By the end of this year, the TuneCore Artist catalog will have earned over $30,000,000.
This means that there is a song selling by a TuneCore Artist on iTunes every second.
Currently, TuneCore distributes between 150 – 250 releases a day.
I went head to head with Jeff Price, President of TuneCore, to find out how he created the world’s largest distributor of music in only four years.
“Music distribution is what we do, and we do it better than anyone else”, Jeff started. “We are the first place music stores come to get the music and we pride ourselves on this. When we launched four years ago, we got to change the world: For the first time in the history of the music industry, anyone could ‘sign themselves’ and get worldwide distribution of their music while keeping all their rights and 100% of the money from the sale of their music. That was a game changing paradigm then – and still is today!”
TuneCore recently announced a partnership with Universal Distribution (Interscope, Universal Republic, Island Def Jam, Motown, Geffen and more), bridging the independent music market with the most sought-after music catalog in the world.
“This was a deal I did solely to provide artists with more options.” Jeff comments. “In a nutshell, in addition to regular old TuneCore.com, we will also be hosting and serving websites for Universal labels that provide artists with distribution while taking none of the artists’ rights or revenues. If an Artist chooses to get their distribution via one of the label portal sites (as opposed to TuneCore.com), they will have a direct line into that label. This means the label will be aware of you, have heard your music, be up to speed on the success you are having, etc. The label can reach out to you to offer more marketing, promotion, physical distribution and anything else. If they do, the artist can choose to talk with them, tell them no, tell them yes, tell them they will get back to them or simply decide to continue to do what they had been doing to that point in time. All the options. No strings.”
From physical distribution via 215 Guitar Center stores to media widgets that distribute TuneCore customers’ content across the social web, TuneCore has made a name for itself by providing dozens of opportunities centered on the most accessible and competitive music distribution model of our time: Flat Fee. No Commission.
Pandora, the revolutionary streaming music and tastemaker service, and one of the most disruptive promotional platforms for musicians of every style and caliber, has imposed new rules for submission of music to its playlist database by artists and labels. In the past, Pandora accepted music in almost any form at no cost. Now, artists and labels must have a CD of their music, a unique UPC code for that CD (for vendors to keep track of inventory), and it must be available for purchase on Amazon, rules that most artists and labels already comply with. However, some indies are not yet on Amazon. In order to meet Pandora’s new criteria, artists and labels will need to obtain a unique UPC code for the physical album they wish promote prior to joining the Amazon Advantage Program at a cost of $29.95/yr, per Pandora’s recommendation, to make it available for sale. These new measures will standardize the album artwork spec Pandora displays on its playlists, pulling all the images directly from Amazon, and linking every playable track to the Amazon store. Amazon takes a 55% commission from sales from which it pays Pandora a share for referrals. Considering that the Net proceeds of six or seven CDs annually will cover the cost of the Amazon Advantage Program plus the fee for the UPC code, I reckon that any artist worth hearing will be only too happy to oblige.
Duncan Freeman of Indie Music Tech uncovered an interesting startup over the weekend. Smirp, in spite of its long-winded and confusing ‘how it works’ page, is a remarkably simple and practical service, allowing artists and music promoters to sell their MP3s at a customer-determined price point directly via email. The set-up is brilliant: use your existing Google, Yahoo or other OpenID username and password to log in instantly, link your account to your Amazon account, upload your content to your Smirp ‘name-your-own-price’ page (example), and promote this page by embedding Smirp buttons on your website or social network profiles. Your customers will click, enter their email, name their own price (or select the minimum price you establish) and receive a link to download your MP3s via email with a 12 hour lifetime [for security reasons]. At face value, it’s similar to Twitpay, the Twitter-dedicated payment solution.
Smirp’s two-tier pricing is more than fair: $6/month for unlimited use or Free in exchange for 20% of your proceeds. On concept, inspired by Radiohead’s In Rainbows campaign, and ease-of-use alone, this is one of the hottest digital music distribution solutions I have come across. Perhaps an alliance with CreateSpace, Amazon’s flexible print-per-order CD distribution service will position Smirp alongside the current indie titans, namely ReverbNation, CD Baby and TuneCore?
By distributing your music through Amazon’s CreateSpace, you can sell both your digital downloads and CDs on Amazon without ever having to finance and ship-in your physical stock. Simply upload your digital assets (i.e mp3s, album artwork, discface graphics) and CreateSpace will set you up with a store, make your mp3s available for download, and print CD’s and ship them to your customers on demand. Although Amazon’s commission for this service is high, duplicating CDs per pre-paid order may save you a tidy sum in the long run.
TuneCore recently partnered with CreateSpace which adds a much needed physical dimension to its one-stop, fixed-price digital distribution service. CD Baby already offers physical and digital distribution and, since its acquisition by Discmakers, can fulfill the printing process too. How will ReverbNation respond?
Twitpay.me, as the name suggests, is a service for sending payments via Twitter. Twitpay makes a note of a “promise” to make payment (which can be cancelled at anytime) and allows the payer to settle the payment using Amazon Payments. The honour system is in play here to a certain extent but, as a payment instruction on Twitter is as public as any other Twitter update, the payer will look like a schmuck (or Twit, if you’re British) to his followers if he doesn’t pay-up.
The company has leveraged Twitpay for a bare-bones retail and distribution system for content copyright holders (e.g. musicians and music promoters). Using Retweet Commerce Suite (or RT2Buy), artists and their agents can upload and store their music on Twitpay and tell their followers about it. Twitpay provides track samples, monitors “promises” to purchase, and delivers the content. The promotion may look something like this:
Just finished a new track “Get Your Rocks Off” available now for only 99c RT2Buy http://rt2b.me/232xe
TuneCore, the indie-friendly digital distribution company which secured $7 million in venture capital in October 2008, has partnered with Musicnotes.com to offer lead sheet music transcription and retail services for TuneCore artists selling more than 25,000 songs per quarter, Musicnotes.com announced on their blog yesterday. Since its inception in 2000, Musicnotes.com has sold over five million sheet music downloads at an average of $4.95 per transaction.
“The music industry began in many ways with the selling of sheet music. The irony of the intertwining of digital downloads with sheet music is not lost on both companies,” said Jeff Price, founder and CEO of TuneCore.
LoudFeed made its introduction on Hypebot yesterday as yet another website and widget creation service for artists. In terms of features, LoudFeed appears to be competing directly with Nimbit, which currently provides a more complete and competitive solution in my opinion. Although there are a number of distinct advantages to managing your own sales and distribution hub, I’m still not convinced that you can’t get everything you need from Word Press, along with ecommerce plugins, and a super SEO-friendly architecture, for free. Check out WPBest.com for premium themes and WP-Cumulus for a cool dynamic Tag Cloud. TDMhosting will host your Word Press site for $4.99. Bargain.
“When we launched our free digital distribution service, we knew we would be able to provide our users with new possibilities to help them expand their own marketing. With Jango Airplay, our users can freely invest into getting radio promotions and establish unique social interactions with new fans to help drive music sales. We are very excited to be working with Jango to provide an effective marketing avenue to our users.” said Kevin Rivers, Founder and CEO of WaTunes.
“We designed Jango Airplay to give emerging artists an affordable and effective way to get their music proactively played to real listeners who like similar music. Thanks to WaTunes and affordable technology it is cheaper than ever to produce and sell music – but getting your music heard is the first step. We are very excited to bring WaTunes users in front of our 6 Million listeners. ” said Mattias Stanghed, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Jango.
SoundCloud, an online music collaboration and large music file management platform, has secured a €2.5 million ($3.3 million) funding round led by Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures. Details on TechCrunch.
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