You’ve finally done it—you’ve recorded a CD.  The songs are great.  Your band is excited.  You know your fans will love it.  You might not be signed with a major label, but if you promote yourself right, you still have a chance of getting your  music in the hands of fans and earning some money for your hard work.   Here are a few things you must do to sell your music online.

Get copies made.  You’ll need to replicate or duplicate your CD’s if you want to sell them.  You can either burn them one by one in your computer’s CD drive, or you can let a replication company handle it.  If you want the best quality and a professional finish we recommend hiring a professional.  You’ll get retail-quality discs with your own artwork printed on the disc and the cover.  

If you’re ordering a small amount of copies—recommended for new bands—you should choose duplication.  Replication is better for large orders of thousands of CD’s.  The methods are different and each is more economical under different conditions, but you’ll get high-quality CD’s either way.

Get a website.  Every band needs a website nowadays.  Your website can include Mp3 clips and samples of your music, video clips from your concerts, a list of coming appearances and tour dates, and even a blog.  These are great ways to make your website appealing to both fans and search engines. 

Even if you keep your website simple, Mp3 clips are pretty much a requirement for most band sites.  You’ll need more bandwidth on your site than a simple text-focused website needs.  Because of this, bands are advised to invest in a professional web hosting service rather than free hosting. 

Make it easy for customers to pay.  If customers can’t figure out how to buy your music online, you won’t make any money.  You can set up a payment processing form on your site, but you may find that this requires more time, money, and hassle than you can handle.  If so, check out Paypal’s or Yahoo!’s options for small businesses.  These and a few other sites allow people to set up online stores without worrying about SSL encryption, business credit card accounts, payment forms and software.

Check out third-party sites.  You don’t necessarily have to sell your music through your own site.  Instead, you can use a retail site such as Amazon.com, or a niche music site that sells music in general or your type of music in particular.  Most of these sites sell CD’s by mail, and offer Mp3’s as free samples.  They usually take a cut of your profits if someone orders your CD.  Often they won’t actively work to promote you beyond making your music available to customers, so you’ll have to do the bulk of the marketing yourself.  Many of these sites will feature your music on their homepage if your orders are high, but they have to be high first.

Use social networking sites to your advantage.  MySpace started as a forum to allow bands to promote their music, and social networking sites are still a good way to connect with your fans.  Most will allow you to set up a personal page full of band information, clips, links to your main web page, and more. 

Bands should always read the terms of agreement, however, before signing up at a social networking site.  Some sites have agreements that essentially say that they retain all rights to anything you upload on the site, including music. 

Consider partnering with a distributor.  If you only get a small amount of orders per month, you should have no trouble mailing your CD’s to customers yourself.  But what if you suddenly see a jump in orders—or need to go on tour?  Who handles fulfillment then?

If you’re getting more orders in than you can handle fulfilling by yourself, you may want to partner with a distributor.  How it works is fairly simple: you give your supply of CD’s and other merchandise to the distributor.  They get the orders, and they send them out.  Some distributors will make sure your CD is in both online and retail stores and handle some of your marketing as well; these often charge a significant percentage of your sales. Other distributors offer bare-bones online fulfillment only, and some of these will only sell CD’s—not T-shirts, posters, or other merchandise.

In general, it’s usually best to handle fulfillment yourself if your orders are still small.  If you’re getting more orders than you can handle by yourself, it’s time to call in a partner.

The most successful bands think of themselves not just as a music group, but as a business.  Consider how you will get your CD’s into the hands of your customers.  The web can help you find new fans and sell your music online, and it’s worth it to put in the time to set up a thriving online business.