De Vivo
Streaming
websites like Spotify and Pandora are a great way to get your music out to the
public, although each platform offers different royalties and amounts of
publicity – so it is smart to do your research on
a couple different sites before choosing one.
How to
Publish Music on Pandora
1. The very first thing
you need to do is create a user account. If you already have a personal
account, you may choose to use this one. Otherwise, you can make a more
professional account specifically to promote your music.
2. Visit Pandora’s submit music page and follow the
directions there.
3. You will be notified
by Pandora if your music meets the requirements and is otherwise appropriate
for submission. This obviously takes anywhere from one to a few weeks since
actual people have to sit down and listen to your music.
Quick tip:
Your CD needs a valid UPC code and you can obtain this by putting it for sale
in the Amazon CD store, so this might actually be a good place to start on your
music publishing journey.
4. If your submissions
are accepted, Pandora will send you a package with a customized label so you
can send your music back to them. Don’t be discouraged if your music is not
accepted. Pandora will alert you on the submission page you signed up on and
encourage you to try again as you continue to produce new music.
How to
Get Your Music on Arena
Although,
Pandora pays only fractions of a cent each time your song is played by
consumers, so you may want to consider a smaller streaming company. Arena currently has the highest rate in the
industry, at just over twenty cents each time your music is played. They also
don’t keep any of the profit when an album you have for sale on their website
in bought.
Arena
partners with a company called 101 Distribution. If you want to get your music
on their website, you can sign up with 101
in order to make that happen. The great thing about 101 is that they can easily
connect you to several other music platforms including: Amazon, iTunes and
Google Play.
Promote
Yourself
Once you’ve
got your music up on a streaming site, you’ll need to do some promotion so
people know it’s there. If you don’t already have a Facebook page, create one
as soon as possible. Facebook is a free and easy tool for marketing yourself.
You can update your status with links to your songs and album selling on Arena
or Amazon or with your own personal song lyrics.
The sky’s
the limit when it comes to self-marketing. Vine, Twitter and Pinterest are a
few other websites where you might catch your audience’s attention.
No matter
where you decide to market yourself, the tools above will help you first get
your music up on an online streaming website. You have the liberty to choose
which is right for you, whether that means making more money or being a part of
a larger company and website.
About
Marcela De Vivo
Marcela De
Vivo
is a freelance writer and online marketing professional in Los Angeles. As an
expert in social networking and search marketing, she helps businesses and
artists market their brand and reach a wide an audience as possible.