Seven platforms giving musicians their own audience back
Ask a self-employed maker what a website costs and you will get a number that stings. For most people, though, that is not where the money leaks away. It leaks at the platforms standing between you and your audience, a little every month.
What Hypebot lined up
Hypebot listed seven digital music platforms that let musicians run their own sales, work on their own discoverability and keep their own fan data. No gatekeeper in between.
It is a music story, but it describes something every self-employed person knows. A photographer selling work through a marketplace. A coach running bookings through a scheduling platform. An organiser selling tickets through a ticketing site. Every time, someone sits between you and the people paying you.
A middleman takes two things
The first one shows up on your statement: a percentage of every sale. That feels fair while you sell little. In a good month you suddenly pay a lot.
The second one shows up nowhere. It is who your customer is. The name, the email address, what someone bought from you before. That stays on the platform. If the platform changes its rules, or the fee goes up, you cannot even send your own people a message telling them where to find you from now on. At that point you are renting access to your own audience.
Do last year's sum
Pull up last year's bank statements and write down everything that touches your business.
- the fixed subscriptions: hosting, mail tool, calendar, storage, bookkeeping
- the commissions: every percentage a sales or booking platform kept
- the outsourced work: every invoice from someone who built or maintained something for you
Add the maintenance you pay for your website each year, and what you spent on outsourced marketing. Add it up.
Almost nobody has ever done that sum, and that makes sense. It sits spread across small charges of a few euros, and small amounts feel small. The yearly total does not feel small. That is why it is worth writing down once.
What you can do with this tomorrow
Three things you can do this week, without cancelling anything.
Get your list in hand. On every platform where you sell, export your customers' email addresses and put them in a file that belongs to you. Usually you are allowed to. Do it before you need it.
Sell one thing yourself. One product, one ticket, one package on your own page, with a payment link behind it. See what is left when nobody sits in between.
Do the sum. Only once you see the yearly total can you decide. With me the answer is one subscription of 35 euros a month, cancellable monthly, with that work simply done. If your sum comes out the other way, I will say so before you pay. That is an answer too.
Frequently asked questions
Am I allowed to take my customers' email addresses out of a platform?
Most platforms let you export your own customer data, and under European privacy rules you have a right to the data you collected yourself. Look in your account for export or data download. Do tell your customers what you use their address for, and make sure they can unsubscribe.
I do not sell much. Is my own sales page worth it?
Work it out before you decide. As long as you sell a few times a year, a commission is cheaper than maintaining something of your own. Once you sell more often, that flips. The tipping point is different for everyone, and you only see it once the numbers are on paper.
Does this mean I have to do everything myself?
No. This is about ownership, not about doing the work yourself. Someone else can perfectly well maintain your sales page and your mailing list, as long as the customer data and the payments land with you and you could switch tomorrow without losing your audience.
