Best way to distribute music digitally

mooshoepork

I made a post about this a year or so ago, but I'm sure the game has chanced since then and would like to get some up to date opinions.

I'm looking to release a cd in the future. There will be numerous covers on it, in a certain style.

I've been recommended CD baby by a friend of mine in the industry, but would like to get your opinions.

I want my music primarily on iTunes, but because CD baby releases music to a variety of stores, sorts out the publishing rights and royalties for copyrighted tracks and all for (what seems like) a small fee, they looked good.

Any musicians here? What are your opinions?

Thanks for the assistance.

edit: tunecore was another one I was looking at. At the moment I'm focusing 100% on digital distribution. I won't need these pressed afaik. Presuming I did, I could use tunecore and cdbaby

Coinage

From what I've heard, Bandcamp is really great for self-released digital albums. Besides being newer (and thus smaller, making you more likely to be noticed), Bandcamp offers a lot more flexibility than iTunes by letting you easily stream it and giving fans the opportunity of many file formats, as well as offering a more sale-likely price point than iTunes' $9.99. I don't know if you make the kind of music where people care about lossless, but I'm sure you know how much some people care about that. And there's no upfront costs. You also might want to consider Soundcloud--I don't know how their sales work, but they're pretty good for at least sharing samples. Personally speaking, I won't buy something if I can't hear at least a significant chunk of it beforehand, although I am also probably not in your target market.

mooshoepork

Coinage wrote: »

From what I've heard, Bandcamp is really great for self-released digital albums. Besides being newer (and thus smaller, making you more likely to be noticed), Bandcamp offers a lot more flexibility than iTunes by letting you easily stream it and giving fans the opportunity of many file formats, as well as offering a more sale-likely price point than iTunes' $9.99. I don't know if you make the kind of music where people care about lossless, but I'm sure you know how much some people care about that. And there's no upfront costs. You also might want to consider Soundcloud--I don't know how their sales work, but they're pretty good for at least sharing samples. Personally speaking, I won't buy something if I can't hear at least a significant chunk of it beforehand, although I am also probably not in your target market.

Bandcamp looks good, but I'm really looking to launch into higher volume market. Most of my marketing will be done through a pre-existing website/fanbase. This fanbase (from the limited research I've done mind you) seems to prefer iTunes/amazon. I'm definitely up for getting it out to as many places as possible, but whatever I use for the non-original songs will have to have something like limelight to sort out respective royalties and copyright costs.

I'll have a look at soundcloud too.


edit:

Seems like CDbaby has a 9% fee each track sold. I can escape this by using tunecore and licensing each song through limelight (15 bucks a pop) by myself.

That may be the way to go.

I'll have a few free tracks on a website to sample. I'm not really out to make much money from this. More a labour of love.

thanks for your help!

mooshoepork

Well it seems it's a lot easier than I first speculated.

I just used limelight for the rights and tunecore to distribute.

Went up on itunes in one day.