Songwriters, artists, producers and music-makers of all types have SO many choices when it comes to getting their music in front of people. At the free end of the spectrum you have Soundcloud, BandCamp, and social media platforms like Instagram, YouTube and Facebook and others. There are nearly unlimited options to post music, monitor engagement and connect with fans.

Once you’ve got a large enough catalog of music and are ready to take a more professional approach, you have many more choices to host your music, help you build and manage a music catalog, and pitch to opportunities and industry folks. Products like Magnetracks, Music Gateway, Source Audio, Synchtank and Songspace fit into this category. 

Choosing your platform wisely can make the difference between having the time to create more great music, and wrestling with shortcomings that force you to string together a whole bunch of single-purpose apps that weren’t made for music or to manage the nuances of an artist or musician’s journey.

And not all music hosting platforms are created equal! If you’re going to invest valuable time and effort into setting your music career onto solid foundations, you only want to do this once, right? At Magnetracks, we believe our platform is one you can grow with as your music business trajectory takes you from bedroom singer/songwriter to musical tour de force! And we can prove it…

Here are 6 Things Your Music Hosting Platform Probably Can’t Do (but Magnetracks can)…

Planning and Preparing music for release

Before your music is truly ready for primetime, there are a lot of supporting tasks that need to be taken care of. Make sure that your choice of music management software handles ALL these aspects:

1. Metadata / Song info capture. This is crucial to making sure your track can be: a) found in searches, b) categorized properly by the music service you’re posting it on (Spotify, SoundCloud, etc.), and c) traced back so you and your rightsholders can get paid! Your music’s licensability depends on it.
2. Bookings/Live Gigs. Live performances are as much a part of your career as your recorded works are. You need to be able to schedule, coordinate and promote your live shows just as you would your latest release. A single place to manage your gig calendar and all the “stuff” that surrounds it is key.
3. Rightsholder management. Co-writers, publishers, musicians, performers all are entitled to performing, mechanical, sync, neighbouring rights, and other current and future types of rights. You NEED a way to track who contributed what to the creation of your music.
4. File Encoding and Conversions. Somewhat related to the info you captured in #1, you need to make sure all the files you send out the front door have your metadata “burned into them”. Since song info doesn’t usually travel alongside your music in a separate file, you need to know that all the important album, genre, category, and rightsholder info is encoded right into the audio files. Also, having the flexibility to send your music out in any format a potential publisher, music library or end user wants is a MUST, unless you want to do the download-convert-upload dance. 🙂
5. Full-featured Mobile App. It’s pretty obvious now that increasingly we all prefer the convenience and speed of working from our phones or tablets. And when you do, you shouldn’t be limited to a limited subset of features that are otherwise only available on your laptop. When you spot a new opportunity for your music, or want to create a playlist to share on SoundCloud, you shouldn’t have to wait to get back to your home studio.
6. Documents and Contracts. Are you still keeping publishing agreements, lyrics, collaborators agreements separate from your tracks in DropBox or Google Docs? Most platforms force you to. It makes way more sense that you’d want to have every single piece of related activity and information available right from the track itself. Things like digital documents, alternate mixes, tasks, related playlists, contacts that have liked it, played it, etc. This level of efficiency is why you’re using a “system” after all!

So when you’re ready to move your career forward, choose a system to handle all the aspects of music management in a holistic way – not just a glorified database that sees part of the picture.

Get started with a no contract, no obligation free account at Magnetracks today. www.magnetracks.com/sign-up.