JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum Tunecore --> A new service rivaling "CD Baby"

I don't know much about this service, but I saw this article on another forum.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/macworld/20070315/tc_macworld/tunecore20070315_1

He wants to compete with CD Baby.. he's got a long hill to climb. What is REALLY annoying is that he makes it sound like he's thought of something NEW. What a total joke. He's only 10 years behind CD Baby in the idea department. What a news source would publish that free advertisement is beyond me. It's neither newsworthy nor a great deal. A yearly fee? Plus a buck an album and a buck a track. So one 15 song CD would be 25 bucks a year? Verses a one time 35 dollar fee from CD Baby which also houses your physical CD's in addition to digital. The only way that may make sense would be if you had no physical CD's to sell and never planned to have any. And even then I am not sure if it works out to be a better deal than CD Baby in the short or long term. And they have no track record and who knows if they'll be around in 6 months.

No thanks,

Brian

Thanks for jumping in Brian. He does make it sound wonderful, but you brought it into perspective quite nicely.

I paid cdbaby a one time fee of $35 and they put me on Napster, Itunes,rhapsody etc. A total of 44 digital sites.

TuneCore has been around for about a year.

Where they end up getting you is the annual fee, and if you should ever want to remove yourself from their digital distribution - they have a pretty nice fee for that too. In the long run CD Baby's digital distribution is cheaper for those who don't end up selling very much.

Jody

I heard about this on another forum.
The thing that people are mentioning is that Tunecore charges no per-sale commission while CD Baby takes a cut off each sale.
Is this a valid point?

Patrick,

It might be valid if you are doing gigantic volume. If you are selling like the average Indie artist, I think it's WAY more expensive with the recurring fees. In some cases, it would be drastically more expensive since CD Baby averages about 17-18 CD's sold per user... (I am guessing it's a similar ration on digital) meaning there's not enough traffic to counter having to keep paying yearly fees and a penalty fee for pulling out. I always think it's better to pay 1 fee one time and then only a percentage if more is sold. With Tunecore, it's possible you could LOSE money year after year. With CD Baby, you only have to recoup the 35 dollars and then you're making profit going forward. Since CD Baby has demonstrated that on average a CD Baby member makes $249 dollars back from their $35 dollar investment, I think Tunecore will have a LONG way to go to establish they can offer anything even close to as good a deal. Again, the only exception I can see is an artist who is famous and will get huge sales and thus not paying the 9% commission is a good deal across huge sales. That has to apply to a tiny percentage of their likely customers.

Brian

Kevin, Patrick,
Brian's right! Tunecore might work for a few larger volume artists and labels, if they aren't already with IODA (Independent Online Distribution Alliance) which charges 15%, but they do all the work and there's no set up fees.

Probably for 95% of the newer bands and artists, they might as well go with the CD Baby model because they get a web page (store) to sell their physical CDs and test the market without much expense or risk, etc. Derek even figured out a way that artists can get digital distribution without having to sell any CDs (except maybe the first two), so they don't have to get 100's of them printed just to get started.

As an alternative, some artists are now using
http://kunaki.com/
to set up their own CD production online for only $1.60 per unit with the jewel case and full color packaging included. That's not bad for smaller "short order" runs.

Of course you are responsible for supplying good audio masters, but Kunaki will faithfully duplicate exactly what you provide them. They'll mail you a copy for approval and upon approval drop ship the rest directly to CD Baby, your friends or customers, etc. They say they have no minimums, contracts, setup fees, or hidden fees and the shipping rates are very reasonable, so it's probably another good way to save some time and money. I understand their average turn-around is within 24 hours.

To be honest, I haven't actually needed to use that service, but I remember some other folks saying some good things about it a while back and they do have a very nice web site and samples of recent album covers they produced for their customers.

Michael

Cdbaby will always be top dog until proven otherwise. I think no matter what the competition comes up with, Derek and Co. will find a way to stay a step ahead.

Gonna play devil's advocate here (or play the ass, however you want to look at it).

It appears to be 1 buck per track and 1 buck per album per online store. So $25 will get your 15-song album into 10 stores. After that it's 10 bucks a year to stay subscribed. The termination fee of $20 is only in effect for the first 6 months, after that, termination's free.

Just the facts...

That's not how I was doing the math here at all. In fact, part of the problem with his convoluted system is that it makes little to no sense in the first place.

If what you are saying is true, then to match CD Baby, you'd have to pay to be in 44 stores which would cost, for a 15 song album, 15 times $44 dollars for the songs and then another 44 dollars for the album... would that be $704 dollars using your interpretation of the system? Plus then a yearly fee of $9.98 on top of that? Wouldn't that be the math using your formula Patrick? If so, that's ridiculous unless gigantic numbers.

So, can someone here specifically break down the math for us exactly? How much would it cost to get a 15 song album in the same number of digital stores as CD Baby does for 15 dollars and 9%? Let's get this clarified.

Brian

Oops, I left out a comma, didn't I?

1 Buck per track.
Then 1 buck per album per online store (as I interpret it) for a grand total of $59 if we assume 44 stores.

Though they really only service 10 stores (a definite downside), so the total would be $25 to get in.

I'm not saying CD Baby ain't the best. Hell, if I also had a personal relationship with Derek Sivers, I'd probably be in his ra-ra club too; I'm just keeping the discussion going so we can get the facts straight.

Peace.

Patrick,

Let's have someone break it all down point by point. Because now we have multiple numbers floating around and I hate misinformation. His press release (it's far from a news story) is totally confusing. I didn't even realize he was only in 10 stores (if that's true, then his service is pointless). So can someone (perhaps other than Patrick or myself) go through and determine what it would really cost, what that actually gets you (10 stores versus 44 stores.. physical CD and digital sales versus only digital... 9% versus no percent... yearly fee versus no additional fees.... per song fees versus no per song fees... per album fees versus no per album fees... cancellation fees versus no cancellations fees... long term track record versus o track record at all... you get the point...).

Brian

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, d'you mind if I quote from your last message when I post to another forum? There's a good deal of CD Baby bashing going on there and I had a feeling there was more than meets the eye as you've so clearly pointed out.

I'll keep your identity hidden, of course.

Thanks.

Well, I suppose that would be alright. But I'd like to know the site.

Jody

I'll send you a PM with the link.