Posted on
Using online retailers and distributors to sell your music
Being able to sell your music to use fans using iTunes, TuneCore, etc. is an alternative to selling directly. For this you use what is known as an ‘aggregator’. These sites help you to sell your music to the top online retailers at the same time.
Ways to sell your music
Sell Your Music with SongCast and TuneCore
- Both services require a small monthly subscription fee for their services
- There is a one-off payment to be made for every single/EP/album you upload. The prices vary depending on which you choose.
- Both distribute your music to a large selection of online retailers, such as: ITunes, Amazon, Shazam, Spotify etc.
- You keep 100% of the royalties and all the rights to your music.
- It is a month-by-month contract so you can cancel at any time! If an album/EP/single has been up for less than 8 months there will be a fee to remove each one from the site!
- Takes 2-3 weeks before your music will be on the sites! You will be paid monthly and can receive daily and weekly sales reports to see how each item you upload is selling!
- TuneCore also offers a Music Publishing Administration service. For a one off fee they offer a worldwide royalty collection service amongst other things, another benefits of being able to sell your music using online retailers!
Sell Your Music with Ditto Music
- Ditto Music offers a similar service to TuneCore and SongCast. Your music gets distributed to a wide variety of online retailers and you keep all royalties and the rights to the music.
- Like the other sites, there is a one off fee for uploading a single/EP/album, which then occurs a small monthly fee 12 months after uploading.
- Ditto can also offer the ability to get your music chart eligible
- Ditto offers a press promotion service, or if money is no problem they will do a full press campaign for your release!
- Ditto offers the ability to start up your own record label!
Sell Your Music- More Tips
Avoid using more than one aggregator site when you go to sell your music. Using different aggregators will result in your track having multiple barcode numbers, resulting in two versions of the same content. Both copies will be removed.
There are many advantages to using aggregators:
- Allow you to sell your music through retailers who would not deal with an individual artist
- Help to sell to overseas markets whilst providing their own marketing support
Just because you can sell your music using aggregators doesn’t mean all the hard works done for you. Don’t expect people to stumble across your music. You will still need to work hard to promote your act; otherwise your tracks will sit there untouched.
Sell Your Music– Online Store Advantages
iTunes
Lots of singer’s choose to sell your music with iTunes because it has largest share of the digital market. Will be most likely place people will go to buy music. If you were going to try and guide fans anywhere, here would be the best bet. Selling enough copies to get into ITunes daily recommendation will do wonders to your music’s visibility to the public.
Amazon MP3
Amazon MP3 sell your music, Digital Rights management free. This means multiple people can access one copy of the track on any device. Allowing fans to share will boost you popularity!
Spotify
You can earn royalties every time your songs are played although you will need to have thousands of views to ever net much of a return. However in theory they can listen for free whilst promoting your music!