As a music fan, i rely on Napster subscription service but i also buy MP3s direct from the artist’s website if not available on Napster. I have never made an online donation to a musician to date, but i have made donations to freeware apps, anywhere from $10 to $100, so i can see myself making a donation to a musician one day. I have also bought a fair amount of “high-profit-margin” merchandise direct from the bands, happy that they made money this way.

As an artist, i currently use a fairly usual format - my tracks are available to stream on my website and i sell downloads via PayLoadz. I also use CD Baby and, for my new stuff, Tunecore, to sell my music on iTunes and the likes. It’s working fine for me but, unlike JoCo, i rely on my day job for a big chunk of my income.

I’ve known a lot of independent bands over the years and for bands with an established fanbase, the best money spinner has always been tee-shirts. Not tee-shirts that you outsource from a website that prints them on demand, but tee-shirts ordered in lots of 100. However, it does require you keep stock and go down the post office to post them - it’s fairly easy to do as a band but as a one-man or one-woman operation, it’s one more thing you have to do, along with writing songs, recording, mixing, rehearsing, carrying your CDs to your show etc

JY

FLAC versions are here.

Looks pretty legit to me. Don’t think I’ve seen it on the blog, though. Comments?

Of course, JoCo wants to put all his source tracks online, at which point you could make a true instrumental version of “Make You Cry” (and I could turn down that dratted beeping in the final verse of “The Future Soon”).

Armed with this track, in any case, I am sure to be the hit of the next local karaoke gathering.

I’m an idiot (no, I didn’t know about the Karaoke Store). Is there such a thing as website agoraphobia? I seem to hover around the main page and the songs page, not venturing further. I did try the “Hear” option on “Make You Cry” and it still has the vocals. If I purchase the song, will my version come without? Does anyone know?

I buy a banana whenever I have a fin to spare. The Octopus video session should have spurred more candy than it seemed to … maybe people don’t realize what that is.

I generally make the most money from sales through my online store, but it depends on how much you’re buying at the time - paypal takes a cut, and payloadz charges a flat fee on a sliding scale depending on how much I sell that month. Most other places involve additional, more expensive middlemen, so it’s a good bet I make less there. Songslide takes anywhere from 10% to 40% depending on what you pay (and they show you the numbers as you choose the price). We’re all still trying to figure out what things work and what don’t, so I’m happy to make my stuff available in lots of different places - I’m particularly curious about what happens to my stuff at Songslide.

I’m half kidding. I love the transparency idea- I seem to remember Music Rebellion did something similar where items with more demand were priced higher and back catalog stuff was priced lower, which I thought was a neat concept.