The music world is changing, and fast. With a UK album sales falling by a massive 13% last year, you could be forgiven for thinking that the CD is fast becoming obsolete – lost to a world of piracy and free streaming via providers like Spotify. But this is not necessarily the case. Although sales for mainstream artists have been declining, it is still extremely advantageous for bands that are just starting up to have their own CDs to distribute.
Although sites like bandcamp, facebook and myspace have made it possible to reach global audiences, with such massive saturation, it can sometimes be impossible to break through, and unless you are particularly savvy when it comes to marketing yourself, it is unlikely that you will never make it past your friends and family.
The best way then, to establish yourselves in today’s music scene seems to be through the “troubadour” technique – to play as many shows as possible, whenever and wherever you can, until people start to take notice.
These shows are a great way of getting your music out to people and so it becomes helpful to have your own CD to sell after shows. Here you have a couple of options depending on the sort of scale you want to operate on; CD replication is great for large quantities whereas CD duplication can be used for smaller orders, generally of 500 or less. This can be very simple and cost effective to do, and will mean that you could potentially gain a wider audience.
Not only this, but having your own product to sell or give away on the night will also make you look more professional than you would by producing a handful of links to people, and will also be particularly helpful if there happens to be a label representative or music journalist in the crowd who can take your CD off to review.
The music world is vast and changing. After all, it has been around for many years and to survive it must keep up with the times, which is why it has embraced new technological advances over time in the ways people own and listen to music.
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