Why Independent Musicians Will Be The Last To Abandon MP3 Downloads

Independent artists know that the music industry is in a state of increasing duality. Producing high quality music has never been easier or cheaper and yet, on the face of it, making an income from that music seems to be getting harder.

The rise of music streaming services has brought about a plummet in MP3 download sales which may drop again by more than 20% in 2016 and, if there’s any truth to the rumours, might even bring about the end of iTunes as a buy and download platform in the next few years.

This change in consumer behaviour—from buying and downloading MP3s to streaming music—is hitting independent artists hard by lowering the value of their music.

How this come about?

In the early days of the web, musicians hailed the new opportunity to sell their music in digital form since it came with none of the overheads associated with CD production. A single was worth somewhere around $1 and it didn’t matter if that song was played once or a thousand times, the artist received their money before the plays began.

Then Napster came along, torrent sites reared their heads and, even though the music of independent artists was rarely distributed on such platforms, change had begun.

Years later, after the music industry giants tried in vain to counter the streaming revolution, Spotify, followed by other companies, built it into their business model and made the revolution official. Streaming was the new downloading.

While the death of MP3 sales has not happened overnight and the transition is still in progress, the trend is clear. Independent artists are having to adapt to a market where it takes somewhere between 150 to 250 plays of a song (on Spotify) for them to make the $1 that they used to earn for a single MP3 song purchase.

Does this mean that independent artists will abandon the format of MP3 downloads?

In terms of direct sales, the answer is yes, but as part of an artist’s online marketing strategy, it’s still no.

Even though people are being taught that they don’t need to pay for music, they still love the chance to download a song for free. That’s why independent artists will be the last to abandon MP3 downloads. Free songs remain the best way to entice fans into subscribing to a newsletter—the central marketing tool of the independent artist.

The strategy is fairly simple: build a following on social networks and YouTube then offer a free MP3 download for newsletter subscribers. Artists can soon find themselves with hundreds if not thousands of subscribers. The question they face at that point is:

What’s the purpose of their newsletter if not to sell digital downloads?

The answer is multi-faceted:

1. To continue to offer their music in MP3 format but also include other formats such as vinyl and CD which are increasingly available via on-demand production.
2. To get fans to include the artist’s songs in their favourite playlists on music streaming services.
3. To inspire fans to share the music on social networks.
4. To pre-sell an album by setting up a crowdfunding campaign for its creation. Fans will often be willing to pre-buy an album for a small price, knowing that their contribution could mean the difference between the album being recorded or not, regardless of whether they would ordinarily buy an album download.
5. To sell tickets to gigs (savvy artists always gather the subscriber’s city and country as well as their name and email in the newsletter opt-in form).
6. To sell merchandise.

With these opportunities, it’s easy to see why independent artists continue to value newsletters and MP3 giveaways as core elements of their online marketing strategy.

Just in case there are any new independent artists reading this, here’s a quick guide to setting up a free newsletter which delivers an MP3 download to new subscribers:

1. Register on Benchmark Email’s free plan.
2. Create a new list for your fans.
3. Create an opt-in form and put it on your website (if you don’t have a website, build one in Wix).
4. Register for free, encrypted cloud storage on Mega.
5. Upload a song to Mega in MP3 format.
6. Get the Mega download link for the MP3 file.
7. In Benchmark Email, create an autoresponder email for all new subscribers. In that email, include the download link from Mega.

While the movement away from MP3s being bought and downloaded could be seen as negative for independent artists, this is offset by the new opportunities which are emerging, such as crowdfunding, social network virality and mass adoption of music streaming services.

These new platforms and trends are changing the whole marketing mindset for independent musicians. The old mantra was about finding a relatively small group of fans who would buy everything an artist creates. Now, artists must turn those same fans into evangelists.