CDBABY.COM - Physical and Digital Distribution
Many people know about CD Baby, and from what I’ve experienced, it’s a great and reliable company. You can sell physical CDs for a one time $35 registration fee. They fulfill the orders and ship worldwide, and will even provide you with a credit card swiper for free to sell CDs and merch at your gigs. They keep $4 of each CD sale which seems reasonable, all things considered. They will give you the contact info for the people who purchase your CD. ADD THESE PEOPLE TO YOUR DATABASE.
What’s even better than their physical distribution is their digital distribution. It’s a free opt-in service, and it puts you through so many digital websites [including iTunes and Amazon digital, the two most important ones for U.S. based artists], you haven’t even heard of them all. The down side is that you do not have any control over the speed at which your music is submitted to these digital outlets, nor of how long it takes for your music to actually show up. The up side is they only take 9% of your digital sales, and they pay every week. So you only pay out if you’re actually selling music, and you’re not paying ongoing fees if your music isn’t selling. I would highly encourage you to avoid anything that will charge you a monthly fee for selling your music, as you can lose money very easily that way.
TUNECORE.COM - Digital Distribution
Tunecore.com is another option for digital distribution, and it works a little differently than CD Baby in that they charge an annual fee [maybe $10?] and then give you 100% of your digital sales proceeds. The up side is, that you actually have a little more control over who your tracks are submitted to, and you only pay for those channels. [Like if you choose iTunes U.S. and Europe, but not iTunes Japan, you only pay accordingly.] Plus you get all of the money from your sales. The down side is you pay an annual fee whether you’re selling music downloads or not, and if you do the math, you might need to sell at least a couple hundred downloads before you’d break even with what CD Baby would take from your sales. So it’s just whatever you feel comfortable with. I’ve not personally used TuneCore.com because you can have ONLY ONE digital distributor, but I’ve never heard anything bad about them.
[Hi all, Ellen here. I've decided to take a very long handout that I created for my college students and break it down into a series of blogs. This is a summary of what I know about promoting yourself and your music online. If you or someone you know is a self released artist who doesn't necessarily have a plan of action after the CDs are manufactured, subscribe to this blog and read the series. I'm breaking it down into bite sized portions. ]
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