, at least in my eyes, be the other way around. I don't want to buy something I'm going to hate but I will gladly pay money for something I love.

In my travels I happened upon CDBaby again. I've always liked the model they have going there of allowing independent artists to have a method of distribution. When they introduced digital downloads some years ago I thought it was a good idea. One of the biggest barriers for independent musicians is physical product. It's very expensive to get CDs pressed in small amounts. Considering the exposure base of most of these artists it's simply not feasible to press in a quantity large enough to get decent bulk discounts. That leaves the artists having to charge an unfortunately high amount for their disc just to cover their costs, which isn't going to happen anyway. How many bands do you know that have dozens, if not hundreds, of their album in a box somewhere?

Digital distribution should elegantly solve that problem. With home recording or cheap studio time, a decent ear at mixing, and the entry level drops through the floor. No need to scrounge money just to get press discs that will largely never sell. Since the entry level is so minor it should encourage prices to be low as well. Sadly, that's not the case.

I'm seeing small, independent artists suffering the same pricing issue that international, label backed artists have. A CD isn't worth more than $10. That's a physical object. Something that someone owns with cover art and printed materials. It's tangible and can be resold. Despite this downloadable albums, usually a middle of the road bit rate MP3, are selling for $10. Single songs going for 99 cents. Really? Most of these artists wouldn't charge more than that for the physical CD but will charge an equal amount for an MP3.

There's a personal psychosis in here. I really dislike the MP3 codec. After spending a lot of time with FLAC and OGG I just really dislike the sound of MP3. That aside it just seems entirely backwards to me. Regardless of your discipline the number one issue for artists isn't people stealing their shit, it's people never being exposed to it. Why should I part with my money for your music? Why should I spend the same amount for a digital download that I would spend on a professional CD?

The removal of the barrier to entry should be driving down the costs. Maintaining the status quo seems ludicrous to me. I'm curious as to why artists aren't releasing entire albums sub-$5 range. If I were to visity CDBaby and while browsing found an artist that seemed pretty solid based off the samples with digital download for $2 I wouldn't even think about it. I'd just purchase it. Why not? It's $2. The margin is thinner but the potential exposure, the likelihood of purchase increases significantly. That's what artists should be focusing on, finding and growing an audience.

david shute - Jan 26, 2010 at 9:09 PM