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How to sell your music on the internet!

How to sell your music on the internet!

Interview with Ben Byrne, October 27, 2006

Ben has been playing music since he was seven years old and he has recently started selling his music on the internet. This interview describes the process that Ben went through to get his music on the web and it provides a very useful guide for anyone who is trying to sell their own music on the internet.

Interview with Ben Byrne (BB) by Richard Johns (RJ), Tabreview.com

RJ: When did you start playing music?
BB: I started playing guitar way, way back when I was about seven years old — me and a mate would play in the school assembly and bunk off lessons to go and 'practice the songs' - which basically meant just messing around playing anything we could for hours on end.

RJ: Do you record as a band or individually?
BB: While I've been in and out of bands, I'm essentially a solo artist now. My day job involves quite a lot of travelling so it's really hard to get something solid together or commit to other people's projects. Hopefully if I go pro I'll get something together behind me then.

RJ: Are you pro or semi-pro? If pro, are you currently making a living out of music?
BB: Very much semi-pro. Making money out of this isn't going to happen in a hurry, I don't think. So you just carry on doing it, doing what you're supposed to do as a musician - which is write songs, get them into a format where they can be heard and just try to get as many people to hear them as possible, whether that's live, on the radio or sold as physical or virtual songs and albums.

RJ: What made you decide to record?
BB: I finally decided last year that I wanted to record an album to just get down songs that had been floating about for years, get it about and see what happened, so recorded it and put it 'out' under the name Silversphere.
I'd really recommend the whole process to really focus your attention as a musician. Even if the album is shit, you'll learn a lot.

RJ: Who was involved in recording the album?
BB: For recording the album, it was all me except the drums, which were done by a young guy who worked as an assistant in the studio and which he did really well. He was cheap too!

RJ: What recording equipment do you use? Studio or your own set up at home?
BB: I demo most stuff at home, and also write / play around with a Mac G4 laptop, an audio converter that you can plug guitar / mikes / midi keyboard into and a program called Tracktion (see www.mackie.com) which I really recommend for low budget recording. It can do pretty much anything you need, and most importantly for me has a totally fluid, intuitive interface which after the total bitchery of working with Cubase is heavenly. It's also about $100 as opposed to over half a grand for ProTools.

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