Distributing Music Has Never Been Easier

In this post I will talk about Toneden and Splice, two music industry startups. They have streamlined very complicated processes to create services that are easy to use.

Distributing a new song is a process with many steps. Artists will often hire multiple managers and agents to assist them with distributing their latest work.

Today we have an unprecedented number of strong music streaming services (Spotify, Tunecore, BeatsMusic, etc) as well as social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc).

When a new song is created it can be shared to the entire world in a matter of minutes. However, minutes soon turn to hours when aspiring musician have to log in to dozens of different online accounts to create different posts.

As an artist myself I often get discouraged when I distribute my own work. When I finish a track I have to communicate with dozens of people through various mediums. Then I make posts on multiple different accounts. It is a real hassle at times. A few young entrepreneurs have thought about these problems. I believe that their solution is awesome. It’s called Toneden.

Imagine one website where you can manage all of your content. Since I began using Toneden my following increased while the time I spend on music distribution has decreased. All of my social network accounts are synced as well as my Soundcloud. Now when I upload a song I can share it instantly on multiple networks. This significantly cuts down on my promotion time. Furthermore I can consolidate all of my content into a single webpage that is hosted on Toneden.  Without the need for multiple websites I can focus on making better music.

Making music with another artist can be difficult if they do not use the same software as I do. When I make a song it usually has anywhere from ten to forty individual tracks. It can be a pain to send all of these to someone else. Conventional file sharing websites like Google Drive, Dropbox, and Mediafire are not simple or quick, and premium accounts are expensive. I recently started using Splice to work with other people. It is a web service that facilitates live collaboration in popular music programs. When anything is changed in a music project the changes are recorded for everyone connected to that project. This makes working together a lot more fun because more time is spent making music, and less time is spent transferring files.

With both ToneDen as well as Splice I spend more time making music, and less time fiddling with technology. Both companies essentially focus on the same concept. They have taken many separate activities and combined them into a single operation. Both companies are only startups with growing member bases. It will be interesting to see how they grow.

 

Sources

https://www.toneden.io

https://splice.com

13 thoughts on “Distributing Music Has Never Been Easier

  1. It seems as if you are the project manager for the promotion of your music and these startups make your job a lot easier. Signing into multiple websites is simple but time consuming for you, and therefore you do much better with this new resources. This is a good example that can be applied to any project. Even if a step seems simple, removing it can make the process much easier over long periods of time. Instead of always looking for glaring problems, we should also look for places to simplify processes. Over time it could end up really increasing efficiency.

  2. I found this article not only interesting but also extremely relevant. Making a name for yourself in today’s music industry is a daunting task that requires either a great management team, or a lot of hours of dedication to source the right outlets as well as promoters for yourself. I cannot say I am “in the know” of what options are out there as far as multi-posting one’s music, however based on your review it sounds like this startup truly has a great thing going for them. I admire the fact that ToneDen and Splice acknowledge this difficulty as an independent artist, and have catered this services towards relevant and known music outlets such as Soundcloud and Spotify.

  3. Interesting post. Your personal experience with this technology really brings great insight to the problems of an artist in this modern world. Music really is a space that could use great collaboration like that to make a better product. My friend who wants to be a rapper and make his own music is going through some of these problems himself. I will share this post with him and hopefully make his life a little easier. Thanks for posting.

  4. Great post, Kevin. It really seems like this new website has decreased the time you use to get your music out there and everyone knows that distribution is incredibly crucial. For a management point of view this is great since it allows you to focus more on the actual product itself, your music.

    Also, this would have also been a good outlet to post your music for us to hear, so if you read this, don’t hesitate to add a link to this post or something. We need to support our fellow blue demons!

  5. I understand the struggle of managing such similar and repetitive tasks through social media. Like you, I had the exact frustration. Last summer I had been a part of a marketing committee for an Asian-American talent show called, Kollaboration Chicago. As a volunteer, I was in charge of social media posts on sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The hassle of posting on each site separately (the exact same text) took more time than it had to. I later discovered a site that incorporated everything into one, just like Toneden. It was called Hootsuite–my time savior.

  6. Hi! Kevin. Really like you post because i never know that distributing a new song is a process with many steps. It seems that the artists are very busy, otherwise, they will not hire multiple managers and agents to assist them with distributing their latest work. It is absolutely difficult that if every one are not using the same software. Then you have to post in couple software. In in opinion, all these music streaming services can combine when people wanna release their song, which means once the artist post a song on one software, the other website they will still have it, such as Toneden. Then the artists will not spend that much time on post account on different account. This is like a step of making music managerment. When you can fix out this issue, you guys will make better music.

  7. This article is pretty cool. Just the other day I read an article about how Pete Wentz was saying they could write a song and distribute it that day; the whole music process has changed just from their pre-hiatus days. It is really refreshing to hear this type of technology is benefiting newer artists as well. I wish you the best of luck on your future career!

  8. This is really cool software. I agree that these two sites are extremely helpful for aspiring artists but I think an interesting argument can still be made against it. I have heard interesting arguments that the internet is ruining the music industry. Before the internet the only way to record and distribute music was through a record deal and in an expensive studio. Now with the help of websites like Facebook, YouTube, and SoundCloud, along with the websites that you mentioned, almost anyone can make a song and post it for everyone in the world to see. I think this is awesome! But, also the ease of this process might make it harder for the more talented artists trying to get noticed.

  9. Promotion can be a difficult task, especially when there is so much music already available. It’s great that you were able to find a medium which would allow you to spread your music throughout the social sphere. There’s a new social media site out every couple of months and it can be hard to effectively market on all the different sites. Tonden seems like an interesting tool and a great way to save time.

  10. Interesting post as the ToneDen software especially relates directly to work that I do with the social media segment of my summer marketing internship when using the application Hootsuite. Hootsuite is a social media management application which allows me to create content related to our customers’ industries that I can post to all of our social media platforms ( LinkedIN, Facebook, Google + Twitter) with one click rather than having to go to each individual site and post it separately. It’s cutting edge software like this that frees up valuable time for employees and enables employers to keep their costs down significantly. Instead of having to add another employee for thousands of dollars a year they can subscribe to this software for a couple hundred bucks a year and achieve the same results.

  11. This post was really interesting to me because I have a deep love for music. I really appreciate you sharing these applications with us. I play drums and work on projects with different musicians and have never come across something that makes promotion time tremendously smaller. It can get very frustrating distributing music across many different platforms. I agree with you in that it does take up valuable time that could be better spent, mastering your craft. Applications that can manage everything for you in an efficient manor are critical. I will definitely give ToneDen and Splice a try. Thanks for the post.

  12. This is a really smart idea, I never thought about how much of a hassle it would be to post your music on every form of social media, since there are so many. Does this website work the other way around where I could follow artists on it? I am into a lot of music and I have to have a bunch of social media accounts if I want to get all the updates from the bands I like. If I could see all the updates from bands on one site, that would be great.

  13. Even though I am the number 13 commenting this post, I had to reply to this post as I felt identified. My best friend is an artist too. He finds it difficult to distribute his music. We attend to various events to meet up with different producers. Building up your connection is hard as well. He sends his music all over the place. I will make you telling him about this post as I am not sure if he is familiar with toneden.

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