Tunecore - Anyone use it and have opinions?

rob aylestone

Moderator
Got introduced to Tunecore today. It seems you pay them a fee and they get your work onto amazon, iTunes and other download sites and you keep the money?

The price to get them to spread your work to sensible places seems quite modest. I'd discounted using iTunes because of the rather niche market my work sits in, and I sell downloads direct from my own site - but iTunes could be useful, and although I might sell a bit through them, the effort in submitting the music and managing the system vs the return made it a doubtful one. Same with amazon - I need people to be able to hear a clip before buying, and that doesn't work for me on amazon, as I can't link to my own server - and have to use an approved one.

Anyone using it - with any success?
 
I have never used Tunecore nor would I give it any consideration. I put all my stuff up on CDBaby. They will upload to all the download and streaming sites, including itunes and amazon. I don't think I've ever had an iTunes sale. Of course, I do zero marketing, but I do get streams and sales at most other sites.

hth
 
There's a lot of these services, there's advantages and disadvantages to each.

I've never been super-impressed by what CD Baby offers. They have a lower up-front cost than most of the others, but they take a higher cut of what you make (and do some dubious stuff with publishing rights).
I haven't tried Tunecore yet.

Here's a couple of comparison blogs:
Ari's Take: CD Baby, Tunecore, DistroKid, Ditto, Mondotunes, ReverbNation, Symphonic or...
Digital Distributors - Choose the Right One for you - Moses Supposes: | Moses Supposes:
 
I've used Catapult for the past couple years (two releases). The pricing is great if you consider the flat fee covers an unlimited number of years having your album listed on those sites. Some services (like Tunecore) charge annually. I've received some very meager money for plays on various streaming sites, I honestly never even bothered to look at the details to see what sites were playing the songs. Neither album is anything I'm worried about promoting at this point.

Here's an example album distributed through Catapult:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/ordinary/id904408265
 
Tunecore charges less up front money, doesn't keep the % CDBaby (and others do), but after that $30 for 1 year fee, you've got to pay $50 a year to keep the album online. Other than that. they put it on the same worldwide sites CDBaby does. CDBaby also collects youtube stream/download money (I think that's an extra $10 for Tunecore to do). CDBaby puts your music on Spotify, not sure if Tunecore does that.
 
Seriously, if you don't care about shipping CDs [and if you do, check out Kunaki], I don't think there's a better deal than Catapult right now:

Catapult - Features

For $25 an album you get on all the major sites, and they also offer the Youtube collection service (not sure what the fees might be):

Catapult - Stores

IMHO CD Baby is overpriced in today's market and distribution model. Tunecore (which i was using prior) is fine but the annual fee is absurd, which is why I stopped using them.
 
The week after Thanksgiving CDBaby had a 50% off album deal going...which pissed me off as I had submitted my last album to them just 3 weeks before.
 
The thing about Tunecore is that although you get a higher payout per iTunes or Amazon sale, you have to renew your album each year and that costs about $50. On the other hand, CD Baby takes an initial fee, and then pays out slightly less, but there's no recurring renewal fee. So for people with small numbers of sales, CD Baby works out better.

If you do get a hit recording, than Tunecore will pay you more as long as you're selling in the 1000s of downloads.
 
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