How 3 indie musicians sought to change the music industry for good.

Starting out with independent music
In March 2019, Ricardo Vasques started talking about distributing music with Mark Hopgood. Ricardo had already established an indie music label and Mark had started building an online community of independent artists, dnldr.

Mark was releasing tracks written with Rachel Starr and Ricardo was helping him to release and distribute their music on digital platforms.

Realising something was wrong
Mark had been asked to join a couple of bands in 2015 and had started getting radio plays and streams on Spotify with his band "Fade Files". When the cheques started coming in each quarter (£65 from PRS for radio play and £4.50 for Spotify he realised something was not right. Plays on Spotify were grossly underpaying. No worries, he thought. Just get more plays on radio and Spotify. This increased with the followings they were getting through their indie group dnldr and the private group dnldr for artists which were run by Mark & Rachel.

Meanwhile Ricardo had other plans
At the same time, Ricardo was going through a similar search and not happy with the situation, decided to write some software. He went on a course and the end result was a software program that worked a little like Spotify. Mark and Ricardo were talking about data and how much revenue was being generated by the music plays and something clicked. Between them, given all their knowledge about software, music and the internet, surely they could come up with a platform for independent artists.

In June 2020, the first release of their app, Projektor Digital was shared with their communities and feedback from this release incorporated into the current iteration.

The missing piece in the puzzle
Giving a greater share of the revenue from the platform with several ways to earn from plays and fans, Projektor Digital set a revolution in motion for the benefit of independent artists.

 You can find out more and try the Projektor Platform at https://app.projektordigital.com

Ricardo, Rachel and Mark continue to produce music as independent artists and share their software platform with members of their communities.

Creating a video preview post for your music.

Unfortunately Facebook isn't kind to musicians and artists. They make it awkward to allow fans to preview music. Here's a guide on how to promote your music to your Facebook page that will play music directly in Facebook.

There are quite a few steps involved and we've put them hopefully together in a way that is fairly easy to understand. As ever if you have any problems, just head over to Projektor Digital webpage and Ricardo, Mark, Sarah, Michael and Rachel will be able to help you out via the chat link in the bottom right of the page ( https://app.projektordigital.com ).

Step 1: Make a playlist or final destination link. 
The idea is to use a video preview to encourage your fans to listen to your music in full. Make sure you have your playlist URL handy.

Here's how its done in Projektor Digital - other platforms are available too.

a. upload your track and image
b. get your playlist url

First go to the release page and scroll down to get promotion tools..

Release page for your music

Then we will copy the playlist URL - this link will be used in the description for the video post in Facebook later. Projektor Digital automatically creates a playlist and link for your music, putting it with other recent releases in the same genre.

Once the link is copied to the clipboard, you are ready for the next step.

Step 2: get your video preview
Scroll down to the preview and download the video preview that you want to use. 

the video preview section will allow you to download a preview video file

after clicking the three dots (menu) you will have the option of downloading the video

in this case chrome shows the video below

Step 3: create your post in facebook.

This is the part that usually confuses me. The process I follow is 

a. go to your facebook page

b. start to create a post, then choose publishing tools

c.  Then click create post, then click photo/video
You get the option of uploading from computer.

Then schedule the video using the following info in the post, e.g.

In the above example i've used the following

Playlist link: 

https://app.projektordigital.com/player/index.php?playlist=52&uid=7&feature=genre&fdata=4%C2%AC28

Hashtag:
#UK20S - my code for UK 8pm on Saturday.

Facebook link:

@projektordigital - because I'm currently helping other artists.

Following up later on this I can use facebook analytivcs for my page to see how well the post did.

If you found this useful and you are a musician or musical artist, consider joiningg us at dnldr for artists, a community of people helping each other to produce and promote music.

dnldr for artists - private community on facebooks

https://www.facebook.com/groups/796223010768973/