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WWW,
July 2014 - During these last months, the
Dubroom has been releasing new original
music in a new original sound. This music
has been put on the Dubroom website, and
equally -without too much noise on the
Dubroom about this- put on a variety of
sites that enable producers, artists and/or
labels to present their music online. Why?
Just to see what these sites are doing in
themselves for your average online (DUB)
Reggae artist. Messian Dread reports how
over 10,000 of ads on sites only led to 8 free downloads...
Let's call
them free Online Music Distributors or OMD's
for the sake of this article, shall we? For
that is what websites like SOUNDCLOUD,
REVERBNATION and others we're going to take
a look at, actually do. You upload your
MP3/WAV file(s), some pictures and write a
little bit of info and voila, there's your
page. Ready to be viewed by what many sites
call "fans", your music available
for download and/or streaming and/or
purchase.
This is
exactly what I've been doing during these
last months. I've been uploading the new
Dubroom music to a number of sites, just to
see what would happen. An experiment, of
which some results are not yet available
which in itself makes a point. Yes, that
first. There is no website that will
instantly give you "fans" or even
views. You'll have to use the OMD's as part
of your own route, like they do with your
music. You see them as distributor of your
music where they see you, us, as content
provider for their websites. Nothing wrong
with that, but nothing to overlook
either.
Indeed:
gone are the days where just one website
could boost an artist and could even become
a threat for established musical
industrialists. Gone are the days where you
could reach out to that large audience by committing
yourself to one OMD. This here is a
scattered Internet, where listeners have to
look for the good music using all kinds of
websites and we, music creators, have to do
the same. We have to use all the websites or
at least three or four, and we have to have
a website for ourselves as well. Even a
facebook page won't do.
With all
this in mind, I took a look at some
websites. Just because I hadn't released a
track in years, even the websites where I
already had an account needed some serious
work. It was kind of an opportunity to see
the various websites through the eyes of a
new artist. Other websites needed me to make
an account, so there was my chance to get a
quick discovery look at them. Here they are,
in a particular order:
VERSIONIST.net
To my shame
I must admit that I had to make an account
at this, revamped, the Original and
Foundational OMD aimed at (DUB) Reggae. I
had to see, though, that -like me-
Versionist has a lot of starting situations
and one of them is that the site's community
doesn't suffer from ADHD. It's too quiet, in
other words. New tracks are added almost
daily but there is little to no commenting,
little to no activity in the Message Boards,
things that I assume are the results of not
too many people knowing about this revamped
VERSIONIST.net (not com).
Versionist
offers you to upload your music, but you can
also upload Zip Files. I did this with a
number of files from Studio Dubroom. An
Acapella that I recently put out, some
Reason Refills, stuff like that. And of
course I uploaded my music. Saw the music in
the monthly and weekly Top 16, which of
course is nice but purely the result of the
fact that there is little activity.
When there
is one website that has the potential to at
least gather the majority of the online
(DUB) Reggae Artist Community, it is
Versionist. That's just a fact and anyone
who denies this can be considered ignorant
to say the least. After all, this is the
original website that since it's vanishing a
couple of years ago left an enormous vacuum
that had never been filled by anyone that
tried. And some did try, some domain names
are for sale long time now.
Link: http://www.versionist.net/dubroomorg/
Update
September 20 2014: Versionist is expanded to
Net broadcasting of live DJ Sets and has
turned from an OMD website to a website with
a DJ and a OMD section. The OMD Section can
now be found at http://www.versionist.net/music
DUBARK.com
Compared to
the oasis that is DUBARK.com, Versionist is
on steroids. DUBARK.com is definitely the
most quiet among all OMD's that I've been
using these last months. Partly, this is
because the website was founded to at least
try and fill the vacuum that the original
Versionist had left and the enormous
frustration that was felt at earlier attempt
to do the same and it seems like in this
time where even Versionist can take it's own
place back, DUBARK.com won't be able to
either.
Even more:
the fact that there's two websites for the
same -small- community may not be that
efficient either. Yes, the community is way
too scattered and many new artists have come
since, perhaps not even aware of the whole
Versionist saga that went on a couple of
years ago and to which I have absolutely
nothing more to say.
Link: http://www.dubark.com/DUBROOM.org/
SOUNDCLOUD.com
So, let's
try some of the major ones and not in the
least because both Versionist and the Dub
Ark have in common that you can create your
account there and link it with a
SOUNDCLOUD.com account. I quickly discovered
why in these last years whenever I glanced
over Soundcloud I discovered
"only" 30 second tunes: they won't
let you have more music than a mere two
hours. For me, and apparently also for the
ones that I was checking during the years,
that's just a joke. You can't build a steady
presence over the years with just two hours
of material.
Sure,
Soundcloud has a very nice player that you
can embed, they let you deeplink to tunes so
they can be downloaded from whatever third
party site (i.e. mp3.dubroom.org), but then,
when you reach the two hours that you have,
you'll have to choose and it will either
cost you money or you will have to disappoint
all those people that have embedded your
music on their blog or wherever. Not to
forget Dub Ark and Versionist, where you
linked to your Soundcloud page. No, thank
you. Indeed, in the end you will see
yourself posting 30 second teasers and link
to full downloads/streams on other sites in
your track description. Oh, wait, that was
the impression I had about Soundcloud all
these years in the first place.
One thing I
absolutely do not comprehend is to see
people uploading hours and hours worth of
mixtapes and podcasts on their Soundcloud
account. They make it available for
streaming only. They can do exactly that:
making a mixtape or podcast and make it
available for streaming and do so absolutely
free and even legal at MIXCLOUD.com,
which -I think- must be a sister company of Soundcloud.
So, what to
do with a Soundcloud account? It was nice,
they had a free gift of Ableton Live Lite 8
for all users of the site. Now that's a nice
thing because Ableton is top software for
music production, even in the Lite version.
Even better: it clearly indicates that the
websites primary target is YOU, the music
producer. It is YOU they see as their source
of income, not the listener and not the
advertizers. And more power to them, again,
nothing wrong with this but it is not
something you must overlook. It's like
facebook: people think that they are the
ones considered to be the customers but in
fact they are not. They are in fact the
product that facebook offers to the
advertizers. The product that Soundcloud
offers is hosting for music creators, not
music for people that want to listen to
music. Which they should make much, much,
much more clear than they do now.
Link: https://soundcloud.com/dubroomorg
So let's go
over to a website that does make it
absolutely clear, the one with the coolest
name of all the major free OMD's:
REVERBNATION.com
This
website aims at the music producers and they
make that nothing to be discovered. It's
in-your-face. I had an account at Reverb
Nation for years but never did much with it.
So when I logged in to upload my news sounds
a couple of months ago, I saw an offer of a
free trial Ad Campaign and before I continue
about the website, I want to show you the
hilarious results (click to enlarge):
From June
25 to June 30 2014, 10,233 "fans"
viewed my ads on 1,135 "sites"
where a the skyrocketing amount of 6 -again-
"fans" played a total of 8 streams
and one unique download. Now, where you read
"fans" these are just
"views". That's obvious. Where you
read "sites", that's where things
become a bit unclear. Is my ad really put on
1,135 web sites where they have been shown
on average ten times? Probably. This could
explain the bizarre results. Let's break it
down a little bit.
To make the
figures more easy: 10,000 views on 1,000
website bring 6 visitors, 8 plays and one
download (which could be me clicking on the
download link in the "test-ad"
section once). In five days. That means two
shows per site per day. I have seen Reverb
Nation adverts on several sites, I suspect
they have a deal with Google Adsense. They
say they show it on YouTube etc, and I'm
sure they do, but that's not the only place
where your ads are shown. As
"everyone" knows, ad campaigns are
only profitable because of
repeat-repeat-repeat. You'll have to pay
thousands of dollars to get a succesfull ad
campaign, that one is most certain.
Something
positive about this: it gives the ultimate argument
why it sometimes does pay to try a
free trial. Pay as in, keep your money in
your pocket and spend it on some soundware.
At least, that would -and is- my conclusion.
This is by
far not the only thing that Reverb Nation
offers, though. Next to free hosting that is
-as I perceive it- more than a mere two
hours worth of tracks, you can subscribe to
daily opportunities. This can be air-play,
considerations for reviews on magazines, et
cetera. Some opportunities cost you money
and others let you submit "for
free". No opportunities to make money,
as far as I can see.
You can do
this in the store, though. A store you can
make for yourself. A store where you can
design your own physical CD and T-shirts,
which is interesting especially since you
can do this for free and Reverb Nation only
takes a comission.
Link: http://www.reverbnation.com/realdubroom
NET
LABELS
For me, the
demise of MP3.com and sort-of repeating of
the same thing at Versionist is very much
connected with the rise of the NET LABEL
phenomenon during the last decade. Sure,
they were always there but they are more
present at this moment and more relevant as
well. I welcome this development with open
arms and even joined in by sort of creating
a Net
Label for the Dubroom too.
There's a
little problem here, especially for the
listeners, for the people who we as
producers/artists whatever do it for. Fot
all these Net Labels factually all are
different websites, offering music by
artists. Hand picked and thing. I try to
sort of gather
the material for the Dubroom visitors when
it's Creative Commons and review as much
as I can for mp3.dubroom.org,
but it should be so Ire when a site like VERSIONIST.net
would grow into just that.
We're not
there yet.
We're here:
July 2014.
WHERE TO
PUT AND PROMOTE YOUR MUSIC
You're an
artist, producer, band, whatever it is you
are, you have this musical production you
somehow made and you want to share it with
the people who want to listen to (DUB)
Reggae Music. What do you do? Let me list
this:
- You sign
up at Versionist and Reverb Nation for a
more or less steady basis. You leave a
couple of tunes on Soundcloud but more
important: you keep your space there to
provide 30 seconds or so fragments and
you link to your Versionist/Reverb
Nation Page.
- You
write to one of the Net Labels you can
find on mp3.dubroom.org and see if your
music would be a good addition to the
catalogue of that particular Net Label.
You contact them and work out something.
- You can
also write to the Dubroom for review
inclusion at mp3.dubroom.org or
music.dubroom.org but that is the most
uncertain thing to build on since I know
for a fact this website has a longer
list of requirements than some Net
Labels for obvious reasons. But you can
always join the Dubroom Message Boards
and promote your thing. The Dubroom
website and Forum serve thousands of
visitors each week, together well over
10,000 so you will expose something to
someone.
Free
promotion of your music, actually, I can
only see this when websites and reviewers
with an audience of Reggae Lovers will write
about you. This can be but is definitely not
limited to the Dubroom. Not one of the sites
I have joined these last months do anything
to promote your music, again with the
exception of Versionist and Dub Ark. I can
easily say that I get more downloads from
the Dubroom website itself than all the
others combined even though that may change
in the future as I kind of like the embed
widgets at Reverb Nation but that's for
another time.
CONCLUSION
At this
moment, the online (DUB) Reggae Artist
community is scattered and there is not one
website that has been able to fill the
vacuum that the original Versionist website
left. Just like this very same thing can be
said about the Online Artist Community in
general after the demise of MP3.com.
The current
situation dictates in my opinion that we
need a strong website where the online (DUB)
Reggae Artist and the online listener of
this very same music can find each other.
The Dubroom isn't the place for this, but
Versionist definitely is.
One Love,
Messian Dread (TO
TOP)
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