Compare and Contrast Tunecore and CDBaby Digital Distribution
66Tunecore and CDBaby digital distribution
Tunecore: Set up fee of $54.oo and $9.95 per year for "storage" of your CD on their network.
CDBaby: One time fee of $35
Tunecore: Lists total sales from each digital distribution site (i.e. iTunes, Rhapsody, etc), but does NOT give you a song by song break down unless you buy a "Trending Report" for $2.98. What if, just hypothetically, you only had $2.97 in digital sales for that month, you need to pay $2.98 to see which song(s) sold. It would be very beneficial to see which songs sold and which are not.
CDBaby: Lists each song sold or streamed and where. Even if you got only 1 stream for a song on Rhapsody, CDBaby will post it.
My conclusion is that CDBaby is still a better deal for digital distribution. You only have to pay a ONE-TIME fee of $35 to get your CD uploaded into their system and then you can see each play of each song and where it was and you can do this for free. You do not have to keep paying $9.95 per year to renew your "storage fee" like you have to do at Tunecore.
I had this discussion with a person from Tunecore and they got very defensive and called CDBaby a "vanity" service because CDBaby keeps $4 for each CD you sell through them. Well, whatever about that, because I was talking about Digital Distribution, which is the future of the music business anyway.
My comparing and contrasting of these two companies is only in terms of digital distribution. I have used both Tunecore and CDBaby. I think it is smarter business to pay a one-time fee of $35 to get my CD available for digital distribution rather than pay $9.95 annually to keep my CD available thru Tunecore. Also, why should I have to pay $2.98 to see which songs have sold? Tunecore should provide that info. Especially since you have to pay $9.95 annually.
peace, love and light
matthew james cepican
PrintShare it! — Rate it: up down flag this hub
Comments
Thanks for the info! I'll check it out right now :)
it's "business," not "bidness," mah wigga fool
Another great distributor to check out is WaTunes.com ( http://www.watunes.com ). WaTunes gets your music on all the stores for free + you keep 100% of your royalties!!!
Matthew, let me fact check for you:
Our album fees aren't $54, in fact, it's $0.99 per track, $0.99 per store (regardless of how many tracks you have), and $19.98 per year. It usually comes to about $42 or so for an average album. A really big one might get up to that, but do please quote our rates, not just an outside, expensive case?
You didn't mention that CD Baby keeps 9% of everything you make, in perpetuity, without cap. That could come to a lot of money--and it's our philosophy never to make money off of anyone's success. The ARTIST is the one busting their hump to get sales, we don't deserve a cut of that.
Also, we do indeed show sales right down to the track, absolutely free. All your sales, from all stores, from all territories, in both native and exchanged currency, with the exchange rate shown. You can see every bit of it.
The Trending Reports are not sales reports, they're for marketing purposes, a "sneak peak" that not everyone wants. And we don't even offer a Trending Report if the previous week had no sales, so people would never be asked to pay for something that had no info in it.
I can understand how it's easy to confuse Trending Reports, which hit weekly, and actual Royalty Reports, which the stores report monthly. But we'd NEVER charge people to see their actual sales.
Thanks! No problem comparing us to other services, but I just wanted to make sure the facts were straight. Let me know if you have any questions.
--Peter
peter@tunecore.com
Peter (that is my brother's name!)-
You are technically correct. And I do agree with your analysis.
I wrote this hub when Tunecore was first created, long ago. Tunecore has been evolving, changing, and becoming more responsive to artists' needs.
I will level with you, clearly, when I wrote this blog, Tunecore did not offer track by track (name of the song, title of the track) sales reports for free.
Either way, I still use both Tunecore and CDBaby for digital distribution purposes. We rarely print CDs to sell online anymore, we only print limited run vinyl and then include a code where the buyer can go to iTunes and download the album tracks free if they buy the vinyl.
I do appreciate your time and effort in responding to my hub because it shows that you do care and that you see the emerging paradigm of digital distribution clearly in black and white.
Sincerely,
Matthew
Susie says:
13 months ago
For £25 www.dittomusic.com provide you with over 50 sites, and not just the US based ones. Also online accounting, a fixed release date, 4 week turnaround and you can become eligible for the UK charts.
They have had 7 UK top 40 singles, all with unsigned artists.
A better service for UK artists