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What's the easiest way to sell an online album?


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I'm asking for advice. I just finished an 8-song instrumental metal album that I want to sell on the internet as a downloadable album. I've been researching tons of different ways but before computer illiterate CHIPP Damage commits to a method, I'd like to hear what you all suggest. Thanks. I can't wait to get everything set up so I can start formally announcing the release!

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Bandcamp doesn't actually sell your physical CDs though, does it? I was under the impression they handle payment but you have to do the physical shipping. They also don't have the same kind of genre sorting/browsing system that CD Baby does, which is really a neat feature. Nor are they a digital aggregator, so your music wouldn't be on iTunes, Napster (etc) unless you use a second service.

As for Tunecore vs. CD Baby for digital aggregation... it's not as clear-cut as you might think. I wrote up an article about this awhile back:

Let’s say you’re releasing your first CD, which has twelve songs on it. You want it to be distributed on iTunes in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Japan, and Australia, as well as Rhapsody. TuneCore will charge you $11.88 in song setup fees and $5.94 in store setup fees, for a total of $17.82. They’ll also provide your barcode for free. OK, not bad so far, compared to the $55 setup fee at CD Baby. Let’s say you sell 200 songs in the first year – CD Baby might receive an average of 70c per sale, of which they’ll take 6.3 cents. Thus, they’ve taken an additional $12.60. However, TuneCore charges $19.98 in album storage fees per year, bringing the TuneCore total to $37.80 and CD Baby to $67.60.

But wait, wasn’t I just saying how CD Baby is a better deal? Well, maybe not in year one. However, remember that you’ll get charged that $19.98 from TuneCore in each subsequent year, per album. For CD Baby to take $19.98 per year, you’d need to sell 317 songs from that album per year. Start selling any less, and TuneCore’s fees will catch up to you quickly. The thing is, these fees are cumulative! Imagine if you had five albums. You’d be paying $99.90 in annual fees per year at TuneCore. For CD Baby to equal that from the 9% cut, you’d need to sell 1,585 tracks a year.

With TuneCore, you’re also losing out on the digital distribution present on CD Baby’s site, which (from my experience) is fairly lucrative. CD Baby is the #1 independent music retailer in the world, meaning people that want to hear fresh new music will often head there first. It’s highly unlikely anyone will be searching for you on iTunes if you’re an unknown, but CD Baby has a lot of fancy search and browse options that enable people to stumble on your music even if you’re completely new.

So, the short answer is that as you get more albums (or have albums with lots of songs), Tunecore's annual fees will really start eating away at your money, and will in fact make it a worse deal overall if your sales start to dip.

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You can do Bandcamp and still aggregate with whatever company you want for iTunes/AmazonMP3. Yeah, you are responsible for sending out the CDs yourself, but the system makes it very easy to do so. Plus, Bandcamp's cut? Zero. This, paired with distribution through TuneCore, is perfect for me. Customers like the ability to buy a physical CD and get a digital download of their choice immediately, while they wait for snail mail.

Yeah, if you don't plan on selling a lot, CDBaby can be a better deal, but even in the first year, I'll make up for those fees for several years where CD baby would have taken their 9%+ of those hella sales. I also prefer the back end system for TuneCore. I've taken all of my music out of CDBaby. It was good, but I very much prefer TuneCore and the $20 bucks a year is well worth it for me.

(Also, Rhapsody? I wouldn't pay extra for all those extra stores - not that you have to with CDBaby - 'cause they don't amount to a hill of beans. Stick with iTunes worldwide and AmazonMP3 - just my advice.)

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i'd have to agree with all the Tunecore and bandcamp love...

plus Tunecore has tons of coupon codes... just search for em

Tunecore took a long time when I sent an album to them, but singles seem to go up pretty fast.

Bandcamp is instant + 0 fee.. can't really beat it.

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You guys are awesome. I wish I was as helpful to you as you are to me.

I was sort of hoping to, in the future, "get" Europe. In other words, I was hoping to sell a lot in the future. The exposure aspect of CDBaby is quite appealing as well. But I guess I should look into bandcamp and tunecore as well. As for SGX's label, doesn't it specialize in Electronica? I'm not sure my album would fit in there. Ugh. I can't stand doing businessy stuff.

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Bandcamp on the other hand, from a listener's perspective, I absolutely fucking despise. Their download system is a Grade-A genuine hunk of flaming shit-stained garbage.
Wait, what? Are we using the same service here? I've bought several albums from Bandcamp and never had a problem. The fact that it offers all downloads in any format one could possibly want is a huge positive, as are the full-length streaming previews... what's not to like?
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Wait, what? Are we using the same service here? I've bought several albums from Bandcamp and never had a problem. The fact that it offers all downloads in any format one could possibly want is a huge positive, as are the full-length streaming previews... what's not to like?

Besides the part where it takes half an hour for one page to load, there's the part where it takes them 20-25 minutes to build your download package, and then there's a 50/50 chance of whether or not it will actually start downloading after that. If it doesn't, you have to build the package AGAIN. If it does, there's a 50/50 chance the download will stop for no reason midway through, and there's no way to resume it, so you get to start all over again!

If they trashed their ridiculous download system and just used direct downloads they'd be fine.

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Besides the part where it takes half an hour for one page to load, there's the part where it takes them 20-25 minutes to build your download package, and then there's a 50/50 chance of whether or not it will actually start downloading after that. If it doesn't, you have to build the package AGAIN. If it does, there's a 50/50 chance the download will stop for no reason midway through, and there's no way to resume it, so you get to start all over again!
Oh right, you're still on dial up, aren't you? :razz:

I've never had any problems with their download system, so I'm inclined to think that the problem lies more with your connection than with bandcamp itself.

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