Why I’m Choosing TuneCore over CDBaby

July 7th, 2008 | by brian |

Every independent musician must answer the question: How am I going to get my music on iTunes?

Fortunately, this is really “easy” today. Not that you could do it yourself, because that still seems impossible. But there are several companies that will do it for you, for a fee.

Here are the two main players:

CD Baby

Pros

  • Like TuneCore, CD Baby greatly simplifies the process of submitting your music to the major online distributors like iTunes.
  • If you’ve already got a physical CD for sale with CD Baby, they will process and send it to a bunch of online distributors for free!

Cons

  • If you don’t have physical CDs but want digital distribution, CD Baby will cost you more money up front than TuneCore.
  • CD Baby keeps 9% of the money from your downloads.

TUNECORE

Pros:

  • Artists that want to circumvent making physical CDs entirely can go straight to digital format via TuneCore. Get your music in all the major online retailers without ever producing a physical CD.
  • TuneCore’s fees are very low: $0.99 per submission per service, and a $19.98 annual fee per album.
  • Using TuneCore gives artists access to auxiliary licensing opportunities in film and television.
  • TuneCore offers good concrete tips on promoting indie music.
  • TuneCore has no binding contracts, so you are welcome to take your music offline after a year if you feel your sales from the album won’t exceed the $19.98 maintenance fee.
  • CD Baby charges $20 per barcode whereas TuneCore provides barcodes and UPC’s free of charge.

Cons:

  • If you stop paying TuneCore’s annual “Maintenance” fee, they will have your music taken down from the services. Which is lame. Allegedly the maintenance fee pays for their servers to store your music projects, but if your music is already on iTunes, etc. and you have no desire to add them to additional services, you are basically paying them NOT to take your music off iTunes, which is like a bribe. Or ransom. Unless they are paying Apple to keep the tracks up there. Which I am guessing is HIGHLY improbable.

My Decision to use TuneCore for my current release

I’ve used CD Baby a few times over the past several years, and I think they do an excellent job distributing independent music. This choice is not really “which service is better,” but rather, which one is best given my current needs.

The two primary factors in my decision making are:

  1. I am broke
  2. I am not printing physical CDs right now (see #1)

So for me, it comes down to a few basic cost factors:

  1. CD Baby requires a $35 setup fee plus $20 for a UPC barcode = $55 startup costs.
  2. TuneCore’s one-time fees are: $0.99 per song. $0.99 per store per album. Annual maintenance fee of $19.98. Since my EP has four tracks, my 1st year costs with TuneCore will be $28.89, assuming I put my music in 5 online stores.

My Logic - Does it Make Sense?

Once I’ve paid CD Baby the upfront costs, I’m done with out-of-pocket expenses. But with TuneCore I’ve got to sell enough music to recoup my $20 annual maintenance fee. But remember, CD Baby takes 9% of your sales money. So I’m praying that I sell a lot of music, effectively betting that the total annual maintenance fees I will pay over time to TuneCore are less than 9% of my total sales revenue. And I’m also glad to be saving ~$26 upfront, since I’m still broke.

An Afterthought

Another advantage I forgot to mention is that with TuneCore, you upload your digital tracks directly. CD Baby still requires sending them a physical CD, which they add to their online store as an out-of-stock item. I have a very hard time getting to the post office, so…

More Info

CD Baby

Tunecore

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  1. 5 Responses to “Why I’m Choosing TuneCore over CDBaby”

  2. By Steven on Aug 23, 2008 | Reply

    I personally prefer CDBaby. You’re absolutely correct in that you have to do the math to see if the maintenance cost will exceed the 9% cut from CDBaby. If you’re not a full time musician who tours and just want to put out a CD, then most likely CDBaby will be a better deal.

    I don’t tour, promote, or anything like that. I just have a web site and I make music for fun. My CD has been on CDBaby for a little over 4.5 years now and I’ve made about $440 in digital downloads. The peak years were year 2 and 3, and it’s really trailed off now to where I make only about 3 bucks a month. For someone like me, I would start losing money with Tunecore by year 4.

    Having a physical CD is not a big deal these days. You can just burn a CD-R and send it to CDBaby. To me going to the post office is no more of an effort than going to the grocery store.

  3. By Steven on Aug 23, 2008 | Reply

    Okay, I really phrased that wrong. I wouldn’t *lose* money at $3 a month in sales with Tunecore–I meant in comparison to CDBaby. 9% of $36 is $3.24, which is much less that $20.

  4. By brian on Aug 23, 2008 | Reply

    Hey Steven, you bring up a good point that, down the road, sales for small-volume releases may sink close to zero, in which case, you would eventually end up paying more to Tunecore over time.

    I think the idea of paying $20 a year to NOT have your CD taken down from iTunes, etc. is ridiculous, since I assume that taking a CD off iTunes requires more action on Tunecore’s part than just keeping it up there, which I think requires no action whatsoever.

    My initial priorities were minimizing my upfront costs, which largely swayed my decision. Perhaps innovation will do us all a favor and there won’t be a need to pay ANY album maintenance fees in the future.

  5. By Susie on Dec 17, 2008 | Reply

    Ditto Music are the cheapest digital distributor with the widest worldwide coverage.
    For £25 http://www.dittomusic.com provide you with over 50 sites, and not just the US based ones.
    iTunes, Play, Amazon, mobile sites like Nokia and Jamster, iTunes Video, we7, HMV, Virgin and loads more

    Also online accounting, a fixed release date, 4 week turnaround and you can become eligible for the UK charts.

    They cover a total of 700 worldwide stores and take 0% commission on sales.

    They have had 7 UK top 40 singles, all with unsigned artists.
    They also have their own TV show on SKY for unsigned artists.
    A better service for UK and US artists

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