Record, Produce, Master, Distribute And Promote Your Song On A Budget

EEveryone of us artists faces the daily challenge of making the most of very small incomes to cater to our careers and daily living. Because not everyone has the luxury of being signed to a big management or record company with huge budgets. We independently have to strategize the most cost effective ways to produce, promote and distribute our music and videos.

Even when we have family and friends to support us, deep inside we know that we’ll never get satisfaction except we do this for ourselves. Bear in mind that as an independent artist it does not hurt to have a job on the side to keep body and soul together. Having an alternative means of livelihood does not mean you are giving up on your dreams. It is only common sense and to reduce the chances of your being a liability to people around you.

Christine Ben-Ameh

So, after months of waiting and saving I figured out a way to record a song, make a video clip and promote it for under $1500.

Here is how I did it:

First, to produce my song I sent a previous recorded version made (with my friend and very creative producer Don Adah in Lagos, Nigeria) to JTV Digital and had it reproduced and sent back to me for voicing. This cost me less than $600. And this is very much worth it because of the very talented producers this company engages. The reason I had this song made again was that I wanted it to be internationally accepted. Trying to promote or distribute a song not meeting world standard enough is as good as trying to fill a basket with water.

During my voicing session at Blank Studios (Newcastle Upon Tyne) costing $100 (I had the session professionally filmed and edited by Gavin Randall of Melting Point Media. This cost me another $200). Please note that if Gavin did this for me on a budget, he will blow you away with the results of a higher budget, meaning for a way better video than mine you are expected to pay so much more. On completion the raw files where sent to President Studio (Moscow, Russia) to be “Mastered for iTunes” which cost another $100.

Now that the song and its video were ready I had to get it in as many as 18 digital stores and monetize for YouTube. Once again JTV Digital engaged this for a sum of $20. At the end of the day I ended up spending $1,020 to professionally record, mix, master and distribute my song plus even make a small video clip YouTube fans appreciate.

Next is promotion. I decided to work with www.iPluggers.com on this because they are not interested in your money before quality but quality first. In other words, you do not pay for the service until your song has been approved for airplay by their team of experienced A and R. This cost $330 a year for guaranteed airplay on all radio stations receiving my genre of music which totals over 6,500. My final total therefore for production, distribution and radio/online promotion came to $1,350.

For online promotion I wrote to my Nigerian blogger friends to post my video and help build some traffic so more people can be made aware of how to access the rest of my music. Everybody in this business needs friends or pushing your work will be so frustrating. There is a free tool I use to promote my releases online called Headliner.fm. For free stuff, one has no right to review (in my opinion) but so far Headliner is not doing a bad job.

The point of all this information is, you do not need a major record label to get quality work done. I know of services who use this same amount of $1350 and more for only production without vocals. If you can afford this by all means go right ahead and engage them. But we all must admit that it feels so much better to get a quality outcome for so much less.

A lot of artists reading this are probably saying $1350 dollars is a lot of money but like the rest of life, the only winners in this game are those who make sacrifices. Sacrifice new clothes and a night out of binge drinking for three months or, don’t be in too much of a hurry to buy that new gadget… you know in your heart the sacrifice you have to make to get the money at least to try.

So far the result of this investment has been mind blowing and to say the least very gratifying. Within two days of engaging ipluggers I had my song requested by radio stations in Italy, Denmark and The Netherlands. Currently my new single is being plugged to radio stations in the UK the rest of Europe and college stations in the US. On YouTube I have scored over 2000 views in my first week and better is on the way. The true test of this will be in the the outcome of my digital sales but I have plans to continue backing up present efforts weekly with more effort. You see? In this hustle, “we can’t stop”.

Watch the video of studio performance of my new single “My Daddy” here, also available on iTunes and other digital stores.

The following guest post comes from Christine Ben-Ameh, independent artist & songwriter, currently signed with JTV Digital, a digital distribution company allowing artists & labels to get their music to major digital retail stores and monetize their content online.