Your Questions Answered: Navigating Online Distro and Streaming Options to Maximize Revenue

We just launched a new feature on our social media platforms where you can submit a question and Lyric Financial’s CEO Eli Ball will answer! Eli began his career as a producer, where he guided a range of studio and live productions from award winning albums to large multi-day music festivals, working with acclaimed artists including Ray Charles, Santana, Lyle Lovett, Roseanne Cash and Herbie Hancock. In 1996, Eli took a break from producing to raise his two sons and began a new career in banking, leveraging his deep understanding of the music industry to provide efficient access to capital for the professional music community.

Our second question comes from independent artist @danmillward_music via Instagram:

@lyricfinancial I’d like to know what advice you’d give to independent artists with regards to making money distributing their music online in this day and age. My specific question is do you think it is more profitable in the long term to share one’s music on numerous online stores and streaming platforms including free ones such as SoundCloud with the hopes of getting more exposure and a higher number of streams/downloads? Or is it more profitable releasing one’s music only on online stores that offer better payment and/or royalty options?

Thanks!!

Answer:

Thank you for reaching out Dan! This is a great question and one we see many artists struggle with.

If the key in real estate is location, location, location…then the key in building a career as an artist is promotion, promotion, promotion. Your immediate goal is to build a hard core fan base that are willing to buy your music. To get there you need exposure to as many people as possible. It’s simply a matter of numbers. So the more exposure in the early days the better. Chance the Rapper is a perfect example of this. He gives his music away to as many people as he could touch, then makes his money on publishing, touring, merch, brand endorsements, etc.

When your music starts building a buzz you want people to be able to find you and follow you. In the developing stage of your career, you want to make it easy to acquire new fans on whatever platform they may choose to look for you on. Make sure they can find you and connect. And make damn sure you respond! It’s easy to get distracted and not follow up with your fans, but you can’t let that happen. Here’s the bottomline: the amount of effort you put into communicating with your fans is directly related to the amount of promotional and financial support your fans give back to you.

Once you are in demand and close to Beyonce level, you can start to be more discerning about which partners offer the most value to your online sales strategy. But my advice up until then is be easy to find and leverage all the platforms at your fingertips.

Best of luck! Eli