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Amazon & TuneCore To Cut Out the RIAA Middleman
eldavojohn writes "So you're an aspiring band and you haven't signed with a record label. Maybe you've got a fan base interested in purchasing your stuff but you're not really into accounting? Enter Amazon's partnership with TuneCore, a CD printing and music distribution service. You want to sell a full album on Amazon of you brushing your teeth? $31. And you get about 40% back on sales, so selling nine digital copies of your CD will put you back in the black. There you have it, public availability on one of the largest online commerce sites for $31 — no RIAA involved!" TuneCore's CEO put it this way: "As an artist, you have unlimited physical inventory, made on demand, with no [sic] upfront costs and worldwide distribution to anyone who orders it at Amazon.com."
Similar model.
If you read the article, they mention CDBaby:
For TuneCore, the deal expands its primary business helping indie artists get digital distribution through online outlets such as iTunes, Napster and Amazon MP3. TuneCore will now compete directly with CDBaby, the current leader in low-volume CD manufacturing and distribution. CDBaby charges $278 for 100 discs, although it recently lowered its minimum order to just five copies.
I've been a massive fan of CDBaby ordering discs straight from people like Anni Rossi but it has a minimum order those artists have to meet. I don't like the idea of a band having to buy up 500 or 100 or even 5 copies. Instead a flat fee of $31 for the artist makes me excited that this could really be big for indie artists ... I think CDBaby's success is proof that this even cheaper alternative could be a massive success. Let's hope Amazon allows you a 30 second preview and review ratings to quickly separate the wheat from the chaff.
Get into the iTunes store.
While iTunes would be slightly bigger, Amazon is a big leap for Tunecore and I'm happy to see it even on this level.
My work here is dung.
Japanese amateur (doujin) artists have been self-publishing professional-quality albums for years now. No RIAA, no middlemen: they set up a booth at a convention and sell it. And then, afterwards, they sell extra copies from their website. It seems to work well enough: some single fandoms have produced hundreds if not thousands of albums.
Isn't it amazing what you can do when you prioritize actually making music over trying to get rich?
And don't think that the Japanese have it easier with regard to music copyright enforcement: the problem is actually so great there that file-traders have been forced to use anonymous P2P systems like Share and Winny.
> Instead a flat fee of $31 for the artist makes me excited that this could really be big for indie artists
Wow, yeah.
So this basically reduces the major labels to their back catalog. No one that knows about this service would sign unless they already have major sales - and that's an even STRONGER argument for using this service. You retain all rights, get 40% of the take, and costs you one lunch bill?
What freaks me out is that the labels, after staring this in the face for decades, still can't figure out how to sell their catalog. They have 10,000,000 songs in the database, but the only thing they can figure out is how to sell the newest 40.
Maury
From the TuneCore-FAQ:
"What format must my artwork be in, in order to upload to TuneCore?
[...] You may not include: email addresses, URLs, any other contact information or any pricing information."
Is this a common (or acceptable) limitation?
sig? Oh, that sig...
In law school, a bunch of us formed "The Learned Hands" and laid down some tracks. I had seen an ad for TuneCore somewhere on the web, so we uploaded our album for distribution. Sadly, having graduated school, the band no longer exists, but it's cool to say that our original music has been heard in Germany and the UK (Someone streamed "Ten Point Buck" and "Sleepy Hollow").
My experience with TuneCore was great! The initial costs were very low - I think it's like a dollar per track, and a dollar per online music store. And what do you know, our music is available on iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody, eMusic, all over the world! Depending on the vendor, you get one or two cents every time the song is streamed, and for downloads, it's usually 65% or 70% of the purchase price. Uploaded the tracks in FLAC format too, actually, and everything turned out swell.
This is the type of innovation that is changing the music industry, and I don't think the RIAA knows how to, or even can, keep up.
1. Record your album in your garage/basement
2. Upload your tracks to TuneCore for distribution
3. ???
4. Profit!
The problem for my band has been step three, since we no longer officially exist (Singers are in CO and Philly, bassist in VT, and I'm moving to BFE), but we did sell 3 copies on AmazonMP3 and a few tracks on iTunes, plus about $0.76 worth of streaming on Napster and Rhapsody.
In conclusion, TuneCore allows Joe Sixpack to (sort of) achieve his rockstar dreams, at least in terms of getting the music out there and making it available.
Isn't it interesting how you come to recognize posters based solely on their sigs???
While this looks good for low quantities, a lot of people don't like burned CD-Rs which these will probably be (but I'll hold off judgement on that until the service is launched).
If you are selling 1000CDs, the deal isn't so great. If you go direct to a pressing plant you can get 1000 CDs made for $999. If you match Amazon's $8.98 price, your profit will be $7,899 minus postage costs, which will be zero if you sell at your live gigs, or at most $4,000 if you sell them all through a distributor like CD Baby.
In comparison the Amazon deal would give you just $3590 profit (with postage paid), but you won't have any stock to sell at gigs or mail out for promotion unless you buy it at retail, you're limited to just the packaging they support (no gatefolds, digipacks, free postcards, signed copies, 2CD sets etc.), and unlike mailing them yourselves, you don't get to build up a mailing list of fan's addresses, which can be invaluable later in your carreer.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Just because you put your independent band up on MySpace and SonicBids and your own website and sell your songs on iTunes and your CD on CDBaby doesn't magically make everyone in the world suddenly know you exist and want to buy your stuff. Somehow they still have to stumble across you in the first place, out of the trillions of other bands who have done the same as you.
This is where I think the future of the recording labels lie. Amazon and iTunes (as well as other services) have shown that distribution is being taken out of the labels' hands. Now Amazon is working to take manufacturing out of their hands also. Recording has been practically out of their hands for awhile now. (Recording artists can buy what used to be thought of as professional level gear for relatively little money now.) The only thing left is Promotion.
The way I see the future of labels (if you'll even be able to call them that) is this: Band X wants to record some songs and sell them. They buy the equipment to record, sign up with Amazon/Apple/whoever to manufacture/distribute, and then sign up with Label A for promotion. Label A gets a cut of the sales, but doesn't own any rights to the music. If Band X is unhappy with how Label A is promoting them, they can drop the label and move on. Label A gets a final paycheck (for work done up to contract termination) and then the next promotion label gets the sales cut paychecks. Labels will have an incentive to treat their bands well and increase sales because otherwise they (the labels) don't get paid. The current labels will fight this tooth and nail, of course, but I think that it is almost inevitable.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.