The Art Of Selling Music Online

With the abundance of online resources available to musicians, it's never been easier to sell music online. The problem is that it's so easy to sell music online that anyone can do it, and now you have an over-saturation of musicians flogging their material with little imagination, craft or originality. 

The truth is that you should only have a respectable fanbase and some decent material before you even think about selling music. A respectable fanbase should be a few thousand fans minimum. After you've reached this target you should consider these steps:-

1. Develop a mailing list for your fans. Ask for an e-mail for musician updates and news and in return you give them a free track. Many bands have become successful this way by giving away free tracks and other merchandise during their development stage. However, from a producer perspective I have an issue with this. If I'd spent a long time to produce a track or album and then I or another musician gave it away for free, I would feel pretty underwhelmed for getting no monetary reward for my efforts. If you have this concern, consider giving away a high-quality demo or outtake of a track as a freebie.
2. So you've given away a track or more for free and you've developed your fanbase and created a bit of buzz. You should then consider creating a bit of anticipation for your next release, either through a blog detailing the development of your music or by some clever promotion through an online video. If you take this stage seriously you'll keep your fans hungry and they will be ready and waiting for your next release. 
3. Now your at the stage where you have your finished masterpiece, more than likely an album or a collection of strong singles. Try to get as many online reviews of the album as you can, one of the most popular way being through blogs. Have great videos for your singles, post them online on YouTube, and with that well looked-after fanbase you're music will spread and go viral. You should offer all kinds of music-related merchandise, including DVD concerts, limited edition CDs, vinyl editions, extended takes of tracks, outtakes of tracks and any other music odds and sods. This way you'll keep your fans focused on the music. And all this time you'll use your growing e-mail list to keep your fans aware of these updates.  

This is not a concrete and mandatory strategy, it is a guideline, but it is still a very powerful method to sell music.