iTunes Distribution: Ten bucks for one tune

If you're an artist and have dreamed about selling through iTunes, TuneCore has a deal for you. For just ten bucks, you can deliver a single to 11 digital stores around the world. Participating stores include the US, Canadian, Japanese, Australian/NZ, and UK/European iTunes stores plus Rhapsody, Napster and a few others.

You keep 100% of the revenue generated and retain all rights to your masters. Your single is hosted at iTunes for one year. (Additional years cost the same $10/year.)

TuneCore automatically issues payments into your account when they're received from each store. The time of receipt varies by store, each has their own policy, which you can read about in TuneCore's FAQ.

You can check into your account at any time and cash out any earnings on demand. Be aware that although it only takes about 6 hours to submit your music to iTunes, on average it takes about 4 weeks for it to actually appear on the iTunes "shelf". This delay can occasionally go as long as 8 weeks, so if you want to sell a Christmas single, you'll probably want to submit it by the end of the summer just to be sure. Update: TuneCore has advised that this new pricing is active as of June 20.

TUAW has previously posted about TuneCore.

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Source: http://www.tunecore.com/

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If you're an artist and have dreamed about selling through iTunes, TuneCore has a deal for you. For just ten bucks, you can deliver a...

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Steven

Why use Tunecore when you have to put money upfront. Why not use http://routenote.com. No upfront fees. Non-exclusive. Head there and take a look

June 22 2008 at 1:29 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

ecume

FYI - we waited months for our songs to appear on iTunes (submitted through tunecore) and they NEVER DID wind up there. Tunecore did refund our money but you may have better luck with a more established player like CDBaby.

June 07 2008 at 6:26 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Yakov Chodosh

what about cdbaby?

June 06 2008 at 8:01 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

jared

http://www.tunecore.com/example.html seems to have different figures.
$0.99/song, but the maintenance fee looks like $20/yr.

June 06 2008 at 6:43 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to jared's comment

Yeah, I thought the "Read" link would go to some new special promo they were running. But I don't see anything on their page. It looks the same as always: One song would cost $0.99 upload fee, plus $0.99 per store (each iTunes region is separate), plus $19.98 annual maintenance. That said, TuneCore is probably the digital aggregator I would recommend to most people.

June 06 2008 at 6:57 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply