How to Produce and Market a CD for FREE - by Beau Hall, Blind Slim

How to produce and market a CD for FREE

Step one: convert your songs to MP3 format
Step two: upload your songs to MP3.com
Step three: upload your cover art and inside art.
Step four: release the songs on a CD

MP3.com pays you 50% of whatever you charge for your CD. No overhead, no initial investment. They handle all money and distribution, and then send you a check. You get money for every time your song is downloaded in MP3 format, and you get money every time you sell a CD.

How this works:
My blues band, Blind Slim, recorded a live show last year. We converted the original numbers to MP3 format, and then uploaded them to MP3.com. I designed a cover and the inside image and uploaded them. We decided to sell the CD for the lowest possible cost, since it cost us $6 in blank cassettes. MP3's pricing range starts out at $6, so that's where we set it. We assigned four of the songs to be available for free, and the rest could only be listened to using Real Audio streaming.

The first month, we sold CDs all over the world. We only sold 50 discs total, but we made $300. The marketing for the disc was already in place at MP3.com. People came to MP3.com to hear unsigned bands, and the music was broken into categories, so blues fans found US, we didn't have to go looking for them. We also ordered 20 copies for ourselves, which we did distribute to local radio stations and papers. The review was HORRID, but they gave out the web address, and our sales doubled the next day.

MP3.com tracks every "listen" to every song. So, instead of a radio station that can only give estimates on listeners, I KNOW that over 10,000 people have heard my song. 5,000 have downloaded them. Yes, for free. I can now find my songs on NAPSTER.

Does it bother me? No. Last month, we released a new CD on MP3.com, and released EVERY song on BOTH CDs to be freely available in MP3 format. Why? We still get money for every listen… sure, it boils down to about five cents per listen, but we're making $30 a day off of those free songs.

And people are STILL buying our CDs. We sold one in Switzerland yesterday.

This new CD is cleaner and sounds much better than the first. I'm now aggressively marketing this CD, posting messages in message boards - blues boards, home recording boards, any board that pertains to this music. We're doing radio appearances and we're buying copies of our own CD to sell at live shows. We can't keep enough of the discs to keep the fans happy.

So, I'm making money off of the discs I buy from MP3.com, I'm making money off of the discs other people buy off of MP3.com, and MP3.com is practically doing most of the marketing and distribution for me. All I have to do is surf the web occasionally, looking for other places to pimp my disc.

Anyone I tell this story to is amazed and doesn't believe that I've now made over $1,300 from this disc, after an initial investment of $6.00! I will continue to produce my CDs this way. I would NEVER consider signing a record deal now, unless they offered me 50% of the take plus money for every person who just LISTENED to my songs. I've NEVER heard of a record deal that did that. I feel this is a great opportunity for ANY musician trying to get a CD produced but perhaps doesn't have two grand for the pressing, printing, distribution etc.

Beau Hall
Blind Slim
http://www.mp3.com/blindslim
blindslim@hotmail.com