Lesson 10

More great distribution opportunities for meditation and hypnosis recordings

Beyond the traditional world of CDs, digital downloads and music streaming, there are some other amazing opportunities for you to reach people with your recordings. 

Don’t miss out on these…

YouTube

Youtube is a platform that really deserves your attention. It has a monumental user base and can put you in touch with huge numbers of listeners. It’s free to start a YouTube channel and once you have built up a certain number of channel subscribers you can monetise your videos, bringing you monthly income on an ongoing basis. 

Your audio recordings can quite easily be turned into videos. You don’t need to film all the background footage yourself! It is far more common for meditation and hypnosis videos to feature footage that can easily be obtained from a royalty free image company, like Shutterstock.com for example. A tranquil nature scene or even a still image may be all you need. After all, people will be listening to your recording with their eyes closed most of the time, so the footage in your videos does not need to be hugely engaging, it just needs to be simple and soothing. 

Two clients of Enlightened Audio that have demonstrated exceptional success on YouTube are “The Honest Guys” and Jason Stephenson. Both have produced numerous meditations with music obtained from Enlightened Audio, and both have developed a very substantial following. As I write this, The Honest Guys have almost 1 million subscribers, whereas Jason Stephenson has over 2 million subscribers with his channel. 

Many people find YouTube to be an especially satisfying way to share their recordings. Unlike music streaming services, YouTube allows people to like and comment on your videos, and you can reply to them too. This means that you can engage with your listeners in a much more immediate and personal way, while also receiving valuable feedback and perhaps requests for additional videos too.  

Bandcamp

Bandcamp is a well-known online music store where people can go to purchase downloads of your recordings. It’s an excellent alternative to (or addition to) selling downloads on your own website. 

It’s free for you to create an account and upload your recordings. When people purchase downloads Bandcamp keep a percentage of your sale price, but the remainder—82% on average—goes directly into your account within 24-48 hours.

You can charge whatever price for your recordings you choose and change it whenever you like. You can sell for a fixed price or specify a minimum and let fans pay more if they want (which they do, 50% of the time).

https://bandcamp.com

Relaxation and Meditation Apps

The market for apps that help with relaxation, holistic health and personal growth is absolutely exploding. A few that spring to mind include:

  • Calm
  • Insight Timer
  • Breethe

Many of these kinds of apps are hungry for new content to add to their platform, and some of them pay royalties to the artists whose content they distribute. Once you have created a recording you can make direct contact with apps such as these and present them with your work. If they like your recording then they may make it a permanent feature in their app, thereby sharing your creation with a potentially huge number of new listeners.

Important Tip for anyone just starting out

I’d like to take a moment to encourage you to distribute your recordings via a wide variety of outlets. Don’t rely on just one.

Streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music will expose you to a worldwide audience and are bound to bring some revenue your way. The same applies to distribution of your recordings via YouTube, Bandcamp or via wellness-specific apps, like Calm, Insight Timer and Breethe for example. 

If you are just getting started then it’s sometime difficult to know which of these distribution methods will be most effective for you. This is why I recommend exploring all of them! Over time you may find that one or more of these methods stand out as being particularly effective for you. For some people, their recordings explode on YouTube, whereas for others, sales of digital downloads on their own website are the main breadwinner. Cast a wide net and then flow where the river takes you.

Keep in mind that these various distribution platforms may all help to cross-pollinate each other by raising awareness of you and your recordings. This means that people who discover you via an app may search for you on YouTube and subscribing to your channel. People who discover you on YouTube may visit your website to purchase downloads, and so on.

Enlightened Audio Education