Artists : Distribution
cultivating resources
No matter how great your songs are, no one will buy your cd unless they can find it EASILY. That would be on a store shelf, in a national catalog, or online.
And it's a simple fact of life that no one wants to distribute something that is not a guaranteed sale. This may seem a harsh reality, but it is one that you can influence. For example, if the bookstore owner in your town knows that you have a local following, he may stock your cds, especially if you personally ask him to. Promotion and distribution are intertwined, big time.
But Distribution with a big "D" means national exposure through traditional channels, ie. stores, catalogs, etc., and it is the ticket to the mass market, where we all want to be. We're talking about the huge market infrastructure that enables the delivery of goods to every corner of the world, nourished by the media - the all powerful promotional tool. The very size of this market means huge rewards for success, and huge penalties for failure. So guaranteed sales becomes a necessary merchant mantra. This creates the catch-22 that defines the mass marketplace - it's a popularity contest for those who are already popular.
For the artist creating children's music, the facts on the ground are daunting when viewed through the lens of the mass market. If you need a coordinated tv and print campaign to sell a cd, forget it. And this infrastructure is expensive when applied to your product - major distributors require you to give them 70% of the gross! But that's the standard for the unproven artist. And that's the good news. The bad news is that they will probably reject you before you even learn of the miserable terms.
But things are definitely changing. Those old Distribution channels are now coming under attack, and a savvy marketer can find loophoes leading into the mass market as a result of the internet. This portal is one such loophole.
Distribution Advice From Other Artists
Wise words form those who came before.
The Big Labels
If you can get this kind of distribution, you're not here reading this.
Streaming Children's Music Webcast.
Childrens-Music.org