RouteNote: A cheap way to get your tunes on iTunes

Cheap tools to help independent musicians sell their music online are proliferating like mushrooms after a rainstorm: last month I wrote about Audiolife, which gives bands an online store to sell CDs and merchandise with absolutely no up-front costs (they take a cut of sales as you make them). Since then, Audiolife was kind enough to send me a sample CD and t-shirts, and they look and sound adequately professional--certainly fine for independent musicians on a limited budget, although nobody's going to confuse them with the deluxe version of the latest U2 album.

Upload your files to iTunes and other major online music stores with no up-front costs.

(Credit: RouteNote)

But Audiolife's download store is a little weak: instead of placing your songs in Apple's iTunes store--which accounts for more than 80 percent of online music sales--and other high-profile venues like Amazon's MP3 store, Audiolife creates a widget that you can place on your own Web page or social-networking site. That's fine if you've got a lot of fans already visiting your Web site. But what about more general music fans who often shop for music online, but wouldn't go out of their way to go to your Web site--think friends of friends, or music lovers who read about new bands online or in a paper. Do you really want them to come up blank when they run a search on iTunes?

CD Baby and Tunecore already offer digital distribution through iTunes and other stores, but both of them charge you money whether you make a sale or not. In contrast, U.K.-based RouteNote charges you nothing until you make a sale, at which point they take a 10 percent cut of whatever the store pays out.

Specifics: CDBaby charges you a one-time set-up fee of $35 (which covers setting up a store for physical CDs as well), then takes 9 percent of digital download revenues. TuneCore, which does digital distribution only (no CDs) charges you $20 a year for each album they stock, but takes no cut. So on a straight numbers basis, RouteNote's a better deal than CD Baby for digital-only distribution, and a better deal than TuneCore if you expect to sell low volumes of downloads. Of course, there are a lot of other factors to consider, like customer service and speed of submission to iTunes and the other stores, but RouteNote looks like it's worth checking out.

[slammerooni]

No point in being an unknown on i tunes, since the i tunes customer only goes there to buy pre-decided tracks. No one does discovery on i tunes. Indie musicians have to sell more than music to survive. Have a look at www.thebizmo.com nimbit or musicane. These are some of the many superior offerings available to the independent and professional getting ready to "go direct"

[gerrrg]

I browse and find a lot of obscure and independent labels and artists on eMusic.

[Rosslander]

I have found a whole bunch of new and interesting stuff on iTunes.
I used to spend hours roaming the aisles of record stores, now I have access to a huge selection from my computer. From a social point of view, its a real loss, because I used to talk to the staff at the store and try all sorts of new artists based on their recommendations. Sadly, the place is now closed, I guess my meagre purchases were not enough to keep the lights on.
At any rate, i have found way more interesting and obscure music on iTunes than I'd ever found in a record store. I usually start with a search on something I know, but then I follow some of the other search hits, or chase a different genre. I have fun with it, the samples are handy and I find it works even better after about 3 glasses of wine (after 6, things can get very weird).

[seven7dust]

@RosslanderI
I also recommend the genius sidebar in itunes
it helped me many times find music
I would have never been able to find otherwise

I also suggest using social music netwworks like last.fm or Pandora
they r great at recommending new music based on yr Library !

[RouteNote]

iTunes has been developing a lot of new initiative that helps users find new music. Go Direct doesnt actually work unless you have a very strong fan base, plus nearly everyone has an iTunes account these days.

[PeterTuneCore]

I'm always happy when another service comes along. It shows there's huge demand: artists want to be in iTunes, eMusic, AmazonMP3, all the big stores. It's only fair that they get to be on the same shelves as Madonna or The Who or 50 Cent.

But why should artists still be forced to give up a cut? Why give up 10% FOREVER and with NO CAP? I don't understand that. If you want to put up a single through TuneCore into ALL our stores it only costs $9.99, and that's it for the year--it's not like that's prohibitively expensive. Our business model is designed to let you work for yourself for a reasonable up-front fee, not the illusion of "free" but with a burden of 10% for someone else.

Either way, the sector keeps growing. Great news for everyone chasing the dream of a living through their music.

--Peter
[e-mail]

[CameronMizell]

I've only heard good things about TuneCore from fellow independent musicians, but the main reason I've been using CD Baby and not TuneCore is that as my digital catalog grows, older releases taper off in sales. While the first few years out I'll be paying more than $20 to CD Baby via their 9% cut on a particular album, that might not be the case 5 or 10 years later when I'm promoting my most recent album. I don't want to pay a $20 storage fees on more and more albums every year, so I'll give up the 9% cut as a convenience.

And while most of my releases are digital only (not all released under my name), I currently have two albums that sell more than enough to cover the initial set up fee for the rest.

But I'm always looking for an excuse to change. My biggest complaint about CD Baby is their poorly organized reporting system. There is no way for me to see how many time a particular song or album has sold at a particular digital store without downloading a tab-delimited text file, importing it into a spreadsheet, and then fooling around with it to organize the numbers as I need to see them. That can be a big hassle when trying to calculate things like royalties owed on cover songs.

I use Tunecore and I agree that it is very reasonable without the expectation that someone is collecting a percentage of the work you've done.

And like I said- not only iTunes, but emusic, sonymusic, Rhapsody, and others will have the opportunity to offer your music to their buyers. It is an artist's dream to distribute at this large of a market.

It would be nice to go back to being able to view the sales breakdown without the added fees, though. I liked that before!

[e-mail]

[RouteNote]

All of this is about artists having to pay upfront fees without knowing how much they are going to sell. RouteNote is very flexible and currently we run on a 10% cut but we can work on any percentage.

If you take a look at http://routenote.com/blog/digital-music-distributors-compared , you will notice that RouteNote is a much better offering if you are an artist selling less than 1000 tracks, plus because we have a flexible percentage we can beat anyone in the market.

[manualfunky]

"but wouldn't go out of their way to your Web site"

wow! you guys have the hard life...!

[pjhenry1216]

As a note, eventually CD Baby would be cheaper if you plan on your sales ever reaching the thousands or tens of thousands. That extra %1 that RouteNote takes will slowly overtake that one time setup fee of $35. Also, CD Baby still gives you the ability to sell physical CDs as well. Overall, I don't think RouteNote gives that much of an advantage over CD Baby.

[pjhenry1216]

PS: In reality, RouteNote is really only a better deal than both if you assume low sales volume AND its digital-only. If you assume a higher sales volume or you want physical distribution, RouteNote really isn't the best deal.

[RouteNote]

It all depends on what type of artist you are and what amount of sales you think you can achieve. As mentioned we are very flexible and if you think you can make more overall then we are able to change the percentage.

[MattRosoff]

Good point on digital-only, that's why I mentioned it.

As far as the difference over time between CD Baby and RouteNote... CD Baby takes 9%, and RouteNote takes 10%. So at $0.60 per download gross from iTunes to the artist, that means that CD Baby lets you keep $0.546 per song sold and RouteNote lets you keep $0.540. That's a difference of $0.006 per song. You'd have to sell 5,834 songs before the difference would make up for the $35 you spent getting set up at CD Baby. But again, that's digital-only--if you're doing CD sales and digital, CD Baby probably still wins.

[CameronMizell]

iTunes pays $0.70 to the distributor. Making that slight adjustment, the difference would be made up after 5,000 songs downloaded. Still a lot, but 15% less than this calculation, which may be significant to an independent artist.

[KevinRivers]

RouteNote is an adaptation of a model based on the old WaTunes 1.0 model (which used to offer the exact same thing). What we've learned is that it's not fair to give up a percentage of revenue especially since it is not our music but the artist or label. This model has a huge pro which is most likely to draw in a large number of artists based on the no-fee base. However, without no marketing or promotional services, it's very hard for the company to generate sufficient revenue unless the artist sell VERY VERY well.

Like Peter of TuneCore, I also am intrigued at new services coming along in the digital distribution sector because it does show a huge demand. In terms of the most in-expensive digital distribution service, I would have to say that WaTunes is by far the cheapest. The reason is because WaTunes customers can sell unlimited songs & albums, keep 100% of their royalties, and get considered for personalized marketing & promotions, all for just $10 a month. There is no maintenance fee or store fee to deliver your contents

The goal is to not just get their contents up on iTunes but to build their brand. That's something that we at WaTunes offer indefinitely. WaTunes is the first digital content provider to embrace the new subscription model to enable user to sell a wide-range of contents at the lowest price.

I put up my album on Tunecore and never pay more than $9 a year and that includes many other sites besides ITunes.

I like their reporting system, although I'm finding that as they grow, they are changing it so you have to pay for a report, where it was free at first. That's a pet peeve I have of growing companies. They should maintain their initial services. It's like a bait and switch thing.

But, overall, I've been pleased. When the term comes up for the year, they may deduct the fee from royalties instead of asking you to make a payment.

And it doesn't go only on ITunes.. it goes on Rhapsody, emusic, sony music, and any other you choose for a small fee.

[marjanlang]

iTunes only serves the short tail of musicians. Let's face it, even with the new iTunes Indie Spotlight feature, it really won't do anything for the long tail. Like slammerooni said, very few people actually search for new music to download on iTunes. Music blogs like Stereogum or Pitchfork are the places to go to for that. Having your music out on iTunes used to be a big moment in a band's career. Nowadays it hardly calls for celebration if you're an indie musician.

I still like Audiolife in that it allows me to create merch as well as CDs and I'm now able to sell worldwide. For us low-selling artists, in my opinion it's the best choice.