Effectively Managing Your Online Distribution Plan

     One in five questions I receive working as an entertainment business consultant revolves around distribution of media and more specifically regarding timetables for releases and their promotion. This is completely understandable when you take everything into consideration and this is often a long conversation but we will sum up quickly.

     With so many different types of "stores" available to license holders online and the equal or greater number of  "digital distributors" who are happy to take a fee per single, album, ringtone, and the like, it can be a confusing time for an independent artist or manager who is also working to finalize the product, marketing materials and distribution channels. Each of these "stores" has their own ways and costs of doing business. Most frustrating, each of them also have their own schedules for uploading an artists media once received and often it is up to the artist to "keep an eye out" for its availability once loaded to the platform. Add to this the number of "apps" that are now expected to be integrated into social and mobile experiences that carry their own contracts, fees, and self-serving upload schedule and the time management for releases can be head spinning if not managed very carefully with an emphasis on relevant information.

     Indeed many, many advertising dollars have been completely wasted due to promoting a product as available when fans cannot find it in their favorite stores due to a hasty decision to rely on a quick service that promises quick turnaround for itunes (and the rest of the world in 5-6 weeks). This could be a real bummer if your largest fan bases are outside the United States, and due to the many micro-niche artists out there and the multitude of above-mentioned services this is the case more often than not. Some of the "worst-case scenarios” I have seen involve artists on tour promoting inactive links and unavailable product due to a "set-it-and-forget-it" mentality with their fancy new blanket distribution site online.

     So here are a few quick things to keep in mind to keep both your spending and value-chain effective. First, have a solid pre-release promotion strategy. The project must be managed in a way that sets everything out by time and territory. Which territories are the most important, i.e. where are your fans located? Do your homework and figure out the services you will need to utilize for those territories and contact the rights societies, publishers, and distributors. Try and license your material piece by piece, place by place and then think about blanketing the rest of the world with a quick and easy service. Once this is done choose an online distributor that will allow you to choose a pre-release date and plan spending accordingly (have things in order first). This way you can be extremely specific about when the release will be available and all other efforts like press releases, appearances, touring, etc. can run concurrently towards the same goal, efficiency. This also allows for better measurement of your efforts and makes it easier to attain greater goals with new material rather than contacting press about a song that came out 2 months ago.