The iTunes Music Store

[T_R_S]

I was just going over a Canadian Database and it looks like sales for music CD's are down again for 2005 from 2004.
Is anyone here selling songs on iTunes or any other online download service. How Long? Is it worth while?

[celticrogues]

Hello,
My band is signed up to sell tunes through the digital distribution program on www.cdbaby.com It is a great program and I highly recommend it - our music is on itunes all over the world, as well as all the other digital distribution sites, (rhapsody, legal napster, etc.) It is great for us because we get quite a bit of money from it even though we are a small band, and don't really have to do any work whatsoever. In my opinion it is a great way to get one's music out to new people who wouldn't necessarily buy a whole album, and get paid for it too!
Cheers,
-Mike

[rainsinvelvet]

Originally Posted by celticrogues

Hello,
My band is signed up to sell tunes through the digital distribution program on www.cdbaby.com It is a great program and I highly recommend it - our music is on itunes all over the world, as well as all the other digital distribution sites, (rhapsody, legal napster, etc.) It is great for us because we get quite a bit of money from it even though we are a small band, and don't really have to do any work whatsoever. In my opinion it is a great way to get one's music out to new people who wouldn't necessarily buy a whole album, and get paid for it too!
Cheers,
-Mike

Same here. We sell a decent amount of music online and it goes into our pockets + helps get the word out..
http://www.myspace.com/thesleepoverdisaster

ERic

[pounce]

me three. i'm way thumbs up on this.

[dpianomn]

ditto

[joaquin]

Originally Posted by rainsinvelvet

Same here. We sell a decent amount of music online and it goes into our pockets + helps get the word out..
http://www.myspace.com/thesleepoverdisaster

ERic

Cool song "oceanographer"!! thumbsup thumbsup Congrats.........................Joaquin.

[rolo]

IT'S GREAT!!!! our catalog is on iTunes as well as 30 other internet distribution sites. we also have our catalog in several store fronts. our physical CD sales lave droped over 60 percent since 2004. but our online download sales have jumped from 600+in all of 2004 to 600+ in the past 6 weeks. most are full albums.. some are singles... WE LOVE IT!!!, but let me say we now have thousands of CD's sitting in a room. looks like we'll pressfewer copies from here on out. B.T.W.... a good portion of our sales come from overseas.... try that without iTunes.

[Ol' Betsey]

I'm curious.

Of you guys that use other online distributors AS WELL AS iTunes, how would the sales be split between the different distributors?

As an example: 75% iTune, 15% Napster, 10% Rhapsody?

What's your experience?

Cheers,

R.

[T_R_S]

I have read that Apple has over 80% of the legal download market is there any other point in sigining up with other companies? Other than maybe Rapsody and maybe Napster.
Our company is now has direct distribuition on iTunes. I wonder if it's worth the effort as there are so many services out there trying to do the same thing in different ways.

[jomo1234]

If you really want control over your music, try this site.....100% of the proceeds goes to the artist.

www.tunecore.com cdbaby, the orchard & Iota all take a piece of the cut and require a contract.

[T_R_S]

Originally Posted by jomo1234

If you really want control over your music, try this site.....100% of the proceeds goes to the artist.

www.tunecore.com cdbaby, the orchard & Iota all take a piece of the cut and require a contract.

Not really ... nothing is free. Tunecore charges fee's per song. Plus Apple get their cut still.
No many companies do anything for free.

[jomo1234]

Yes, really. Of course they charge for the service and of course Apple takes a portion, but the artist gets 100% of the artists share of the royalties. Tunecore only charges for the service of getting your music to Itunes....a much better deal than ANY other online service.

Originally Posted by T_R_S

Not really ... nothing is free. Tunecore charges fee's per song. Plus Apple get their cut still.
No many companies do anything for free.

[joaquin]

Originally Posted by jomo1234

Yes, really. Of course they charge for the service and of course Apple takes a portion, but the artist gets 100% of the artists share of the royalties. Tunecore only charges for the service of getting your music to Itunes....a much better deal than ANY other online service.

Sorry for the ignorance on the matter, but...why would you pay someonelse to get your music on I Tunes? Why don't you put it up your self??
Again, sorry...do not know anything related to web distribution...Thanks.

[jomo1234]

Because individuals can't put up their music directly on Itunes. You have to have a contract with Apple to do so, and Apple doesn't want to have to deal with contracts with every individual who wants to put up a few songs....hence the need for these companies.

Originally Posted by joaquin

Sorry for the ignorance on the matter, but...why would you pay someonelse to get your music on I Tunes? Why don't you put it up your self??
Again, sorry...do not know anything related to web distribution...Thanks.

[joaquin]

Thanks for the info! So, If I put together my own label (corporation and evrything) then I should be able to deal with them in a sort of long term relationship?
What's the minimum that I should provide, music wise, in order to fulfil the requirements?
What's the percentage that I tunes takes for each download?
Thanks again Jomo!

[GPl]

I havn't really heard too much from anyone doing a label relationship with i-tunes. I would guess if you were a label with many published works, they woul consider your application over some with only a few. Again, I have not heard much about it but am getting ready to apply for one fwiw

[Sqye]

Originally Posted by joaquin

Thanks for the info! So, If I put together my own label (corporation and evrything) then I should be able to deal with them in a sort of long term relationship?
What's the minimum that I should provide, music wise, in order to fulfil the requirements?
What's the percentage that I tunes takes for each download?
Thanks again Jomo!

It's not that easy. I applied as a small label with marketing/ manufacturing plan numbers in many categories in OCTOBER, and they just responded (negatively) to my application THIS WEEK. So, I'd look at the actual labels affiliated, or try to get in direct contact with Apple before wasting your time submitting an application. I think they're looking for more established labels/ businesses - maybe someone else here has more accurate info.

Just my $.02

[adam_w]

Apple has an "indies department", but true - reject most small label applicants even if they are a "real" small label & have catalog, distributor. etc due to the sheer volume of people in a simlar position who'd like to have their music up. They prefer smaller operations to come through some kind of aggregator / digital distributor who can then deal with the admin, which is fair enough. Those distributors WILL take you on, and will take a cut for the service, but you will end up in the same i-Stores. The music industry always presents several layers of filtration in all of its tentacles for bad, and good

I always think the hardest thing in music is the selling it, not the physically making to sell, per-se but this current shop window du jour presents a great opportunity in getting up another rung for small labels as far as availabilty worldwide. Like I said, even if it is available more places, there's no reason why anyone should randomly buy it because it's there, so that's where the hard graft comes in in inverse proportion to the marketing budget you've got !

Something else that's great is that there is a whole world out there making essentially underground records which now have at least the potential to be heard on a wider scale than ever and do get heard. Magazines like The Wire are great in championing this sort of thing and at least give the art part of music a break

[T_R_S]

Originally Posted by joaquin

What's the percentage that I tunes takes for each download?
Thanks again Jomo!

That might be hard info to find (posted on a web site) as Apple's contracts have a NDA in them.

[Chrisac]

My stuff has been on I Tunes for a few years now. The only problems is that I have no idea how much I have sold (in the us I tunes)' as th labels that licensed the album refuses to send me any royalty statements or pay me so I have no idea how much I have sold except to say that sales went up much more over the last six months. I Tunes reached a Billion sales before the nend of last year. This is big business

[adam_w]

EDITED..

Label/ Distro gets 0.65-0.70 USD According to this press release:

<a href="https://www.theorchard.com/news/2005_07C.htm"> Orchard</a>

..doesn't quite add up to my numbers...hmm..

[Jeff16years]

but I don't get how do you get you music on itunes?
my band has 2 full length cd's with a 3rd on the way.

[bloodstone]

Originally Posted by Jeff16years

but I don't get how do you get you music on itunes?
my band has 2 full length cd's with a 3rd on the way.

If you're indie pretty much the only way is to sign up with CD Baby. They'll put you on there. You can apply as an indie artist but it takes a long time and six months later I got a rejection email.

[joaquin]

Thanks Joseph and TRS for answering my questions! This thread is an eye opener...I'm sensing that artist are going from one form of submisive monopoly to another. Do not know much about this so I won't make more smart remarks till I study a bit the system. There should be there a Web Site that group small indie lables and allowd them to sell their music without chaqrgin for it. Just a listing of lables in an organized structure with a powerful search engine. There should be a fixed yearly fee to get in the system regardles of sales...
Anyway, Thanks again.

[T_R_S]

Originally Posted by Chrisac

My stuff has been on I Tunes for a few years now. The only problems is that I have no idea how much I have sold (in the us I tunes)' as th labels that licensed the album refuses to send me any royalty statements or pay me so I have no idea how much I have sold except to say that sales went up much more over the last six months. I Tunes reached a Billion sales before the nend of last year. This is big business

I would tak a hard look at you contract with the company that has you music on iTunes. ISRC codes are asigned to each song as well as UPC codes (For album sales). So it's very easy for the label to log into thier ITMS acccount and get a report.

[bloodstone]

Originally Posted by T_R_S

I would tak a hard look at you contract with the company that has you music on iTunes. ISRC codes are asigned to each song as well as UPC codes (For album sales). So it's very easy for the label to log into thier ITMS acccount and get a report.

CD Baby offers a tab-delimited report you can open in Excel.