Anyone have any luck releasing an album on iTunes?

Define success.

Anyone become as big as U2, Pantera or even Loverboy? Not likely.

Anyone make a living? Again, not likely.

Anyone make a profit? Maybe some.

Anyone sell a CD or 20? Probably.

Anywhooo. I know Frank Tanton sells his CD there.

I got a musical buddy to say what a talented songwriter and musician I was, in a review of my CD.  And the Dalai Lama promised me true enlightenment on my death bed.  So, I've got that going for me.  Which is nice.

Success would be...

1) Make a profit
2) Not get ripped off (unseen fees,  not get money that should come) 

Does working with Tunecore etc.  actually work?    I realize i would have to do the heavy lifting marketing.

Which digital distribution company?

Thanks!

I've used Tunecore for singles and will again.

Never made any money... but that's because I have zero promotion.

Have fun!

best regards,
mike

yea I'm actually targeting my songs for Film/TV/Commercials with the thought maybe some additional $ can  be made.

It appears Tunecore makes your songs available for those things also. 

Has anyone here tried Taxi.com? Especially in regard to the lisencing market for movies, games etc?

They're an honest organization, that provides exactly what they advertise.  Their first screening for any song is tough - deliberately so, so that the ratio of acceptance with the people they deliver the music to is high. 

Just had a look at Tunecore. Looks pretty cool too, and they do licensing for movies, games etc. Anyone know how they compare to Taxi?

Tune core basically charges, I think 20 bucks a year per CD for itunes. More if you want it on other sites for download. They give you a percentage of what is sold. They have widgets and stuff and you can manage your home page. Not bad for 20 bucks a year. I have two cd's on line with tunecore. They keep your royalties in an account so you can either request a check or use it to pay them each year.

paulclaro


Tune core basically charges, I think 20 bucks a year per CD for itunes. More if you want it on other sites for download. They give you a percentage of what is sold. They have widgets and stuff and you can manage your home page. Not bad for 20 bucks a year. I have two cd's on line with tunecore. They keep your royalties in an account so you can either request a check or use it to pay them each year.

I don't know how accurate some the infromation I saw is but there were a lot of people screaming scam about
tune core on the internet. I got two different pages for tune core. The second wasn't accessible from the first, didn't have link back to the first. They have a P.O. box for a street address. Many on the internet are claiming that tune core cut them off from their royalties after the third or fourth attempt to transfer the money to Paypal. Upon calling the number for Tunecore, they were told their music wasn't properly "licensed". One poster claimed his original music was copyrighted and the response from Tune core was, " if you have a problem, get a lawyer. Don't call here again." While they were laughing at him over the phone.
Makes me want to think about it, find a physical address, see the staff and owner, and see their business license.
There were also posts that said Tune core was being audited by the FBI. I don't know what to think at this point.

???????

Hmmmm..... that Tunecore seems.... well at least it has a semi dodgy reputation!

I googled Tunecore Scam (it came up as an automatic alternative in Google when typing in Tunecore) and got LOTS of interesting results.

There were people who said they were happy with it and managed to get $9.000,00 payments through them. And I suspect that the majors like NIN etc get a lot of money from them. However, the indies didn't seem to happy with it and there are a number of sites/blogs/forums telling that they've been ripped off, been treated poorly and even explained how they do it.

I don't know what to make of it, just thought it was worth a mention. I don't think I will look into Tunecore any more. I have my partners I work with and leave it at that. Then I'll keep contemplating Taxi instead;)

I use Tunecore to place my music on Itunes.

It has worked fine.

How many other options are there?

Futher more, the claims that CRG refers to are copied and pasted all over the internet. If you go to the trouble to read them you'll find the typical scenario is a musician who claims to have sold $467 of unlicensed covers of Michael Jackson's Billie Jean who are pissed that Tunecore will not release the funds.

The saddest part is that it is easy to purchase and document a license for making a cover of "Billie Jean" at 9.1 cents a sale but the *musicians* would rather piss and moan.

The other group seems to be the sample crowd... or the sample crowd that has yet to learn the business of sampling... sampling songs actually costs more than merely doing a cover because you can easily sample and owe many times the payments per song sale to multiple parties... but the unsophisticated sample thief doesn't know that until Tunecore informs them that when you lie about your paperwork when you upload *your* song that it's gonna come back and bite you in the butt when you get found out.

The reason many artists find that they don't get caught until they have significant sales is simply because that is the first time anyone pays any attention to the them and figures out that the "artist" is using stolen material.

I'm working on a country hits cover album this season and I look forward to having all my paperwork in order. If I am lucky enough to catch someones attention and be questioned about licensing it will be very easy to document the fact that everything is legal.

It's not that big a deal... don't steal and make sure that the guys at Tunecore will not be pissed that you made them an accessory to the crime.

Does that make sense?

Other than that... the music and entertainment business has always been a slimy world of finger pointing accusations... what's new?

best regards,
mike

It seems to me that Tunecore and Taxi are in entirely two different businesses.

Taxi is specifically a A&R placement service that attempts to either broker your recordings to someone needing needle drop music for their media production or broker your songs to another Artist and Repertoire rep who is trying to collect song material for some other artist to record and perform.


Tunecore was formed specifically to serve as an intermediary between digital download distribution vendors and the artist or an artist's management. Tunecore would not exist except for the fact that companies like iTunes simply refuse to work with smaller record companies and artists. The frictional complaints that are levied against TuneCore are specifically the type of issues that iTunes sought to avoid. iTunes has offset the liability of screening and reviewing legal paperwork to a small number of brokers like Tunecore which iTunes uses as a risk management portal. It's both simple and complicated. Tunecore has simply made a calculated risk by doing very little legal screening up front and waiting until the risk grows before they identify whom they should pay more attention to. That is what lets a company like Tunecore do what they do as cheaply as they do... they trust you up front... you may tell the truth or lie... when it becomes worth the time to look at the details you are expected to have told the truth when you checked the check box that says you have all your paperwork in order.


Both services have evolved to have overlapping features.

If you really are interested in placement in other media... then Taxi offers that as a primary service.

If you simply need to get your music on iTunes because you have some method of driving customers to that store then you have very few options... with Tunecore having been one of the first to make that possible.


If you want one service to do what the other service does better... you are probably doing the best thing... which is trying to become informed of your options.

all the best,
mike