Now What?

     Alright!    

     Now that all your songs ( or in this case mine ) are ready, willing, and able to be heard; the next step, naturally, is how are you going to get the music out to the wider audience so you can bask in the glory and praise you so richly deserve? In the old days you would send out tapes, of varying quality, to anyone you thought might be interested ( vinyl albums from someone other than a label in those days was a vanity project and very expensive ), play a lot of gigs; good and bad, put flyers on poles and walls; all of which you can still do, in hopes of landing a recording contract for the low low price of your publishing rights, royalties, dubious accounting practices, an advance you may or may not be able to ever repay, and your soul.
     Don't laugh!
     More than a few bands have tales of woe at the hands of the record machine.
     Those tales also include being told all the ways you have to change your look and sound in order to make the big bucks dancing around in your head. It wasn't for the weak or timid. That may or may not explain why you might believe some artists are self absorbed jerks. It is what it is.

     Now with the Internet and digital recording that are relatively easy and affordable, you can be your own man or woman. Or if you're someone like me sitting on a trove of recordings, you can get those out for everyone who's interested in hearing them. The question is which way are you going to go? There are any number of sites that caters to starving musicians and bands that promise to get your music out there. You also need a social media presence, preferably more than one, and then there's the delivery platforms for the music itself: CD's, vinyl, downloads, either in full sonic clarity or compressed, and you need art and graphics to go along with the music.
     For me, I asked my son, Yuji, to do the artwork:

     This is the cover art for the first album I'm releasing: Apologia. I always had a thing for bands that had artists do their album covers, so my plan was to have a series of paintings for the albums that are as interesting as the music. I have no interest in plastering my sad mug on the cover. Once the artwork was done I went with Discmakers to make a limited run of CD's and went through them with for the digital distribution on iTunes, Amazon, Soundcloud, Spotify, etc. That takes time and money. That's the other thing; getting your music out ain't free.

     Next: I need a website.