Producers take great pride in their music and their work and rightfully so. It takes skill, time, ambition, and hard work to get known in the very crowded music field. Some that have “made it” have done it in unique ways. Zedd made it by winning remix contests, Deadmau5 made it by putting out great and unique music over and over, and new producers are getting known every single day.
There are many ways to make it but one way to NOT make it is to buy your own music. As straight up as we can possibly say it, it’s not cool to buy your own music.
There are producers out there that think that buy purchasing their own tunes that they will go up in the charts and in most cases, they don’t. There are intricate tools in place preventing the song from increasing in the charts so really, all you are doing as a producer / dj is paying more money to the retailers and the content suppliers that put the music out there and you’re not getting any new recognition off it.
To make matters worse for anyone that’s buying their own material, it can be clearly noticed from whichever retailer or partner is selling the material that you are indeed purchasing the material yourself. (Believe it or not, there are usernames that match up to the artist names, and even worse, email addresses that match up to the artist names). So now ask yourself, if you are an artist and are buying your own material, using an email or username that matches your artist name, what do you think that retailer or streaming provider is thinking of you?
If you want to make it and/or receive the “cred” that you crave, then one way of achieving credibility, admiration and respect is to do it the real organic way. Put out solid music and do it consistently with professionalism, creativity, and with the intention of creating material that will innovate and not imitate.
As a company the piece of advice we tell every record label or artist is to work as hard as possible to be consistent with quality while not flooding the market. We know it is not guaranteed however, you will be opening up more doors on a positive note then you ever would by buying your own music.
Don’t ever buy your own tunes. It’s “juicing” and it’s not cool.