TuneCore vs. CD Baby for digital distribution
Hip hop giants Public Enemy will release their next album via digital distributor TuneCore, according to a story in yesterday's New York Times.
As a musician who's recorded a lot of CDs with unsigned bands, I'm a longtime fan of CD Baby, which provides an online store for selling physical CDs, as well as digital distribution through iTunes and other online services. How do the services compare for digital distribution?
CD Baby charges a one-time $35 fee for each album you want to sell through them (digital or physical), and takes a 9% cut of each download. TuneCore charges about the same amount up-front (although it will vary depending on how many songs are on an album and how many stores you want to sell your music through), and charges an additional $20 per album per year. But they never take a cut of any sales.
If you're a relative unknown with a local fanbase and minimal tours, you might sell 100 tracks in a year. From each of those downloads, you'll probably earn about $0.60 of the $0.99 that most sites, including iTunes, charge. Sixty bucks. CD Baby takes 9%, leaving you with $54. TuneCore's always going to be better in that first year, as they let you keep the full $60.
But in the 2nd year, you'll pay TuneCore $20 per album regardless of whether it sells or not. Or you'll pay CD Baby 9% of your gross from digital sales. Assuming the $0.60 per download is accurate, the breakeven point is 370 downloads: that is, you will have to sell more than 370 downloads to do better with TuneCore than with CD Baby. For a name like Public Enemy, that's a no-brainer. For other unsigned bands--depends on whether you tour, whether your MySpace friends actually translate into paying customers, and so on.
If you're signed with a label, they've probably already covered digital distribution for you, and the contract says what the contract says.
Matt Rosoff is an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, where he covers Microsoft's consumer products and corporate news. He's written about the technology industry since 1995, and reviewed the first Rio MP3 player for CNET.com in 1998. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network. Disclosure.
- Topics:
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Music industry,
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Online music services
- Tags:
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TuneCore,
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CDBaby,
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Public Enemy,
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independent musicians
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TuneCore:
The actual amount we pay when a song sells on iTunes it $0.70 for the U.S.
store, of which the artist sees 100%, just as you said.
We're also proud to include ISRC codes and UPC codes at no extra charge, if
the artist/band doesn't already have them, which is a real boon to unsigned
or new people. Those codes are theirs for life, and can even be used on
physical products--we never reuse them, even if the person leaves TuneCore.
Also, that $19.98 per year isn't mandatory: if someone's had their music up a
year and decides they don't want to pay the annual maintenance/storage fee,
we'll take it down, no questions asked, no charge. I don't want your readers
to feel they'd be locked into anything, we're non-exclusive and cancel-any-
time.
There are a lot of other factors folks might want to consider when shopping
for a digital distributor: frequency of payments (TuneCore is 24/7), the
accounting process (I admit I'm REALLY proud of ours, which is astoundingly
thorough and transparent, even down to letting folks export a spreadsheet-
ready accounting), and customer service.
I'm really glad folks on the c|net boards are offering information about digital
retailers. The more people know, the better informed their decisions.
If you or your readers have any questions, feel free to drop me a line or post
here--we scope out blogs all the time, it's a great way to learn how to
improve our business.
Thanks!
--Peter
peter@tunecore.com