Digital Distribution. How?

[Erly Thornton]

I asked a question of the friends on this network on who has the "Manual on Digital Distribution" of your recorded music. I got a few answers. Mostly I got a lot of people that said that they had NO IDEA with requests that said, if I found out, tell them.

So this discussion is about developing that Manual and FAQ. Post away with your questions and answers!

[Erly Thornton]

I saw a lot of blog comments on SNOCAP regarding MySpace that were discouraging. I had already tried a digital company, BurnLounge a few years ago and while the concept was good, they did not do their indie artists right. As far as I know, I sold copies of my music with their service and never got paid. SNOCAP with MySpace were at one time according to others in the blogosphere taking your tracks from MySpace and making compilation CDs from which you never got a royalty. I hear that has been corrected, but the comments on the Sound Quality is all I needed to hear to help me with my final decisions. Thanks!

E.T.

[TIMKAT Entertainment, Inc]

We have since dropped them, as they added no value whatsoever, and have been super happy with CDBABY, TuneCore, and advertising through Don at Continental (see my posting in the DIY Group) .... our greatest thanks again to you, Erly, and all those that posted here to help get things off the ground in our first year of business.

Best,
Kathryn

[Geoff Lapp Trio]

Thanks..
good to know....I seem to remember reading that Itunes has 97% of the market..not sure if that is the right stat.

And peaking of high quality files...I am eagerly awaitng the day when radio will download the artists boadcast quality files.....I think it will be a hard sell for those that are not well known..as the Dj s are not hapy with more work to do..and the systems are still not ready for it. .Will save the artist a lot of money.though.

Airplay direct gives you space for 3 songs....I have managed to direct some podcasters to get the music that way.They take Flac files if I remember correctly.

cheers
Lorraine
www.geofflapp.com

[Katie Fellows]

Although I have no experience with digitally distributing any music, a few local artists that I know use CD Baby and speak pretty highly of it. A few more just distribute their music on their own, submitting it to iTunes, etc. but the queues for such services are apparently pretty long.

[Geoff Lapp Trio]

Yes..the queues might be long..(not too bad with cdbaby -to get on tunes) but it gives you time to prepare the marketing of the CD. We rushed to get the cd out..without enough prep or knowledge of the arena... and had no advice.

You have a small window of opportunity with a new release (3 months,maybe)and have to know how to utilize it. Having learnt that..when our next cd is finished I will take the right steps to give it chance. Its a lot of work.

LC
for
GLT

[Erly Thornton]

Well I now have my music on two services and I did confirm an important fact: Do not submit your music to the same download stores or services from two or more different distribution companies.

What happens is that if iTunes receives your music from one company and gets it into the system, if they get another submission from another company, they will PULL your music from their system and wait until you make up your mind. I am probably sure that they will not proactively contact you to let you know that!

So I submitted to TuneCore initially because they had no royalties that they took from your music, giving you all of the sales amount received from the stores. They had a smaller selection of digital outlets but their selections were the major ones where you will sell the bulk of your tunes. I then signed up for CD Baby also for physical CD sales as well as digital, then I went into CD Baby and told them to NOT send to iTunes and all of the other stores that were on my TuneCore listing.

I will likely look at WaTunes too to see which services they cover that are not on either TuneCore or CD Baby and submit there also.

Concerning CD Sales physically, I figured CD Baby but thought about Amazon Advantage, but they charge you a huge percentage, like 55% or 65% of the sale price so I did not submit to them. Does anyone else know how to get your music physically into stores?

[Deb Lake]

Hey Erly, great thread. I've done a little research in this area for a few friends and came to the same general plan of action as you. Smaller distrib. (TuneCore) for the major retailers (keeping all the royalties) and then larger, percentage based distributors for the rest, if possible. Wondering, if you know, are the distributors with larger retailer scopes (IODA or Orchard) allowing you to be selective about which retailers they can distribute through? In other words, will they handle everything but those major 6 or 7? I rather thought that since they're percentage based, and since probably 80 percent of the online sales are coming from the majors, they might want an all or nothing deal. But, I don't know.

For physical distribution (U.S.), I know many people use City Hall Records (cityhallrecords.com). Still checking out overseas channels.

Thanks,
Deb

[Erly Thornton]

Hey Deb,

I tried to contact IODA and the Orchard and did not get a response from them. Consequently I have no idea how they work. I tried searching and found a few blog entries that stated that these services charge you more but promise marketing and placement. So you just do not go into a store as another entry but may make it to a featured artist page. That's it in theory, but the blog entries don't speak very positively about this actually happening for many artists. I mean with thousands of artists with thousands of titles they would have to have a pretty large promotions staff to make that possible. (These are not my words but paraphrasing the blog entries on the subject...)

Oh yeah, Billy Hall turned me onto March's issue of Computer Music out of the UK that has an A-Z guide about all of this. I could not put it down today. Go get it before it leaves the bookstores.

Thanks fot the tip on physical distribution. I'll check them out.

Lastly, with Jazz having the word of mouth reputation that it is somewhat better respected overseas, in that you can actually make a better living in Europe, Japan, etc... Does anyone know what sites someone should go to in order to be listened to in France, Italy, Japan, London, etc? What about gig booking?

Erly

[Deb Lake]

Hey Erly,

Thanks, I'll scout around for that magazine. Always nice to have info in one cohesive spot! Some other sources of info: Elli Fordyce sent me a link to a good site: http://newmusicstrategies.com/. I signed up for their newsletter and it appears to have some good info/ideas. I also get the newsletter from Musician's Atlas (http://www.musiciansatlas.com.)

A friend actually just signed up for IODA as her single source of digital distribution. I'll be getting some feedback from her on sales across all those various retailers. It'll be interesting to see how much sales activity there is with the non-major retailers. Will keep you posted.

Deb

[Lea Ball]

I've consigned with 3 local record stores in Portland, OR. The biggest one, Music Millenium, consigned 3 copies of my CD for each of their 2 stores (at the time). In the approximately year and a half, they sold a grand total of 1 copy, before they de-consigned me. This is an album that gets airplay on 3 local radio stations. Everyday Music consigned 2 copies, but I have no evidence that either one was sold, and I've never been paid for either. Timbuktunes took 2 copies, and has sold at least one, in much less time than Millenium ever did. The stores will consign, but they don't help a lot with promotion, even when given materials to do it with. A 4th store, Catbird Seat in Eugene had some copies for a while, sold none of them, and returned them all when they went out of business.

[Clark Bjorke]

I don't know anything about any manual but I do know that it is possible to get you music into iTunes if you have a CD and a "label." There is also Soundclick, where you can distribute music, either free or for a $.99 download. MySpace Music is gearing up to do $.99 downloads also as part of a band's profile.

There will be more outlets for digital distribution of music coming online in the next year, I'm sure. Eventually digital downloads are going to replace physical CDs altogether.

Clark's Picks

[diana bellone]

I´m interested in selling my tracks in a digital way do you know which is the best way to do it? Is it possible to do it by myself in my website?. Diana Bellone