1. Distribution – I know that this should be wildly obvious, but it’s incredibly important. Anyone who has ever tried to self release an album knows that it’s incredibly hard. Getting your album into retail outlets is difficult enough, but trying to make your product easy to find, keeping tabs on your overall sales, submitting Soundscans, and maintaining control over your products place and pricing is a full time job. Websites like Bandcamp and iTunes are incredibly useful tools, but it’s very hard to generate any sort of meaningful income from those unless you are a very specific sort of band, or you have gratuitous amounts of free time, no friends, and really enjoy doing online promotion.
