I try to remember to post all the activity from our Berkeley Records Cattery on our home site, berkeleycatrecords.com. It’s built on a WordPress platform, and (nerdly note!) I use the Twenty Sixteen WordPress Theme, there. Cleverly named for the year of its creation, it is my favorite WordPress template, and I also use it on ericdin.com and a few other spots in the vast and tentacled Intermass, customized purr my liking.
This morning I’m reflecting on the journey - my journey, and the journey I share with so many others - everyone, really - in that interconnectedness is not at all limited to what we can see, or know. I think interconnectedness extends to all living beings, and the rocks and earth we stand on, the water we swim in and drink, and the air that sustains us, oh, and the planets and their gravities and orbits and the stars and galaxies beyond, all the way to infinity. Small stuff.
(and now a leap. kitty leap, ready? hindquarters wiggle, whickers bristle, calculate trajectory, and… POUNCE!!)
I recently decided to distribute my solo recordings to ALL of the streaming outlets available in the DistroKid interface. I have researched most of them, and here, for your bafflement or amusement, is a current list of online music services to which anyone can easily distribute their music for a small price:
Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes, Instagram/Facebook, TikTok & other ByteDance stores, YouTube Music, Amazon, Pandora, Deezer, Tidal, iHeartRadio, Claro Música, Saavn, Boomplay, Anghami, NetEase, Tencent, Qobuz, Joox, Kuack Media, Yandex Music (beta), Adaptr, Flo, MediaNet, Snapchat.
(Deep breath, whaaaaat?!) Why yes, Petunia. There’s even a paid option called Store Maximizer where DistroKid will and I paraphrase: “Automatically deliver to new online stores and streaming services as we add them. Which is often. We'll give you notice each time we add the single to a new service.”
Amazing, no? I have not selected that option because it seems reckless, even for me, but hey, I get it! Artists want their music available to PEOPLE, actual people in the actual world, so…
Bazillions of new tracks each day, created and uploaded, sent around the world to servers where they diligently wait for someone to… click! And listen. It boggles my boggles.
Returning to my point… WHY?! Did I recently decide to send my solo records to EVERY outlet available thru my distributor? Really because:
I didn’t want to pull my work from Spotify, because that is the service a majority of music listeners currently use, INCLUDING many of my own dear friends. My buddy Daniel even told me that Am I Not Alien was the top song in his Spotify year-end wrap-up, and that his whole family likes it. That, esteemed pals, means a lot to me.
Leaving my work on Spotify given the recent rumblings about their royalty policies, which I have studied but honestly still do not fully understand (google it if you’re curious), while NOT sharing with all the other outlets, just seemed odd to me - like, somewhere between futile or hypocritical or just silly.
I’ll have individual discussions with other Berkeley Cat Records recording artists about how they want to handle the current distro-landscape.
And I’m glad that Bandcamp still exists.
Here’s to you and yours and your musical journeys,
Eric Din