How to Use Custom USB Drives for Music
When it's time to release the music that you've worked so hard on, accessibility, convenience, and aesthetics all matter. But if you're looking around at music formats lately, you might struggle to find one that's just right.
CDs? They're dated and becoming less accessible as CD players disappear. Vinyl? The classics never go out of style, but it's expensive and even less accessible than CDs. Digital downloads? All well and good, but missing that extra something.
A USB drive, on the other hand, can strike just the right balance between promotion, practicality, and personality. Here's why an increasing number of artists are choosing to put their music out via custom flash drives.
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Why Use USB Drives for Releasing Music?
Releasing music via USB drives is an accessible and modern way to get your music into the hands of your fans.
- Easy to Use: Depending on your audience, many of them might not have a CD player or vinyl turntable. However, they probably have a device with a USB drive. If you really want to future-proof your music, we even offer customizable dual-action USB-A and USB-C drives!
- Outside the Box: As well-known artists like Bob Dylan and Lady Gaga (who have both released albums on USB) demonstrate, it's a distinctive way to release your music. A creative and memorable custom USB design can help generate buzz for your album.
- Customizable: Our USB flash drive customization gives you an incredible range of ways to match your music's visual aspect to its sound, whether it's bright and fun, dark and somber or somewhere in between.
- Convenient: Ever bought a vinyl album at a show and spent the rest of the night carrying it around? That's not a problem for USB drives, which are small enough to fit in the pocket of even the skinniest jeans.
- Preloaded: We make it easy to purchase your flash drives preloaded with any files you want, so there's no need to sit around uploading your music to hundreds of flash drives one at a time.
- Durable: The flash memory of USB drives is reliable and resistant to everyday bumps and drops. (Just try moshing with that double gatefold vinyl!) Plus, USB Memory Direct offers a lifetime warranty on all of our products.
- High Capacity: Want to release your music in an ultra-HD format like FLAC so that audiophiles can savor all the little details? We offer flash drives in high-capacity sizes up to 64 GB, so you can include your whole eight-album progressive rock opera cycle.
- Affordable: USB flash drives are a more affordable alternative to pricey formats like vinyl. It's easy to purchase wholesale flash drives at a price that still leaves plenty of budget for customization, while keeping the items affordable for fans.
Three Cool Ways for Musicians to Use USB Drives
- Releasing Your Album: Custom USB drives are an ideal way to make a splash with your album release. A sweet custom design on a USB drive stands out at the merch table, and it's a fun and affordable way to put out your album.
- Deluxe Package Merch: Some musicians like to offer deluxe merchandise packages for the most devoted fans. These packages usually include the album in multiple formats, like a vinyl and a digital download, and a cool custom USB drive offers a great opportunity to throw in fun extras like bonus tracks, demos, music videos and more.
- Promotional Campaigns: Other artists with a flair for the theatrical have used flash drives in creative ways to promote their music, such as Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, who left USB flash drives in restrooms at his concerts that provided cryptic clues about his next project. USB Memory Direct offers tons of customization services that can help you make a flash drive for almost any application, no matter how unusual.
USB Drives in the Studio and Beyond
Lots of musicians find that it's important to keep spare USB flash drives on hand throughout the writing, recording and mixing process. In fact, USB drives can be an indispensable part of the creative workflow for many musicians.
Let's look at a few of the practical applications in the studio and the practice space:
- Backing up recording files, software presets, lyrics or anything else you can't afford to lose
- Exchanging song ideas between musical collaborators
- Storing practice and scratch tracks
- Creating studio deliverables for the recording, mixing and mastering process
Why do DJ's use USB flash drives?
A USB flash drive helps DJ's store all their music and have it accessible at all times. DJ's use them when preparing and performing their sets. This prevents them from having any issues when it comes to playing their music. They don't have to rely on downloading files or hope they have service or WIFI to access the cloud. All they have to do is insert their flash drive to their computer and play their music. Ideally, DJ's should use a 32GB drive to be on the safe side. This may vary depending on the amount of music files they need to store.
Lately, a lot of videos have been surfacing where DJ's ask their fans for their USB flash drives. Its a current trend where they will pick one of their fan's drive and play their music. This has given flash drives a lot of popularity in the music industry.
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