DISQUS

Peter Wells · 8 months ago

Thanks for the mention, and for the very positive words, Adrian. Isn't it astonishing how this space is filling up? The demand for digital distribution is growing, and that means more people making music and more people wanting it in the stores.

One addition, I hope you'll include mention of our physical solution, Amazon on Demand, which lets any of our artists put their music into the Amazon CD store, and have Amazon MANUFACTURE and fulfill and deliver the disc--it's a new program, everyone we've told about it has been crazy excited by it. I think this and our soon-to-be-rereleased widget and iPhone app a game changer.

I read a lot of "which one to use" blogs, and yours is one of the best: you're looking beyond the pennies, encouraging artists to consider other factors. That's exactly the right move. It's not just about the deal and the placement, it's about the philosophy, the tools, the stability and the growth.

I look forward to your thoughts on all the new tools and opportunities (and yes, stores!) we're getting ready for our artists. Should be fun to see it grow.

Thanks. Questions welcome, as always.

--Peter
peter@tunecore.com

buzzsonic · 8 months ago

Thanks for the positive and constructive comments Peter. Yes, there certainly is a great amount of choice. I sometimes think that people don't really appreciate how much easier it is to get your music out there now. Of course you're speaking to another old school music biz type here, pressing my own vinyl and walking around vinyl stores in London physically distributing them myself!

Having said that, I think its actually harder now to get HEARD above all the noise.

I'm aware of Createspace (I presume you mean that Amazon service?). Personally I prefer to get small dupe runs myself (another great Tunecore service I've used by the way), but Createspace is a good shortcut to getting physical product made available.

Any developments/plans on getting any of the dance stores onboard (Beatport?) yet?

Thanks again for taking time out to visit the blog and comment Peter

Adrian

Charles · 8 months ago

Hi,

Good article!

My 2 cents:
- for artists who want to sign a digital distribution deal, the best thing to do is to sign with an aggregator like Ioda or Orchard, who AFAIK have the largest distribution channels. They are on our books for example, 24-7 Entertainment, and we are the biggest B2B digital music service provider in Europe with 100M tracks downloaded last year spread over 40+ shops.
But you are right, it's not only about share alone, it's important how they treat you and market your music.
- No mention of Vidzone, InGrooves, Kontor and Finetunes re. aggregators?
- you mention Tesco for example as a store, but I think you should look beyond that and look at digital distribution range. there's no way an independent artist can approach such stores, if you go through an aggregator, you can approach all major channels in one go.
- No mention of mobile music? TDC, Voda, Omnifone, Nokia, SonyEricsson... all doing their bit to make this happen and don't be fooled, this segment is playing catch up with the good old web.

Best,

@roelsc

buzzsonic · 8 months ago

Thanks for the comments. I did mention in the piece that IODA and the Orchard were aimed more at labels vs artists going it alone. And yes I agree that both are two of the longest established set-ups out there with probably the widest reach, if you can get on their service.

Which is why I kinda focused more on places like Tunecore and the like, people that bands with no track record can get in with (and build a track record!).

Yeah, I tried to be as comprehensive as possible with the listing which is why I didn't just concentrate on companies here in the USA, but I did realize I missed a few companies, which I will be updating soon.
InGrooves, Finetunes (not to be confused with Finetune) and Kontor I knew of. Vidzone I didn't http://www.vidzonedigitalmedia.com/ So thanks for that, you may have given me an idea for another post!

Obviously I know individual bands cant go direct to the main retailers which was the point of the post in main.

I did actually mention that Ditto Music service all the mobile music outlets.

Thanks for your thoughts, much appreciated

Adrian

Kevin Breuner · 8 months ago

Thanks for the mention of CD Baby! One thing that I would add is that artists who use CD Baby to distribute their music digitally, are also available for download through http://cdbaby.com, where the artist makes by far the largest percentage of the money over any aggregator (all the other companies still have to surrender around 30¢ on the dollar to iTunes and other retailers). Artists also have the ability to set their own price, which has created some pricing options that can be very lucrative for the artist.

It's also worth noting that we still sell thousands of CDs every day to all points of the globe, which is included with your sign up fee.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask!

Kevin
kevin@cdbaby.com

buzzsonic · 8 months ago

I think this is something that Derek Sivers had put in motion when he was still at the helm, so was aware of it. Would be interested to know the percentage of download sales vs CD sales on CDBaby nowadays.

And of course I am aware of the CDBaby services as I have used them myself!

Thanks for taking time out to leave your comments here Kevin. Really appreciate you taking the time!
Adrian

Mark · 3 months ago

It's a shame that CDBaby's submission service is broken right now and has been broken for 6 weeks. I have been told that it might be up in 4 weeks.

I loved CDBaby for years, and now am reading this article so I can learn which company I'll be switching to - forever.

Steven Finch · 8 months ago

Thanks for the mention of RouteNote. We are currently offering artists reach to over 90% of the online music store market, even though we dont deal with Rhapsody and Napster (who are small players currently). Additionally, we will be addding a lot more features in the coming months, as we arent aiming to be your normal digital music distributor, we are aiming to provide artists with the best online music service.

José Luis Zagazeta · 8 months ago

Don't forget to add La Cupula Music, a new Digital Music Aggregator focusing on Spanish Markets with an interesting self-service system www.lacupulamusic.com

Justin Boland · 7 months ago

It's startling to see actual research and content on a music business blog. Thank you for taking the time to do this right, this was something worth printing and taking notes on. Very rare and much appreciated.

buzzsonic · 7 months ago

Thanks for the feedback Justin, also much appreciated. I do hope you saw my part 2 update here:
http://buzzsonic.com/2009/04/26/digital-music-d...

There's a part 3 coming up this weekend and I'll be putting all three parts together as a PDF very shortly.

All the best

Adrian

Flemming Kjer · 7 months ago

Hey Adrian,

Thanks a lot for including our humble company on your list, and thanks for the input. We can definitely use your comments to improve the information on our website and the structure of it. We certainly do not mean to scare off visitors - in fact, we might want to consider leaving our relatively tiny all-flash site and replace it with an (x)html site.

KJER.com strive to be the preferred business partner to record labels and music production companies worldwide that do not have the time or the resources in-house to take care of the complex digital distribution processes, and therefore have chosen to outsource the administration of their digital music assets.

Before we enter a business relationship we use a quite "analogue" way of discussing whether KJER.com is in fact the right place for the company in question. Consequently, visitors aren't enabled to automatically sign up. We want to be sure that we are the right choice for our clients, and we are only interested in helping the right clients.

In that process, we collaborate with IODA and and we have done that since 2005. Of course! :)
- Please allow me to underline the fact that KJER.com is a B2B company, i.e. we do not assist individual artists.

By-the-way: We help our clients with a lot of other relevant and critical tasks too, e.g. audio and graphics prep work.

Thanks again. Keep up the good work.

All the best,

Flemming Kjer
- director / founder
KJER.com ApS

buzzsonic · 7 months ago

Really appreciate the comments Flemming, certainly helped to fill in some gaps which I will be updating shortly in a bigger round-up.

Many thanks for taking time out to leave feedback!

Adrian

Kiley Thompson · 3 months ago

Incredible resource list, as I'm up to my eyeballs with anger with the two digital distributors i work with right now (cdbaby and feiyr). WHATEVER YOU DO, don't use Feiyr's mastering service. You can't download or approve the final result. and with the restructure of cdbaby, i've been waiting two months to have 4 singles released with them (they haven't even put them on their website). Feiyr is extremely quick to post to their exclusive portals, and they report/pay almost immediately. Outside of their portals, i think i paid for nearly 50 sites and 10 have them and are selling them.
weak.
Symphonic looks promising.
Again, thanks for the info.

Jorge Fusaro · 3 months ago

Hello! I apologize for my comment (a bit off topic on this post, which by the ways is really helpful). I helped produced an artist last year and before we launched the full-length CD became available online every store in the world!

I am hoping someone in the community can give me some tips to track who pirated the music. I don't know where to begin.

Thank you very much!