What's the cleanest way to get your music on various distribution sites?

[Vamecx]

I always hear about sites that claim for a price they'll put your music up on pretty much every site imaginable. The only real place I want to put my music up, though, is Spotify and maybe iTunes. Everything else doesn't feel like it has much of an audience. I have a Tunecore account, but I haven't used it yet since I don't have any money for it.

I was wondering what's the best way to get your music up with keeping all the rights and getting the most amount of money back? I submitted some songs to Spotmeup, they claim to put music up on Spotify for free but it'll take 6-8 weeks, I haven't heard too good things from them when I just Googled them now. Apparently they take all the streaming money, but you get some of the money when people buy tracks from Spotify.

Basically the topic of conversation is, in a world where scamming on the internet is everywhere and people are too lazy to read the terms of service, what are the most legit ways to get your music on popular distribution sites?

[guitarplayr82]

CD Baby?

[Greg_L]

The first thing you should do is forget about making any money. The second thing you should do is just use CD Baby.

[Vamecx]

The first thing you should do is forget about making any money. The second thing you should do is just use CD Baby.

Hah, I don't expect to make a living. Some side-money would be nice, but I'm not counting on anything. And yeah, I hear good things about CD Baby, I might try it out.

[VomitHatSteve]

CD baby does digital distribution now too? That's cool.

[Seafroggys]

CD Baby has done digital distribution for several years now, actually.

[dewhitt]

I'm not trying to plug CDBaby too much here, but I just put my first album out through their online distribution service, and I was very impressed with the whole process. The latest cool thing they do is allow you to "opt in" some or all of your tracks to non-exclusive sync licensing, which makes the tracks you opt in available for placement in television, games, movies, etc. That also gets your tunes added to YouTube's music catalog so that people making vids on YouTube can choose your music if they like it to use in their videos. They've recently partnered with Rumblefish to implement something called digital ID (or something like that) which takes some kind of digital fingerprint of your tracks, and then can ID whenever one of your songs is played on YouTube, no matter who uploaded it or clicked it. Then, if/when someone uses your music in any of those streams, you get paid. Probably not much...but hey, it's something.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, since I just got my album done, and what I am starting to think is that even though it's cool to have the album up on iTunes, and Amazon.com, the really interesting thing is the places where people click to play/stream, like Rhapsody, or Spotify, etc. I may be thinking about this wrong, but it seems to me that an iTunes purchase is a once and done event...they buy your album, you get your $6 or whatever, and then they go off and listen to your stuff out of their iTunes library or on their mobile device as much as they want and you never get paid again. On the other hand, the streaming model gets you paid for every listen, from now on - forever. I like that better

Just my $0.02 (which by the way, is probably about what I get paid for each click...lol)

Very Best,

[VomitHatSteve]

CD Baby has done digital distribution for several years now, actually.

Which means I probably already knew that, but I'm a luddite and don't bother to make anything but physical copies or free downloads.of my music.

[Greg_L]

Which means I probably already knew that, but I'm a luddite and don't bother to make anything but physical copies or free downloads.of my music.

I use CD Baby and without even trying my stuff is everywhere and available for no one to buy!

[Vamecx]

So I guess I'm going to use CD Baby, since it's pretty much what everyone is recommending. :P I've always liked the look of their site, it looks professional and not like a gimmick. I have a question for all the CD Baby users, though. Is there any way I can put my music only on Spotify and (hopefully) pay a small one-time fee? How much is the fee if you can do it? I don't have much of a fan base that extends out past my friends, and most of them use Spotify, so it could be a good advertising method with the whole "see what your friends are listening to" stuff. Then I'd be selling it on BandCamp. And if for some crazy reason I get a decent fan base? Then yeah I'd throw it up on iTunes and all that.