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Permalink to Giving Away Your Music For Free – Tools For Indie Musicians

Giving Away Your Music For Free – Tools For Indie Musicians

by Brian|on September 17, 2011 |in Blog, Tips, Tools For Musicians |3 Comments

This post is part of the “Tools for Indie Musicians series. See all the posts here.

This is more of a strategy than a tool, but strategies are tools, right?

All of my original music is free. I’m going to explain my strategy in this post, but first, let’s look at this idea from both sides.

Argument against free downloads

You can do a google search and read tons of opinions on artists giving away their music for free. Many are passionately against the idea. I’ve read a lot of arguments against giving away music, and I’ll sum them up with this statement:

Giving away your music for free cheapens it. You put lots of work into creating music, and if you believe it is valuable, you shouldn’t just give it away. Furthermore, it harms the entire music industry, conditioning fans to expect to listen to and download music for free.

Why I choose to give my music away free

I believe the argument for giving away music is stronger. So, this is why I give away my music for free.

I am an unknown artist. Sure – I may have more than 2 or 3 twitter followers, and my mailing list has more than 13 emails on it, but in the grand scheme of things, I’m totally 100% an unknown.
As an unknown artist, exposure is worth way more than money.

Unfailing Love (Single) – Free Music Friday

by Brian|on September 16, 2011 |in Blog, Free Music Friday, My Music |Leave a comment

A Free Music Friday bonus release! I guess I just got too excited and had to release two singles this month.

Download from iTunes ($0.99)

Download the chord chart

This song is based on Psalm 57. My favorite part of the Psalm is also the bridge of the song, and it states:

Be exalted, O God, above the highest heavens. May your glory shine over all the earth.

This song will remain free through NoiseTrade until October, when the next free song is released. If you download through NoiseTrade, you’ll get the acoustic version as well.

Our Father Is A Good Man – 2011 Songwriting Challenge

by Brian|on September 8, 2011 |in 2011 Songwriting Challenge, Blog, My Music |3 Comments

My August song for the 2011 Songwriting Challenge is based on Psalm 73.

Here is a rough acoustic demo:

I believe this Psalm is extremely important for Christians in our culture today. Asaph is struggling in his faith. He has, in his own words, “kept his heart pure”, and he feels like it has been for nothing. He sees everybody around him turn from God and prosper. Nothing makes sense to him. That’s what I tried to capture in this song.

TuneCore – Tools for Indie Musicians

by Brian|on September 8, 2011 |in Blog, Tips |8 Comments

This is part of a “Tools for Indie Musicians” blog series where I highlight what tools I use to spread my music out there. See other posts in the series here.

My last post in this series was over CD Baby. TuneCore does pretty much the same thing – and that’s getting your music to iTunes and other digital retailers so people can buy your music and make you rich and famous.

Visit TuneCore’s website

TuneCore has a few differences, though, and I’m going to highlight those here, as well as detail my personal experience with them.

CD Baby – Tools for Indie Musicians

by Brian|on September 6, 2011 |in Blog, Tips |4 Comments

This is part of a “Tools for Indie Musicians” blog series where I highlight what tools I use to spread my music out there. See other posts in the series here.

If you make music, you probably want to be able to sell it. And if you want to sell it, you want to sell it on iTunes. Trust me on this one. But, how in the world do you get it there?

Getting your music to iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody, Amazon, etc, is called “digital distribution”. It’s really difficult to do this yourself, so there are several companies that will handle this for you acting as a middle-man, taking care of the distribution as well as the money. Today we’re going to talk about CD Baby.

Visit CD Baby’s website.

CD Baby has been around for a long time. They handle both digital distribution as well as sales of physical CD’s. I’ve used them for several of my releases, and I’ve been extremely happy with them.

Tools for Indie Musicians

by Brian|on September 5, 2011 |in Blog, Tips, Tools For Musicians |8 Comments

I’m going to start posting a series of articles titled “Tools for Musicians”.

There are lots of great sites out there specifically for indie musicians like me, but hearing actual user experiences is always a good thing. I don’t claim to be a super successful recording artist, but I feel like things are picking up steam for me, and I’d love to share some strategies and tools that I use to get things done.

Just as a teaser, I’m planning on reviewing and sharing my experiences with (links take you to posts over that topic):

CD Baby (sell your music on iTunes and everywhere else)
TuneCore (another way to sell music on iTunes and other online retailers)
BandCamp (a service that allows you to sell your music on your own terms)
Giving Away Music For Free (my thoughts and strategy with giving away free music)
NoiseTrade (seriously – read this – you need to be using NoiseTrade)
MailChimp
YouTube
Other websites that list tools for indie musicians

I’m also planning to talk about different strategies for blogging and sharing music.

My hope is to have all of you who are indie musicians to add to the conversation so we can all learn from our shared experiences. Stay tuned!

Permalink to What guitar would Jesus play?

What guitar would Jesus play?

by Brian|on September 3, 2011 |in Blog |4 Comments

I love YouTube. I hope that’s obvious in the fact that I have 121 videos up. Actually, my 122nd video is currently uploading.

YouTube comments are great, too. There are lots of haters out there, but I have some great subscribers and viewers that say nice things to me. Here’s a particularly awesome comment I received on my Amazing Grace My Chains Are Gone cover:

If your playing a martin you better be able to sing like jesus, and you have succeeded

to which I responded…

I, too, believe that Jesus would play a Martin.

Thank to YouTube user 661BlackJesus for leaving such a spectacular comment!

Permalink to Things – Free Music Friday (September 2011)

Things – Free Music Friday (September 2011)

by Brian|on September 1, 2011 |in Blog, Free Music Friday |Leave a comment

The very first Free Music Friday release. I have to say, I’m pretty excited about it. You can download for free above, or…

Download from iTunes ($0.99)

Chord Charts

Key of C (capo) // Key of D

I wrote this song back in April 2010, and it’s one of my personal favorites of all the songs I’ve written. I released an acoustic version of it last year, but this is a full-production version of the song.

This song will remain free through NoiseTrade until October, when the next free song is released. If you download through NoiseTrade, you’ll get the acoustic version as well.

Sunday Set-List: August 28 with Audio

by Brian|on August 31, 2011 |in Blog, Sunday Set-Lists |Leave a comment

Another awesome weekend at Evergreen and River Oaks. The band is just continuing to get better and better. Here are the songs we played with audio. The recording setup is working like a charm.

Let It Rise – Big Daddy Weave version (kind of)

No One Like You – David Crowder

The Heart of Worship – Matt Redman

Happy Day – Tim Hughes

Permalink to Free Music Friday: The Announcement

Free Music Friday: The Announcement

by Brian|on August 29, 2011 |in Blog, Free Music Friday |4 Comments

This is going to be big. At least – I sure hope so!

Jump to the songs

Starting this Friday, I’m going to start releasing one fully produced single a month to iTunes. Up to this point, I’ve been giving away all my music for free, and most of that music has been acoustic or a really stripped down kind of recording. I’m starting to re-think this model just a bit.

I’ve been writing and recording a lot more lately, and I’m recording these songs with full production. I think they sound pretty good, and I’m excited to share them with you. So, on the 1st Friday of the month, I’m going to release one of my songs to iTunes and everywhere else you like to buy music. The cool thing is that I’m also going to release the songs to NoiseTrade, which will allow you to download them for free.

How to get the songs for free

If you want in on the free music, the best option is to sign up for the newsletter. I’m going to announce every Free Music Friday to the mailing list.
I’ll update my blog here on the site when I release music, so you can subscribe here via RSS.
iTunes allows you to follow artists and they’ll update you when I release new material. I’m not sure I’m going to release every single to iTunes, though, so the newsletter or web subscriptions will probably be a better bet.
I’m planning to update the Facebook page as well.

That’s a lot of options!

Here are the songs (this list will keep growing)

Seasons (January 2012)

<a href="http://store.brianwahlmusic.com/album/seasons-single">Seasons (single) by Brian Wahl</a>

Christmas Acoustic EP (December 2011)

Though I Walk Through The Valley (November 2011)

lyrics, charts, and other info

So what’s the goal?

Ultimately, I’m working toward a full-length full production release. These singles will most likely be very close to the final versions of the songs that go on the full-length LP.

So, to recap – Free music released the 1st Friday of every month. Sign up to the mailing list and you’ll never be out of the loop.

Give credit where it is due

I totally stole this idea from Jon Meyer. He is an awesome musician and audio engineer.

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