Topic: Tunecore vs. CD Baby

Tagged: CD Baby, cdbaby, distribution, release, tunecore

This topic has 5 voices, contains 6 replies, and was last updated by Tom Atkinson 30 days ago.

Viewing 7 posts - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

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December 8, 2010 at 2:15 pm #6237
buildingonfire	I decided to pay Tunecore $50 to distribute my self-released album Habitats to online retailers. After working with them for a couple months, here are my impressions: Good: - “Does what it says on the tin” : I did not feel like I got baited and switched. If they offer a service, they will deliver it once you pay. - Horizontal distribution: My music is now available via lots of different routes, such as iTunes and Amazon MP3 as well as lesser-famed services like eMusic and Napster (remember Napster? Well, Napster got a job and isn’t much fun to hang out with anymore). Bad: - They wouldn’t submit my music to Amazon CreateSpace (formerly Amazon On Demand). I had to contact them and ask them why. Turned out it was because my cover art needed to by 2000 x 2000 pixels. That would have been nice to know without having to contact them. - I paid them for a subscription to find out my weekly iTunes sales, but they haven’t made a report available to me in almost a month. I reckon I’m going to have to contact them again. All in all it is good in some ways, but I wonder if a similar service offered by CD Baby might not be better. Brad, Brad Sucks fans: What have been your experiences with these two services? Are there others out there that are worth a look? Let’s talk.
December 9, 2010 at 11:18 am #6238
PeterTuneCore	I’m a bit confused, Buildingonfire. Amazon-on-Demand only requires 1600 x 1600 pixel images, where did you see 2000 x 2000? Is that on our site somewhere? It shouldn’t be, I’ve never heard of it before. Also, the only reason why a report wouldn’t show is if you had 0 sales. We designed it that way so no one would ever pay for a Trending report, only to find it empty. But you bring up a valid point–what about those folks who bought a subscription? It doesn’t hurt them to see a 0-sale report, and it would let them know they’re getting what they paid for! I’ll bring this up to the engineering team. Thanks for the feedback, let me know if you’ve any questions about us. –Peter peter@tunecore.com
December 9, 2010 at 2:46 pm #6239
buildingonfire	Thanks very musch for responding, Peter. I must say that I’m impressed; I note you are a new user on this forum, as of about 4 hours ago. Did you sign up for this forum just to address this topic? I think that shows Tunecore is doing a good job keeping an eye on its reputation. You are correct, 1600 x 1600 it is. I’m afraid I didn’t see that during or after sign up. The button to join Amazon On Demand was simply grayed out, even a couple of days after my submission. I ended up emailing to find out why, and was answered quickly by Bryan Halpin. Looking now, I see a note about this in the site’s help section, but I wasn’t able to find it when I searched a few months back. Perhaps I overlooked it. A small note explaining this requirement near the ‘Deliver Here’ checkbox would have helped during sign up, though admittedly perhaps not all your users have the same difficulty as I did. :) Now that I understand what was happening, I agree that not being charged for an empty report is a nice feature. I must say I am slightly embarrassed that that is the answer to my problem, although I am glad to know that the service is working as intended. If I may suggest; perhaps when you speak to the engineering team, a message saying ‘No downloads for this period’ could show up on the website for a given sale-less timespan, instead of an empty line (or even an empty report). To sum up, the ‘bad’ points I mentioned have been cleared up to my satisfaction, and by no less a person than a representative from the company who showed up to address my concerns personally less than 24 hours after I voiced them on a forum. That’s a couple of solid points for Tunecore. I still would love to hear CD Baby user experiences, if there’s anyone who would like to share.
December 11, 2010 at 12:01 am #6240
Brad	Well, I started off on CD Baby when it was the only game in town and I’ve been hesitant to switch. I did hang with Jeff Price on a panel in Toronto and he seemed like a good guy, so it’s not like I wasn’t tempted. The main thing with CD Baby has been that it’s brainless and painless. Beyond submitting my stuff for digital distribution originally, I haven’t had to do anything else. When a new digital service launches, my stuff seems to be in it. Tunecore gave me the impression I had to opt in to all new services and choose to pay for them and I just didn’t want to deal with that. Probably income-wise I’d do better with switching over to Tunecore since they don’t take a percentage, but I feel like I’ll have to deal with more service decisions and bullshit, which I don’t want. One of the big draws I’ve heard about Tunecore is how quickly they can get your stuff on iTunes. I haven’t done any research about this, maybe CD Baby’s the same speed, but it’s a big issue that I’ll be thinking about with my next album. Waiting months for my stuff to show up on iTunes is something I’d be willing to switch for. One thing I keep meaning to email as a suggestion to Jeff/Tunecore is that they do some sort of flat rate “we put you in everything” fee for lazy/cheap people like me. Tunecore Max or something. “You get everything CD Baby offers but it’s faster and a fixed rate, we don’t take a cut of your income!”
December 11, 2010 at 8:35 pm #6241
buildingonfire	I can confirm that my album was in iTunes very fast; I submitted my album to Tunecore on October 3 and made my first sale through iTunes on October 7.
May 2, 2011 at 6:27 pm #6242
Chris B at CD Baby	Hi Buildingonfire, Not to be outdone, I have also created an account to respond :) CD Baby delivers to iTunes in as little as 48 hours. We’re very quick. One of the really cool things about CD Baby is we don’t charge yearly fees. So you don’t have to pay a fee every year (for the rest of your days) if you want your album available for sale. Yes, we take a 9% cut instead. But I, personally, like the idea that if I don’t sell any albums next year I won’t owe anybody 49.95 for every album I put out. It makes me sleep better :) Chris B Chris B at CD Baby
April 23, 2012 at 5:38 am #8504
Tom Atkinson	Excellent forum. I’ve done a comparison chart of the differences between four major networks: http://www.funk.co.nz/auckland-music-update/tunecore-reverbnation-cdbaby-the-orchard/ Overall, ReverbNation gets you into the most (36) discreet networks, although some must be pretty small, but CD Baby with (27) wins for me mostly due to $0/year cost and the CD manufacturing and shipping arm. If RN/Tunecore would wise up to this, they could really steal a lot of business from CD Baby (say by offering a guarantee against a bad year meaning you owe them).