Unless you only wish to create a memento for friends and family, it is necessary to consider how you will recover your investment and make a profit. For better or worse, the old comfortable model of recording ten songs and pressing 1000 CD's is fading as a practical option for most musicians. Demand for music is as strong as ever, but the internet, iPods, digital downloads and social networking have rewritten the marketing and distribution rules. Fortunately, the new frontier favors creative thinkers and independent musicians.

• For $35 one time, you can send one CD to a company called CD Baby. CD Baby will create a web page for your CD with online samples. They handle all order processing and shipping for physical CD media and will also make your songs available as digital downloads on more than 10 sites including iTunes, Amazon.com and Rhapsody. You can also release your CD in digital format only, which means no CD copies to buy and store! Or if you still wish to make CD's available, you only need to provide them with about 5 at a time, which you can burn yourself on your computer or have Sound Amazing make for you. Artwork is optional. CD Baby keeps a portion of each sale ($4 per physical CD or 9% of each digital download). We have found their modest cut to be considerably less expensive than setting up and maintaining credit card processing, never mind all the other amenities.
  
  
• More and more people listen to music on iPods and buy songs one at a time for $0.99 each. If this doesn't make complete sense to you, it is easy to guess you don't yet own an iPod. Go buy one right this minute! No, really!
  
  
• People who have never heard your music will not buy it. Every artist should be taking full advantage of the opportunities offered by social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Youtube and sites that offer free blogs. These sites are all free, simple to use without special skills and effective. One extra benefit of selecting Sound Amazing is that we can help you get established online for no extra cost. We figure our success depends on your success so we do everything possible to help you expand your fan base.
  
  
• If you aim at nothing, you are sure to hit it every time. But if you aim to make some of your music available for sale, you can absolutely achieve that goal. Here's the secret: Begin now and take a step in that direction every day until it's happening.
  

Let's look at some specific models that work. None of these are fixed packages. The examples are meant to give you ideas so you can design the custom package that works best for you.

The minimalist option:

Your motivation is to have your song heard and not necessarily to make money with it. This option proves just how inexpensively you can put a professionally recorded song out there. For this example, we'll assume you have one song that you wrote and can provide accompaniment for. We'll assume no piano tuning so either guitar accompaniment, keyboard, accordion, etc. You'll be able to do a few takes and we'll edit to give you the best from the few takes. It'll help greatly to bring a friend or family member with a video camera. This option can be a great way to begin building a following (called a "fan-base" in the music industry).

Let's say you have a day job with additional family obligations and can't perform live regularly. You have a few songs but maybe not ten and find it nearly impossible to come up with $5000 or more. Here's a plan that will work for you. For sake of the example, we'll say you have three songs, but you could just as easily have one, seven or any other number. Well assume you are a vocalist that wrote the song yourself, have solo instrument accompaniment (like piano or guitar) and not much additional instrumentation. Lastly, you find a family member of friend who will video tape part of the recording session with their personal video camera. The following would be about average. Could be less if you don't make many mistakes.

- 9 hours of studio time $585 (figure 1-3 hours per finished minute)

- CD Baby signup $35

- 5 CD copies - $25 (price per CD is less if you buy more or do it yourself)

- Piano tuning if using a piano $135

- Facebook artist page - free

- Twitter account - free

- Myspace page - free

- YouTube videos - free (but you provide the video)

- Blog - free

________

TOTAL - $780

Live concert with studio mixing - Just call. Our pricing is insane; nothing short of absolute temptation. We can provide references that will attest to this.

This is for the group or organization that travels to multiple venues and has a large potential live audience. Just to show the extremes, we'll say all ten songs were written by other people and music licensing fees are necessary. We'll also assume that each song has filled-out orchestration and multiple voices. The goal is highest quality and the attitude is "whatever it takes". This is a fairly extreme example. There are many ways to make it cost half or less.

- 120 hours of studio time $6000 (reflects quantity discount)

- music licensing for 10 songs $920