I recently used Tunecore to distribute my latest musical release to iTunes, Rhapsody, Napster, and a whole bunch of other services.
The album creation and upload process was pretty straightforward, and TuneCore’s user interface is very clean and easy to use. The tracks took forever to upload, but it was ~160MB for 4 songs.
Only two quibbles:
- The help links on the album creation/upload pages open in the same browser window, which made me worry I was going to lose the information I had already entered. These should open in pop-up windows.
- After uploading a track, it says “Verifying file” or something, and a circular icon rotates to show you that the file is being processed. I waited for this to stop, but it never did on its own. I was afraid to do anything else because I didn’t want to corrupt the file I had waited an hour to upload. Turns out, once verification begins, you can add another song below, and when the page refreshes, it will indicate that the previous track has been added successfully. This wasn’t clear to me, so I wasted a lot of time waiting for something that never happened.
These are really just small usability issues…
Each Digital Distributor is Different
TuneCore does a good job of laying out all the payment intricacies involved with each of the digital distributors that you can push your music to. Each service is different and may be more or less profitable for artists. But I figure that the more ways someone can discover my music, the better. Everyone I know buys music from iTunes, but maybe some users of the other services will discover me somehow.
And now…The wait.
After completing the upload and album creation process, then paying, the site returns a message saying that the music should be available in 8-10 weeks. Damn. This is a long time. I’m sure Apple and company have billions of terabytes to process, but still. Two months seems quite long. Oh well. At least it’s out of my hands now.
Update
It didn’t take nearly as long as I feared for my music project to go live with the various services. In many cases, it was only a few weeks. Awesome!
Dude — I know the feeling.
The thing I found on my mind about sending the first cd’s of, Songs to Soothe the Savage Child, to CDbaby, was jeez, burning 5 cds, mailing, and paying for them! Here goes X dollars, $100 out of my pocket… I was bummed out even though the music is great, that how will anyone ever hear it?
Then a friend pointed out that $60 was only one tank of gas, and I didn’t get that torn up about 1 tank of gas…
It’s made all the difference, although I’ve put my music out now into free until popular mode…
Naturally, as a computer guy 🙂 I thought wouldn’t uploading be easier… it wasn’t anywhere I tried, including Createspace.com because the status of the uploads — they wanted single huge files, and the upload indicators were TERRIBLE… amiestreet, amazon, everywhere — why can’t I just load one song at a time, OR a zip file? 1 little thing wrong and it would fail, an hour latter, and if you weren’t there to watch… you’d not know why…
Well, to let you know I feel for you, the same thing happened… waiting 2 weeks to see it listed, then check it, then wait for it to go out to Itunes, and elsewhere — and you know what — they are running on their schedule, not mine.
The traditional artist would be out spending the advance 🙂 where as now, it’s looking around for it to show in the market places, Itunes, etc. and then trying to find the best way to market it.
I used the time to write two more albums, and put them on Amiestreet 🙂 Visited sick friends with cancer, and naturally worked hard at my normal day to day job… 🙂 I think having had a child, my ability to be calm and wait for things has grown greatly.
I can’t wait to hear your music now, and get feedback from you.
Oh, one last thing… oddest thing… My Nascar Wannabe with Car Noises, a song, sold on Itunes, and my album was popular !
I like the song, dedicated for my uncle, and so I was kindly surprised by success.
http://www.clousfamily.com
Just a thought… If the time frame for the album to be download-ready varies between 3 weeks and 2 months, how do you set a release date for your album? Is there a way to put the music on hold until a particular date once it’s finally posted?