A lot of the information you're looking for is right on tunecore's website...

They have a handy link to find out what it would cost to put a 5 song CD on 4 stores (they treat each iTunes store as a separate store - of which there are a grand total of: 22 iTunes stores at the moment). It's $0.99 per store so that's 4 x $0.99. Then 5 x $0.99 for the CD. Then a first year's maintenence fee of $9.98. That totals out to $18.89 for a 5 song CD to 4 digital stores. http://www.tunecore.com/example.html is the link for that example.

They charge a $20.00 removal fee for the first 6 months. What they tell you later in the paragraph is that if there is a problem with the data or anything about what has hit the store, you have to have it removed before you can resubmit and get it changed. Thus, if something gets screwed up, no matter who's fault it is, you get dinged $20.00, then you have to pay for it all over again.

There is an anual fee of $9.98 per album + a service fee for each song on the album - meaning for a 10 song CD you've just about doubled your annual fee.

***** An Example using my last CD *****

Via CD Baby my cost was actually free for the CD page and Digital Distribution because I'm hosted with Hostbaby. So all I'm being charged is 9% per stream, or sale of any digital download. Hmmm... free up front for an insane number of stores (with CD Baby all of iTunes stores count as 1) and only 9% on the back end.

Now under Tunecore my costs would be:

62 x $0.99 = $61.38 (there are 62 digital stores - remember iTunes is 1 in this list from CD Baby)
With 21 more iTunes stores it would be:
83 x $0.99 = $82.17

I have 12 songs on the CD, so that would be:
12 x $0.99 = $11.88

My first year annual fee of:
$9.98

For a grand total of:
$104.03

Now, how many sales do I have to have just to make that up: ~ 149 based on US iTunes from Tunecore. That's just to make up the up front costs of putting it on all those stores via Tunecore. Now how many sales do I have to have in order for that $104.03 be equal to 9% of my sales? ~ 1651 songs based on US iTunes numbers from Tunecore. Meaning I'd have to sell 1651 songs before I equalled CD Baby's 9% cut from my current setup. Then anything over 1651 and I'm starting to actually do better than CD Baby's rate.

And let me not forget that there was an issue with my CD when it first hit a few of the digital stores - it was probably a goof up somewhere between CD Baby and iTunes. That would have cost me $20.00 per store to fix the audio and CD art problem that occured. Then have to repay for some of those stores. Ouch! (the fix was free from CD Baby, didn't cost anything but time)

That's just for one of my CD's and provided they can put it in all the stores CD Baby can.

If Brian is correct and you can only get into 10 stores, then they aren't even covering all of iTunes - why bother?

Don't forget the annual fee, not to mention some strange thing of automated renewal - why would I need that?

***** End of Theoretical Cost Analysis *****

CD Baby is providing me a wider digital distribution for a much more nominal cost. Even if a CD Baby artist started selling over 1600 songs in a year, I would be willing to bet you might be able to negotiate a better rate. Even if you couldn't, 9% is probably worth the headache and hassels associated with any new store that crops up.

Jody

Jody Whitesides
A Funky Audio Lap Dance For Your Ears!
www.jodywhitesides.com