Further musings on Online Music Distributors (OMD's)

'Why is there is so much investment in OMD websites by their proprietors?' was something of a rhetorical question. That there was no flood of answers on incoming postcards, came as no great surprise to me, so, as you might have guessd, I was already primed to answer the question, myself. Here, is the hardly astonishing truth. Income Generation - that is the simple two word answer. Cynical, you might say, but one thing I have discovered, in my short life, is that while genuine altruism does exist, it is not a naturally abundant resource on this planet of ours. We certainly can't expect to find it any more frequently on the internet than we do in our daily lives...

There are a number of different ways that OMD's generate income. I'm not going to provide a list, let alone an exhaustive one, of ways in which OMD's do this, because the thrust of this post is not about the detail of OMD financial aims and imperitives, but to make the general point that OMD's are not in the generosity business. No, they are simply 'in business', and, before you misunderstand me, I am happy to say that my view is that it is okay to be 'in business', it's absolutely fine, and fair enough, for OMD's, or anyone else...I have no complaint about that, whatsoever. I simply want to make the point that OMD's are following a business strategy when they provide facilities for Indie Musicians and encourage their use of the facilities they provide...So, my fellow Indie Musician, by all means, use the facilities OMD's provide, and derive as much benefit from them as you can, but be aware... be aware that the online music business is a business, and you are contributing to the success of your favoured OMD's, whenever you create a 'Band Page', whenever you upload your music, whenever you post in a forum, listen to music, review or comment on a fellow 'Artist', indeed, whenever you interact in any way with an OMD website...

More to come...