Posted on: July 7, 2005 in Music
How to get your songs on the iTunes Music Store
So you think iTunes is a pretty good idea. Your Mom and all her friends would gladly pay a buck a pop to boost your rockstar ego, but as an independent artist, how do you get your music on the iTunes music store?
There are several options available to the independent artist. To start with, go to Apple’s own sign up form. After you have carefully filled in the appropriate details, waited for 2 months for a reply, and finally given up all hope of receiving any kind of acknowledgment, mosey on over to CD Baby.
CD Baby is a great service, run by musicians for musicians. Simply sign up to be a member (this involves filling out a form, mailing them a CD and paying $35 fee) and CD Baby will distribute your music online for you. In addition to iTunes, CD Baby will also get your music onto other ‘legitimate’ music services like Rhapsody, Napster, MSN Music, MP3tunes, AOL’s MusicNet, Yahoo MusicMatch, and more. The price for this service is a 9% commission on whatever each service gives back to CD Baby, which is reasonable. For more details on CD Baby digital distribution service, go here: http://www.cdbaby.net/dd
For some further food for thought, keep in mind that iTunes takes a whopping $0.35 for every $0.99 tune sold, and the other music services are similar. Digital distribution of music has often been trumpeted as “empowering musicians”, but at times, it seems like the money is just flowing in a different direction with musicians still cut off! The website DownhillBattle.org and their iTunes rip off site do a good job portraying the dark side of major lables and the digital distribution of music.
But don’t let this scare you! For an independent artist, using a fantastic service like CD Baby is a great way of making your music available to the masses, with a minimal investment of time and money on your part.
June 25th, 2008 at 4:45 am
Why use CDBaby when there is a new service out that is growing at a rapid pace and doesnt cost any money upfront. http://routenote.com. Head over and take a look.
June 6th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
I am looking for help with a website and getting my music on ITUNES. Please help me someone
May 26th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
To help unsigned artist and indie labels get there music on the iTunes Music store. We have developed an Upload application we are calling
“Audio Odyssey Director”.
http://www.audioodyssey.co.uk/setup.exe
With this Application users can:-
1) Create an album, enter song metadata.
2) Attach the album music files and cover art
3) Finally upload ready for sale on iTunes.
Free UPC!!!!!!
No upfront Fees!!!!!!!!
For more info visit www.audioodyssey.org
March 1st, 2008 at 9:01 am
John: Try RumbleFish (http://www.rumblefish.com/) or IODA (http://www.iodalliance.com/) to license music for your film.
February 29th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
Any recommendations as to the best avenue for film music? And very fast? The premiere is in 2 weeks
February 12th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
Hello everyone. Here at WaTunes, we provide a rivaled service that enables everyone to get their music and music videos placed on iTunes and other music stores freely without the hassle of paying up-front fees. We’ve helped dozens of music artists, record labels, other digital distributors, and even social communities to get their catalog placed at no cost to them while retaining a very high royalty rate. I’m very happy of our model and look forward to push the success of many talented artists. - Kevin Rivers, Founder/CEO WaTunes.com
December 8th, 2007 at 3:41 am
Selling music on iTunes is fine and very cheap to do but unless you have a large following who want to buy your music you are wasting your time as your music gets lost amongst the thousands of others on there. There are some good distributors around such as The Orchard but to use them you need a clear marketing plan and a small marketing budget also helps. Consider employing a plugger or pr company and build up your friends on myspace and similar sites. Alternatively approach some indie labels, if you have material of release standard that is already well produced they may be more likely to take a gamble on you.
You can view some info from EH Records (UK Indie Label) at http://entertainment-heaven.com/blog/
They talk about management, pr packs, pluggers and distribution.
November 18th, 2007 at 8:50 am
Question to those who have signed up with CD baby or any similar distrobution service: Do the words “work for hire” appear on the agreement? Agreeing to produce music as a “work for hire” means the artist is giving up their copyright claims and is assigning the copyright to the other party.
October 4th, 2007 at 12:17 pm
I love WaTunes.com, I get on iTunes for free and I get 90% of my sales back. They even deliver my music to over 100 music stores. There way better than CD Baby. Check them out at: www.watunes.com and sign up for free!
September 17th, 2007 at 7:55 am
We put up a few albums on CDBaby and receive semi-regular (every couple months) payments on them all without any promotion. We have made back every cent invested in CDBaby and started turning a profit months ago. Imagine if we actually promoted! We’re trying to get our music on iTunes ourselves but until then we’ll stick with CDBaby.
September 10th, 2007 at 11:09 pm
Sounds like you need to check out this Digital Distribution Store! You can make money in several different ways.
www.rocmp3.info/outrageousdistribution
September 10th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
I used www.tunecore.com and it took 6 weeks to get my music on iTunes. My music wasn’t mastered or mixed professionally, but it sounded well enough to be listened to on a home system… and it was ambient stuff (not a very popular genre at all).
Fees were cheap… like $35 or something.
September 6th, 2007 at 6:29 am
“Ive Basically gave CD Baby a try, half the time i was redirected to different people - and they didnt know anything about my project, when i had paid them for sum services.” “So, `i had submitted money to them and didnt recieve adequate services from them.” “My suggestion would be to look for a local distributer.” “However, doing this may cost sum, and the reality is, it does cost to get the good stuff.”
August 31st, 2007 at 7:19 am
(Moderator go for this one -completed properly :)
CDBABY kicks ass. 35 dollars, plus 20 more so i get the universal barcode to my album. irsc codes attached to my individual songs, straight onto iTunes, napster and other places to boot.
All i have to do now is promote it myself, thats obviously the hard part, and where one gets stuck, especially if you dont have a fan base.
Promotion is the demon. Once again CDBABY RULES, and have a very friendly staff.
five stars to them
August 31st, 2007 at 7:09 am
CDBABY kicks ass. 35 dollars, plus 20 more so i get the universal barcode to my album. irsc codes attached to my individual songs, straight onto iTunes, napster and other places to boot.
All i have to do now is promote it myself, thats obviously the hard part, and where one gets stuck, especially if you dont have a fan base.
Promotion is the demon. Once again CDBABY RULES, and have a very friendly staff.
five stars to them
August 7th, 2007 at 1:56 am
WaTunes.com are very good, we now use them as a distributor for us. At Entertainment Heaven you receive 100% of your sales on any music sold on our our site and we forward on the 90% from WaTunes onto bands for anything sold through them, the bonus to bands being that we do file conversions etc on their behalf
August 5th, 2007 at 10:19 pm
If I were you guys? I’d try out WaTunes.com.
They offer free digital music distribution to indie artists, labels, and even other aggregators. You even get to keep 90% of your sales. I was checking up on them recently and I’m definitely switching my music over to them. You guy should check them out!
http://www.watunes.com
August 3rd, 2007 at 3:55 am
Hi all, we are an entertainments promoter with a relatively new site that sells mp3 tracks on behalf of artists, free to register and to upload four mp3 tracks.
We pay 100% of the revenue received on downloads to the artists. We are licenced by the PRS-MCPS, we can also legally sell cover versions as well as original tracks.
We are currently looking into getting some of our indie artists into iTunes and other large retailers. http://www.entertainment-heaven.com
Good luck with your music!
July 3rd, 2007 at 1:10 pm
You guys are so friggin stupid if you think iTunes and CDBaby shouldn’t take a cut. Don’t use them then. Nothing is stopping you from selling your music from your own website. Let’s see how much you sell. Geez, independent musicians are the biggest bunch of crybaby whiners ever. And to that guy who was told had a “casio sound”–man, you have no business trying to sell CDs if you had to have someone tell you that.
June 25th, 2007 at 2:23 pm
Another important question; Does an artist recieve unit credit when his or her music is purchased on Itunes? In other words, does the scanning process which tallies units sold apply when a purchase is made on Itunes?