Bandzoogle, the leading website platform for musicians, will now report its direct-to-consumer sales to Nielsen SoundScan, giving artists a chance to impact charts, Billboard reports. The site allows bands to include a "store page" where they can sell their music directly to their fans without a middle man, putting 100 percent of the profits in the artists' pockets as Bandzoogle doesn't take a cut. As of publication time, there have been $16,483,745 in member sales through the company and counting.
The 11-year-old Montreal-based company provides a cloud-based service for building and maintaining a website and online store. Prices vary depending on level of service and other features. For example, the Pro Plan at $19.95/month offers inventory tracking, album pre-orders, sale pricing, the ability to create unlimited download codes and the ability to sell e-books, videos and other non-music digital files with no size limits on files, data, mailing lists, pages, etc.
Music Times spoke with CEO David Dufresne earlier this year about what artists can do to make the most of their online space. He detailed a variety of ways that artists can make money through the site.
"Too many bands don't have anything for sale on their website, and I think that's a lost opportunity," he told Music Times. "If you send people to iTunes or Amazon that's fine, but then you're kicking them out of your website and you don't get to keep 100 percent of the sales. More importantly, however, you get them to sign up for your mailing list so you know who actually just bought your music, whereas on iTunes or Amazon, you have no idea because you don't own that data.
"Having a store right on your website means you can sell digital music, but you can also sell physical CDs, vinyl, merch, or other nontraditional things such as non-music files, sheet music, eBooks, guitar tabs, or sometimes files for remixes. More and more people are selling either live performance videos or instructional videos. We're seeing some interesting ways musicians now make more money."
Take a look at all of his tips and tricks here.
