https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/spotify-opens-the-floodgates-users-can-now-upload-tracks-to-the-streaming-platform-for-free/

Spotify is in all devices and videogames dude, is the best service for me...soundcloud is for musicians i say..

Hey, this is pretty neat!

It reminds me a bit of www.jango.com which helps a lot of Indie groups get exposure.

Hopefully this will give some exposure to those who need, and hey, maybe we will get some Band-in-a-Box created content in there!

Mikke,

There ALREADY is a warehouse of Band-in-Box Tunes on Spotify by David Snyder, Yours Truly, Sir.

What do you think I've been doing for the last four years man??

Me too !!

Looks a bit like the Amazon approach, offer free/cheap service so long as it takes to crush the competition.

You are not the only ones using spotify etc. I have five albums on line, for the most of it all songs were biab/realband made.

I also have material up on spotify, four CD's worth, with backing tracks made with BIAB.

In my case I used CDBaby to get me on all the various platforms, I think a few others here use them too.

It will be interesting to see what the other players will do, if anything; iTunes, Amazon etc. in reaction to this.

And us. An album and an EP.

This is incredibly interesting to me. It makes me wonder how it is going to work in terms of paying artists who upload things for free and end up getting millions of views. It won't happen right away, but if this becomes a thing it is inevitable it'll happen eventually.

It seems it is pretty simple. Nobody buys anything anymore, really, and why should they? There is no incentive.

Soon Spotify will be it and if your songs are good, I guess you stand just a good a chance as anyone.

Self promotion is the game now. It's all about social media, pure and simple.

Remember that Kim Kardashian's expensive book of selfies was one of the most popular books ever (and best-selling) not that long ago and that tells you about all you need to know.

Yes, just having material on spotify (or iTunes, amazon, etc.) means nothing. The chances of someone randomly finding one of your songs amongst the other 30 million songs there are slim at best.

Self promotion is tough, how do you make yourself stand out from everyone else out there who is also plugging their songs?

I have quite a few people subscribed to my mailing list over on reverbnation, even more on my band page over on facebook. But the amount of people that actually read the emails I send or the posts I make on facebook is a very small percentage.

You have to have some decent marketing skills to make it happen I think.

A few years ago my Mom asked me to make her an album for Christmas called "Soothing Classical Guitar and Orchestra" using my newly found BIAB arrangement chops because she needed something to calm her down.

So, as lark, I did it--the whole thing took two days. It's just BIAB/Aria/Garritan orchestral stuff with me playing guitar. I get a good amount of streams off of that so I did another, same thing.

All of a sudden I started seeing activity on my other stuff too, so I don't think it's impossible--you just have to find a niche.

Beyond a shadow of a doubt I know the classical guitar niche is where I will stand out, and I don't think I stand a snowball's chance in any other category, though I could be wrong.

I am still running a grand experiment with all of this just to see where it leads me. I have no expectations but I am having fun.

* On a totally unrelated sidenote, I got shortlisted last month for a "Tom Petty" soundalike that was my very first BIAB song, when I got BIAB 2014. I was so excited. I remember it like it was yesterday. I had just gotten off the phone with Alyssa and I had like 32 Real Tracks and maybe a dozen Real Styles and four or five choices of drums and guitars to pick from. I was in heaven. (It was the beginner's pack.)

That first song I created with it "Can't Make Me Hide" actually got picked. I should post it one day. When I listened to it, I laughed out loud. I really thought I was the cat's pajamas with my 32 Real Tracks.