I believe that tunecore will burn your CD's on-demand, that is, you send them the masters and they produce only what someone orders. That would seem to be a more-efficient 21st-century paradigm. I would advise against trying to gauge your demand in advance... the whole drink coaster thing.


Been there.

Ok, so tunecore looks interesting, but it appears to conflict with CD Baby. Which do I choose?

Sam

ORIGINAL: samhoff

Ok, so tunecore looks interesting, but it appears to conflict with CD Baby. Which do I choose?

Sam

Do some research and be careful when it comes to CD Baby. I think they make you sign away some rights in return for their services, that you don't want to sign away. I think tunecore is more reasonable in that regard.

Nooooooooooooo!!!!!!!! CDBaby is the best thing going for musicians on the damned Internet. You don't sign a blessed thing away with them. Been using them for over a year now. They've gotten me a lot of sales I never would have had on my own, much of it through iTunes and similar digital download carriers. Derek's the man.

Ok, I've got a stupid question to add...

What constitutes a 4-panel? Is that basically one strip of paper, or card, folded in half? Creating essentially 4 sides to print on? Or is that 4 pages, 8 total sides to print on? Somehow I think I know the answer to this...

I'm not sure I could fit all the lyrics on two sides, the insides.

Also, does replication require larger runs, or is it just that it's usually not economically sensible unless you're doing larger runs? Might sound silly, but I like the idea of replication over duplication, but I could never move a thousand CD's, or even 500 for that matter - maybe not even a hundred.

I like the idea of replicating about 50 cd's. Even if it's more expensive per cd, it's more feasible than letting go of hundreds, or thousands of dollars, for me anyway. I'm a poor bastard...

ORIGINAL: Joe Bravo

Nooooooooooooo!!!!!!!! CDBaby is the best thing going for musicians on the damned Internet. You don't sign a blessed thing away with them. Been using them for over a year now. They've gotten me a lot of sales I never would have had on my own, much of it through iTunes and similar digital download carriers. Derek's the man.

Well, maybe you checked that little "I Agree" box without reading the fine print.

Seriously, I read this in an article in EQ magazine. It's quite enlightening, and tunecore sounds like the better deal.... check it out: http://www.eqmag.com/story.asp?sectioncode=36&storycode=15646

Hmmmm.... You have me looking at TuneCore, now!

Man, Tunecore looks pretty damn good. I don't have much experience with this though. I checked out CD Baby, and while you can purchase directly from their site as well as the digital download stores, they continue to take proceeds sale after sale. Tunecore only charges for the initial delivery to the store - Itunes, Rhapsody and etc. But, it doesn't appear you can purchase anything directly from Tunecore - music that is.

Original: j boy

Seriously, I read this in an article in EQ magazine. It's quite enlightening, and tunecore sounds like the better deal.... check it out: http://www.eqmag.com/story.asp?sectioncode=36&storycode=15646

One thing though...the article talks about "print-on-demand" and how the publisher handles the transaction and shipping of physical CD's. That sounds great, except when I went to Tunecore's site, they appear to only be providing a low-run CD duplication service - not handling the duplication on-demand from customers.

Unless I'm missing something, I thought the idea behind "print-on-demand" was that folks could choose to purchase the CD and Tunecore would handle printing it, shipping it and taking the money. And you'd never touch the CD yourself.

Whatever the case, it does look like a great idea. And not having to sign away certain rights feels more secure to me, also.

Maybe I missed it, but I didn't find on TuneCore's site where they offer print on demand or physical distribution of any sort. They will print up a run of 1000+. CD Baby does handle phsyical distribution, and while I wouldn't use CD Baby for promotion, I would use them for physical distribution. I would use TuneCore for digital distribution, as their payment plan looks better than CD Baby's.

Okay.... so you guys aren't necessarily making this any easier for me, but I just checked with my album at CD Baby (I'd already paid the $35) and it looks like you can choose to sign up/not sign up with the digital distribution. So.... I guess I don't sign up for digital distribution with them, but I do sign up for it with Tunecore. Sound like a plan?

One of my problems is how to print the covers without knowing FOR SURE what's going on. I mean, I guess I print on the covers "Find my music at CDBaby and download it at ITunes" and then I just make sure that those two things are in place before I ever sell (okay, give away, really) the first bunch. Right?

For what it's worth, this is not correct:

You can create your CD Baby account before you send them a CD. That will give you a complete URL. You will want that on your CD back if possible, e.g. "http://CDBaby.Com/myartistname"

I've looked. It's not there. I'm assuming (hoping) it doesn't get there until they have an album in hand (?).

One last question I'll ask again: Do you all bother doing the copyright step or just forego it?
Sam