My regular job pays for food, clothing, bills and sake. But fortunately, about 30% of my gigs are paid (and that's a big thing in Brazil). This is the money I invest on gear and I plan to put on a 7'' single in the future. So yes, money is necessary.
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uhajdafdfdfa
all of those were free
multiply these by twenty to get the download figures of a proper chip-musician
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Westfield, NJ
christopher_voss wrote:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv-HKv2Ndgo
...
I know it's on youtube, and I know it's technically a cover. I had over 130,000 hits within a week period. The rest of them have come trickling in. I offered the song for free and am kicking myself in the pants for it.
Whoa whoa whoa, hold your horses. If it's a cover or remix then you would have to get permission from the original artist in order to sell it. You can't just put it up on a paysite and start collecting money. You would likely have to enter an agreement with the record label that owns the original track where you only take a percentage of the money.
Basically your song is popular because it's based on something popular, but for that reason you can't make money off it like you can with original works.
So your story is not that relevant to this thread.
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Westfield, NJ
Here are my figures as of today:
Decktonic - Lighthouse (Single) - 12 Sep. 2010 - 37 downloads
Decktonic - Return to Gravity (EP) - 10 Nov. 2010 - 66 downloads
Decktonic - Remixes Volume 1 (EP) - 4 Jan. 2011 - 37 downloads
then there are 2 EPs that I removed (Space Travel and Return to Gravity Promo) which totaled almost 140 downloads between the two of them... those were up longer.
On another note, compilations are where it's at... it's a great way to get a lot of exposure, especially when you are starting out and nobody knows who you are. The "Mega Micromusic" Warioware DIY compilation that I did on my label Dual Mode Records has 132 downloads as of today. The DS10Forum.com compilation "A Journey Through Space" has had 342 downloads, and it's only been out for a week. So I highly recommend participating in compilations if you are trying to build a following.
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Brunswick, GA USA
What's keeping you from making it available for sale anyway? Many people don't realize that there is a world of legal free music outside of iTunes and such, and while it hasn't generated the thousands of dollars you're looking for, I'm sure the impulse sales you'd pick up would be something. It's up to you to decide if that's worth the upload fee.
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chunter wrote:
What's keeping you from making it available for sale anyway? Many people don't realize that there is a world of legal free music outside of iTunes and such, and while it hasn't generated the thousands of dollars you're looking for, I'm sure the impulse sales you'd pick up would be something. It's up to you to decide if that's worth the upload fee.
Yeah, personally I think we should be selling our stuff just to "legitimise" it to an extent. While I know it goes against some people's ideology (which is fair enough) it does put us in the same bracket as artists working in other styles. (or genres or whatever we call it these days) You buy some band off Amazon, you buy some chipmusic off Amazon. (or iTunes or Bandcamp or whatever) We get away from being "those guys using gameboys who pop up on gaming news sites now and then." I mean, that's what we want right? We want to move it away from being about the equipment we use and more what we're making with it? (and, from my experience with the press last year, they're just as sick of that being the handle as we are.)
Before this makes me sound like a total breadhead I'll add if people don't want to pay they can always grab the stuff out of the webcache on Bandcamp, or just get a torrent from somewhere. I have no problem with that. Besides I always stick a few other tracks out for free anyway, I'd certainly never stop doing that. 
But it is a pretty good way of drawing a line in the sand for this stuff, I don't think people should feel bad about it.
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Philly, PA, USA
4mat wrote:
I mean, that's what we want right? We want to move it away from being about the equipment we use and more what we're making with it?
this this this this this this this this this this
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Michigan
this is a really really good discussion and has given me a lot to think about.
ive been torn about whether or not to release noisewaves full length album for free or not.
the whole tipping point was the e.p. cost me literally nothing to make. however we will be going into an actual legit recording studio to record this time around.
but i dont consider this band or myself as even closely "a career" endeavor, so would charging money for the album be treating it a such?
this is where i feel bandcamps "pay what you want" option is great.
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Grahamstown, South Africa
low-gain wrote:
maybe it's not finished, and you should sit on it, and work on it some more.
I can't agree more... though I'm usually the guy who wants to be done with a song and post it before I find too many mistakes... horrible mindset that. i need to break it. (I'm just so lazy 
)
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Westfield, NJ
noisewaves wrote:
but i dont consider this band or myself as even closely "a career" endeavor, so would charging money for the album be treating it a such?
this is where i feel bandcamps "pay what you want" option is great.
All the Cheese N Beer releases use "pay what you want" with no minimum. It's a good model.
Here are some other ideas:
- the album costs some amount but a few of the songs (an EPs worth) can be had for free
- the album can be had for free in average quality MP3 but can be purchased in high quality
- the album can be downloaded for free / any of the above but you can sell a limited quantity of physical copies
etc.
Essentially, be creative. If the music is good, people will pay something for it... it's just a matter of what you are willing to give away.
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New York, New York
High downloads or sales has not much to do with music being good. It's more about the excited customer. When one of a download or purchased release's customer is excited about a release, it creates more downloads or sales. A crowd creates new customers. Whether on the insides of the chiptune community or for a larger market, this is true. Within the chiptune community, quality music is getting ignored for the latest fad. If there were less quantity of releases, quality of releases would be discovered much easier.
Last edited by Esopus-dragon (Feb 2, 2011 6:14 pm)
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4mat wrote:
Yeah, personally I think we should be selling our stuff just to "legitimise" it to an extent.
4mat wrote:
We want to move it away from being about the equipment we use and more what we're making with it?
How do these two things co-relate? How does spending money "move it away from being about the equipment we use and more about what were making?"
I don't get this because money is an abstracting medium.
Do you mind elaborating? I don't want to start a war I'm genuinely interested.
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Riverton, Utah
Decktonic wrote:
your story is not that relevant to this thread.
That may be true, but the focal point of the story is still legit.
christopher_voss wrote:
If it's hot, why not sell it? People pay to enjoy things all the time.
Does giving it away for free constitute a moral high ground? Doubt it.
If something even remotely like this happens again, will I take advantage of the situation? You betcha.
Also, I absolutely love having a physical copy of the music. I appreciate what I have much more, most people do. If I can just go and download any ol' chiptuners tunes, the amount of time I invest to digest said works is minimal because the amount of effort/money to get it was also such.
Last edited by christopher_voss (Feb 2, 2011 7:23 pm)
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Brunswick, GA USA
Battle Lava wrote:
4mat wrote:Yeah, personally I think we should be selling our stuff just to "legitimise" it to an extent.
4mat wrote:We want to move it away from being about the equipment we use and more what we're making with it?
How do these two things co-relate? How does spending money "move it away from being about the equipment we use and more about what were making?"
That's a valid question. For me, it's not about the money, it's about being in a place where people can find you, recognizing that I know many people who will not look on SoundCloud, chipmusic.org, or even my own blog for music: it's about being visible from as many places as possble.
The "validation" is really bending to a form of elitism; as I was saying, I know many people who will not visit archive.org to download legit free music, yet throw money at iTunes liberally. Chipmusic is not alone in having this "validation" issue, indie, punk, and folk musicians, really, any outside-the-mainstream musics have gone or have to go through this.
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Berkeley, CA
To me, if you're trying to get out there and promote your music, it can't hurt to be as publicly visible as possible. So I sign my music up for every nook and cranny that I can. I think that to an extent the amount of music you sell / get people download is more a result of how well you do at promoting it than it actually being amazing or not. WIth that being said, I'm sure most of us try to make it all as amazing as possible.
I also like to alternate between free and for cost albums. I feel like if you're proud of your music, it has intrinsic worth and I am not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, which is why i charge for some of it. I'd also rather get financial reward for something i love to do than waste life working a crappy part-time job. haha.
Since folks are asking about sales figures, I'll throw mine into the mix:
Rise of the Obsidian Interstellar (came out 1/1): digital purchase: about 250. CDs: about 45
Easily the best run I've ever done so far. To put things in perspective, I have a 1500 person mailing list and 650 fans on facebook. I'd say half of the people who bought the album are from one of those, the rest are probably word of mouth and word of the internet. That is my guess. I'd also say that while I put a fair amount of time into promoting, twittering, website, facebook, all that stuff i just mentioned, it's probably not nearly as much as I could be doing if i was really insane about it.
In terms of getting the music out there, the most important thing I think is to offer your album up to listen to without any strings attached. This is one of the reasons I think Bandcamp is so cool. People can stream your entire album and they don't have to drop a dime. As a result I've had about 5,000 people at least check out my new album in a month and a half, which is probably way more even than if it was for free to download, but without an online preview.
Here are some of the stats for lifetime Pause downloads, which i'm sure some of you would be curious about:
Norrin Radd - Anomaly - 12,491
V/A - Magnetic Sumo - 5,937
sadnes - Fill My Head - 4,621
Phlogiston - Nectar - 4,429
Zan-zan-zawa-veia - N0de-claw - 3,911
Norrin Radd - Melodia di Infinita - 3,489
Animal Style - Teletime - 3,228
The J. Arthur Keenes Band - Pamplemousse - 3,087
and so forth...
These aren't entirely fair figures in the sense that some of these records came out last year, and some of the older ones have been lost. Though it is fair to say that a lot of people have a boner for Norrin Radd. He's got a lot of fans from metal circles and various sources unrelated to chiptunes, so that might have something to do with it.
So yea... food for thought I guess!
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cool! thx for realeasing those download numbers! really interesting