MySpace + Kunaki = Money

Once upon a time, record labels ruled the music industry. Getting an appointment with an A&R guy on any major record label was hard work. And when you DID finally meet with him, you better be damn sure that you're music and image is up to scratch - otherwise you can kiss any chance of a record deal goodbye.

That was the scenario.

Now, things have changed. Drastically.

Since the extreme diversification of music and the advent of the internet, it seems like record labels are now finding themselves desperately looking for the next big merger, rather than signing the next big artist.

In the meantime, artists and bands are looking towards a better way to make money from their music ...their songs ...their artistry ...and what some would consider, their life.

I want to tell you about a service that's available online, right now, that's making the process for distributing YOUR OWN music an absolute walk in the park. The company is called Kunaki - and here's where things get really interesting.

Picture this. You've set up a MySpace page and you have 3 of your songs on your page. You've made loads of 'friends' and even a bunch of 'fans'. You're getting feedback from people and you're constantly improving your music because of it. You have loads of songs, but you don't want to put them all on your MySpace page.

Would you say that out of the many hundreds (or even thousands) of people who visit your MySpace page, that perhaps just a couple of them would be interested to buy more of your music? Would you say that maybe a few of them would want to buy more songs from you? On a daily basis?

Well of course it's plausible. This is a definite possibility - and this is where Kunaki comes in.

Kunaki (despite the strange name) is a company that burns your own album on to a CD, packages the CD jewel case and ships it out to the chosen country. The great part about this is that they only charge you when somebody buys it.

And of course, you set the price of your album.

Let me show you an example.

Go here http://kunaki.com/Gallery.asp?cc=

Click on a 'detailed view' for any CD

Choose a country and click 'calculate shipping'


You can see a breakdown of how much they charge. For outside the USA it's normally $3.00 handling charge and $3.60 shipping/air mail fee. For inside the USA it's around $4.60 in total.

Note: You can check out the prices at their site and email them if you have to. My numbers may not be 100% acurate - but they are roughly correct.

So here's how the process goes:

1) You get some songs together and put up a MySpace page. Present 3 'teaser' songs on MySpace. You spend some time making as many friends on MySpace and basically promoting the heck out of it. If you want to know more about promoting on MySpace you can try this ebook. It may help you.

After you've gained some presence, you want to let people buy your music! There are two options for this... but for now I'm going though Kunaki which handles your CD as a physical product. As I said, they package, burn and ship out your album for how much you want to sell it for. Example, $5.00. So the buyer will pay around $7-11 depending on if they live in the USA or not.

Even $11 is pretty good for an album of 15 songs ;-)

2) Go to Kunaki and go through their procedure. You may need to download some free software (they provide) to design your album cover and CD design.

You design it, and they print it. And it's all professional - we're not talking 'sticky labels' here, we're talking about images burnt on the actual CD and high quality inlay cards. It's proper.

You will also upload your songs one-by-one to their site so that they can then burn it on CD.

3) Then you put the link and your newly designed album front cover picture on your MySpace page. Monitor it... see if anybody buys your stuff.

4) When you make sales, Kunaki will send you a check every month - deducting their own fee's first.


There you have it :-) With this process in place, any songwriter, musician or singer can make money in the music industry.... and potentially, lots of it.


~Shamir