How to Sell Your Music Online

Your record is done and now it’s time to sell your music online. Unfortunately, getting your music onto iTunes or Amazon.com is not as easy as creating an account and uploading your songs. Just as getting your physical record into a national retailer takes a distributor, so does getting your music to online retailers. Because there can only be one online distributor for your record, we’ll look at different distributors and explore different avenues for independent artists to begin selling their music online.

CD Baby

If you’ve ever received a Disc Makers catalog in the mail, or run across their website online (http://www.discmakers.com/) while researching CD pressing options, then you may have seen their affiliation with CD Baby (http://cdbaby.com/), a distributor of independent music.

If you send CD Baby five of your completed cds, they will open one, digitize it, and upload the music onto many online download sites like iTunes and Amazon.com. In addition to the digital distribution, CD Baby also makes the remaining four cds you’ve sent available for stores in the physical world to carry, as well as to people looking for new music directly from the CD Baby website. When they sell out of those four physical CDs, they’ll contact you to replenish their stock.

CD Baby charges a one-time set up fee of $35, takes $4 for every physical CD sold (no matter the cost to stores; you choose the selling price), and 9 percent for every MP3 download purchased through CD Baby.

CD Baby places your music for digital download on the following sites:

Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/mp3)
Apple iTunes (http://www.apple.com/itunes/whatson/)
AudioLunchbox (http://audiolunchbox.com/)
eMusic (http://www.emusic.com/)
GroupieTunes (http://groupietunes.com/)
Napster (http://www.napster.com/)
PayPlay (http://payplay.fm/)
Rhapsody (http://www.rhapsody.com/home.html)
Verizon V-CAST (http://products.vzw.com/)
Walmart (http://mp3.walmart.com/store/home)

Tunecore

Tunecore offers affordable access to digital distribution sites, and takes a zero percent cut on any sales instead making its money from maintenance and placement fees.

With an easy-to-use interface, an artist can upload songs, add album art, and choose which sites to sell music on.

Fees are $19.98 per year for album maintenance and storage, 99 cents for each site chosen to sell (iTunes US, iTunes Canada, Napster, etc.), and 99 cents for each song uploaded.

Choose from the following sites on which to sell:

Amazon
eMusic
Groupie Tunes
iTunes
Napster
Rhapsody
Lala (http://www.lala.com/)
Shockhound (http://www.shockhound.com/)

RouteNote

An independent digital music company out of the UK (although payouts are in US Dollars via PayPal), RouteNote claims to place your music in over 95 percent of the digital retail market at the lowest market rates.

RouteNote has no up-front costs and takes a reasonable 10 percent cut from all digital download proceeds.
In essence, RouteNote is a free-use website. While still growing, their partnerships will be expanding on a regular basis.

Partnerships include:
Amazon
eMusic
iTunes
Imeem (http://www.imeem.com/)
last.fm (http://www.last.fm/)
Snocap (http://www.snocap.com/)

Nimbit

A very Pro-Attitude type store, Nimbit caters to the truly aggressively band or artist that believes entrepreneurship is as important, if not more so, than actual artistry. Most successful bands and artists run this model, so this is a perfect site for the business-minded musician.

Nimbit offers three levels of membership:

Free Level includes Nimbit's own digital music player that tracks sales (reports are available anytime online) to place on the web with an 80 percent commission to the artist.

For $9.95 a month, Retail Level gains access to sell CDs, MP3s, and merchandise as well as tickets to your shows.

Retail+ offers a customizable store on the site, multi-artist features, HTML content tools, and more all for $19.95 a month.

Nimbit offers the following sites for digital download service:

eMusic
Groupie Tunes
iTunes
Napster
Rhapsody

New services with varying features are popping all of the time, so do your homework and stay on top of the latest trends for selling and promoting your songs online (and in the real world).

Source: www.rockshowusa.com