H OT LINKS
CDbaby.com
and have poured your soul onto a disc, the next step gets a little
murky. How do you get your “baby” out there?
If you’re into the independent music scene at all, you might have
run across CD Baby before. Its music browsing features are great—
the ability to search for new artists based on their influences is a
great guide. But if you’ve recorded your own music, it would be a
shame to not investigate the artist side of CD Baby.
Save for the lucky few, most of us are sans record contracts, and
CD Baby allows any independent musician to make their albums
available to the world. The guys at CD Baby buy directly from the
musicians—no fancy-pants distributers allowed—and the site interfaces with i Tunes, Amazon and Rhapsody for even farther reach.
In a traditional record deal, musicians make $1-2 per album—if
their label actually pays them. With CD Baby, the artists make
$6-12 per album and get a paycheck every week. The clean interface and ease of use has led to more than 265,000 independent
musicians selling their music on the site, generating more than $99
million for their artists since the site was founded in 1998.
In addition to distribution help, the site has recently launched a
disc duplication service, which ships hard copies of your music
to you without a minimum purchase. The disc duplication service
offers templates to aid in packaging design as well.
What’s really cool about the site is its no-bullshit attitude. There’s
no red tape, no release of rights, and no exclusivity clauses. The
site is clearly all about helping independent musicians get off the
ground—getting started with CD Baby requires only a $35 set up
fee—with minimal self-promotion.
While we don’t usually advocate websites that charge for their
services, if you’re looking for a way to get paid for your music, you
should definitely give it a try.
Visit CDbaby.com to get your music out there.
www.premierguitar.com
Homerecordingtips.co.uk
There’s more to home recording than we could possibly cover in a
-
stores and online that offer tips, tricks and myths to achieving the
without the myths and voodoo, is homerecordingtips.co.uk.
The UK-based site is run by British recording professionals who
want to “demystify the world of audio recording and enable all
musicians to produce professional recordings using their home
recording studio.”
The site’s resources are broken up into nine sections: Buying
Advice, The Basics, Studio Setup Advice, Room Acoustics,
Microphone Techniques, Studio Techniques, Manufacturers,
sub-sections that make it easy to find the answer to any problem
you may be experiencing.
Most of the information is pretty basic, which makes it good for
someone just starting out. The glossary provides a listing of common recording vocabulary, explained in simpler terms, and there’s
an illustrating section on micing techniques. However, if you’re
tweaking your already-bitchin’ home setup, you might not find a
whole lot you don’t already know.
If you’re new to recording, homerecordingtips.co.uk might be a good
resource to bookmark and come back to as you find your bearings.
Get some tips at homerecordingtips.co.uk
