Buy 100 CD ROMs, burn your music, design a label, front and back, address on it and send them as a promo CD to radio stations etc., sell them to friends for 10€/10$ or just give them away, that way your music gets out into the world and stays there.

 

But if I am going to be the only artist on the label, what would be the point of having a label anyway? Do you mean I have to formally start a business?

 

That's an interesting idea. Do radios still have CD players these days? I wonder if cassette tapes would pique their curiosity more... but tape players are probably even more hard to find.

 

Do some research on being your own publisher. The label also allows a more accessible facility where unsolicited material might not be accepted. For some people it is logical, for others not. You will likely need to work out the ins and outs depending on your own personal goals.

 

I think I think I caught your drift... the label façade works as a barrier against teen fan harassment! lol

 

Parasites.... avoid it ALL.

 

a realistic/usual share of selling CDs is more like 40% of the revenue for the publisher and 60% for all others*) "below" him - and 50/50 for the royalities between the publisher and the composer(s).

add another sharing of again 40/60 between the distributor and and the label and you are there.

but it can always be far more or far less, depending on what the label or publisher does. some do nothing, others go ast high risk and work 24/7 for the rightholders.

some might ask for a fee, others might pay everything for you in advance.

for 3% you could not really exist when you were selling records and CDs in the last century - you would have needed to sell 100,000 records in order to buy a 12-track tape recorder.

general advice for surviving in capitalism: do not sign any contracts of more than 3 pages of text.

*) take into account that "all others" in the case of a tape leasing contract between A and B means that these "all" are just you.

 

well, the business field is not (releated to what could a business field become smaller? ) , what is shrinking is the size of the market for physical copies.

from the perspective of someone who composes and produces music and wants to sell media of it, it does not matter how big his share of the world market is, or that the CD market gets 20% smaller year by year: you still have to do certain things in order to sell these media.

founding a company, managing it, developing a business model, accounting, tax return, promotion, design, press releases, finding distributors and distribution channels, the actual publishing of the titles with the collecting society, registering the production for the mechanical rights/fees, dealing with copyright and ancillary copyrights, billing, dunning, dealing with legal issues, financing/funding for all of this...

sure, you can also ignore car manufactures and quickly learn how to build you own. but maybe you rather prefer to stay a composer and producer...

 

Last edited: Jul 24, 2025 at 5:41 AM

Thanks for that, I was speaking of the artist's share though

 

yes of course, who you are is different for each beeing.

though when i take you literally, the "artist" you are talking is limited to the composer? (which is a totally correct definition imho, all others do not create)
that would explain your numbers. half the composers royalities, which is around 1 Euro / USD, is like 3% of what a CD or vinyl today averagely goes for retail, net price, in best case. indeed.

above i am too much thinking about electronic dance music made by only one person, then your share is more like 60% of 60% or 10 bucks ... errr ... minus all the costs you have to cover.