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Hi again just here to say that I am not an authority on this and spent a long time mainly being confused which I just want to share so that other people know it’s okay to be confused most of the time. If you can educate me that would be amazing so please do let me know if I’ve done anything drastic and ruined my life.

When it comes to releasing music there are so many different ways of going about it, it’s very overwhelming. I had done a year at college where we had gone through all of the different sites that do music distribution and I felt completely lost. There are so many options for distributing online to streaming and download services. I think it comes down to personal preference and what you want to focus on in terms of promotion.

I spent a lot of time researching which ones I liked. I have accounts with probably three or four different companies because a lot of their websites don’t show everything until you’ve signed up. I chose CD baby in the end because they have a partnership with Show.co which allows you to have Spotify pre-save links. I would recommend looking into each company because I believe that Distrokid now also offers Spotify pre-save but they didn’t when I was first looking to release music. Things change very quickly online so what I say now may not hold up in six months.

The best way I could find to make the decision was a spreadsheet type thing, I prefer to write it down on paper so I have it and can make notes, you may prefer an actual spreadsheet, it doesn’t really matter. But because you’re looking at so many sites all with different layouts it’s so hard to compare them so I wrote down how much each cost. Some charge by the year, some charge per release. CD baby is one charge per release that you don’t have to pay again, Distrokid is a yearly subscription which means if you ever stop paying your music gets taken down. Some sites are very expensive, CD baby offers two different packages one is about £30 the other about £10 (as of 2019), the more expensive one means they will go and chase money (royalties) down for you, the other one you’ll have to do it yourself. All of this factors in.

So, before you venture into this, decide what’s important to you. Price? Promotion? Adverts? Ease of use? And make sure you sit and read the terms and conditions before you sign anything, this is your legally binding contract which decides ownership.

The other thing you have to know is who wrote the song and if you wrote it with someone else how much of a percentage do they own and how much do you own?

But at the end of the day, this won’t kill you. It can be scary and intimidating but you just have to make the choice and go with it, it’ll be fine in the end.

This is my last post in this series so thank you for reading. Again before I start I just want to say that I am no authority on this matter, I’m sharing my experience even the things I’ve done wrong. If you know more than I do then I would always appreciate help with this!

Promotion, social media, advertising, all of these things terrify me honestly. I spend a lot of time worrying about what I’m posting, if people will see it, if I’m trying hard enough. What I’ve learnt, though, is that the only truly wrong thing is not posting anything.

I’ve played open mics and had people offer to put posters in the pub window, which is amazing. I’ve had people I haven’t spoken to for years share my son

I spent a lot of time being very anxious about sharing my music, being embarrassed about it because I didn’t know if it was good enough to share. The thing is, I’m putting it out there, I have to believe in it, so I have to promote it.

For your first single you don’t have access to anything, no Spotify or Apple music for artists, no presave links, nothing. So when I saw a lot of people saying that you have to get two months worth of promo out of a song, starting a month before and not stopping till there’s something else to talk about, I stalled. I had no links to send people to. I had a website with nothing on it, I wasn’t gigging, I had no songs out, so what was I supposed to show people.

What I did instead was I waited until a week before my single came out and then I posted everywhere saying ‘hey, look, my song’s out a week from now’ and then I did ‘hey, my song’s out this Friday’. And then, as soon as my song was out, I went into promo mode.

I think I posted four times on Instagram the first day, then another two the second day. This includes stories. I posted all of these to Twitter and Facebook, and then I just kept talking about it. Every couple of days for about two weeks I reminded people of my song.

My one piece of advice about promoting your first single, when you have barely any followers, is be proud of what you’ve done. This is something you have to believe in. Shout it from the rooftops if you have to, just tell everyone. Ask people to share it, get your parents, your friends, anyone to share it everywhere. If you can get just one or two followers from your first ever release then you’re doing well. And when people tell you it’s good, or they share it, share their post, say thank you. Maybe they’ll share it again.

Just believe in your art, tell people you believe in it, some people will believe in it with you.

Before I get into this, I would just like to say that I am no authority on this, or anything else for that matter. I just want to share my experience, and if you have found a better way of doing things I’d love to know so I can make my own life easier!

My music is very personal to me. I know everyone says that but it’s true for us all so I’m saying it again. I write the lyrics for my songs on my own pretty much all of the time and they’re often based on my life or on something I’ve seen, a film or a friend’s story. Either way they’re my thoughts and feelings on a situation. Because of this I had this idea that I wanted the cover to be my own, that I wanted to make something for it, do it myself so that it can properly represent the music and the thoughts and all of those things.

To be more specific I wanted to paint or draw the covers. Now this didn’t quite work out the way I wanted it to, and next time I might come up with a different concept, or maybe try and follow through on this idea.

I started with the idea of a wine glass, I wanted to add water colour to it so I mixed some paint to close to a wine colour, which is difficult because I’m not really a wine drinker. The song, if you haven’t heard it (you should obviously), is about someone only wanting you to forget, only wanting you till ‘last call’, until home time and the drinking stops. I tried for a long time to paint this fallen over wine glass with wine spilled everywhere. I got to the point where I really wanted to do anything other than paint this cover art but it needed doing so I sat and continued trying.

The thing that ended up catching my eye and inspiring everyone was actually when I got so bored I picked up the wine glass I was using as a reference and put it down in the paint and then on the paper, creating a circle on the page.

I took this to my father after sitting and making stains on the paper for about an hour. We ended up using the first one, typical. He worked some Photoshop magic, adding linen texture to the background and making it less plain white so it was less stark. We added text, the name of the song and my own name, in my handwriting. I tried to make a font to do this but it has turned out to be easier for me to just write it out and for us to scan that in.

Obviously everyone is different and you might want to do this in a completely different way. I don’t particularly want to do it exactly like this next time as it took a long time and was very stressful. The key, I think, is to have a really strong concept that you’re happy with. The problem really was that I wasn’t 100% happy with my own concept which meant executing it in a way that made me happy was incredibly difficult.

 

All streaming/download links are available on my Music page.

Again, before I start I’d just like to say I am no authority on this, I am just sharing my experiences and if I’ve done something wrong or you know of a better way of doing something then let me know! I am always open to learning and collaborating.

I was very lucky when it came to recording my single. At the time I was doing a college course studying live performance and music, the college I was at also did courses for live sound and tech meaning they needed people to record so that the tech students could learn. This meant that I didn’t have to pay for the time in the studio or the people to do my recording.

On my recording it is not just me, however much I’d like to be able to play all of the instruments to that high of a standard I am not that skilled. The other musicians who performed with me for our college gigs also agreed to record with me. This means I did not have to pay any session musicians either. Session musicians obviously vary on how much they want to be paid, if you’re lucky then you might have friends who won’t ask to be paid however it is a job and I personally would have loved to pay the very talented people who worked with me but at this point I’m not able to.

When preparing for recording it was quite simple, at the time we were regularly performing on our course so we’d had a lot of practice, once a week for a couple of hours. If I were to record songs I wasn’t gigging with at the time I think I’d have to do a lot of rehearsal with the people I wanted to record with.

We’d done some recording with the college on the course before I decided to record, this meant I had a kind of plan in my head for how I wanted to do it. Because we’d practised together so much, and knew how each of us worked, it meant that we managed to get a lot done with not a lot of time, it only really took one day to get the song done meaning they started the mixing and we were pretty much done for lunch.

We started with the base of the song, the bass, drums and the rhythm guitar. On this song there is acoustic and electric playing rhythm so we added electric afterwards. We then added the guitar solo and the vocals. I added backing vocals on a separate day.

Once the recording was over I had to get it mixed. I didn’t manage to get the song mixed through the college so this I did have to pay for. I was lucky in that I got a recommendation from a friend of a relatively cheap person for mixing who was amazing and then they recommended someone for mastering who was also on the cheaper side. I did this song at the same time as three others so my mixing cost £160 for all four and my mastering cost £112 for the four.

Although this was a lot of work I really enjoyed this process, for one thing it was a huge learning experience for me but it was also a lot of fun working with other musicians and creating something I am really proud of.