Want to distribute your single, E.P, or album? Want to get it on iTunes and Rhapsody and all of those other nifty digital distribution sites? Where do you go?
For many DIY artists you have 2 choices: CD Baby & Tunecore.
Many musicians take the classic route with CD BABY. With CD Baby you basically get:
- Your music on a lot of quality sites. iTunes, Rhapsody, etc
- You pay a Per Album fee of $35 + $20 for a valid barcode. Totaling $55 bones.
- BUT THEY TAKE 9% on ALL DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION (unclear if it’s 9% after iTunes’ cut or not)
Tune Core is another option. With Tune Core you basically get:
- Your music on whatever sites YOU choose. iTunes, Amie Street, etc
- They charge $.99 per track, $.99 per album per store, and $20 annual storage fee.
- You keep all of the profits from the digital distribution sites after they take their cut (iTunes takes 20%)
- YOU KEEP 100% but they charge you an ANNUAL upkeep fee of $20 PER ALBUM
++ BOTTOM LINE ++
If your planning on selling large quantities of downloads then you should probably go with Tune Core.
If your not selling a ton then CD Baby is probably a cheaper road over the long term.
Check out their sites and make an informed decision. Let us know if we’re missing any other good online distribution sites.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOdtG0L9Alk]Take Control of Your Music,
Voyno
16 Comments
what is the significancy of iTunes? it seems like an artist does a lot of work on their own to market their music. I am not sure what makes iTunes a must for independent or big label artist. i think it was in the begining but don’t see it now. why 20%? it seems like all these optiones discussed here are insisting that they will get your songs on iTunes…to me it seems they also believe iTunes is a must have thing…
I think the best advice is to research all the options and decide for your band what is best, based on how much you intend to be selling, and where the fans you’ll be targeting are.
Maybe iTunes isn’t even the best route, in which case CDBaby and Bandcamp have sales external to iTunes that give artists more of the sale. For small bands marketing themselves using embedded widgets and social media, the importance of iTunes becomes questionable I think.
ReverbNation is by far the best value route to market, and as an artist I would even go as far as saying that it’s by far the best site for giving you all (And I mean ALL) the tools you need to get your music to market.
Do any of these sites have a feature where the shopper can choose either an entire album, or create their own album from choosing songs, and have the host site create (burn ) a CD, label it and ship it out (one -at- time) custom made cd’s, rather than stockpiling?
Hi Major,
The best deal by far for just iTunes IS WaTunes. We’re the only distributor in the world that enables you to sell unlimited songs and albums on the iTunes Store entirely free! This means we don’t ask for any upfront fees + you keep 100% of all royalties generated. For more information, check us out at: http://www.watunes.com. If you have any questions regarding WaTunes and the music industry, please drop us a line. We’d love to hear from you.
Kevin Rivers
CEO, WaTunes.com
[email protected]
TuneCore gets the highest rate possible by any independent. In fact, you can see all the rates on our FAQ:
http://www.tunecore.com/index/faq
And of course, when you get that money, TuneCore takes NOTHING, no percentage of it. It’s all yours. 🙂
–Peter
[email protected]
Which one of you has the best deal with iTunes and what is the percentage…
Thanks for the mention, and I can see some of the comparisons have already been made, including the subtleties. But there’s no substitute for homework! I urge everyone to do their homework: look around the Web, check out the sites and see what people have said. Of course, the longer a service has been around the more customers they’ve helped, the more there will be those unhappy, so think in terms of percentages, so keep that in mind.
Most important, remember that you have your own idea of success. What is success to you? Do you just want to say, “Hey, I’m on iTunes!” Okay, that’s fine. If you’re looking to sell a lot of music, losing a percentage every time might not be the way to go. Luckily, at these prices, no one’s going to go bankrupt no matter what service they choose. Everyone’s a winner.
Thanks for the mention, NRP!
–Peter
[email protected]
Has anyone used Ditto Music? (www.DittoMusic.com) they have been great for my band and when we looked at CD baby and Tunecore we found that Ditto provide more services and for less. They do the usual get you on itunes but they can get you on up to 700+ sites including HMV and allow your fans to download a track by texting something like ‘Music’ to a number. They don’t take a cut, just a small sign up fee. Would highly recommend them over the rest.
J
Actually Lou,
WaTunes has now gone absolute. ReverbNation charges customers $34.95 a year, while WaTunes now offers it’s services for free. Also, the customers of WaTunes will still earn 100% of their royalties and sell unlimited songs & albums. By going absolute, this makes WaTunes the cheapest digital distributor in the world!
Kevin Rivers, CEO WaTunes.com
the two-and-a-half other options not mentioned are
1) sign with an aggregate – more traditional ‘distribution’ business model = no annual / upfront ‘fees’ but they’ll take a cut of earnings, sometimes with opt in promotional services. Downside is you need to be selling (or have the potential to sell) in enough volume to negotiate this kind of deal.
2) start your own label and deal with iTunes directly – this can be tricky for individual bands but if you can arrange a collective with enough bands / high profile releases iTunes etc. will come to the party. Downside is this is much more work to get your music onto digital distribution services.
2 1/2) sell direct – yes it’s not on itunes or rhapsody but maybe a better option for smaller indie bands who may not sell large quantities online is to self-distribute through their website and set up a ‘honour’ / donation / give us your email for album downloads system ala Girl Talk. I wonder if ultimately mailing lists might not be more valuable than iTunes sales for newer bands?
Obviously there are a range of other pro’s / cons here but it’s not my blog…
Not to start an argument here but I’m not sure how you could state that “Watunes is the cheapest by far”. Watunes is $120/year versus ReverbNation at $34.95/year.
Please check out ReverbNation. The Digital Distro we offer is only a tiny bit of what we offer artists. ReverbNation specializes in fan relationship management and is partnered with hundreds of thousands of musicians who use our digital marketing platform to manage their artist-to-fan communications.
Artists manage all of their songs, videos, photos, show schedules, blogs, on a single account at ReverbNation and syndicate this content across social networks, emails, instant messages and blogs using a proprietary set of technologies.
Every interaction is measured by us (and you get the data as well), and results in a deep understanding of fan demographics.
So even though we provide many of the traditional music marketing services including low cost digital distro, email mgmt, street team functionality, our real value is our ability to take the aggregate influence of hundreds of thousands of artists and offer their services to brands that are looking to access the very fan bases of these artists. The ReverbNation platform provides the data needed to support these brand offerings.
WaTunes.com is the cheapest route by far. With WaTunes, you can sell unlimited songs & albums, earn 100% of your royalties, and they work with you to market your music for just $10 a month.
CD Baby takes their 9% of digital $$ after iTunes takes their cut. Also, you don’t have to buy a barcode from CD Baby if you already have one.
You left out ReverbNation which has 310,000 artists and we also offer digital distro. We take $34.95 per release per year. A release can be a song or it can be an album or even a dozens of songs. We take 0% fee so you get back 100% of what the retailer gives you. We also give you a bar code for free if you don’t already have one.
Good to know Lou. We’ll have to check out ReverbNation again.