How I created a sample pack for sale.
With no more university, I found myself with a lot more time to focus on music. A long term goal was to create and distribute a sample pack for profit, and with the website now live it was more possible than ever.
The first step was learning about business. The tedious, mundane stuff - the things they never taught you in school. Fortunately, with the help of friends, family and the internet, I registered an ABN (Australian Business Number) and a business name as an individual/sole trader. I then linked these details to this website, and then conducted a successful test transaction.
The next step was to identify my best skill. I think this would be my ability to noodle on the guitar and write progressions. In fact, I did just that here. Nothing ground-breaking, but with my jazz and neo-soul background I felt I could whip up some more pleasant sounds. On a quiet, rainy day I sat down and started playing away, drawing inspiration from the cosy window view.
Although a fun process, I quickly found out it was a lot harder than I had thought. There were so many things to consider. What BPM do I use? How about keys? How many chords is too much, and how should I voice them on the fretboard? What about the pickup positions and amp settings?
To tackle these thoughts I started thinking of the audience. A bedroom producer looking to make lo-fi music would probably just want simple stems they can work with. Whether they wanted to chop up, flip, pitch and/or loop the sounds, it would be easier with guitar stems that weren’t too eccentric.
And that was the answer. With some restraint in my fingers, I wrote and recorded ten simple progressions. After exporting to a folder, I named each riff and included the key and chord progression details. I took a new photo of myself with my guitar, and dropped it into the online Adobe Spark editor to create the cover. Almost there. I uploaded the sample folder and cover art onto this website, set the price and wrote the product description. I was so close to publishing, but then I realised something.
Covering my back. It dawned on me that literally anyone could buy and download the sample pack, and then redistribute for profit. Please don’t get any ideas.
Luckily it took just a quick search to learn about End User License Agreement (EULA) documents. Yep, those documents that people click ‘agree’ on after quickly scrolling past chunks of never-read text. It was surprisingly fun to write, and after including it in the download I felt a lot more at ease, and a lot more excited to finally make this happen.
Click here for my debut sample pack, “Simple Smooth Guitar Vol. 1”.
