Retain the Rights By Distributing Your Own Music

One of the reasons to have a contract with a record label is the distribution resources. Big companies, with deep pockets can get your CD in online and brick/mortar stores. In publishing, when LuLu.com came out they offered a feature of making your books available for purchase on Amazon.com. Although there was no promise that your book would appear on Amazon.com, the idea that your book could be distributed to a larger audience outside of your own website was a big step.

Enter Musicadium, an independent music distribution service that works with iTunes and eMusic. The service fee is a minimal US$29.95 compared to the fact that you retain all rights to your music, which means no signing your soul away to big businesses.

I am eager to hear some success stories about this service. I personally, didn’t purchase the ISBN number needed to make my books available on Amazon, but the option is enticing. The implication that a budding artist in any medium (print, music, video) can get their work out to a larger audience through services like this is compounded by large artists that are moving away from record labels. An example of this is Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails, who have made the decision to not attach to a record label and stay independent. Radiohead in particular is releasing their latest album In Rainbows online, without DRM, and a name your price model (think NPR listener supported radio).

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