TuneCore

[lunaticpro]

Hey guys,

Just wanted to let you know something I found out. Recently I had seen an advertisment for TuneCore on a magazine. I mentioned it to a friend that is releasing a cd soon and he told me the following info.

TuneCore works like this:

They have a service charge of about 50 bucks intially for a full album. After the intial charge, they do not take any other percentage of your sales. You upload your music and they handle the sales. Artwork and even a UPC can be provided in your uploads. By way of UPC , they track you sales which is directly monitored by Billboard charts. This way - if you ever are being considered by a major label - the proof of sales is tracked this way.

Once you upload your songs - it is sold through 8 different online stores and I think it includes I-tunes as well as other major websites.

Just alittle info for those that have a band.

[maestoso]

it's pretty cool but it takes a long time to get your music up! took us 3 months to get on itunes

[EnSkorSang]

TuneCore is pretty good, and VEry cheap, but its also v. slow and does little to help the band in terms of promotion.
A distribution company who takes percentage will do a hell of a lot more to promote you because its in their best interests to.

They usually only take a maximum of 30%, which may seem a lot, but if you sold 1000 CDs at £10, you would still be taking home £70 000!

I recently signed with 'Believe' online distribution, who I hadnt heard about until one of there A & R people contacted me.

After visiting the website, it appears quite easy to join them. You just have to fill in a form and an A&R manager gets back to you in 2 days...as i didnt do this route i dont know if they only take what they think will sell, or if they take anything.

They also upload your music to pretty much every online store you can think of, and they often have artists on the front page of itunes.

[lunaticpro]

THis is good to know. Especially for us guys that record and are in bands ourselves. I recently read that Musicians Friend/Guitar Center bought out most of the shares/stock of TuneCore. For the most part - Ive always had good customers service with MF and with GC (except from the Guitar Center of Mcallen TX is the worst GC in the nation for customer service.) I dont know if this take over will change TuneCore's long processing of music, but I thought Id mention it.

I looked for Believer online and couldnt find them. 30% is what most record labels take anyway after they relieve themselves of all cost of publishing and promotion. Good info guys.

[EnSkorSang]

believe:

Believe - Distribution

[johnjm22]

I use TuneCore. Overall I'm pretty happy with it, but I actually prefer CDbaby's digital distribution. Tunecore charges annual fees, on a per store basis. The more stores you have your music distributed to, the more it will cost. It's relatively cheap overall.

CDbaby has put my bands' album in 40 stores, while TuneCore has put it in 10 stores.

Tunecore does have few advantages though. They have AmazonMP3 which CDbaby doesn't, and they put your music in iTunes international stores, I'm not sure if CDbaby does this.