TuneCore

Yes you can

Here is just one of many sites that will print your CD's barcode and seal them in jewel cases and distribute them to Itunes and others all for a flat fee (usually around $1000 for 1000 CDs). We used them for our first CD.

http://www.communitymusician.com/

If you already have your CDs printed, you can pay to a flat fee here ($199) to get on ITunes, Napster, etc.

Check around for other sites, you may find a better deal. Some that offer posters, T Shirts and other stuff to sell at your gigs.

Zero
 
I've been using Tunecore since they started, and it's an excellent service!!!!! Sometimes they're a little slow getting albums up on iTunes, but I've heard that it's a problem on apple's end and that it's out of their control.
All in all I love Tunecore!!!! Give 'em a try!!! :D
 
Haven't used Tunecore yet, but we plan to on our next CD coming out in a month or two. we used CD Baby last time and they literally took 6 months to get our tracks on itunes...that's right. six months. again, they claimed it was iTunes fault, but what the hell! anyway in contrast, there were people who claimed they put their CD through CD Baby right around when we did and they got theirs up in a couple weeks.

How long has Tunecore been taking to get tracks up and live?
 
excuse my skepticism . . . is there a practical cash value in using that service or does it just "look good" to have your own projects up there along with other artists . . .
 
excuse my skepticism . . . is there a practical cash value in using that service or does it just "look good" to have your own projects up there along with other artists . . .

um...i don't get it...what don't you get? you're talking about tunecore right?

well, if you want to sell you're music on online things like itunes, emusic, napster... tunecore simply allows you to put your CD or songs up there like everyone else. you can use the electronic version of CD Baby, but they charge you and take a cut of each sale. it's not all that bad (like 8%?), but it adds up when/if you sell many CDs/songs. Tunecore does more or less the same thing, but instead of charging you a cut of each song, they charge you at the beginning for each song/CD you post (say you want to put it up on iTunes...well there is iTunes US 99cents, iTunes Europe 99cents, iTunes Japan 99 cents... something like that). i haven't used it yet (plan to our next cd), but that makes more sense to us as probably 85% of our CD sales are from online digital sales (mostly itunes US).

if you sell like we do, you'd be nuts to give a middle man a cut for every song you sold instead of a flat fee up front. i believe there's a yearly "storage" charge of $20 or something like that, but that's nothing.
 
True on all points... however; getting your music on itunes is only half the battle! You must promote that shit or you'll end up with well, a cd on Itunes and the like that isn't generating any money. I'm not talking about a Myspace campaign either! (believe me I know from experience, my artist have over 6000 friends and we get maybe 30 to 50 plays daily but those numbers do not represent cd sales. You gotta get out there and grind homie. Tunecore while it is a very good service is only another tool for us indies. Use it well.
 
True on all points... however; getting your music on itunes is only half the battle! You must promote that shit or you'll end up with well, a cd on Itunes and the like that isn't generating any money. I'm not talking about a Myspace campaign either! (believe me I know from experience, my artist have over 6000 friends and we get maybe 30 to 50 plays daily but those numbers do not represent cd sales. You gotta get out there and grind homie. Tunecore while it is a very good service is only another tool for us indies. Use it well.

This is very true, however i didn't think promotion was the topic. Tunecore is great for getting your stuff up on iTunes and all those other places, but if you're not promoting your stuff, it's pretty pointless. hell, having a CD or live playing band is pretty pointless if you don't promote. sounds like you need to work on promotion. Tunecore does nothing but get your stuff up on iTunes and other digital places.
 
that promotion piece is the key. that's the real reason i posted my skeptical response . . . i was just thinking out loud really - truthfully, i was bemoaning and lamenting . .. i would actually pay someone to promote if 1) their price was reasonable and 2) they could actually pull off at least a meager profit from it . . .

promotion is really my . . . achilles heel . . . i am, i have realized, JUST TERRIBLE at it . . . i have psycho-analyzed it, rationalized, and meditated on it, even prayed about it . . . it iso FOREIGN to my "DNA" (if u will) that its like . . . chinese arithmetic!

ahhhh - now i can get off the shrink's couch and return to my dismal existense . . . i mean "life"
 
that promotion piece is the key. that's the real reason i posted my skeptical response . . . i was just thinking out loud really - truthfully, i was bemoaning and lamenting . .. i would actually pay someone to promote if 1) their price was reasonable and 2) they could actually pull off at least a meager profit from it . . .

promotion is really my . . . achilles heel . . . i am, i have realized, JUST TERRIBLE at it . . . i have psycho-analyzed it, rationalized, and meditated on it, even prayed about it . . . it iso FOREIGN to my "DNA" (if u will) that its like . . . chinese arithmetic!

ahhhh - now i can get off the shrink's couch and return to my dismal existense . . . i mean "life"

cool, well our best promotional tool by far has been myspace. it takes some time, but if you send friend requests to people that leave comments to similar artists, you're going to do ok (assuming the music you're pimping is good). that's pretty much how we got the ball rolling. also make sure you looking for other opportunities to pimp the band(s), weather it's in skater video's, surfing footage...whatever...as long as it fits your target demographic. every little thing helps. we've been fortunate that we've done ok in that department, but it requires a lot of fairly constant work to stay ontop of it. i'd say we spend more time pimping ourselves than we do doing music...which kind of blows, but it's what you've got to do if you want to get anywhere in this market without record companies.
 
1. send friend requests to people that leave comments to similar artists, you're going to do ok . . . 2. also make sure you looking for other opportunities to pimp the band(s), weather it's in skater video's, surfing footage...whatever...as long as it fits your target demographic..


1. I may need to retool my focus on this prospect. It seems reasonable enough but seems like I ever seem to locate are artists leaving comments on fellow artists' pages and artists whose "offline-friends" are making comments . . . maybe I am making too many assumptions . . . I have seen few comments that look like ACTUAL "fan" comments . . .

2. skater videos? sounds cool - but im not even sure what you mean by that? skaters do videos? for what? network/tradestuff/convince them to let me be in their video?
 
just check out our myspace page...

http://www.myspace.com/bagoftoysmusic

there are plenty of comments on our page from people that (at least i hope) like us. many of those people are people that we found commenting on other similar bands (like Jack Johnson, G. Love, Slightly Stoopid, Pepper...). it doesn't matter if those people are online or not. send them a friend request and or a little message letting them know that they may dig your music. if the music is good and they've got a little time, they'll usually check it out and...well...that's a huge step.

when i'm talking about video's, since we're kind of acoustic surf rock, so the logical place for us to look are surfer videos. there is a website called surfline.com (among others) that give you the info for who created each video (and there are many), so i contacted a bunch of them and offered our music for any of them and now we're in like 8 DVDs...oh, and microsoft Zune commercial...just get your stuff out there. that's all that counts
 
http://www.tunecore.com/harmonycentral?utm_source=HCemail&utm_medium=HCMarch08&utm_campaign=HP

Anyone use their service? It looks pretty easy? But, can you get on Itunes without any middleman? :confused:

https://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZLabel.woa/wa/apply

thats the application directly from itunes, i was looking for it, because i want to make myself an indie online distribution label, and a studio...and my friend wanted to record a few songs, so i looked this info up a while back. :D
 
Thanks for the link to the ITunes site. I looked at it and they want a Tax Identification Number. How do you get one of those? I don't want to give them my SS#.
 
Thanks for the link to the ITunes site. I looked at it and they want a Tax Identification Number. How do you get one of those? I don't want to give them my SS#.

that part bewildered me too, because I'm 15 and I really don't know "much" about the whole tax ID things, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say you can probably get it from the place were you filed your taxes, I'm sure that if you ask the person that did your taxes they could tell you what that is and where to get it(or Google might have some of that info). I know a lot of e-commerce places do that now to stop people from evading taxes...So that's why I'm guessins its somewhere in the income tax you filed, because all it does is link your music sales so that every 50 cents that itunes gives you per song sold will go to your pockets, after giving Uncle Sam his cut of the profits first.
 
Thanks for the link to the ITunes site. I looked at it and they want a Tax Identification Number. How do you get one of those? I don't want to give them my SS#.

that means that you must own a company, at least in canada.. when you have a company, you have a tax number, with that tax ID number you can charge taxes to your customer and reclaim taxes at the government..
 
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