Kevin Riley Sheet Music: a composer’s shop that sells his pieces as downloads

Kevin Riley joined the Army at 15 as a trombonist, studied at Kneller Hall, and from 1973 played solo trombone with the band of The Queen's Royal Irish Hussars for nine years. Today he is musical director of The Allegro Wind Band and Andover Light Orchestra, and teaches at Thorngrove School.

He writes and arranges music. His arrangements of copyright songs are sold by other publishers: nearly 300 of them through Sheet Music Direct, and more through Sheet Music Plus and Score Exchange. His own compositions he sells himself, to musicians anywhere in the world.

His brief pointed us at the layout of Sheet Music Direct, which he liked, and at the people who buy his music: players and bands, mostly looking for a piece for a particular group of instruments. So the site is a shop first:

• The shop, sorted by ensemble, so a wind band director sees the pieces written for a wind band
• A basket and a checkout that takes cards, Apple Pay and Google Pay, with the money paid into his own Stripe account
• Other publishers, a page that sends people on to where his arrangements are sold
• How ordering works, with the questions buyers ask, and an About page with his story

The first version sold printed copies to be posted. That was not how Kevin wanted to sell. Over the following two weeks he asked for four changes from his dashboard:

• His logo, chosen from the designs we drew for him
• His phone number taken off the site
• The "score only" options removed, and every piece sold as a PDF download
• The "Posted worldwide" card on the home page changed to "Download and print"

The third needed something our sites could not do yet: sell a file. So we built downloads into the shop that every site we build uses, then finished his change by hand. Now someone pays and gets their PDF straight away, wherever they are, and there is nothing for Kevin to post.

Selling downloads started as one composer's change. It is now part of the shop on every site we build: a photographer can sell digital prints, a trainer can sell a plan, a teacher can sell worksheets, each delivered the moment it is paid for.