In March of 2010, I started an online music production business. After searching around and doing a bit of homework, I began utilizing the popular website Soundclick to sell my beats online. There were many other third-party beat selling websites to choose from but I chose Soundclick because it allows producers to upload an unlimited number of instrumentals on their web server at no cost. With the help of a good friend skilled in graphic design, I was able to establish a web page where artists could download & buy my beats.
However, I ran into a problem. The process of someone buying my instrumentals became very cumbersome and time consuming. When a customer would visit my website they would pay for beats via PayPal. Once I received a payment, PayPal would send me an email stating that I’d received payment for a specific beat or instrumental. From there I would determine what beat(s) would need to be sent to the customer(s) per their email instructions (or by default, the email that the beat payment was sent from). As I began to gain more clients, I noticed that I was spending way too much time sending beats to my customers. I was in search of some way to completely automate the sales of my beats.
This brought my attention to the website myFlashStore.net. This website provides a way for artists and other customers to buy beats online and download beats for sale in a clean, professional and fully automated manner. It allows customers to listen to beats, make their instrumental selections, and place an order to buy a beat all within a flash player.
As stated before I was looking for a way to completely automate my beat sales, but I was also looking to save time and money. Other third party beat selling websites I’d checked were charging up to 50% or more in commissions of the beat sale. I wasn’t looking to give up that much cash!
myFlashStore was free to sign up and twenty dollars per month ($19.99 to be exact) to upload an unlimited number of beats to their servers. I was hesitant at first to pay the fee, but I must say that for the value provided it was well worth it.
Some of the features of myFlashStore are as follows:
You can post the player on an unlimited number of websites
Instant download delivery to customers
0% commissions taken on beats for sale
You can upload a personalized voice tag or sound mark to protect your instrumentals
Wav files and Track outs of the beat sessions are supported
You can create customized beat discounts
You have multiple player design offers to choose from
After registering my account I began to upload some beats to lease. This process was easy, simple, and intuitive. myFlashStore allows you to upload up to 25 beats at a time! After uploading your beats, myFlashStore provides you with an area where you can choose the type of design you would like your customers to see. They have four flash designs to choose from: The bubble store, the echo store, the sound store, and the istore. My personal favorite is the bubble layout because it fit well with my website and blog pages’ color.
After choosing a flash design, myFlashStore made it dead simple for me to post their flash code within my blog and website. Literally, all I had to do was copy and paste the given html code. One of the great things about the flash player, is that when you upload a beat, it automatically updates all your flash players no matter where you have them posted!
One of the downsides to the flash player services is that it lacks the ability to upload contracts and agreements with the beats for sale. In my opinion, this would be a great feature to add. I think that if this feature was available, it would streamline the beat selling process completely.
Overall, I am happy with my subscription to myFlashStore. I am pleased to say I’ve sold over $250 worth of beats through the player in the past 3 months. The 20 dollar fee I pay per month is more than worth the value provided by the company.
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