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Hello friends! A whole lot has changed over the years with iTunes. Especially regarding independent Musicians. But there still are plenty of ways to make sure your Music is available on the platform, so you're getting paid for your songs.
Making sure your music original music is on one of the biggest music platforms is essential to spreading the word about you as an artist.
There are a few things you need to understand about Apple Music. And how to make the best use of its platform.
These are the Important Questions this article will be considering.
These questions and more are answered by BY GREG MAJEWSKI from DIYMUSICIAN below:
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"When promoting your music, it’s important that you NOT put all your focus on a single streaming service. Your fans aren’t all in the same place; listening is fragmented across numerous platforms, including Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, and Apple Music.
Any promo message you share with your entire audience should acknowledge that fact, and Apple Music should be featured alongside other popular services. That’s because as of 2020, Apple Music is second to Spotify in overall subscribers. The numbers break down like this:"
Apple Music was also one of the top revenue sources for CD Baby artists in 2020.
How can you make sure you’re making the most of your presence on Apple Music? We’ll get to that. But first, a little history.
As its name suggests, Apple Music is the music streaming branch of Apple, the tech company responsible for the Macintosh computer, iPhone, iPad and other various gadgets with hundreds of millions of users the world over. You might also remember an old program called iTunes. Apple Music is a spiritual successor to that too, but we’ll get to that in a bit.
The genesis of Apple Music began with Apple’s purchase of Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre’s company Beats Electronics — and with it Beats Music — in May 2014. Beats Music had launched as a streaming service earlier that year and had amassed a library of more than 20 million songs.
One year after its purchase of Beats, Apple merged Beats Music’s library with its own Internet radio service iTunes Radio. Apple announced its new music streaming service in early June 2015, and officially launched Apple Music at the end of that month.
Within its first six months, Apple Music had surpassed 10 million users. By mid-2019, it had reached its latest major marker of 60 million users, beating Spotify in paid subscribers.
That last milestone is significant because unlike Spotify, Apple Music only offers paid subscriptions. Any paid subscription service will pay more for streams compared to a platform that offers a free streaming option.
The other major reason to get your music on Apple Music is simply a numbers game: since it’s pre-installed on all Apple devices, Apple Music has a built-in potential user base. Considering Apple CEO Tim Cook’s report in early 2020 that there are 1.5 billion active iOS devices, that’s a lot of potential Apple Music users! Especially since Apple offers a free three-month trial to entice new users into subscribing. Don’t ignore that huge market of users. Get your music on Apple Music.
Okay! Now that we’ve convinced you why you should be on Apple Music, how do you go about doing it?
Just like getting your music on any other music streaming platform, you’ll need to use a music distributor to send your music to Apple Music.
In the Artist Craft Mastery Course, you will learn how to send your music to all digital distributors
Once your music is available on Apple Music, you can claim your artist profile on Apple Music through their feature called Apple Music for Artists. This is similar to verifying your artist page on Spotify. Both features allow you to customize your artist profile and view stats and data, including:
To claim your Apple Music for Artists profile:
In another parallel to Spotify, Apple Music offers a feature similar to pre-saves. “Pre-adds” on Apple Music allow listeners to save an album that is available for pre-sale on iTunes to their Apple Music Library. On the sales start date, the album will automatically be available in the listener’s Apple Music Library.
Pre-adds can also include an “instant gratification” track if the artist chooses to make one available. This means when a listener saves an album, they can hear one song from that release right away. They are then notified when the full album launches.
The only major difference between Spotify pre-saves and Apple Music pre-adds is that only albums are eligible for Apple Music pre-adds. Single-song releases cannot be opted in for Apple Music pre-add.
You can opt in your album for Apple Music pre-add during the submission process with CD Baby. Follow these steps:
Since Apple Music is a bit more exclusive in its membership thanks to its subscription-only approach, functions like playlist creation aren’t as transparent as they are on other platforms. But making a playlist on Apple Music is actually pretty easy once you know the steps:
You can also make your playlist public by selecting “Show on My Profile and in Search.”
You can share your Apple Music playlist on social media by following these steps:
Earlier in this article we mentioned that iTunes Radio was merged into Beats Music to create Apple Music. So far we’ve only talked about the on-demand music streaming portion of Apple Music, but the radio side still exists and is a versatile way to discover new music.
Apple Music Radio is divided into two separate sections:
To create a custom station on Apple Music:
Did you know there’s a suite of marketing tools available through Apple Music? You can use these tools to:
You can also use Show.co’s Ad Builder to embed your songs into interactive ads on your fans’ favorite websites.
And don’t forget about HearNow smart-links, which house links to your music on platforms across the Internet, including Apple Music.
You may remember back in 2019 that Apple announced it was discontinuing iTunes. While this is true, they didn’t completely put it out to pasture. Instead, Apple merged iTunes with Apple Music.
So yes, your fans can still buy and download your music on iTunes. They just click the iTunes Store tab in the Apple Music app. And CD Baby still distributes to iTunes, so make sure they’re selected for those fans who want to purchase music instead of streaming!
