Digital Distribution
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What Is Digital Distribution?
Traditionally, audio recording has been distributed in a physical format. From wax cylinders, to vinyl, to tape, to CDs, people have always been able hold recordings in their hand. This is no longer true.
Just as Digital Recording can be used in place of analogue tape in the studio, now Digital Audio Files can take the place of physical mediums for distribution.
The History of Digital Distribution
Early Digital Audio
With the advent of computers and digital audio technologies, it became possible to store audio files on personal computers. However, at first these audio files were too large and the hard-drive space too expensive to make storing a large quantity of music viable. This changed with two major advancements in both the realms of hard-drive technology and Digital Audio File compression.
Hard-Drives and Compression
In time, hard-drives became more advanced, allowing larger amounts of data to be stored in a small space and at a smaller cost. While before 1 GB of storage space sounded like an impossible dream, hard-drives started to hit the consumer market that were tens of GBs, then 100s of GBs, and currently even 1 TB (1000 GBs).
At the same time, Audio Compression Codexs made audio files smaller and smaller. Where once a 1 second of stereo audio used 1 MB of space, it become possible, with new codexs like MP3, OGG and ACC, to compress a stereo audio file to one tenth the size. While these codex are lossy, a.k.a. they don't contain the complete recorded sound, most listeners found them acceptable. Further advances even made lossless compression possible with codexs such as FLAC, which creates an audio file about half the size of the original digital audio file, but with the same quality of sound.
The Internet and Sharing
With these new codex, particularly the lossy MP3, people began to store large amounts of music on their computers. In 1999, a program called Napster was released, allowing people to share their MP3 music collections over the internet. Napster became massively popular, but caused a backlash due to the large amount of copywrited music that was being distributed without royalties. Eventually, lawsuits from several major recording companies caused Napster to shut down.
Other methods of sharing became common, most notably Gnutella and BitTorrent.
Digital Music Stores and Copyleft Distribution
In response to the mass interest of consumers to get their music off the internet, the major record labels began selling their music online. The most notable of these efforts is Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store. Others include a new rendition of Napster and sites like eMusic.com.
Also in response to this mass interest, many creators of audio recordings began distributing their work under the "copyleft" GNU and Creative Commons licenses, which allow people to distribute and use music legally without paying royalties via websites, sharing programs such as Gnutella, etc.
How To Digitally Distribute Your Work
There are three common ways to Digitally Distribute your work.
The first is to host your music on a website. This allows you to both give your music away for free, give listeners a chance to donate money to you, and, with enough know how, it is possible to sell your music as well.
The second method requires that you get signed to a label. Most major labels and some independent labels can get your music on iTunes Music Store, along with a variety of other services, some which use DRM and some that don't. However, the labels will most likely take a cut of the profits.
The third method is to sign up for CDBaby's Digital Distribute program. For $35, CDBaby will warehouse 5 copies of your CD, set up a page on their website where people can buy your physical CD, and they will get your music on over ten digital distribute services, including the iTunes Music Store, Napster, and eMusic. They take %9 of the profit, leaving 91% for the artist. For example, for a sale of $.99 on the iTunes Music Store, after Apple and CDBaby take their cut, the artist gets paid $.65.
Check it out at CDBaby.net
