Music 3.0 Music Industry Blog: music distributors

Showing posts with label music distributors. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Questions To Ask When Choosing A Music Distributor

The easiest way to submit your music to a digital distribution service like iTunes or Spotify is to use what’s known as an aggregator. An aggregation service submits your songs or album to multiple services all over the world, and also collects the royalty for downloads or streams.

There are more than 40 digital aggregators doing business around the world, but they all fall into two basic categories; they take a percentage of sales or you pay a fee. Examples of services that take a percentage are CD Baby, Louder, Mondotunes and Bandcamp. Services that charge on a per album or song basis include Tunecore and Reverbnation. Some services, like Distrokid, just require a yearly fee for unlimited submissions.

Some questions to ask when comparing services include:

Do they report to Neilsen Soundscan?
Do you maintain your rights over your music and publishing?
How often they provide a sales report?
How often do they pay?
What other services do they offer?
Is there a setup fee for each release?
Do they supply ISRC codes or barcodes?
Will you continue to receive royalties if you stop paying the monthly or yearly fee?
How many outlets do they distribute to?
Is there a take down fee to remove your songs or album for the service?
Can they arrange iTunes pre-order sales?
Are there any additional charges that aren't obvious?

There are a lot of options between aggregators and there is no clear choice between them all. For more information, there are plenty of comparison sites online, but be sure that the service that you choose best suites you needs without any unforeseen surprises.

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Thursday, June 9, 2011

Music Distributor Rankings

Ever wonder which online music distributor is the most influential? Of course we know that's iTunes, but it's a big world out there and you'd be surprised all the other services that have huge customer bases. Here's an overview from Digital Music News regarding the state of music monetization.
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These are the stats we've been able to confirm; please share if you've got more numbers.

(1) iTunes
* Paid Song Downloads: 15 billion, cumulative since mid-2003 (source: Apple, shared this week.)
* Broader Story: Annual gain-rate of about 4 billion; iCloud $25 annual subscriptions start this fall.

(2) Spotify
* Paying Subscribers: 1,000,000+ (per Spotify, as shared early March, 2011)
* Subscriber Mix: Roughly 10 percent are paying; Spotify says the number is closer to 15 percent when measured by active users. Within paid tiers, 90% appear to be paying full premiums (source: Digital Music News, citing statements and information from European partner sources)
* Royalty Payouts: 43 million euros ($58.5 million) in 2010 (source: Spotify, shared with ballade.no earlier this year).

(3) Sirius XM Radio
* Paying Subscribers: 20.6 million (per first quarter company disclosures). Ranking: Sirius is the third largest entertainment-related subscription service in terms of subscribers, trailing Netflix and Comcast.

(4) Pandora
* Registered users: 90+ million (per SEC filings, June 2nd.) Of note: Subscription and other premium payments accounted for 13.6 of total revenues, according to February disclosures. Pandora has counted more than 10 billion thumbs, though they are not yet profitable (as of April, 2011).

(5) Rhapsody
* Paying Subscribers: 750,000 (per Rhapsody president John Irwin, January 20th). Of note: Increase of 100,000 since April, 2010; awaiting half-year updates (company is preparing to announce a major increase, according to conversations with the company).

(6) Slacker
* Paying Subscribers: 'Well past 300,000' and growing (source: Slacker, to Digital Music News on Wednesday.)

(7) eMusic
* Paying Subscribers: 400,000 (per eMusic disclosures to Digital Music News, November 15th). Of note: Zero subscriber growth since 2007.

(8) Rdio
* Paying Subscribers: Company will not disclose to Digital Music News.

(9) MOG
* Paying Subscribers: Company will not disclose to Digital Music News.

(10) Vodafone UK
* 100,000 paying music subscribers (per Vodafone content services director Lee Epting at MidemNet 2011). Of note: Global goal is 1 million by 2012.

(11) Napster
* Paying Subscribers: 760,000 as of the Best Buy purchase (May, 2008). Current number unknown, likely smaller.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for daily discussion of music, recording, and production tips and tricks.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

A Comparison Of Online Music Distributors

Here's an interesting chart that I found (my apologies, but I can't remember where) that provides a nice overview of some of the popular online music distribution services. With all the hoopla over Tunecore recently raising their prices, it's interesting to see that they're really not that out of line when you look at a side by side comparison.

So which one should you choose? Price isn't always the most important element of your decision. Things like free UPC codes and which stores and subscription services they service are also important. Ultimately, the general feel of the distributor and their user interface may have more of an affect on your decision than anything, so make sure you check them all out before making your choice.