Independent assistance for the independent artist

[Fletcher]

TuneCore.com is a new service designed to level the ONLINE MUSIC distribution playing field. Before TuneCore's advent, if you were an independent artist and wanted to get your music on iTunes® or Napster® etc.you had to either be on a label or press CD's and sign up with a CD Distribution service that would usually throw your stuff onto one of the digital distribution services for free... uhhh, not really for free, they'd peel anywhere from 9 to 30% off the back end payment.

With TuneCore there is access to WORLD-WIDE digital distribution without ever having to pay anyone a piece of your earnings, NOR GIVING UP YOUR DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION RIGHTS!. TuneCore charges a flat rate of $7.98 USD per album and $0.99 per song and $0.99 per album per service.

So... if you have a 10 song recording that you want to put on all 5 iTunes® stores and Napster® it would cost you around $24- [$7.98 for the album, $9.90 for the songs, $4.95 for 5 additional services... a total of $23.83... less than most guitar straps] to reach several million people on a global level... AND you don't have to wait for anyone to do the accounting (in order to TAKE their cut from YOUR EARNINGS) and mail you a check... with TuneCore.com you are given an account from which you can take your earnings at any time... at your convenience, on your schedule.

In addition, TuneCore's sister companies offer such services as "distribution on demand" [you sell a CD, they press it up (artwork and all real perfeshunal like) and ship it for you], and Merchandise on Demand (same deal except it's T-shirts, coffee mugs, whatever the hell you want).

As a special promotion for the Gearslutz.com community, if you email Gearslutz@tunecore.com we will email a code back to you that will generate a free "UPC barcode" for your album. The barcode allows your product to be tracked by "Soundscan®" on both your digital downloads as well as on the physical CD product [we'll email you the "art work"], as well as make it easier for a brick and mortar retailer to sell your product. This code is about a $20 USD value... free for being a Gearslut who found TuneCore a useful service.

[Lindell]

thumbsup

[not_so_new]

Originally Posted by Lindell

thumbsup

Double... thumbsup

[Ruphus]

Decent policies deserve a bump

Ruphus

[bleen]

Hey Fletcher,

What if I'm already a TuneCore customer? Can I retroactively add the barcode?

Thanks, man!!

[T_R_S]

We offer clients distribution on iTunes and charge zero for it. Apple does not charge people to get thier music on iTunes so I would be carefull about companies that what to charge. It takes Apple about 4 - 5 weeks to get content on the ITMS. I have had several complains from clients some services take up to 6 months to get content on ITMS.
And the really important thing to remember is Apple is the final judge of all content sumbitted to the ITMS. So if you pay someone 20 bucks there is no guarantee it will be offered for sale on iTunes.

[Killahurts]

Originally Posted by Fletcher

TuneCore.com ... AND you don't have to wait for anyone to do the accounting (in order to TAKE their cut from YOUR EARNINGS) and mail you a check... with TuneCore.com you are given an account from which you can take your earnings at any time... at your convenience, on your schedule.

Sorry T_R_S, but that right there alone is worth a helluva lot more to me than $25.

Besides, the successful independent artist knows that there is strength in numbers, particularly when it comes to distribution (of any kind).

[T_R_S]

Originally Posted by Killahurts

Sorry T_R_S, but that right there alone is worth a helluva lot more to me than $25.

Besides, the successful independent artist knows that there is strength in numbers, particularly when it comes to distribution (of any kind).

Sorry you missed my point just because you pay the $25.00 does NOT guarantee you'll be on iTunes. Apple has a screening process to content on iTunes. So you could end up paying your $25.00 and get nothing on the ITMS.

[GPl]

So for $25.xx, you can find out how long if at all, your music will get onto ITunes. That's not much to find out if the service is useful or not.......

[sharky]

I looked over the FAQ at the Tunecore.com site. I like the company and I like the policies and philosophy. The management certainly has a good pedigree to boot.

I'm looking forward to releasing stuff through them! I'm pretty excited. The only thing that came to mind is that the name may make less sense when they inevitably start putting people's indie video/film content.

Cool idea.

[Fletcher]

Originally Posted by T_R_S

We offer clients distribution on iTunes and charge zero for it.

I'm on a bit of a learning curve... what business are you in that you have an arrangement with iTunes [and I'm going to guess Napster and Rhapsody and emusic and musicnet and (well you get the picture)]... I am going to guess that you are in a business other than being a "one stop shopping" portal to these services otherwise it would be kind of suicidal to offer the service for free.

Apple does not charge people to get thier music on iTunes so I would be carefull about companies that what to charge.

Apple also doesn't store your material for on demand CD replication [at full 16/44.1 "red book" .wav file kinda storage], nor do they store all the album art so you can distribute full CD copies if you'd like... and while they don't charge, the fact of the matter is that they're not the easiest people with whom to work.

While I do have something to sell, the fact of the matter is that much like gear pimping [my previous life], there are a myriad of services and portals to accomplish this goal. No one service is going to be right for 100% of the clientele so all will exist as long as they remain unique in their function and services.

For example... my "label" [with 2 ancient titles I'd hardly call it a label... but for lack of a better term let's roll with that] is signed up with CD Baby. They handle the lion's share of the CD distribution [about 20-30 units a year!!!], the digital distribution setup and accounting, and every now and again [what seems like out of the blue] I get an email from Derek Sivers telling me how much money he's mailing me... and every now and again I get emails from Derek telling me about cool new alliances they've arranged, and things to look out for [like the language in the "American Idol Underground" agreement]... and on the whole, some very cool stuff.

For me, for my label, for the amount of attention we pay to that area of life, CD Baby is the perfect outlet for us. I don't want to pay attention to that product, it's not enough money to get excited about... but it's a couple hundred bucks a year so it'll take me an the ol' lady out for a nice dinner once a year [and I don't have to think about shit!!].

In this case, the "backend" [I neither know, nor care what the percentage might be] is totally worth it to me. In my case, the percentage we give them from the backend of the digital downloads could be double and I know I wouldn't care in the least. I didn't even understand that we had digital distribution for our product until like the 3rd statement that mentioned it when I finally asked the wife what it was, and saw it on "iTunes" when my daughter got her "iPod Shuffle" [she bought it with money she earned doing chores and cat sitting for the neighbor].

I would be the wrong client for TuneCore.com because I couldn't give a rat's ass about what happens to my product. It sells, it doesn't sell... who cares. One title is 5 years old, the other is 10. It's not like I'm betting my life on this music. Both projects started as me doing some technique experiments in the studio and turned into 'vanity projects'... 1000 units pressed later [of which there are still several hundred if anybody is looking for a "group buy"], it sits on a shelf not being throw out selling 20-30 units a year.

It takes Apple about 4 - 5 weeks to get content on the ITMS. I have had several complains from clients some services take up to 6 months to get content on ITMS.

I'd have to take your word for the 6 months thing... I think I heard it was like 6-10 weeks but 4-5 could be more accurate... I dunno, I'm still kinda new at this and learning as I go.

And the really important thing to remember is Apple is the final judge of all content sumbitted to the ITMS. So if you pay someone 20 bucks there is no guarantee it will be offered for sale on iTunes.

I'll guarantee that.

Apple isn't sitting there going "sorry ace, your music sucks we don't want that on our service". That thought is entirely ridiculous. In fact, with a service like TuneCore.com in the loop you have people that will watch and track the progress of your product to insure that IT DOES get posted for sale on iTunes [etc.]

The bottom line [at least it was to me] is that if you're going to pay attention to your product you have immediate access to your money, you keep all of the digital distribution rights [I hate giving up my rights to anything, especially my music.

TuneCore.com is not a 'managed service' like CD Baby is a 'managed service'... it is purely a point from which you can access digital distribution and form a payment account [$7.98 USD/year... less expensive than the ticket I bought to "Scary Movie 4" last night]... it is a point where you can align yourself with CD Distribution and Merchandise Distribution "on demand"... it's a point where you can get your music into a loop for shopping to TV, movies, etc.

Is it the right portal for everyone? Hell no. Is the right portal for a hell of a lot of people? I think it will be, but who knows... only time will tell.

Peace.

[T_R_S]

Originally Posted by Fletcher

I am going to guess that you are in a business other than being a "one stop shopping" portal to these services otherwise it would be kind of suicidal to offer the service for free..

Well I guess it not entirly free ... I do it free for my clients that have recorded in the studio.
I am using it as a marketing tool for the studio.

Originally Posted by Fletcher

Apple isn't sitting there going "sorry ace, your music sucks we don't want that on our service". That thought is entirely ridiculous. In fact, with a service like TuneCore.com in the loop you have people that will watch and track the progress of your product to insure that IT DOES get posted for sale on iTunes [etc.]
.

I was told by the Apple iTunes Producer that there is a review process for content on the ITMS. From what I was told by Apple if the content provided is not up to a certain professional standard it may get rejected.

I would think if you made a song banging trash can lids together and try to sell it for 99 cents it would not make the cut with Apple.

[Killahurts]

Originally Posted by T_R_S

I would think if you made a song banging trash can lids together and try to sell it for 99 cents it would not make the cut with Apple.

I disagree. That might be the one thing you could do that would...

[id-rejected]

Fletcher, is this only for the U.S. iTMS?

I (proudly!) sing in French I would like my releases to be on the France, Belgium and Canada iTMS.

Thanks.

P.S. So you're not with Mercenary Audio anymore?

[Fletcher]

All 5 iTunes™ stores are represented... US, Canada, UK/EU, Japan, Australia, as well as Rhapsody, MusicNet and Napster.

As for me at Mercenary... I'm still a share holder, I'm still around the building from time to time, I still keep my studio in the back of the warehouse... I'm just not involved in "day to day" operations. Jay Fitz has always been the guy running the joint... I was kinda like David Lee Roth to Jay's Eddie Van Halen... now between Zach and Drew I was becoming rather superflous.

Peace.

[Eddie Kish]

Just wanted to chime in here with my TuneCore experience so far.

I just finished up my bands first cd and ran across one of Fletcher's posts on TuneCore and figured why not. It seemed like a good deal and I have friends who are now in their 3 month waiting for CdBaby to get them on iTunes.

I uploaded the cd on May 7th (sunday night). It was completed with TuneCore by Monday morning and out of their hands. Tuesday May 9th we were live on Rhapsody and by Saturday May 13th we are up on the iTunes music store.

So far the service has been amazing. I will be able to tell you more in a month or so, but at this point I'm telling everyone who is looking for online digital distro about TuneCore.

You can check out the band here- http://www.stonedgrace.com and http://myspace.com/stonedgrace
and <a href="http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewArtist?id=153613714">
<img height="15" width="61" alt="Stoned Grace" src="http://ax.phobos.apple.com.edgesuite.net/images/badgeitunes61x15dark.gif"></img>
</a>

[Alécio Costa]

Fletcher, this is your brazilian friend. I already have an album, but putting a barcode on it would not ask for a new cover art generation?
Also, is there any specific category for albums mostly spoken in other languages, besides english? MY CD has only 2 songs sung in english.
So, in order to receive payments, would it be done via PAy pal also?
Thanks

[Fletcher]

Payments will be received by PayPal which you can take from your account at any time. As for "cover art"... the "cover art" you upload with your music is generally the front cover of the CD artwork. Traditionally I have seen the barcode on the back of the CD product which means that you would have to add the barcode art to the back of your CD product... which you'd have to do no matter what. I reckon if you've already done the first pressing of CD's you could add the barcode art with a sticker or something like that.

As for the language thing, I have to admit that I'm not all that well versed in the policies of iTunes™ nor any of the other services. I would suggest you look over what they have to offer in terms of language selections.

Peace

[Crandall1]

Hey, Fletcher:

I have a couple questions, and I thought everyone could benefit from the answers, rather than asking privately.

1) For our label, we have 20-odd releases, and we've used CD Baby's service to get them in iTunes et al, because it is much easier than submitting directly to all the companies. The major downside to this course of action is that, in iTunes specifically, you can't browse to any of our albums. You have to search for them. I gather this is a result of the huge mass of submissions that CD Baby makes.

So my question is thus: is a TuneCore submission to iTunes treated like a "real" album that can be browsed to in whatever catagory, or is it like the CD Baby thing, where you can only find the artist if you type the name in the search window?

2) We're going to do our next release through TuneCore instead of CD Baby just to try it out. If we like it, how complicated is it to kill our CD Baby-ized entries in iTunes, et al, and move them to TuneCore? Has anyone done this yet? Is it even possible?

Overall, TuneCore seems, on the face of it, to be a much better system than CD Baby provided you have an expectation for a certain amount of income via the various digital services. We generally do high 3 figures to low 4 figures per month total for all our catalog, and it seems to me that going through TuneCore instead of CD Baby would increase that not insignificantly.

[GPl]

Crandall1 I beleive in i-tunes, you yorself can go in and make an i-mix of all your releases. That puts them in one location. Go check out i-tunes and brouse for i-mixes, you'll see what I mean.

[Crandall1]

Been there, done that.

What I want is to not be treated like a second-class citizen, and have my albums show up when you browse the appropriate catagories.

[PeterTuneCore]

Your albums will show up on the iTunes browse function if you use TuneCore.

I just checked a bunch of our artists, and they're all there.

First-class all they way.

--Peter

Peter Wells
TuneCore.com
peter@tunecore.com

[PeterTuneCore]

More news for you, Crandall--

You can get out of CD Baby, if your contract permits you to, and many do. But CD Baby is an all-or-nothing place, no choices. You're either in ALL their digital stores, iTunes included, or none of them.

So you'd just contact CD Baby, ask to be taken down, and then go up with us in the stores you want. Choices abound, and as a sneak peak, we're about to add more stores--big ones.

And we're non-exclusive, so if you want, you want, you can have yours up on our anytime. If you use a different UPC and ISRC, you won't even have any collisions in reporting your royalties.

--Peter

[Fletcher]

For those that have never met "Peter TuneCore"... he is the CEO.

[Crandall1]

Thanks for your replies, Peter. That's exactly what I wanted to hear.

We sell DRM-free digital downloads directly from our label site, which is here:

http://shop.positronrecords.com

But it's a tree-falling-in-the-woods scenario; if the bands are represented in their appropriate catagories in the big stores, it would stand to reason that they're going to sell better as a result. Since they aren't (at least in iTunes) currently, it makes sense to explore options that _would_ do this.

So, as I said, we'll submit our next release via TuneCore and see how things work out. The numbers, from our particular perspective, look _much_ better. As Fletcher mentioned in one of his earlier posts, I don't think TuneCore would make much sense if you're only moving a couple albums or downloads a month. But if you're doing any kind of quantity at all, this seems to be a good way to go.

[7rojo7]

I would think if you made a song banging trash can lids together and try to sell it for 99 cents it would not make the cut with Apple

tell that to the guys who produced "STOMP" and they'll get a kick out of that

[burst]

One of the frustrations we have as a small label is the waiting game that happens when we've sent in our Brand New Album to CDBaby weeks or months ahead of the 'release date' so we can hopefully be up on iTunes around the time we have set the magical Street / Release Date.

Is there any way to coordinate our releases' street dates with the online digital distribution services? Does TuneCore alleviate that problem and allow a timed availability to the public, or are all these submission services for indie labels just waiting on iTunes no matter what.... i.e without the political muscle of a major, are we stuck waiting for Apple et al to launch our content online when they get around to it?

[Solar]

Hi how are you doig both "Peter and Fletcher!!

Hope both of you are great. Listen up, i just read this thread and payed a visit to your Tunecore site and Wow i must say that your service seems to be very attractive and also very or more then FAIR to NEW Release and artist. I simply want to tell you that i will or my Partner (carlo) will be touching base with you concerning the Release of our First and New Act (mlae artist) called "MANNY" that we just finished his first ALBUM (in the genre: R&B/POP/SOUL) and we're doing a double Album wich should be release in Europe/Canada/USA

We're right now working and dealing (witht he offers we;re getting) with Major Label and Indies that are intrested on him but of course right now we do OWN everything to Master of his album. So we still looking for the best deal but one thing for sure, i'm pretty that instead of us going directly to Itunes ro so.. Tunecore would be the best way and the best BEt for us..

I will PM you soon with more details and for sure getting in touch soon enought. Thank you both for this great New Opprtunity.. its about time...Appreciate and i'm sure tones of new acts will take advantage of this service...

truly

[GYMusic]

Fletcher.

I read Tunecore's FAQs and maybe I missed it, but let's say... I have an ALBUM on iTunes through Tunecore. I don't want that album on iTunes anymore. How do I get it removed (not my account), does Tunecore do this and does it cost me anything?

TNX

[Ol' Betsey]

There was another really informative thread on GS about this here:

Tunecore

I still haven't managed to get any of the bands on my label up there yet (too busy recording, touring etc. and just general slackness...) but it certainly is a great team behind the company.

Some pretty heavy hitters from the indie music and internet technology fields.

R.