After Zimbalam, another music distributor has shutting down some weeks ago: Songflow. It might come as a shock to some music creators out there, but for us, this was not a surprise.
At MusicDiffusion, we think that offering 100% free or giving 100% of royalties to music creators is only a marketing model, but not a long business term model that the music distribution requires.
You want to be paid your royalties, now, and also in the future, without changing your distributor every year right? You also want your music distributor to regularly be able to invest and propose you new tools and new ways to make money with your Music.

With a heavy heart I am sharing the news with you that Songflow will cease to operate in early 2019. Our aim with Songflow was to offer you, the independent artist, a solution to distribute and earn money with your music in a simple, honest and user friendly way. From day one we’ve been amazed by how all of you have used our platform to promote your music and establish yourselves in the digital music age. Yet, it has become clear that continuing to operate Songflow, while at the same time offering a top tier service, is becoming commercially and operationally unattainable – Thomas van Wijk

Obviously for the people who already were using Songflow platform, they will have to find a new home
At MusicDiffusion, the transfer of any catalog is free. So Songflow users can already move their catalog to MusicDiffusion by create an account in a minute, and then by upload their tracks with the same ISRC codes in their dashboard. When this is did, they just need to contact our team here that will proceed to the update of any catalog to MusicDiffusion for free.
If you need to deliver new music to the stores with us, find out our plans and prices here. But be sure that with MusicDiffusion, you are running with the best and cheapest music distributor on the market as partner, and the only music distribution platform builded by artists and musicians for artists and musicians. Discover all our services for independent artists and music labels here!

Distribute and sell your music on iTunes, Apple Music, Spotify, Deezer, Beatport, Facebook, YouTube and much more with MusicDiffusion®

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THE CHANGES OF MUSIC INDUSTRY

The record industry has seen a lot of change over the years, and especially music sales.

The 8-tracks system took a short-lived run at the dominance of vinyl, cassettes faded away as compact discs took the world by storm, and through it all, the music industry saw its revenue continue to climb. That is, until it was digitally disrupted.

Looking back at four decades of U.S. music industry sales data is a fascinating exercise as it charts not only the rise and fall the record company profits, but seismic shifts in technology and consumer behavior as well.

THE LONG FADE OUT

For people of a certain age group, early memories of acquiring new music are inexorably linked to piracy. Going to the store and purchasing a $20 disc wasn’t even a part of the thought process. Napster, the first widely used P2P service, figuratively skipped the needle off the record and ended years of impressive profitability in the recording industry.

Napster was shut down in 2002, but the genie was already out of the bottle. Piracy’s effect on the industry was immediate and stark. Music industry sales, which had been experiencing impressive year-over-year growth, began a decline that would continue for 15 years.

THE RINGTONE ERA

While acquiring music was as easy opening Limewire on your desktop computer, transferring that new T-Pain track to a flip-phone wasn’t a seamless experience.

This brief gap in technology – before smartphones hit mass adoption – brought us the ringtone era. Distribution was controlled by mobile carriers, so ringtones were a comfortable gateway for the record industry to get a taste for digital-based revenue. In 2008 alone, they injected over a billion dollars of revenue into an industry that was getting used to gloomy forecasts.

PADDLING UPSTREAM

Though services like Spotify and Pandora haven’t replaced the money pipeline that CD sales provided, they have reversed the industry’s tailspin. For the first time this millennium, record industry posted an increase in revenue for two consecutive years (and likely a third in 2018).

It took a while for consumers to warm up to paying for a premium music subscription, but today, there’s a solid basis for optimism. Music streaming is now the most common format for music in the United States, and the RIAA reports that streaming now makes up nearly half of the market.

THE END OF PHYSICAL FORMAT?

Gone are the days when people would line up at the music shop for a hot new release. In fact, CD sales are down 80% in the past decade. Today, physical format sales only account for 17% of the industry’s revenue.

There is, however, one bright spot in physical format segment: vinyl. In 2017, vinyl sales hit 25-year high after making a slow and steady comeback.

“Vinyl is written in stone. I think if it’s made it for 120 years now, it’s here forever.”

                       – Jack White

Article by Nick Routley on Visual Capitalist. Read it here: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/music-industry-sales/
 

Distribute and sell your music on iTunes, Apple Music, Spotify, Deezer, Beatport, Facebook, YouTube and much more with MusicDiffusion®

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