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Sep 24, 2024 · Want to ditch streaming and buy MP3s and FLAC files instead? Here are the top places to buy music you can keep forever.
- Streaming vs. CDs
- Audience Reach
- Promotion
- Sound Quality
- Portability
- Fan Engagement
- Music Discovery
- Brand Building
- Monetization
- And The Winner Is…
After a long decline in sales, physical media are growing again, and I believe it’s because physical media has several benefits that streams just don’t have. So, let’s make a comparison and let’s have a little competition: Streaming vs. CDs. Now, you may think that as one of the foremost proponents of physical media for music artists — and CDs in p...
This is an important factor for independent artists: how do you reach as many potential listeners as possible? Not surprisingly, there’s a clear winner here: streaming. A music streaming service is an amazing way to reach potential listeners around the world. Once your digital distributor delivers your song to every streaming platform, it will be i...
The picture is a bit more muddled here. Clearly, the ability to email or text a link to your song on Spotify or SoundCloud or Bandcamp,or any other music streaming service is very compelling. Copy and paste the link, mail it to your contact list, and it’s in their inbox. Simple. But will they see it and will they click on the link? There’s never an...
Does CD sound better than streaming? Most definitely. CD quality sound is full 44.1kHz uncompressed digital hi-res audio. That’s as good as it getsfor any mainstream music format. While some streaming services allow streaming of uncompressed digital audio, that requires pretty hefty bandwidth. So, by default, streaming platforms compress the digita...
Nothing to talk about here, right? CDs are lightweight and highly portable, but streaming beats the pants off any physical format. Even the most hardcore music fan can keep their entire song collection on their phone. Not to mention, you can search for and instantly listen to just about any song ever recorded. Clear advantage goes to streaming.
One category extremely important to independent artists is fan engagement. What does that mean? Simply put, how impactful is your music on your fans and how do they interact with it? Here, the CD is the clear winner. I’m sure you’ve experienced it: someone sends you a stream, or it shows up in your release radar or a playlist. You click it, you don...
Here also, streaming is a clear winner. I discover new tracks by artists I know and by new artists just about every week thanks to tools built into the streaming services, like Spotify’s release radar. They’ve built tons of other playlists, both algorithmic and curated, to aid in further discovery and to keep me streaming. Regardless of how many ne...
Not much to talk about here. Everyone is on streaming. For under $10, you can have your song or your album on over 100 platforms. It’s no big deal to get your music onto streaming sites — digital music is completely commoditized, and that risks devaluing your music. Having a CD, however, says that you’ve arrived, you’re a serious artist. It creates...
Here, there is no comparison. One stream on Spotify pays about three-tenths of a penny — that means 1,000 streams pays $3. To put it a bit differently, you would need 3,000 streams to make $9, about the same profit you will make when you sell one CD at a concert for $10. Which do you think is easier, generating 3,000 streams or selling one CD at yo...
Let’s look at which format has more advantages, CDs or streaming. Turns out, it’s a 4-4 tie. Streaming is better for important categories like audience reach and portability, while CDs win on sound quality, brand building, and monetization — perhaps the most important of all. So what do you do? Do you choose CDs or streaming? What a dilemma! Of cou...
Audio CDs and MP3s are both popular formats for listening to music, but they have some key differences. Audio CDs are physical discs that store music in uncompressed format, resulting in high-quality sound. They can be played on CD players, car stereos, and computers with CD drives.
Mar 23, 2024 · While an audio CD requires a physical disc and a CD player, MP3s can be stored and played digitally using various devices. Additionally, CDs offer uncompressed audio, providing high sound quality, while MP3s sacrifice some audio fidelity for smaller file sizes.
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- Amazon Music. When you buy a song or album online, there are two ways you can receive the content—either digitally (in the form of an MP3 file) or physically (as a CD or vinyl record).
- iTunes Store. The Apple iTunes Store was the original place to buy music online, and it continues to thrive to this day, albeit in a slightly re-imagined format.
- Beatport. Beatport is the best online music store for fans of electronic music. You can buy music as singles or albums; most singles cost $1.29, while albums vary accordingly.
- 7digital. 7digital is a company that has been around since 2004, offering a place to buy music downloads at extremely high resolution. Songs on the site are available in up to three formats: 320kbps MP3 (standard quality), 16-bit/44.1kHz FLAC (CD quality), and 24-bit/96kHz FLAC (high-res quality).
MP3 Downloads. At first glance, distributing your recordings as MP3 downloads probably sounds like a good idea. In contrast to CDs, digital downloads incur no manufacturing costs, no stocking costs and no shipping costs. They are also more environmentally friendly too.
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Nov 20, 2018 · You might consider buying music to be a thing of the past now that streaming services are more popular and feature-rich than ever before. But which approach is best for you?