Distributing Your Music through iTunes?

wedge · Post by **wedge** » Thu Jul 24, 2008 2:21 pm

Has anyone here managed to get their music up on iTunes so that others can buy it? In other words, distributed through iTunes? If so, what were the steps? Any pitfalls? Things to be concerned about?

I've gone on the iTunes website and started the process, but I was just curious about any of youse guys'es experiences...

JGriffin · Post by **JGriffin** » Thu Jul 24, 2008 2:41 pm

My stuff is on iTunes through CD Baby. I tried for a year to contact iTunes/Apple directly with absolutely no luck--not a single returned email. Through CD Baby you sign up for their digital distribution and they set you up on iTunes as well as a bunch of other sites.

After that iTunes is like any other retail deal--you still have to drive people to your product.

RefD · Post by **RefD** » Thu Jul 24, 2008 3:52 pm

dwlb wrote:After that iTunes is like any other retail deal--you still have to drive people to your product.

do we lure them into the car with pizza and candy bars?

dsw · Post by **dsw** » Thu Jul 24, 2008 4:57 pm

what works on me is scotch and cigars. fuck that candy bar shit.

CD baby +1. Good outfit.

I knew someone who worked there and they said that the vast majority of people with product for sale there sell very few.

You truly do have to get people to go there somehow. Stumble across you they won't.

RefD · Post by **RefD** » Thu Jul 24, 2008 5:21 pm

dsw wrote:Stumble across you they won't.

scotch...cigars...a Jedi craves not these things!

acjetnut · Post by **acjetnut** » Thu Jul 24, 2008 9:51 pm

Cdbaby will do it for you. They take a cut of each song sold. Tunecore will also do it for a flat upfront fee, and won't take a cut. CDBaby distributes to more places, but Tunecore gives more control.

Mark Alan Miller · Post by **Mark Alan Miller** » Thu Jul 24, 2008 10:30 pm

Tunecore also takes setup fees that vary by the number of songs on the album, and the number of stores you want them to deliver it to.
And an annual maintainance fee. So it may not be the financial best bet unless you anticipate a certain level of sales per year, every year, for the album in question.

I manage a large catalog of releases, and the costs to get them into the stores they're in, and the annual fees to keep them active, would barely make them worth it to have out there at all - it's long tail sales where for some, like me, CDBaby just makes more sense, where that 9% of download sales they take is less than what the annual fees would be (not to mention the setiup fees for that many albums, with the number of songs they have, delivered to the number of services they're on.)

May you be fortunate enough to have higher sales every year where that wouldn't make sense for you, where TuneCore's model works better.

Good for some, not good for others.

Nimbit is also good if their other services are suited to your needs.

Mark Alan Miller · Post by **Mark Alan Miller** » Fri Jul 25, 2008 5:56 am

I just heard that TuneCore do a thing at the end of each month that, if you have fees you need to pay, they email with a discount code if you pay by the end of the month. Like a 3-day window. Worth keeping in mind if you're signing up a record with them.

Wonder how long they'll keep that up?

PeterTuneCore · Post by **PeterTuneCore** » Fri Jul 25, 2008 11:43 am

Not entirely sure what you mean by an end-of-month sale, I don't have a program going like that, though we've many specials that can do something similar!

Another cool thing about TuneCore--we love Tape Op!

Holler if you have any questions about us.

--Peter
peter@tunecore.com

b3groover · Post by **b3groover** » Fri Jul 25, 2008 2:10 pm

CDBaby.

They are well established, they always pay when they say they will, and they do what they promise they will.

T-rex · Post by **T-rex** » Fri Jul 25, 2008 3:47 pm

dwlb wrote:My stuff is on iTunes through CD Baby. I tried for a year to contact iTunes/Apple directly with absolutely no luck--not a single returned email. Through CD Baby you sign up for their digital distribution and they set you up on iTunes as well as a bunch of other sites.

After that iTunes is like any other retail deal--you still have to drive people to your product.

+1. Went through CD Baby and it just hit Itunes not too long ago. We sold a couple right off the bat, but it's like everything else. You have to have some press, buzz, marketing dollars or whatever to drive people to buy it.

chris harris · Post by **chris harris** » Mon Jul 28, 2008 6:33 am

Tunecore is a great service. If you sell a couple of album downloads a year, it will cover the cost of the service. If I didn't think that I could sell a couple of albums a year, I probably wouldn't mess with selling the songs anyway. I'd probably just upload somewhere and offer free downloads and try to build enough interest to drive at least a couple of sales a year.

GLEA · Post by **GLEA** » Mon Jul 28, 2008 10:59 pm

CD Baby is great income stream for my label. The good thing is, people browse and buy at CDB. Just putting stuff on iTunes via any digi distro doesn't mean anyone is gonna buy your own noise. You know how many bands/artists have stuff there? If you have an audience who want to buy your stuff, then the $35 set up fee to sell your cds, MP3s from CD Baby, and thru their digi distro, it's a fantastic deal. You only need to seel 5 cds to recoup and then it's gravy.

Write a good one sheet for CD Babe, 'cause at the very least that is the only blurb you might get on iTunes. It looks like they pull blurbs from AMG, so you need to send promos to them, and hope someone reviews your record.

See, it's not easy.... but your music is better than everyone else, right?

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