The digital world has completely changed the way we buy music. It has become even easier to get your music out to the masses through digital distribution. There are many digital distributors our there, but which one is the best for you? In this article we discuss the best distributors for your music.
The three major digital distributors are CDBaby, TuneCore & Reverbnation. All of which will get your music in the major online stores like iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody, etc. Each of them have their own costs and keep different commission for selling your tracks.
So what’s the cost difference between the three?
CDBaby:
Cost Per Album: $49 One Time Fee
Cost Per Single: $9.99 One Time Fee
Percent of Profit Kept By Them: Direct downloads from CDBaby: 9%.Downloads from iTunes, AmazonMP3, etc: 9% of profit.
UPC barcode: $20 per album. $5 per single.
ISRC Code: $0
TuneCore:
Cost Per Album: $29.99 first year. $49.99 each year after.
Cost Per Single: $9.99 per year.
Percent of Profit Kept By Them: $0
UPC barcode: $0
ISRC Code: $0
ReverbNation:
Cost Per Album: $34.95 to $59.95 per year.
Cost Per Single: $34.95 to $59.95 per year.
Percent of Profit Kept By Them: $0
UPC barcode: $0
ISRC Code: $0
You can find out more on each companies pricing from their website:
CDBaby Pricing Info: https://members.cdbaby.com/cd-baby-cost.aspx
Tunecore Pricing Info: http://www.tunecore.com/index/pricing
ReverbNation Pricing Info: http://www.reverbnation.com/band-promotion/distribution
So Which is Best?
As explained above, CDBaby charges per album and single and takes a certain percentage, while TuneCore and ReverbNation does not take any commission but charge a monthly fee. For singles, you’ll notice that ReverbNation’s costs do not change from the $34.95 minimum. The reason for this is that they consider each submission a “release” which can contain 1 to 50 tracks.
In our opinion CDBaby is the your best bet unless your going to be selling hundreds of thousands of records. It makes much more sense to have a one time fee rather than a yearly fee. Leave us a comment and tell us which you think is best.