Pay To Play: Paying To Perform Your Music

Paying To Perform Your Music: This was just a scam of venues to make money from hopeful bands, but it is more than that in the recent online years.

The only way anyone (as in normal music consumers, not other musicians) will play your music is if it is on SPOTIFY or APPLE MUSIC and such streaming services. You can only get your music on such streaming services if you are on a Record Label or you use Distrokid.  

I have my music on Soundcloud and Bandcamp.  

Both great streaming services but Bandcamp even lets people buy your tracks and albums.  By buy, I mean they can pay with actual money! Even paying $0, free, if you set the price to that like I do.

Thing is, I think only other musicians are on Bandcamp and Soundcloud, not "normal music consumers".

So Spotify etc. Streaming Services are the way to find a normal audience, it seems.  Not that 99.99% (but I am guessing, just know that it is a really small number) of musicians can make any money out of those platforms.  

Which brings me back to Distrokid.  To use it you are most likely an independent musician who wants his tracks to be heard. You pay them $20 a year, charged to a credit card, and they put your music on all the streaming platforms.   Where it will be discovered and the fame and glory will follow. Well, there is a very slim change of that.  Stop paying Distrokid and your music is pulled.

You may be able to use it to get followers who will then buy your music on Bandcamp. Maybe. 

But I am lead to believe that music doesn't sell any more. Selling guitars, pedals or adverts on your YouTube channel does.

So is Distrokid, for most of its targeted audience, just a variation of Pay to Play?

For myself, I think it would be.

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