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Sell Your Music on iTunes Music Store
Photo_Designer writes "CD Baby is now accepting music to be sold via digital distibution through iTunes Music Store, Listen.com and others. Their cut is 9 percent. The artists get 91 percent of the sale and retain all the rights to their music. There is a $40 fee for each album submitted. It will be interesting to see how much indie music gets on and how it does. Imagine being a touring indie band and be able to tell people to go to iTunes and buy your songs; it seems this could be a huge boon to musicians wanting to circumvent/boycott/avoid/destroy the RIAA." Note that this is not an agreement to get on iTMS or any other service, only for CD Baby to be your distributor. iTMS can still reject your sorry attempt at fame.
I have to say, it looks like CD Baby is being very fair to the artists with this deal. The artists can even sell their music via other means, just not to the same store, and they can end the contract with 30 days' notice.
Also, this could bring a fair amount of indie music to the iTMS. Personally, I'm all for it. Hopefully, CD Baby can get the word out effectively.
It's gonna take a BIG organization outside the RIAA to come up with a system to beat them. iTunes is a great idea, and this new way of selling music is a good idea, though I think $40 is a bit steep. I think they should have an option. You either pay $40 to get the album on there OR they take a higher percentage of the revenue. (Say 15% instead of 9%.)
Regardless, the RIAA have done themselves no favours with their continued insanity, and this iTunes venture comes on the heels of Michael Jackson (he may be a nutter, but he's one of the top grossing artists of all time) saying that going to jail for downloading MP3's is nuts and that the RIAA needs to find a new solution rather than making criminals out of people.
So, anyone care to start an "RIAA Dead Pool". I reckon they'll be dead and gone by 2007.
I've never heard of CDBaby. Their website looks very shoddy, as if they used a very basic WYSIWYG editor. I would also like to know how picky apple is about taking music from the labels. Do they take anything the labels feed them or are they selective in their choices? If they'll take anything, then CDBaby looks like a fantastic way to get wide-spread distribution. If not, then you've just wasted $40 on a pipedream.
We hate buymusic.com because its DRM is too oppressive, not to mention it's based on sub-par Microsoft technology that's already been cracked.
We like the iTunes Music Store because it uses reasonable DRM and a good format.
See the difference?
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
What are the chances apple will accept them though?
This is a good point. There would be labour overhead and storage costs for each album. Even if they fully automate the submission process, can Apple swallow the cost of thousands of albums sitting on their hard disks?
What Apple might do is have a sales cut-off for artists, and maybe labels too. Sell a certain amount within a certain time or get kicked.
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Get ready to be modded flamebait. Anyway, I just wanted to clarify your position. The DRM in buymusic.com is much, much more restrictive than that found in iTMS. Given the state of the industry, it is a pipe dream to even think that any store will get to license media from the big record labels without at least some DRM. Hence, we like Apple for getting the job done with the least invasive DRM possible. It is a lesser of two evils situation.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
Apple definately needs a solution to keep the quality of the selection resonably high. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for variety of choice, and I fully support independant bands. However, I would hate to see iTMS turn into a place where there is a bunch of crap music, sort of like MP3.com. No one will buy music there if they have to wade through sludge to find a choice indie band.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
Surely the band could deal with Apple themselves ?
Nope. Apple's already said they're going to deal with only distributers. Smart decision if you ask me, you don't want to have to become a record company and deal with all that hassle (A&R, contracts, etc), plus you want to remain "neutral" so as to not piss off the other record companies. Not to mention 2 living Beatles, one tone deaf asian widow and the reincarnated soul of George in the form of a goat would sue you faster than you could say "Apple Records".
A nice idea, but imagine what it would be like in practice? Britney, Christina, and friends would all have amazing karma and artists like Brian Eno would languish at the bottom of the Hellmouth because mainstream people wouldn't get it.
Fuck that. Anyone who doesn't sell will either become discouraged and get a real job, or will persevere until they become great.
There are how many bloggers out there?
The cream will rise to the top even without the old maids at the churn.
wait a minute...why does apple need to control this? freedom is what this is all about. folks who want to download mp3's search through an amazing selection...which is what this is all about. if you know what you want, you'll know what you should get. this is going to be a big boon for the world's struggling artists. the only folks who should be panicking now are the fat cats that are milking the music industry gravy train...yes...the same engine that's depriving some pretty awesome talent from ever being able to lift their foot off the ground. this is awesome...bring on the new music!!! don montalvo, nyc
Maybe a moderation system is in order?
A nice idea, but imagine what it would be like in practice? Britney, Christina, and friends would all have amazing karma and artists like Brian Eno would languish at the bottom of the Hellmouth because mainstream people wouldn't get it.
I think Amazon has been quite successful in avoiding this. You search on specific key words and then look at ratings and reviews. They also have tips such as "people who bought this also liked that". This could work for music also.
Tor
I wouldn't expect to use MP3.com or iTunes to find music that is totally new to me. At best, I'd maybe use them to check out other albums by artists I already know of.
It seems to me that streaming services, such as live365, are where one would go to find new music. Listen to streaming stations that play the kind of stuff you like, and then go to MP3.com or iTunes to buy it.
What the hell does CD Baby "distribute?"
These aren't physical CDs, they're just music files, so why is CD Baby taking a continual 9% cut of your music?
Anyway, for most bands it's tough enough getting people to listen to your songs even if you put them online for free. So, this is probably just another way to coax money out of indie hopefuls.
That works out to about $6,500 for 100k albums
I don't think it's that simple. You need a lot more infrastructure than just enclosures. You need somewhere to store the systems, power, cooling, someone to manage them, redundancy, especially if you're going to use IDE drives. And you've also got to contribute to the head office costs. It all adds up.
Even if you multiply that by 10, which is not unreasonable, it's only about $200K for their current load. But then you've got to consider return on capital. They need to make money on their investment, say at least 10%, probably more like 20%. So they need to make say $30K. With depreciation (33% a year) and gross margins of about 30%, they probably need to sell somewhere around 15% of their catalog each year to make a modest profit. Maybe double that to pay off the R&D on developing the shop in the first place.
The question then is can they sell 15-30% of songs from "all-comers" each year? I doubt it.
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Sometimes I wonder about you all... when it comes to becoming a famous musician, it's not a matter of distribution, but creating a demand for distribution. There are tons of digital warehouses out there for indie artists.. just waiting to house their music for distribution, but unless people know (or want) to go there, there isn't much reason for having it housed anywhere digitally.
Just ask an indie artist when the last time someone downloaded their free MP3s off of Kazzaa... even providing the content for free will not guarantee anyone will ever download it.
What the labels get the big $$$ for is promotion, at least that is what they tell the artists. The labels have the connections... they can get you on the radio, opening for a popular band or a guest spot on Letterman etc. This is what makes the difference between selling 10,000 albums and 500,000 albums.
There are a ton of companies that distribute indie artists' albums, but these companies do little or no promotions beyond a "featured artist" list on their website or a sampler CD with new music.
The company that can find a way to connect with listeners and invade existing promotion channels while creating a new model that provides the artists with the bulk of the $$$ and provide direct digital distribution will change the industry... believe me, I have been cooking ideas related to this for years. I would love to see the industry turned on its ear.
If you have an existing fan base, this might be a great way to get your music out there without the expense of pressing CDs... but it will be catch-as-catch-can unless you have some kind of promotion tied to it.
But as far as I am concerned, much of what I hear is idle words... if you want to support indie artist, hit one of your local music venues and pay the $10 cover and you will discover that there are a ton of fantastic artists out there... nearly all of which will never make big $$$ playing music. The catch is that by going to a show, you may create a greater demand for physical or digital distribution of indie music. And if you are the type that doesn't actually have social interaction with others, spend some time on MP3.com listening to indie artists and buying their music.
"Perhaps most amazingly, votaries of 'diversity' insist on absolute conformity." -- Tony Snow