Which digital-distribution service is cheapest?
Last week, I blogged about digital distributor RouteNote and did a brief comparison with CD Baby and Tunecore, two better-known services that help independent artists place their songs in online music stores such as iTunes and Amazon MP3.
Now RouteNote has one-upped me on its own blog and run a detailed--and very helpful--mathematical comparison of itself versus CD Baby, Tunecore, The Orchard, and Musicadium.
You can check out a direct comparison of up-front charges and ongoing revenue splits, as well as a chart showing how much money the artist will earn after selling specific numbers of songs.
RouteNote acknowledges when its service might not be the best deal--basically, when you get up to about 5,000 track sales, TuneCore and Musicadium offer more money to the artist, and at 30,000, CD Baby begins to show a slight advantage.
I found this to be a pleasant change from the usual marketingese that populates corporate blogs, in which competitors are rarely acknowledged except to be criticized. Of course, RouteNote can't resist tooting its own horn a little bit, noting that its small size makes it more invested in the success of its artists.
In the interest of fairness, I'd add one caveat: while The Orchard looks like a crummy deal for artists on a straight dollars-to-dollars comparison, it's more like a full digital record label. It handles digital distribution, as well as marketing and licensing (like getting your song on a TV show), and it works with video as well as audio.
Matt Rosoff is an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, where he covers Microsoft's consumer products and corporate news. He's written about the technology industry since 1995, and reviewed the first Rio MP3 player for CNET.com in 1998. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mattrosoff. 
On the note about Amazon, I recently came across an interesting table that details the discounts on Amazon. Maybe someone will find it useful too. It is at http://www.uberi.com
Anyway, Amazon appears to be competing with iTune store well (I do love my iPod too) and is also pushing Apple in a direction that moves a bit farther away from DRM, which is awesome.
While RouteNote was pitching their business model, the same old "we take a cut of your earnings, forever, without cap, for doing nothing," I was perfectly happy to let it slide without comment, we've seen it before. But I must take issue with the chart they created and their pitch. The numbers they present are misleading, to say the least.
They've chosen to present "two albums with two years renewal," so they could get a nice scary number for an "initial outlay" from TuneCore that approaches a hundred dollars. Why not make us look even more scary and pick five years, or ten, and make the "initial outlay" appear to be in the thousands? If something is a yearly renewal, it is by definition NOT an "initial" outlay of any sort. They conveniently forget to mention you can put up a single with TuneCore for a flat $9.99 a year, because then the math doesn't seem so frightening, especially if you sell more than a few "units" (what's a unit, an album, a song? big difference in royalties!). I cry foul.
Further, when you stretch the time over three years in one breath, a paragraph above, it's easy to forget when, in the next paragraph, you start talking about thousands of sales required to "catch up"--it's quite possible to make many sales OVER THREE YEARS (renewal for two years means you've been live for three). In fact, I can show tens of thousands of artists who have done just that, and I bet our colleagues at CD Baby and others can too.
Frankly, our artists are doing just great: they've earned $22 million at TuneCore and kept all of it, without giving up 10% for no reason. I say RouteNote is painting pictures with statistics, and my concern is that a trusted name like CNET now has a blog entry that's presenting RouteNote's flawed pitch as "detailed" and "helpful." Their chart looks mathematical, but it's misleading and makes people feel good about saving tiny, fixed up-front fees while blithely agreeing to percentages that can come to far, FAR more. I'm happy to show you that math, based on actual accounts.
But my concern isn't really about how RouteNote or TuneCore or anyone else presents their pricing strategies. I'm glad, honestly glad, that different stores are out there making different offers. They're right in one way: not every pricing model is right for everyone. The more companies offering choices to musicians, the better. It shows there's a demand, and it gives everyone options. Competition is good.
Please, let's be sure when we examine how these sites measure one another, we do it with clear eyes. To RouteNote, I say, stop playing games with the numbers. If you're serious, just deliver and let the best service--and the best model--win.
--Peter
peter@tunecore.com
Peter Wells
co-founder
TuneCore.com
34.95 for digital distribution. You keep 100% of all digital royalties in perpetuity.
- by leeman10 March 24, 2009 4:35 PM PDT
- I find it quite amusing how defensive tunecore are over other digital outlets thereare out there.
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(4 Comments)Tunecore charge you PER song, PER site and only cover a handful of sites, all of which are US based.
No, they ont take a commission, but they do take $20 a year , for life from you, which will most likely ad up to a lot more than a percetage would.
Other sites do digital istribution a lot cheaper.
www.dittomusic.com distribute you to over 50 stores , itunes, amazon, napster, hmv, emusic, for £25 and you can have chart eligibility, they collect your airplay royalties, you can pick your own label name, the list goes on.
They do around 700 stores altogether and take 4 weeks to get you live, thats in comparison to tunecores 8 week lead time!!