Affiliate Disclosure

In compliance with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), I am providing the following statement about affiliate links used on D4 Music Marketing.

This page is to let you know that any products or services that I link to marked with “Affiliate Link” means I receive a small commission at no additional cost for you only when you sign up for any paid services using the link I shared. These affiliate links contain a special code that tells the company that I referred you to them.

In some cases, you will pay the same price, whether you use my link or not. There may be times where you get a discount for using my affiliate link, which I will mention. You will never pay more than you normally would by using my affiliate link.

You are not obligated to use my affiliate link in any way. However, using my affiliate link is a great way to support D4 Music Marketing and allow me to keep producing free content to serve musicians or music professionals like yourself all around the world.

Trust is extremely important to me so I will always be transparent in this regard. My blogs often list a lot of links to different companies and their competitors that you should consider for various services. None of these companies reached out to me and asked me to include these links to their sites. Any affiliate links to services or products on my blog will be clearly marked and always be for something I have personally used for my clients and recommend for others, regardless of any paid commission, or a service I will use when needed.

Why Affiliate Links?

As I continue to grow my readership, monetization is something I have to keep in mind to allow my blog to remain a free resource and be sustainable in the long term. Just like you, I hate annoying ads and pop ups when looking for information. I find that the affiliate link system to be the best way to monetize the content I spend a lot of of my spare time writing and researching. Many people may not not realize it, but writing quality blog content is very time consuming and costly so using any affiliate links is a good way to support my work. I love the affiliate system because I get compensated for recommending companies I already use or fully support. I intentionally seek and share services that are affordable to independent artists but offer great value.

My goal with D4 Music Marketing is to provide the most valuable information, tools and resources to help musicians make it independently in this tough, highly competitive industry. That will always be a top priority of this blog. I will always recommend what I think is best to use, regardless if I get paid or not.

Affiliate Partners

Here is a complete list of services I am currently partnered with to receive a small commission when someone uses my affiliate link:

Canva

User-Friendly Graphic Design App

canva.com

My Comments: Canva is a very good graphic design tool that I highly recommend for independent musicians for things like CD covers, shirt designs, business cards, social media graphics and flyers. If you don’t have a budget to pay a graphic designer or know how to create your own graphics, Canva is easy to use and offers a bunch of templates. Even though I can use Adobe Photoshop, I’ll still use Canva for certain things.

In my opinion, most readers will be able to do everything they need from Canva’s free plan and not have to pay for a Canva Pro subscription. I only get a small commission if you start a Pro plan trial or if you pay for a subscription. Even if you only intend to use the free plan, please use my affiliate link to sign up.

DistroKid

Subscription based music distributor
distrokid.com

Discount: 7% off for signing up with my affiliate link.
My Comments: This is the music distributor I recommend to get your songs on all digital stores and streaming services because it costs $35.99 a year (Musicians+ Plan) to release as much as you want. You can also schedule releases for future dates in this plan, which is something the basic $19.99 plan can’t do. The only caveat is that you need to stay subscribed in order to keep your music in digital outlets. However, you have an option to pay a one-time fee to keep it up in case you miss a payment called the “Leave a Legacy” option.

Printful

Print-On Demand Fulfillment service for merch
printful.com

My Comments: I’m a big advocate of using screen printing whenever possible, but I know it’s not always feasible for independent artists. Using an on-demand drop shipping service like Printful could a good way to design and sell merch without any upfront costs. Plus, it’s free to sign up and try out. I encourage you to try these alternatives as well to compare – TeeSpring and SpreadShirt.

SkillShare

Subscription-based online learning community

skillshare.com

Deal: Free 14 day trial

My Comments: I’m a big advocate for continual education, especially for entrepreneurs and musicians alike. There’s a wealth of information and resources online, but it may not be easy to sort through. Compared to site like Udemy, I like SkillShare because it offers unlimited access to quality courses for an affordable rate. There’s plenty of music-related, creative, business and marketing courses you can choose from to help with artist development. Plus, they offer the first 2 months free of their premium service and you can cancel anytime before that to not get charged. I’m currently working on setting up my own courses on SkillShare because I feel it’s the best platform for independent artists on a budget.

Squarespace

User-friendly platform for website hosting and building

squarespace.com

Discount: Use my link with code D4MUSIC10 to save 10% off your first subscription of a website or domain.

My Comments: I’ve used similar platforms like Wix and Weebly, but Squarespace is the best one I’ve used. It’s relatively easy to use without knowing how to code. I like that everything you need is connected seamlessly. I do wish they offered more music related templates, but the user experience is smooth compared to other web builders I’ve used.

Here’s one of the Squarespace websites I manage for an artist.

Although most of the websites I’ve done (over 50) have been with WordPress, I personally recommend Squarespace if you can afford it. The personal plan is the cheapest and would run you about $144 the first year then about $160 every year after. If you wanted e-commerce capabilities to sell merch on your website, you would need the business plan that runs $232 a year paid annually. You also get a custom email account with your domain name (i.e. info@artistwebsite.com) free for the first year, but it costs $72 a year to keep. They offer a 14 day free trial with no credit card required if you wanted to try it out first.

99designs

Freelancer marketplace to get quality design work through contests

99designs.com

My Comments: There are a number of ways to get design work for your projects. You have freelancer marketplaces that make it easier to connect with designers. You have a bunch of graphic tools like Canva that you can do-it-yourself. The cool thing about 99designs is you can host a paid contest where a number of graphic designers submit their designs and concepts to you based on your ideas. You choose one winner that you pay. This is a great option if you need cover art, logo or even merch designs, but you’re not quite sure what you want.

I actually heard about 99designs back in 2014 and knew someone who tried it back then. I have a client who used 99designs to run contests to generate cover art designs for her releases. I plan to run my own contest with 99designs soon.

ConvertKit

Email marketing platform for content creators

convertkit.com

My Comments: Before I became a ConvertKit affiliate, I heard a lot of great things about them as a great tool to capture emails. I used them for my Patreon eBook download page for over a year now and it’s been great. Although I’ve been recommending MailChimp for several years (I still use it too) for it’s free plan up to 2,000 subscribers, I was looking for a new service that catered specifically for musicians. FanBridge was that service, but it was terrible from my experience. The good news was that ConvertKit bought out FanBridge. It looks like they want to build a niche in the music community, which is what I’m excited about and why I wanted to partner up with them. ConvertKit does offer a free plan up to 1,000 subscribers, which for independent musicians is plenty early on. The one downside is you can’t do any email automation or sequencing so you can’t do email drip campaigns without a paid plan. In terms of the fundamentals, you can create forms to add to your website or create a landing page to collect email addresses from fans.

Got questions about marketing your music? Contact Me

About D4 Music Marketing

D4 Music Marketing is an online resource that focuses on music marketing, artist development and business education to empower aspiring and emerging artists who want to make a living off music as an independent.

The aim of this blog is to help guide DIY musicians in a highly competitive industry with strategies and tactics to effectively promote music and attract life-long fans. By emphasizing the importance a strong foundation, you will be better equipped to navigate and adapt to the ever-changing music landscape with a clearer direction towards independent success.

Affiliate Disclosure